Goody One Shoe Read Online Free PDF Page B

fan.
    “Get out.”
    It was a whisper, but one so menacing, Billie thought her
heart had stopped beating. “Yes, ma’am.” Billie turned to the door, hesitated,
turned back to face the tempest, her gaze on her mismatched feet. “Do you mean
out of your office. Or out of the building?”
    Katherine’s heavy sigh blew her caramel macchiato breath
across Billie’s face. “Get your gimpy ass to your desk and do your job. Only your job. Understood?”
    Billie swallowed the urge to scream, “Fuck you, bitch, I’m
no goddamn gimp,” and simply nodded. She turned, strode to her workstation, sat
with purpose and a straight spine. She double-clicked on a file icon, opened a
manuscript, the priority work of the day, and began to proofread. And edit.
Couldn’t help herself. But she kept those edits off the digital page, hidden
away in her mind. Right next to Katherine’s dead body.
     

May 21 s , Thursday
    BILLIE PICKED A LILLIPUTIAN piece
of fluff from her skirt and flicked it into the air. It floated and swayed on
the stillness before the evil forces of static electricity dragged it back down
to the floral polyester. She sighed and looked up into the sagging face of Dr.
Kroft. The past twentyish years hadn’t been kind to the old broad. What was
she, pushing sixty? The crevasses around her eyes and canyon-deep laugh lines
parenthesizing her dry lips made her look closer to seventy-five.
    The doc pushed her Sally-Jesse-Raphael-red glasses up higher
on her nose and glanced at her lilac notepad. Not a book, never white paper.
Lilac. Only lilac. Billie had always wondered why. Had never asked. But at that
moment, the question burned a hole in her thoughts. “Why lilac?”
    The doc sent one eyebrow into space. “What’s that, now?”
    Billie gestured to the notepad. “Lilac paper. Always lilac.
Twenty plus years of lilac. Did you buy them in bulk back in 1994 or
something?”
    Doc’s eyebrow landed back on earth and the corners of her
upturned lips disappeared into folds of old skin. She shook her head. “I like
purple. When you were gone, I tried yellow. Even plain old white. But lilac is
calming.” She tapped the rim of her glasses with her pen. “It’s kind on the old
eyes. Now enough about my quirks. Let’s discuss your messed-up psyche.”
    One thing Billie could always count on was Doc Kroft not
pussyfooting around her crazy.
    “So you awoke on the fire escape. You think you were going
to jump?”
    “Either that or fly. Maybe my night brain thinks that’s
possible. I can run with one leg, so why not fly without wings?”
    “Have you had any new trauma?”
    “Nope.” Katherine’s pokey finger and crimson face came to
mind. Is being mistreated at work, being intentionally held back from any
opportunity to move up, to be promoted, to find any nuance of job satisfaction,
trauma?
    “No public teasing, no verbal abuse.”
    Billie squished the piece of skirt fluff under her thumb and
pushed it around. “That’s not trauma. That’s life.”
    Doc tossed her lilac notepad on the coffee table between
them and lobbed her blue pen at it. “Billie, we’ve talked about this. It’s not
the same as witnessing your parents’ murder, or having your leg shot off. But
for someone who has been traumatized in that way, it can be a trigger.”
    Billie sighed. “Yeah, I know. You being pissed at me doesn’t
help.”
    “Darling, Billie. I am anything but pissed. I’m worried.
You’ve not been to see me in more than two years. Are you taking your meds?”
    Doc had her scrunched-up concerned face on. Did she practice
that in the mirror? Billie liked that face. It was endearing. It reminded her
of her grandmother.
    Billie fidgeted with her skirt, made eye contact with the
curtains, cleared her throat.
    “Billie. You stopped again.”
    “Yes, I stopped. I think it’s the meds that make me crazy.”
    “No, it’s not. There are side effects, but without them,
things end up worse.” She tented her fingers.
    Billie