I'm Your Girl. J.J. Murray

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      It’s a start.

      I don’t want to forget them.

      No one’s asking you to forget them.

      I don’t want to…put them on the shelf somewhere to dust off and look at every once in a while. I want them back!

      Then give them away.

      I can’t, and I won’t.

      They aren’t yours to keep anymore. They belong to God.

      They belong…to God?

      They belong to God.

      Yeah, God can be greedy that way. Only the good die young, right?

      Nothing gold can stay.

      Right. Nothing gold—or golden—can ever stay in this overcast world.

      Except you.

      I’m not golden.

      You could be.

      I’d rather be overcast.

      God moves in mysterious ways.

      Well, sometimes He doesn’t move fast enough or at all.

      The snow is starting to stick. The roads will be slick, but the truck ought to do fine. I wonder if I have enough boxes for all these clothes. I could use garbage bags…. No. That wouldn’t be right. They deserve better than garbage bags.

      I’ll just have to make a couple trips and get my boxes back each time. Geez, the four-wheel-drive vehicle I bought to replace the van that cost me my family is going to be used to safely deliver their memories to the Salvation Army. What could be more ironic?

      It can’t be considered ironic if it’s expected. You aren’t the only one who has ever lost a spouse and child. This is all part of the process.

      The process sucks.

      Only for a little while. But when you’re done with this part…

      And when I’m done with this part…

      Don’t think too long, now. Do something fun.

      And when I’m done, I’ll…

      Think sunny thoughts, now.

      I’ll make Stevie a snowman.

      7

      Diane

      Instead of going into the library on the day after Christmas, when no patrons come to the library anyway because they’re all out standing in lines at the mall, I use my last remaining sick day. And since it’s snowing—okay, it’s not really snowing like it used to in Naptown—I don’t want to drive anywhere.

      “Too much partying last night, huh, Diane?” Kim “Prim” says when I call in to tell her I’ve developed a nasty cold.

      “Yeah, I guess,” I say. Why spoil her stereotype of me? At least she thinks I have fun. Somebody should be thinking I have a fun life.

      “See you bright and early tomorrow, okay?”

      “Okay.” I’ll be early, but I doubt I’ll be bright.

      I hang up and blow my nose into an imaginary tissue. Then I pick up the next book, P&Q, by J. K. Growling. What kind of name is “Growling”? I can only hope for the best.

      1: Venus Dione

      Oh no she didn’t!

      I clutch the latest copy of Maxim and see Psyche’s flawless body glistening with sweat on the cover, one scrawny towel barely covering her unnaturally natural “yes-they’re-real” breasts, one scrawnier towel lying along her caramel thighs, toned to perfection by daily aerobics, her stomach so tight lint would bounce off of it.

      So far, I hate Psyche. This is so fake. Venus has an interesting voice, though. But what’s up with these names from Greek mythology?

      I hate her beautiful ass, I hate her blonde highlights, I hate her perfect uncapped teeth, I hate her darker-than-Mississippi-mud brown eyes, and I hate that trademark orange and black monarch butterfly tattoo on her arm.

      I still hate Psyche. She’s too perfect. This might be lucky to get one star, though I like Venus’s attitude. Maybe I’ll give it two stars for Venus hating Psyche, too.

      Psyche was only supposed to be quoted, and she was only supposed to be inside the magazine in a pictorial on all of Aphrodite Incorporated’s models, including me. I barely get a black-and-white head shot on page 128 in a sidebar.

      Here she is on the goddamn cover.

      Bitch.

      “Bitch,” I say with a giggle. Oh, like Psyche really exists. But here I am, yet again, echoing a fictional character. I hate it when this happens. I start talking back to a book, and the book hooks me. I’m curious about Grandpa Joe-Joe’s jungle, but…I’ll keep reading this one for now.

      Nearly two million men of all ages and races will be drooling and jerking off over Psyche, and where is my latest full-body shot? On page seventeen of the latest JC Penney fall catalog. Not many men check out hot black women in itchy-ass wool blazers and turtlenecks on page seventeen of the JC Penney fall catalog, and if they do, I don’t want to have anything to do with them.

      Neither do I! They’d have to be perverted to get their “pleasuring” that way. Even Mama would agree with me. But was the phrase “jerking off” absolutely necessary? Is the author a man or a woman? I can usually tell. If the women’s voices sound authentic, it has to be a woman. I’ll bet J. K. Growling is a woman.

      This has to stop! I knew ten years ago that Psyche would be trouble when she was only Ginger Dane, skinny brown wench with high cheekbones and a perfect smile from Athens, Ohio, sister to Rosemary Dane, another skinny brown wench whom I let model for me because I felt sorry for her. I have tried to snap Ginger in two on many occasions, giving her shitty shoots near the equator, where I had hoped she would turn black as night or get yellow fever, but the bitch came through with flying colors—and fame. That damn Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue catapulted her to glory. I never should have let her do that. And when I wanted her to get sleazy in a rap video to damage her holier-than-anyone image, she flipped the script on those rappers, dressing in a formal white gown instead of some coochie-cutter hip huggers—and sent that single platinum. And last year I thought I could ruin her for good by rumoring her into a tasteless affair with that fat, sloppy comedian, what was his name? Fat Daddy? Pudge Daddy? Whatever. No one believed the rumor at all, not even Jay Leno, who said Psyche was just too “pure to be with a porker” on The Tonight Show. Damn, the bitch is giving supermodels a bad name, being as pure and healthy as she is. She isn’t high-strung, isn’t anorexic, isn’t popping pills, doesn’t drink, and she somehow manages to stay out of most of the tabloids.

      Pure and beautiful.

      But her purity and beauty will be the end of her.

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