Blackout by Caroline Crane Read Free Book Online Page B

of
levity.
    “You can have mixer without the gin,” I
said.
    “I can?”
    “But I don’t think we have any. My parents
only drink when they have guests, and they go in for wine.”
    The dogs woofed as we entered the house. Cree
got down on the floor and hugged them. We chose our sodas and sat
at the kitchen table. Nobody had anything to say except to wonder
how Kelsey was doing, and we’d already covered that.
    “I could try calling the emergency room,” I
said.
    “Yes, do that.” Glyn was back in the dumps
again.
    “She wouldn’t still be there, would she?”
said Cree. “They don’t keep them there, do they?”
    “Not in the ER. She’s either out or somewhere
else in the hospital.”
    I hoped not dead. I called Patient
Information and found they’d put her in Intensive Care.
    “Better than—not,” said Cree. “Where there’s
life there’s hope.”
    It cheered me, too, just a little. I could
have asked for the nurses’ station, but at least I knew she was
alive.
    Another issue was involved that concerned me
as much as Kelsey.
    I asked Glyn, “Do you happen to have his
email address?”
    She gave a little start. “Whose?”
    She must have known who I meant. She’d been
rather taken with him last winter when he was giving me a hard
time. He tried to get at me through her. It took her a while to
figure out he was using her. Then she began to see him as he really
was.
    “Who do you think?” I said. “He can’t keep
hiding from the police. This time he’s really done it. Not that my
brake line wasn’t bad enough.”
    She stared down at her Pepsi can. She’d told
me his whereabouts once, when the police needed him for something
else. But she still wanted to deny, even to herself, that she’d
ever had anything to do with him.
    “Why would I have his email address?” she
asked. “I would think you’d have it. Unless you threw it away.”
    Actually, I had. I’d also deleted it from my
memory, both the computer’s and the one inside my head.
    “Maybe it’s better I just keep hands off,” I
decided. “We don’t want to alert him that the police are after him,
if he can’t figure it out for himself.”
    “He’s not stupid.” Glyn sloshed the Pepsi
around in its can.
    “No, but he’s insufferably arrogant. And
psychopathic. He might not think he did anything wrong. Just
fooling around. Having a little fun. Showing off to his pals.”
    “How could he?” said Cree.
    I took a breath to explain, when she got it.
“Oh, yeah. Because in his mind Kelsey’s not a real person.”
    “Exactly. And that’s what we have to change.
Not just him but the whole male race, or a lot of it.”
    “Not Ben! He’s not like that.”
    “No, I know he isn’t. Neither is Rick, or my
daddy, or a lot of other guys, but too many are. And we’re going to
change that.”
    Cree fixed me with her gold-flecked eyes.
“How?”
    “Yes,” agreed Glyn. “How are you going to do
that? They like themselves the way they are.”
    “It won’t be easy. Too many women think they
have to appeal to men’s prurient interests to get their attention.
That just reinforces their attitudes, so we’ll have to work on
women, too.”
    “Who interests?” asked Cree.
    I hoped that was what I meant and hoped I
pronounced it right. “Prurient. Sexual.”
    “Oh. Yeah.”
    “And I don’t plan to do it all by myself.
It’s us. We. We’ll need more members. We can get a whole thing
going. You know the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes?”
    “Huh?” said Cree.
    Glyn asked, “What are you talking about?”
That reassured Cree that it wasn’t just a Lakeside thing, although
that may have been where I heard of it.
    “Aristophanes,” I said, “was an ancient Greek
playwright who specialized in comedy and satire. The other biggies
mostly did tragedy.”
    “Well? What is it?” Cree gulped down the last
of her soda.
    I heard Ben’s sneakers galloping on the
stairs. Our parents were out in back, Rhoda gardening and