Forty Words for Sorrow

EDIE Soames kept her eyes on the clock until it finally inched its way to lunchtime, then she told Quereshi she was breaking and went to the Pizza Patio at the other end of the mall. She always had lunch by herself; Eric never got lunch at the same time. The need to be with him was particularly bad right now. They'd been holding the boy for so long, Edie's anticipation was in danger of turning into fear. Eric kept putting off the party, apparently enjoying stretching this one out. He loved having a prisoner; it gave him a renewed sense of purpose. But Edie was feeling restless and jumpy, as if her skin were on too tight.

At the next table, her ex-friend Margo sat with her back to the entrance, giggling with two other Pharma-City employees. Edie never sat with Margo anymore; Margo was not a serious person. A year ago, before Eric came along, she had confided to her diary, Margo knows how to have fun- something I've never learned. I think I may be in love with her. She came round and set my hair last night, and we had such a good time. But then Eric had come along, and Margo and Eric disliked each other on sight. One day, before Margo realized how much Eric meant to Edie, she had commented carelessly that he looked like a ferret. Except for unavoidable interchanges at work, Edie hadn't spoken to her since.

Edie ordered a diet Coke and two slices of pizza. She was halfway through the second slice when she heard her name. Margo had shrieked it out, but Edie wasn't being called, she was being discussed. "Oh, my God," Margo was saying. "Such a sourpuss. I mean that face could stop a truck. And she must wear like a quart of Obsession. That girl needs a makeover, big time."

"Big time," Sally Royce agreed. "A personality makeover."

The voices went low for a moment, and then there was a burst of laughter.

Edie pushed aside the rest of her pizza and left. Bitches should read the papers, get acquainted with the Windigo. They wouldn't be laughing so hard if they knew what she was capable of. She could scare the shit out of them, if she felt like it. Have them begging for mercy like that stupid Indian brat. She might've done Billy LaBelle herself, if the little runt hadn't died on them. Her courage had failed only once: She'd had to cover Todd Curry's head with that seat cover before she could help Eric move the body.

But she was getting stronger all the time. Why, less than twenty-four hours ago she'd been driving a dead body out to Trout Lake. Eric was amazing. So cool, so calm. Killed him like he was nothing, not even a bird. And then we dumped him like a bag of garbage. Garbage- that's exactly what he was- left him at the side of the road. But the really brilliant touch- totally Eric's, of course- was leaving the van out at the Chinook Tavern. "Somebody'll steal it before you can say Rumpelstiltskin," he said. Totally correct, as usual.

The Algonquin Mall has a massive Food Town at one end, and at the other an equally gigantic Kmart. Between them the mall itself forms a wide, fluorescent L. It is meant to afford this northern city a Main Street without winter. Blizzards, ice storms, windchill factors, who cares? A shopper can stroll from store to store, window-shopping all afternoon if the mood strikes, without freezing to the marrow.

Edie thought it very tasteful the way they had set out squares of indoor trees and large plants with benches around them. You could sit on a bench and stare at a window full of running shoes at the Foot Locker, or on the other side you could look at Records on Wheels. Or she could sit on the bench near Troy Music Center until Eric got off work.

Edie walked past the Tot Shoppe where the window was crammed with tiny parkas as if an army of dwarf Eskimos was about to invade. Then in Northern Lighting they had a high-tech chandelier fashioned from copper tubing and aluminum cones. It looked like futuristic moose antlers.

She stopped into Troy Music, but Eric was in the back doing inventory. Just as well, really, because he'd told her not to visit him at work. Eric's boss, Mr. Troy, was behind the counter, tuning a guitar for some geeky-looking kid. Edie flipped through the sheet music, reading the words to a Whitney Houston song and then a Celine Dion. Of course they were famous, look at those perfect teeth, perfect tits. Give either of 'em a case of eczema and then where would they be? Fame was a genetic lottery, just like love, and Edie had inherited neither from the unknown man who'd fathered her or from her mother, who had vanished from Algonquin Bay six years later.