Empire Falls

occurred.

CHAPTER 28
    J ANINE GOT THROUGH her midday step class, after which she was supposed to work the desk, checking members in and making the pain-in-the-ass protein shakes they served in the Fox’s Den, the small lounge of half a dozen tables where the workmen’s comp guys—assholes and scam artists every one—liked to hang out after their physical therapy. Janine hated to look at them even on a good day, which this certainly was not, not anymore, not after going to the bank. She was still wobbly about the knees, truth be told—and not because she’d done her advanced step class on an empty stomach, either. The idea of food, normally a sweet, forbidden fantasy, made her stomach roil—with what, she couldn’t imagine.
    “Still no sign of that Voss boy, is there?” Mrs. Neuman, a short woman, had to peer around the cash register to see the TV hung from the ceiling in the Fox’s Den while she waited for Janine to key in her membership number. The noon news broadcast was signing off now, urging viewers to stay tuned for the soap that followed.
    It had been five days since the woman’s body had been discovered at the old landfill, though it wasn’t really a body anymore. More of a skeleton, really, according to the newspaper, so little left after six months’ exposure that positive identification would have to await dental records, wherever they might be. Charlotte Owen had outlived not only her friends but also three Empire Falls dentists; the fourth, who apparently had her files, had retired somewhere in Florida. The boy, John Voss, had simply vanished.
    “Just goes to show,” Mrs. Neuman intoned, “life is one big secret. You never even know who’s living right next door.” Which was not entirely apropos, Janine almost told her, since the old woman and the Voss boy hadn’t had any neighbors.
    And anyway, never mind about not knowing who’s next door. Half the time you don’t even know who you’re marrying until you go to pick up your license and happen to see by pure chance how old the fucker really is. Then—talk about your secrets—just when you think you’ve straightened out the whole age thing and go ahead and marry the old fart anyway, against your better judgment, plus the advice of everybody you know, then you go to the bank and try to write a check on your joint account—and whammo! There you are, wondering all over again, just who is this son of a bitch anyway?
    Not that Janine would say any of this to Mrs. Neuman. No more than she’d tell this human medicine ball to stop wasting her time and money at the club. Five days a week Mrs. Neuman showed up at one o’clock, a busy time in the exercise room, and did her leisurely stroll on one of the three working treadmills, reading the free magazines and pissing off the members who were interested in real workouts. At the rate Mrs. Neuman walked the goddamn treadmill, she could get as much good out of sitting in a chair and flipping through TV Guide .
    “Imagine that?” Mrs. Neuman said. “You live to be eighty-some-odd-years old, and one day the good Lord decides you’re all done, and your own grandson takes you out to the dump and leaves you there. I swear to heaven, I just don’t know anymore.”
    “Me either, Mrs. Neuman,” Janine said, picking up the phone to dial Amber, who was always looking for extra hours.
    “Must’ve just slung that poor old woman over his shoulder,” the woman said, slinging her own workout bag over her own round shoulder, where it slipped off again halfway to the women’s locker room door. “Probably what’ll happen to me if it’s that one grandson of mine that finds me.”
    “Not unless he rents a forklift,” Janine muttered, as the door swung shut behind her. “Get here as quick as you can,” she snapped into the phone when Amber agreed to come in and finish Janine’s shift, “before I do something I’ll regret.”
    This exact opportunity presented itself the moment she hung up, when the workmen’s comp table called for another round of light beers, which they believed they could drink all afternoon without getting drunk or gaining weight, this despite the fact that they left drunk every afternoon, their heavy beer guts sloshing. The worst of the lot was Randy Danillac, who had been a year ahead of Janine, though he had no recollection of her in high school, though she’d stared at him dreamily for two straight years. She suspected that not one of these goldbricks was actually