Mean Woman Blues

pledged TriDelt.”
    “Honey, if you tell even one soul who mutilated you, I swear to God I’ll slash my wrists.”
    “It’s perfect Justin. My lips are sealed.” She fished out money for a tip.
    “Well, just be sure you wear something with sleeves; the tattoo is
so
not Kansas.”
    She’d already figured that out. She was going to wear a light blue dress. She was going to go some place like Dillard’s and walk into the Dowdy Shop, or whatever they called their soccer mom department, and get herself something a Metairie lady would wear, maybe with a little jacket, so the tattoo wouldn’t be an issue. And she was going to dig out the little gold cross her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday, and she was going to wear that around her neck. The lights would shine on it; the camera would pick it up; and it would shimmer. Her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.
    Even Isaac barely recognized her. But once he did, once he realized it was really Terri sitting in Terri’s chair without Terri’s blue hair and Terri’s tattoo and one of Terri’s navel-baring T-shirts, his eyes bugged out, and his voice came out in a hoot. “You look like somebody’s Baptist sister!”
    She nodded primly. “That’s the general idea.”
    “Uh-oh. We can’t have sex then. I couldn’t defile you.”
    She thought he was kidding, but that night he really wasn’t interested— an entirely new development in their relationship.
    She used it as a jumping-off point to get to some dimly lit corners of her mind, places she’d been trying not to go. She had tapes of
Mr. Right
now, and she watched them over and over. And the more she played them, the more she thought about David Wright.
    It wasn’t something she wanted to admit even to herself. But now Isaac had opened the door… and it really did occur to her that she was changing and he wasn’t changing with her. Maybe he wasn’t working out any more. Maybe the relationship had run its course.
    Otherwise, why would she be finding David Wright so attractive? At first she’d found him sleazy and cornball; so what was this about? Maybe she was shallow, a victim of reverse snobbism. Ergo, if he had on a suit, he was cornball. If his hair was sprayed, he was sleazy. The man was in show biz, she reminded herself. Of course he used hair spray. Maybe she was getting through that getting to who he really was. After all, he had a really lovely accent; that had to count for something.
    She thought about having sex with an older man. Maybe it was true what they said, about experience and all that. She wouldn’t know and wasn’t sure it mattered. David Wright seemed so feeling, so caring. That was what impressed her. Isaac, with his brittle humor about Baptists, turned her off right now. She wondered if she would have erotic dreams about Mr. Right.
    But she dreamed only of Isaac and woke in the night to find him ready for her. She rolled on her back for a lovely, sleepy midnighter. “So much,” he said, “for the Baptist angle,” which made her laugh. She loved his humor, couldn’t imagine why she’d felt so mean about it a few hours ago.
    She awakened feeling happy and once again hopeful, but cleaning off her desk squelched that. She found records she hadn’t mentioned to Isaac— traffic citations she’d been handed in jail, for two hundred dollars plus court costs. When they got you, they really got you; this had nothing to do with the bank problem but everything to do with the negligence that led to it. It made Terri feel ashamed and hopeless. Her depression came back like a blow to the head. She wanted to shake the bars of her cage like an animal and was surprised at the metaphor.
    But she had an insight about it. She thought it came less from jail than from the life she had chosen for herself. It wouldn’t be like this if she had money. If she didn’t have her head in the clouds all the time, thinking of images, trying to translate her life into colors and shapes. Maybe there was an easier way.
    Before that moment the notion of her life as a crusader had extended only until the end of the show. But what if it really were her life? What if she changed everything? Moved to Dallas and became a researcher for
Mr. Right
? She cut class that day and spent the day online, researching bank scams. She drank iced tea and reveled in learning, dreaming of doing good in the world, saving others like herself. Her own cozy head was a good place to be.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
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