unconscious, stolen the diamond off her finger, and had gone off to look
for sunnier climes and more sympathetic company.
But he'd left her the drugs. Hitch, in his way, was a humanitarian.
Jane hadn't had sex in over two months. It didn't particularly bother
her. If she wanted an orgasm, she only had to pop the needle under her
skin and cruise. She didn't care that no one came to see her, no one
called. Except during that brief time after the drug started to wear
off and before she craved another fix. Then she would become weepy and
full of self-pity. And anger. Most of what she felt was anger.
The movie hadn't done nearly as well as predicted. It had jumped,
with almost rude haste, from theater to video. She had been in such a
hurry to see the movie made, she had all but signed over the video
rights. Her agent had been unhappy with the deal, but Jane had fired
him and gone her own way.
The movie hadn't made her rich. A lousy hundred thousand pounds didn't
last long with someone of her taste-and appetites. Her new book was
being rewritten, again. She wouldn't see the bulk of her advance until
the stupid ghost writer had completed the job.
Her oldest source had dried up. There were no more checks from Brian.
She'd depended on them. Not only for the money, Jane thought, but
because she'd known that as long as he'd been paying, he'd been thinking
of her.
She was glad he'd never found real happiness. She was proud that she'd
had some part in seeing him denied. If she couldn't have him, she at
least had the pleasure of knowing no other woman had held him for very
long.
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 sex 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 breasts, 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
massive 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
Bombshell 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, pornographic 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.