Men Are Trouble | Page 9

just flunked the pop quiz. One third does not
equal .033 and Los Angeles has never been the capital of California. "Is there anything
else I should know?" she said.
"There is." I had to tell her what I'd found out that morning, but I wasn't going to tell her
that I was working for a devil. "You mentioned before that Rashmi had a friend named
Kate."
"The Christer?" She tore another strip off the napkin.
I nodded. "Her name is Kate Vermeil. I don't know this for sure yet, but there's reason to
believe that Rashmi and Kate were married yesterday. Does that make any sense to you?"
"Maybe yesterday it might have." Her voice was flat. "It doesn't anymore."
I could hear stirring in the next classroom. Chairs scraped against linoleum. Girls were
jabbering at each other.
"I know Rashmi became a Christer," she said. "It's a broken religion. But then everything
is broken, isn't it? My daughter and I ... I don't think we ever understood each other. We
were strangers at the end." The napkin was in shreds. "How old were you when it
happened?"
"I wasn't born yet." She didn't have to explain what it was. "I'm not as old as I look."

"I was nineteen. I remember men, my father, my uncles. And the boys. I actually slept
with one." She gave me a bleak smile. "Does that shock you, Ms. Hardaway?"
I hated it when grannies talked about having sex, but I just shook my head.
"I didn't love Sunil, but I said I'd marry him just so I could get out of my mother's house.
Maybe that was what was happening with Rashmi and this Kate person?"
"I wouldn't know."
The school bell rang.
"I'm wearing white today, Ms. Hardaway, to honor my darling daughter." She gathered
up the strips of napkin and the sandwich and the carton of milk and dropped them in the
trashcan. "White is the Hindu color of mourning. But it's also the color of knowledge.
The goddess of learning, Saraswati, is always shown wearing a white dress, sitting on a
white lotus. There is something here I must learn." She fingered the gold embroidery at
the neckline of her kameez. "But it's time for recess."
We walked to the door. "What will you do now?" She opened it. The fifth grade swarmed
the hall, girls rummaging through their lockers.
"Find Kate Vermeil," I said.
She nodded. "Tell her I'm sorry."
4
I tried Kate's call again, but when all I got was the sidekick I biked across town to 44 East
Washington Avenue. The Poison Society turned out to be a jump joint; the sign said it
opened at 9PM. There was no bell on the front door, but I knocked hard enough to wake
Marilyn Monroe. No answer. I went around to the back and tried again. If Kate was in
there, she wasn't entertaining visitors.
A sidekick search turned up an open McDonald's on Wallingford, a ten-minute ride. The
only other customers were a couple of twists with bound breasts and identical acid-green
vinyl masks. One of them crouched on the floor beside the other, begging for chicken
nuggets. A bot took my order for the 29 combo meal -- it was all bots behind the counter.
By law, there was supposed to be a human running the place, but if she was on the
premises, she was nowhere to be seen. I thought about calling City Hall to complain, but
the egg rolls arrived crispy and the McLatte was nicely scalded. Besides, I didn't need to
watch the cops haul the poor jane in charge out of whatever hole she had fallen into.
A couple of hardcase tommys in army surplus fatigues strutted in just after me. They ate
with their heads bowed over their plastic trays so the fries didn't have too far to travel.
Their collapsible titanium nightsticks lay on the table in plain sight. One of them was not
quite as wide as a bus. The other was nothing special, except that when I glanced up from
my sidekick, she was giving me a freeze-dried stare. I waggled my shiny fingernails at

her and screwed my cutest smile onto my face. She scowled, said something to her
partner and went back to the trough.
My sidekick chirped. It was my pal Julie Epstein, who worked
Self-Endangerment/Missing Persons out of the Second Precinct.
"You busy, Fay?"
"Yeah, the Queen of Cleveland just lost her glass slipper and I'm on the case."
"Well, I'm about to roll through your neighborhood. Want to do lunch?"
I aimed the sidekick at the empties on my table. "Just finishing."
"Where are you?"
"McD's on Wallingford."
"Yeah? How are the ribs?"
"Couldn't say. But the egg rolls are triple