Men Are Trouble | Page 7

which would discourage the mom from snooping. I
doglegged a key and opened the file. She had multiple calls. Her mother had been trying
her at [email protected]. But she also had an alternate: [email protected].
I did a reverse lookup and that turned up an address: The Church of Christ the Man, 348
Vincent Avenue. I wasn't keen for a personal visit to the church, so I tried her call.
"Hello," said a voice.
"Is this Rashmi Jones?"
The voice hesitated. "My name is Brigit. Leave me alone."
"Your mother is worried about you, Rashmi. She hired me to find you."
"I don't want to be found."
"I'm reading your novel, Rashmi." It was just something to say; I wanted to keep her on
the line. "I was wondering, does she find her father at the end?"
"No." I could hear her breath caressing the microphone. "The devils come. That's the
whole point."

Someone said something to her and she muted the speaker. But I knew she could still
hear me. "That's sad, Rashmi. But I guess that's the way it had to be."
Then she hung up.
The mom was relieved that Rashmi was all right, furious that she was with Christers. So
what? I'd found the girl: case closed. Only Najma Jones begged me to help her connect
with her daughter. She was already into me for twenty bucks plus expenses, but for
another five I said I'd try to get her away from the church long enough for them to talk. I
was on my way over when the searchlet I'd attached to the Jones account turned up the hit
at Grayle's Shoes. I was grateful for the reprieve, even more pleased when the salesbot
identified Rashmi from her pix. As did the waitress at Maison Diana.
And the clerk at the Comfort Inn.
3
Ronald Reagan Elementary had been recently renovated, no doubt by a squad of janitor
bots. The brick faade had been cleaned and repointed; the long row of windows gleamed
like teeth. The asphalt playground had been ripped up and resurfaced with safe-t-mat, the
metal swingsets swapped for gaudy towers and crawl tubes and slides and balance beams
and decks. The chain link fences had been replaced by redwood lattice through which
twined honeysuckle and clematis. There was a boxwood maze next to the swimming pool
that shimmered, blue as a dream. Nothing was too good for the little girls -- our hope for
the future.
There was no room in the rack jammed with bikes and scooters and goboards, so I leaned
my bike against a nearby cherry tree. The very youngest girls had come out for first
recess. I paused behind the tree for a moment to let their whoops and shrieks and laughter
bubble over me. My business didn't take me to schools very often; I couldn't remember
when I had last seen so many girls in one place. They were black and white and yellow
and brown, mostly dressed like janes you might see anywhere. But there were more than
a few whose clothes proclaimed their mothers' lifestyles. Tommys in hunter camo and
chaste Christers, twists in chains and spray-on, clumps of sisters wearing the uniforms of
a group marriage, a couple of furries and one girl wearing a body suit that looked just like
bot skin. As I lingered there, I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the shade of a tree. I
had no idea who these tiny creatures were. They went to this well-kept school, led more
or less normal lives. I grew up in the wild times, when everything was falling apart. At
that moment, I realized that they were as far removed from me as I was from the grannies.
I would always watch them from a distance.
Just inside the fence, two sisters in green-striped shirtwaists and green knee socks were
turning a rope for a ponytailed jumper who was executing nimble criss-crosses. The
turners chanted,
"Down in the valley where the green grass grows,
there sits Stacy pretty as a rose!

She sings, she sings, she sings so sweet,
Then along comes Chantall to kiss her on the cheek!"
Another jumper joined her in the middle, matching her step for step, her dark hair flying.
The chant continued,
"How many kisses does she get?
One, two, three, four, five ..."
The two jumpers pecked at each other in the air to the count of ten without missing a beat.
Then Ponytail skipped out and the turners began the chant over again for the dark-haired
girl. Ponytail bent over for a moment to catch her breath; when she straightened, she
noticed me.
"Hey you, behind the tree." She shaded her eyes with a hand. "You hiding?"
I stepped into the open. "No."
"This