Men Are Trouble | Page 8

is our school, you know." The girl set one foot behind the other and then spun a
hundred and eighty degrees to point at the door to the school. "You supposed to sign in at
the office."
"I'd better take care of that then."
As I passed through the gate into the playground, a few of the girls stopped playing and
stared. This was all the audience Ponytail needed. "You someone's mom?"
"No."
"Don't you have a job?" She fell into step beside me.
"I do."
"What is it?"
"I can't tell you."
She dashed ahead to block my path. "Probably because it's a pretend job."
Two of her sisters in green-striped shirtwaists scrambled to back her up.
"When we grow up," one of them announced, "we're going to have real jobs."
"Like a doctor," the other said. "Or a lion tamer."
Other girls were joining us. "I want to drive a truck," said a tommy. "Big, big truck." She
specified the size of her rig with outstretched arms.

"That's not a real job. Any bot could do that."
"I want to be a teacher," said the dark-haired sister who had been jumping rope.
"Chantall loves school," said a furry. "She'd marry school if she could." Apparently this
passed for brilliant wit in the third grade; some girls laughed so hard they had to cover
their mouths with the back of their hands. Me, I was flummoxed. Give me a spurned
lover or a mean drunk or a hardcase cop and I could figure out some play, but just then I
was trapped by this giggling mob of children.
"So why you here?" Ponytail put her fists on her hips.
A jane in khakis and a baggy plum sweater emerged from behind a blue tunnel that
looked like a centipede. She pinned me with that penetrating but not unkind stare that
teachers are born with, and began to trudge across the playground toward me. "I've come
to see Ms. Jones," I said.
"Oh." A shadow passed over Ponytail's face and she rubbed her hands against the sides of
her legs. "You better go then."
Someone called, "Are you the undertaker?"
A voice that squeaked with innocence asked, "What's an undertaker?"
I didn't hear the answer. The teacher in the plum sweater rescued me and we passed
through the crowd.
#
I didn't understand why Najma Jones had come to school. She was either the most
dedicated teacher on the planet or she was too numb to accept her daughter's death. I
couldn't tell which. She had been reserved when we met the first time; now she was
locked down and welded shut. She was a bird of a woman with a narrow face and thin
lips. Her gray hair had a few lingering strands of black. She wore a long-sleeved white
kameez tunic over shalwar trousers. I leaned against the door of her classroom and told
her everything I had done the day before. She sat listening at her desk with a sandwich
that she wasn't going to eat and a carton of milk that she wasn't going to drink and a
napkin that she didn't need.
When I had finished, she asked me about cyanide inhalers.
"Hydrogen cyanide isn't hard to get in bulk," I said. "They use it for making plastic,
engraving, tempering steel. The inhaler came from one of the underground suicide groups,
probably Our Choice. The cops could tell you for sure."
She unfolded the napkin and spread it out on top of her desk. "I've heard it's a painful
death."

"Not at all," I said. "They used to use hydrogen cyanide gas to execute criminals, back in
the bad old days. It all depends on the first breath. Get it deep into your lungs and you're
unconscious before you hit the floor. Dead in less than a minute."
"And if you don't get a large enough dose?"
"Ms. Jones ..."
She cut me off hard. "If you don't?"
"Then it takes longer, but you still die. There are convulsions. The skin flushes and turns
purple. Eyes bulge. They say it's something like having a heart attack."
"Rashmi?" She laid her daughter's name down gently, as if she were tucking it into bed.
"How did she die?"
Had the cops shown her the crime scene pictures? I decided they hadn't. "I don't think she
suffered," I said.
She tore a long strip off the napkin. "You don't think I'm a very good mother, do you?"
I don't know exactly what I expected her to say, but this wasn't it. "Ms. Jones, I don't
know much about you and your daughter. But I do know that you cared enough about her
to hire me. I'm sorry I let you down."
She shook her head wearily, as if I had