Page 3 of Throwing Shade
I inhaled the heavenly scent of my favorite zucchini chocolate chip muffin. My stomach growled and I shoved a piece in my mouth, sighing blissfully. “Thank you, o dealer mine.”
She squirted out more petroleum jelly with a farting noise. “If I’d have known you’d be this grateful, I’d have insisted on house cleaning in payment.”
“Always have a contract in place.” I tore off some more of the muffin. “Today has not been fun. One of our junior lawyers accused me of being incompetent, discharged a half gallon of spit on my sweater, and topped it off by calling me Mara.”
“Ouch.” Judith got comfortable in my desk chair, tucking the small tube of cream into the pocket of her jean jacket. Balancing one cowboy boot heel on the ground, she pawed through my drawer until she triumphantly waved a letter opener. “Here’s the plan. We lure him in to the men’s room before he leaves and…” She made stabbing motions. “Then we prop him in a stall. No one will look for him till tomorrow. We’ll have plenty of time to come back after hours to dispose of the body.” She tapped her wrist brace. “No one will suspect me and I’ll cover for you.”
I picked up the scarf that had slid from the chair onto the floor for the third time this afternoon. The rose print was beautiful, but the silk was a pain in the ass. “Not unless you’ve upped your lying game. Ten seconds of scowl from that border guard and you were confessing your two pairs of smuggled socks.”
Jude scrunched up the back of her curly red hair with her hand. “To be fair, those guys are pros.”
“Body disposal isn’t necessary. I snitched to Mara.”
Jude crossed herself, then stopped halfway through. “Oh, wait. I’m Jewish. So what’s your resident blowhard got you doing?”
“Researching the Law on Remoteness.”
She shuddered. “This is why you couldn’t pay me to work a corporate job anymore.”
“Yes, but you envy my cornucopia of medical and dental benefits.” I pulled a paper napkin out of the bag and wiped my fingers.
“True.” She poked one of her teeth. “I swear this one is being held together by crazy glue and a prayer. In penance for that depressing reminder, you can be my mid-afternoon entertainment break. Hmm. Since I doubt you have pasties on under that wrap dress, you’ll have to amuse me some other way.” She snapped her fingers. “I know. Let’s check your dating profile.”
“Let’s not.”
“Come on, Miri. I could use a laugh.” She winked at me.
I twisted my shoulder-length dark hair up into a bun, and jammed a pen through it. “I deleted it, okay?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made fun of you. It’s hard putting yourself out there. Believe me, I know.”
“The emotional vulnerability of online dating in general is bad enough.” I shuddered and sat on the edge of my desk. “But this was a nightmare.”
“How so?”
“Two words for you, my friend: septuagenarian balls.”
“Ewww.” Judith shook her head. “That’s so wrong on so many levels. You’re attractive, you have all your own teeth, you’re gainfully employed.”
“Intelligent, funny…”
She snorted. “The two most prized qualities on dating sites.”
I pushed up my boobs. “Great rack.”
“True. We’ll list that before the teeth.”
“It won’t help. The boob game out there is too strong. Plus, I’m forty-two and I have a kid. Thanks for playing.” I beheld my little kingdom of books, covering such heart-pounding topics as construction law and application fraud. “I was so excited to turn forty. Finally, I could give zero fucks, free of all the BS that dragged me down in my youth. And that’s true to an extent, but mostly I feel like I missed some Kafkaesque ceremony where I was presented with a pair of mom jeans, the number for the easy listening station on my FM dial, and the admonishment to ‘go gentle into that good night.’”
“Where’s the rage and rock ’n’ roll when you need it?” Jude said.
“Oh, there’s rage.”
One of the paralegals waved at me from the library and I held up a finger, grabbing a memo off my printer to give to her.
“This should fix the login issues,” I said, “but let me know if you’re still having problems.
The woman thanked me and left.
