Public Secrets Part 228

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 s.e.x in over two months. It didn't particularly bother

her. If she wanted an o.r.g.a.s.m, 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 appet.i.tes. 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 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.