Harrow: A Novel by Joy Williams

Author:Joy Williams [Williams, Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B08QN1FWZS
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

The next morning it was determined that Foxy had gone but Scarlett was still in residence.

“Please go and coax her out,” Lola begged Khristen. “Tell her Gordon has arranged for a car and driver.”

Scarlett was not at all pleased to see Khristen.

“Do you want me to call an ambulance?” Khristen asked.

“The ambulance doesn’t come out here, girl, don’t you know a thing! What’s the matter with you! Who are you anyway!”

She was complaining about this pain, this new pain, way down…“It’s like I want to take a dump but I can’t. Is that kidney stones? Gallbladder?”

“Your suit’s all ready to go. Why, you’re even wearing it!” Khristen exclaimed. “And I’ve just been informed that Gordon has arranged for a car and driver.”

“I bet he has,” Scarlett said crossly. “Those two love to arrange for a car and driver.”

She’d been given eight months to live and was coming up on the end of it. Initially she’d been quite excited about her role in this lunatic venture.

“Your mission might make a difference,” Khristen said. “Insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, there are no restrictions on their use whatever. This might make people question…”

“You can’t stop the bastards. I’d just be offing an underling or two. It wouldn’t affect the corporate level at all. I must say though that meeting last night was almost enough to push me out the door.”

“What happened to Foxy?”

“Who knows. She’s a bit weird, don’t you think? All she wants to do is repent which quite narrows her potential.”

“She seemed pretty determined.”

“Oh she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. But the rest of them—they have no more sense than a Pluto Platter.”

“What’s that?”

“A Pluto Platter?”

“Yes.”

“Well it started out as a pot lid I believe. For a popcorn pot. But the concept became plastic. You sail it through the air. But it doesn’t return to you, that’s something else.” She looked at Khristen and emitted a burp.

“Did you have a favorite part of being here?” Khristen asked. “You’ve been here for a while now.”

“I guess my favorite part was thinking of the people who knew me back when, if they were still around, saying ‘Why, we didn’t know her at all! Who knew she was capable of murder. And on behalf of the earth at that!’ ” Scarlett gently kneaded her stomach, “That gave me a good feeling, thinking that.”

“Well they can say those things for real now. Lola said you had a lot of scatter pins. Do you want to be wearing all your scatter pins?”

“For real!” Scarlett mocked. There were scatter pins, she supposed, but she preferred to think of them as medals. She would be a general, terribly attractive, marching into battle with all that sauce or salad or whatever they called it on her chest…But that came later. You didn’t wear them during the actual battle. That would be in poor taste. “I’m not going to do it,” she announced. “I want to be remembered as a respectable person. I don’t want to do anything wrong.

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