The Happiness Machine by Katie Williams

Author:Katie Williams [Katie Williams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Screamer

Pearl didn’t recognize the woman who answered her knock. Well, woman was overstating it. She couldn’t have been much older than Rhett, low twenties, leaning on the door like they, she and the door, were in it together. Perhaps she was the daughter of the client Pearl was there to meet. Or the girlfriend? The nondisclosure agreement Pearl had signed was absent any name except for that of the anonymous client’s law firm. Given all the secrecy, Pearl thought she might recognize the client on sight. As the car service had driven her hours from the city, and the Calistoga hills had unwrapped themselves to reveal this edifice of timber and glass, the door of which Pearl now knocked upon, she’d imagined the lupine grins of various actors, the taxidermied smile of a certain former governor, even the whey face of CEO Bradley Skrull. Pearl hadn’t imagined this, though, this girl, this young woman, tiny all over except for her eyes and breasts, both sets inflated to full capacity. The girl was a Japanese cartoon. No, she was a Japanese cartoon of a woodland animal. When she opened her mouth, Pearl expected to hear a squeak.

The voice that emerged, however, was surprisingly husky, almost boyish. “Apricity! Right?”

“Yes. I’m from Apricity. I’m Pearl.” Pearl extended her hand.

“Calla,” the girl returned, with a sheepish note to her voice that Pearl took to mean, But of course you already knew that. But of course Pearl hadn’t. So this was Pearl’s client then, this nubile cartoon.

Instead of shaking Pearl’s hand, the girl fastened on to it, yanking Pearl into the house. Pearl found herself tugged along through a series of professionally decorated rooms, the colors complementary, the throw pillows abundant, the knickknacks too quirky to be endured—traffic signs cast in mother-of-pearl, mobiles of dangling paper jellyfish, a bird’s nest filled with toy soldiers. Calla kept up a bright stream of talk as they tripped along, the words coming so rapidly that when Pearl finally caught a sentence, she held on to its tail for dear life.

“—and then I sent everyone away so that we could meet, just the two of us.”

As if on cue a voice from the next room called, “Calla?”

“Well, everyone except Marilee.” The girl tugged Pearl into what turned out to be a faux-rustic kitchen, a witch’s kitchen, complete with open brick oven and a dented copper pot large enough to stew a child. “But Marilee isn’t everyone.”

On the contrary, Marilee did appear to be everyone, or rather anyone, a composite of all middle-aged women, their weights averaged into a plumpness that wasn’t quite fat, their hairstyles swirled together into a dusty brown wedge cut, their khakis and cardigans compiled into these two unremarkable specimens. However—Pearl blinked—there was something missing. It took her a moment to place it: no smile lines. Around Marilee’s eyes and mouth there existed an eerie smoothness. Botox, she assumed, until she met Marilee’s gaze, at which point Pearl revised her opinion, deciding that the woman lacked smile lines for that most obvious of reasons.

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