Woman Most Wanted. Harper Allen

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      Chapter Four

      Jenna was stiff from spending the night on a hard bus terminal bench, her hair looked like the proverbial burning bush, and her dress had wrinkled as only a natural fiber could. Jenna smoothed ineffectually at it with the palms of her hands and realized, for the first time in her life, that there was something to be said for polyester.

      The bus station washroom was empty, so when her stomach gurgled the sound echoed hollowly around the tiled room. A skimpy lunch yesterday, no dinner, and she didn’t have any money to buy breakfast.

      She shifted slightly, and the muted silvery chime of her ankle bracelet tinkled off into a delicate echo. At the sound, Jenna’s chin lifted and her slumped shoulders straightened.

      She hadn’t been able to sleep much last night, and her insomnia hadn’t been because she’d kept slipping off the plastic bench. She’d run a whole gamut of emotions before she’d finally dropped into a fitful doze; from fear and anguish to a sense of betrayal to bewildered confusion. And just as dawn had begun to filter through the grimy terminal windows she’d come to a conclusion that had brought her a faint ray of hope—enough so that she knew she could go on.

      Maybe Franklin had passed on the instability that had robbed them both of a normal, settled life. It seemed as if he had, judging from everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. But she was Sara Moon’s daughter, too—Franklin had always said that Jenna took after her mother more than she did him—and Sara Moon had been the sanest person Jenna had ever known.

      She didn’t remember much about her mother, but she could recall a voice that was never raised in anger, a calm acceptance of Franklin’s spur-of-the-moment upheavals and a reassuring presence that had managed to turn each new and bewildering town into a comforting home for a lonely little girl. Sara Moon was as much a part of her as her father was, Jenna thought. Her mother’s strength would keep her from veering over the edge as Franklin had.

      From now on she would live a dull, uneventful, normal life, Jenna decided. If she saw Elvis walking down the main street wearing blue suede shoes and eating a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich this afternoon, she’d smile politely and walk on. She wouldn’t tell anyone, she wouldn’t phone anyone and she wouldn’t try to convince anyone of her crazy story.

      Least of all that snake in the grass Matt D’Angelo.

      She walked casually through the bus terminal, drifting by the vending machines and surreptitiously pulling on their handles to see if anything dropped out. Nothing did. There was a line of pay phones flanking the far wall that she’d tried earlier, but just in case, she glided like a hungry shark by them again, flipping open the coin return on each one hopefully. She was walking dispiritedly away from the last one, the bells on her ankle bracelet jingling sadly, when she heard a cascade of coins dropping to the ground behind her.

      Jackpot! Jenna stuffed the money into the pocket of her dress and dodged out the nearest exit door as guiltily as if she’d just pulled off a major heist. Half a block away she stopped to count her winnings—four and a half…no, five dollars in quarters. If she was careful, she could get breakfast and lunch out of that.

      The tiny corner diner was packed with truck drivers and, for some reason, six or seven young women dressed as if they were going out for an evening’s club-hopping, instead of sitting hunched over cups of coffee and half-eaten pieces of toast at six-thirty in the morning. Just looking at them while she placed her order at the counter, Jenna felt like a wreck, but when a seat at one of the tables became vacant, she slid in with a murmured apology.

      At one of the communes she’d lived on a few years ago there’d been a woman who made all-natural herbal cosmetics, but her beeswax lip balm had felt sticky and the buttermilk and orrisroot eyeshadow she’d given Jenna had smelled like—well, like sour buttermilk. She’d never really gotten the knack of makeup after that, Jenna thought.

      Out of the corner of her eye she cast an envious glance at the woman sitting beside her. Her lipstick was an iridescent mauve, and her eyelashes were thick and black and the longest Jenna had ever seen. She wore a white denim bomber-type jacket that was so short it showed her navel, and under it was a black lacy bra top. Her skirt was some kind of stretchy fabric that clung to her curves, and under the table five-inch-high stiletto heels lay toppled over on their sides. One of her feet was wrapped around the rungs of her chair. She was massaging the other one when she met Jenna’s interested gaze.

      “You a working girl, Ginger?”

      It took a moment to realize who she was speaking to, but then Jenna flushed, embarrassed to be caught staring. She tucked a fiery strand of hair behind her ear. “Oh. Yes, I guess I am. I just started a couple of days ago. Sorry I was staring, but I love your lipstick. What’s it called?”

      The other woman fished in a tiny purse with a chain-link strap that lay on the table, finally pulling out a black plastic tube. She squinted at it. “Mauve,” she said in a disappointed tone. “What a rip-off name. So who do you work for, Ginger?”

      “The Skipper. And the Professor’s her best customer,” another girl said. She flipped open a compact and checked her teeth in its mirror, then snapped it shut and started humming a tune. The other two girls at the table started giggling and humming along with her, and even the woman with the mauve lipstick grinned and joined in. The only words they seemed to know were the last few, and the whole table finished on cue.

      “Here on Gilligan’s Isle!”

      It had to be a television thing again, Jenna thought in frustration. She smiled weakly. There was so much she’d missed through Franklin’s vow never to own СКАЧАТЬ