Murder in the Collective Read Online Free PDF

Manila. Zee probably wasn’t that serious about revolution; why should she be?
    “I don’t think you’re being fair to her,” Penny told me, after listening to me harangue one day. “Zee is incredibly dedicated to the newsletter and organizing in town. And her clothes didn’t bother you—you know she makes them herself and everyone wears jewelry in the Philippines—before she got involved with Ray; you thought she was exotic.”
    Ashamed, I’d said, “I’m not jealous, really. Let’s have her over to dinner soon. She and Ray. No, I really want to…”
    But we’d never quite gotten around to it. In the early period of the collective’s history we’d all spent a lot of time, maybe too much time, together. After Kay left, however, and Jeremy came, after Ray and I split up and Elena joined, we’d become more formal, less friendly. We were all so different. Sure, we had brunch meetings and an occasional beer after work, but June was really the only one Penny and I saw much of, and it was really Penny and June who were friends.
    I never knew what Zee thought of me, whether she was sorry not to get to know me or Penny better. We were women, but we were white, and who knew what Ray had told her about me? She was always polite, but she was polite to everyone, polite and reserved, except about political questions. She sometimes looked as if she were waiting for something more from me.
    But at this point I couldn’t manage it.
    By the time the meeting with B. Violet took place the following Tuesday evening the weather forecaster’s increasingly timid prophesies had been realized. Not only had it stopped raining, but it was actually hot—seventy degrees and climbing. The air was at first steamy as a bathroom with the door closed; then the earth dried out and it began to feel like another climate had come to visit. Seattle reacted predictably. It called in sick to work, took off its shoes and sweaters and hit the glorious outdoors with sunglasses and fast tanning lotion. No one knew how long it would last. These could be the only sunny days all summer!
    We met at seven-thirty in our shop. It was the first time any of them had been to Best Printing, and they spent the initial ten minutes walking around and commenting about the space. To my mind this smacked a little too much of tape measures and moving vans, and I felt my co-collective members rustling about uneasily in the background. Jeremy hovered protectively around the entrance to the darkroom, and June joined him.
    At length, however, we all seated ourselves in a circle of chairs in the office, and finally I had a chance to look at everyone from B. Violet together.
    There was Fran, sitting next to Elena: Fran with her thatchy white-striped hair smoothed down and her prickles temporarily out of sight. She was, in her way, a rather regal figure, a sort of Queen Victoria of dykedom, with her fleshy, handsome face, black-fringed light hazel eyes and ramrod posture. I thought she must be at least six feet tall. She sat with her legs far apart like a statue of some nobly unrelenting idea, with a notebook in her lap.
    There was Margaret and, next to her, Anna. Both of them were light-haired and on the small side, wearing jeans and worn, striped shirts. Margaret had her sleeves rolled up and bit her nails sometimes; Anna had a black vest and noticeably large breasts. Otherwise they were remarkably similar. From the way they shot comments back and forth under their breaths, I guessed that they were very good friends, if not lovers, and from the way they shot glances of hatred at Elena I guessed that our favorite merger-urger was high on their shit list. I wondered how Fran had been able to talk them into participating in this meeting at all. She couldn’t have initiated it completely on her own; therefore she must have had help from someone, namely Hadley, who sat there so nonchalantly, chewing gum, with her long legs stretched out to the limit and her head thrown back as