Part 228 (2/2)

There were still times when she fantasized about him coming to his

senses, coming back to her and begging her forgiveness. In those

fantasies she saw them making love in the red velvet bed, the hot,

frantic s.e.x they had shared so many years before. Her body was curvy

and smooth, a young girl's. Jane always imagined herself that way.

She'd grown grotesquely fat. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, like soggy balloons, hung

down to what had been her waist. Fish-white, her belly drooped low and

was ringed with row after row of loose flesh. Her arms and thighs were

ma.s.sive and shook like jelly with tab whenever she stirred herself to

move them. It had become so difficult to find a vein through the layers

of fat that she had taken up freebasing. She could still skin pop,

slide the needle under the skin, but mainlining was rare.

She missed it, mourned it like a mother mourns a lost child.

Rising, she turned on the bedside lamp. She didn't like the light, but

she needed it to get to her pipe. Her hair hung limply and was blond

only on the last few inches. She had wanted to bleach it with Clairol's

Bombsh.e.l.l Beige, but had lost the box somewhere in her cluttered

bedroom. She wore a black lace nightie the size of a two-man pup tent.

When she lit the torch, she looked like some mad, p.o.r.nographic welder.

The smoke calmed her. She'd been lying in bed planning. She was shrewd

enough to know she needed money, a great deal of money if she wanted to

pay her supplier. And she wanted pretty clothes again, pretty clothes

and pretty boys to come and sink into her. She wanted to go to parties.

To have people pay attention.

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