Prodigal Son

CHAPTER 75

Jenna Parker, blithe spirit, lived in a collection of plush teddy bears, inspirational posters-EVERY DAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, JUST SAY NO TO THE BLUES-and cute cookie jars.

The ceramic cookie jars were for the most part confined to the kitchen. There were a clown jar, a polar-bear jar, a brown-bear jar, a Mother Hubbard jar, a Mickey Mouse jar, a Wookie jar. Jars in the form of a puppy, a kitten, a raccoon, a rabbit, a gingerbread house.

Carson's favorite was a jar in the shape of a tall stack of cookies.

Apparently Jenna Parker didn't spend much time cooking, for the jar collection occupied half the counter space. Doors had been taken off some of the cabinets, so that the shelves could serve as display space for more cookie jars.

"Don't you dare say anything," Carson muttered to Michael as they entered the kitchen and were confronted by the aggressively cheerful ceramic figures.

Pretending wide-eyed innocence, he said, “About what?"

Jenna sat on a stool, wearing a pink jogging suit with a small applique of a running turtle on the left breast. She was nibbling a cookie.

For a woman who had such a short time ago been naked, strapped to an autopsy table, and about to be dissected alive, Jenna seemed remarkably cheerful. "Hi, guys. Want a cookie?"

"No thanks," Carson said, and Michael managed to decline, as well, without shtick.

Holding up one bandaged thumb like a child proudly displaying a boo-boo, Jenna said, "I mostly just tore off my thumbnail when I fell. Isn't that great?"

"Imagine how good you'd feel," Michael said, "if you'd broken a leg."

Well, he had repressed himself for the better part of a minute.

Jenna said, "I mean, considering I could've been sitting here with my heart cut out, what's a thumbnail?"

"A thumbnail is zip, zero, nada," said Michael.

"It's a feather on the scale," she said.

"Dust in the balance," he agreed.

"It's a shadow of nothing."

"De nada."

"Peu de chose," she said.

"Exactly what I would've said if I knew French."

She grinned at him. "For a cop, you're fun."

"I majored in banter at the police academy."

"Isn't he fun?" Jenna asked Carson.

Rather than stuff one or both of them into a damn cookie jar, Carson said impatiently, "Miss Parker, how long have you been Jonathan Harker's neighbor?"

"I moved in about eleven months ago. From day one, he was a sweetie."

"A sweetie? Did you and he…"

"Oh, no. Johnny was a man, yeah, and you know what they're like, but we were just good buds." To Michael, she said, "That thing I just said about men-no offense."

"None taken."

"I like men," she said.

"I don't," he assured her.

"Anyway, I'll bet you're not like other men. Except where it counts."

"Peu de chose," he said.

"Oh, I'll bet it's not," Jenna said, and winked.

Carson said, "Define 'buds' for me."

"Once in a while Johnny would come over for dinner or I'd go across the hall to his place. He'd cook pasta. We'd talk about life, you know, and destiny, and modern dance."

Boggled, Carson said, "Modern dance? Harker?"

"I was a dancer before I finally got real and became a dental hygienist."

Michael said, "For a long time, I wanted to be an astronaut."

"That's very brave," Jenna said with admiration.

Michael shrugged and looked humble.

Carson said, "Miss Parker, were you conscious any time after he chloroformed you?"

"On and off, yeah."

"Did he talk to you during this? Did he say why?"

"I think maybe he said having sex with me would be like having sex with a monkey"

Carson was nonplussed for a moment. Then she said, "You think he said it?"

"Well, with the chloroform and whatever he pumped into me through the IV, I was sort of in and out of it. And to be perfectly frank, I was going out to a party when he grabbed me, and I had a little bit of a pre-party buzz on. So maybe he said it or maybe I dreamed he said it."

"What else did you maybe dream he said?"

"He told me I was pretty, a fine example of my species, which was nice, but he said that he was one of the new race. Then this weird thing."

"I wondered when this would get weird," Michael said.

"Johnny said he wasn't allowed to reproduce but was reproducing anyway, dividing like an ameba."

Even as those words chilled Carson, they invoked in her a sense of the absurd that made her feel as if she were a straight man in a burlesque revival. "What do you think he meant by that?"

"Well, then he pulled up his T-shirt, and his belly was like a scene from Alien, all this squirming inside, so I'm pretty sure all of that was just the drugs."

Carson and Michael exchanged a look. She would have liked to pursue this subject, but doing so would alert Jenna to the fact that she might have experienced what she thought she had only dreamed.

Jenna sighed. "He was a sweetie, but sometimes he could get so down, just totally bummed out."

"About what?" Carson asked.

Jenna nibbled her cookie, thinking. Then: "He felt something was missing in his life. I told him happiness is always an option, you just have to choose it. But sometimes he couldn't. I told him he had to find his bliss. I wonder…"

She frowned. The expression came and went from her face twice, as though she wore a frown so seldom that she didn't know how to hold on to one when she needed it.

Carson said, "What do you wonder?"

"I told him he had to find his bliss, so I sure hope his bliss didn't turn out to be chopping people to pieces."