After she went undercover, Stellas mother would smooth her eyebrows with her pinky finger and wink at her reflection. She lined her eyes, shadowed her eyelids, lengthened and strengthened her eyelashes with mascara, painted her lips with a thick coat of lipstick and then brushed her face with a loose powder to hold it all together. She turned her head to the left, sucking in her cheeks, painted blush just below her cheekbones. She applied foundation with a big, soft brush, sometimes tapping the bristles against Stellas nose.
She added moisturizer, rubbing it into her skin with her fingertips in quick circles, trying not to stretch the skin. Her mother called it going undercover. First, Stellas mother tied her hair back with a headband and washed her face.
When Stella was seven, her mother taught her how to apply makeup. He doesnt even remember how he likes his coffee anymore.Įvery night, Stella removes her makeup with a coarse white washcloth she cut from old towels she received from her mother when she got her first apartment. He decided to call all the girls Annaliese. He decided to call the next girl and the girl after her Annaliese. He never bothered to find out or he knew and was holding that secret in a dark, lonely place. Then Annaliese had to go and get married. She knew how to type without making too many errors and always answered the phone after the first ring even if she was hung over. She smelled like hot tea, which was strange but he didnt mind. She worked for him for four years, always dressed real sharp in tight blouses and short skirts. His best girl, Annaliese, she was a smart cookie. Just when he has the girl trained, she moves on to something better or worse. Its hard to behave rationally when every other month theres a new temp sitting at the desk outside of his office. His tears stain his cheeks and seep between their mouths. He presses his lips to the dead mans lips and he cries. He inhales deeply, the smell of death sinking into his skin. When he can bear the anticipation no longer, he slowly licks his lips, then leans over the cadavers face. Parker carefully presses his fingers along the nearly invisible vein structures of the dead mans body. After they leave and hes alone in the morgue, he finds the body of a strong man, lays the corpse out on the gurney. Even though he wears a lab coat, he always dresses up, fresh slacks, a nice, clean shirt, a small splash of cologne. The best part about medical school, Parker thinks, is being alone with the cadavers when hes studying for his anatomy class.
The way they take and the way they need her make her feel special. They take and take and take and she loves it, how bad it makes her feel, how good it makes her feel. Rosa tells her mentally disordered friends everythings going to be OK and she hears the voices too and they are the center of her joy.
She specializes mostly in narcissists, mild schizophrenics, manic depressives, and people with borderline personality disorders who might, under different circumstances, become serial killers. Rosa likes to befriend people with pharmaceutically manageable yet socially aggravating mental disorders. Emma heard a womans high-pitched scream from the street below her apartment. Later, she would wash her hands in the sink, enjoying the warm water trickling across her knuckles and she would smell her fingers and hope they still smelled like newsprint. It was so charming to read about it in a newspaper. It was so charming, Emma thought, that people still cared enough to do that sort of thing. The good Samaritan was pictured on the front page, an older man, balding but fit, his face darkened by smoke, and in his arms he held a scowling young boy, limbs flailing. The previous evening, a passerby rescued a boy from a burning building. How he loved the way his chest muscles burned after that tiny indiscretion.Įmma was reading the newspaper and drinking tea and feeling rather old-fashioned about the whole thing. He walked to work every morning and, at the last corner before reaching his building, he liked to inch the toes of his left foot beyond the neatly painted margins of the crosswalk.
His bathroom was full of random objects to better aid in the quantification of things. If a shampoo bottle instructed him to squeeze a dollop the size of a quarter into his hand, he used a quarter to help him measure that exact amount. He believed in rules great and small from the Ten Commandments to the instructions on everyday products. Abiding by the rules, he often liked to say, was the foundation of a democratic society.