Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons by Julie Smith

but if he was a pretty sick guy…”
    “Oh, man. This could be it.”

Chapter Seven
    Chris was sure it was. Before Rob took me home, we dropped by her house and made her day. She covered her right eye with one hand, in the careless and, to me, supremely Southern gesture she made when she was overcome with amazement.
    “Oh my God. He said things like, ‘You can’t do this to me. Nobody shines Tommy La Barre on.’ Then he sort of did this slow, disgusted glance around and said, ‘Look at your office. You can’t afford to turn me down. This could have made your pathetic little career.’”
    “And I suppose he left, saying, ‘You’ll regret the day …’ or something like that.”
    “You know something? He did. The guy was slug spit, I’m telling you. And I don’t see how Jason McKendrick could have been a decent person either, if he was friends with him.”
    But I did. I had to agree with Susie Rodenbom on that one. A man like that was fascinating. The dangerous, the shady, the criminal, the other— even the evil—had a malign appeal; if kept at a distance, of course. Maybe Jason had gotten too close.
    I thought about that awhile— the other. And wondered why Roger DeCampo hadn’t been more fascinating. The answer was simple, I thought— because we were operating in two separate realities. You couldn’t make a connection with someone like that. Evil— if that’s what La Barre was— was part of all of us, something all too familiar that we never, never for any reason acknowledged in ourselves. And so we gave it so someone else— Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Nixon, whoever was in the neighborhood. You didn’t want to make a connection with it— you just wanted to reassure yourself it was out there instead of in here, and so you liked to get it where you could watch it. I’ve always been suspicious of people who get squeamish when you bring up violent crime— they don’t even want to think it’s out there, which is even scarier. With no evil in the world, surely they couldn’t do any. Such people must have unhappy spouses and children.
    “Uh, Rebecca,” said Rob. “Are you with us?”
    I’d been staring into space, quietly giving myself the willies.
    He said, “We have to get going.”
    “I want to talk to Chris,” I said, and turned to her. “Could you take me home in a bit?”
    “Sure. I need the company anyway— you two get to go out, but I don’t.” She meant to the wake. Under the circumstances, we’d thought, it was best if she didn’t go.
    Rob said, “Pick you up at eight?”
    When he’d gone, Chris said, “What’s wrong? You still mad at me?”
    “I’d say you were psychic, but you’re only half right. I wasn’t mad until I started thinking it over.”
    “And now?”
    “Well, I’m not sure I know who you are anymore. I mean, every time you make fun of Shirley MacLaine, you’re a hypocrite.”
    “I’ve never in my life made fun of Shirley MacLaine.”
    “You haven’t? Yes, you have— I’ve heard you do it.”
    “Uh-uh. You’ve seen me trying to titter politely when everyone else is doing it. Matter of fact”— she kicked at her coffee table with a sock-clad foot— “I hate it when people do that. There’s this kind of socially acceptable list of beliefs if you’re college educated and live on one of the coasts. I was at a dinner party the other night where someone said, ‘My ex-boyfriend just converted to Christianity, isn’t that disgusting?’ And nobody said a word. A couple of people just said, ‘Ohmigod,’ like it was the worst thing they could think of.”
    “I don’t get it. You’re not a Christian. Are you?” Who knew what she was anymore?
    “No, Rebecca, I am not a Christian. I have never been and I will never be a Christian, though I come from a family of devout Presbyterians. I can’t imagine having the least interest in a religion that denigrates both sex and women like Christianity does. But I am still an American, and I’m absolutely