Steam had wreathed around the showerhead, so she pulled her nightgown over her head and hung it carefully on the hook. It swung, loose, and she made a mental note to fix it even as she knew she’d forget again until the next time she hung something on it and it threatened to fall. In the shower, she bent her head so the hot water could pound away at her neck and shoulders and back—it was a quick fix that would ease the aches and pains for a while, at least. So would a double dose of ibuprofen and some stretches, if she could force herself to manage them. She should’ve worked out before she got in the shower, but the morning had already started off upside down—why bother to fix it now?
She slicked her palms full of soap and slid them beneath her arms. Over her belly and thighs. Something stung her there, and she turned to let the water wash away the suds.
A small bruise, the size of a quarter and already fading greenish at the edges. It hurt when she pressed it, but the pain was brief. She pushed it again, making it ache. Then harder. Her fingernail dug into her skin, and that hurt worse. She could’ve made herself bleed, but stopped before that happened. She had enough scars without giving herself more.
The tears fell before she could stop them, and even though the shower made them invisible, they still burned. The rippled floor that kept her from slipping and killing herself was also impossible to keep clean. The ridges collected all the minerals and iron from the water, forever tinted orange no matter how hard she scrubbed or how much bleach she used. They also hurt her knees and palms as she folded herself onto the floor. She stayed that way until the water began to turn cold. By that time she’d pushed the memory of Glenn’s mouth on her so far away she could pretend it had happened to someone else.
CHAPTER THREE
What Stella did would never hang in a museum, but there was an art to touching up photos. Smoothing the lines of concern in a forehead. Erasing blemishes bad enough to leave scars. The scars themselves she never took away, unless the client had specifically requested she do so. Consequently, photos that came in with a lot of scars ended up in her queue, and that was fine with her. She knew too well how scars could define a person, no matter how ugly.
Today, her job was to touch up a family portrait taken for a church directory. A set of graying parents, a sullen teenage girl. A young marine son in uniform. The parents and the girl made a triangle, the son slightly separate despite the mother’s clenching hand on his shoulder. Her grip had a somewhat desperate look to it that Stella wouldn’t be able to do anything about, but she totally understood.
The marine had clearly seen some action. The right side of his face had been burned. The ridges of his scars were still purple and red, the curve of his eyebrow bare of any hair, the lashes missing from that eye. His mouth pulled down on that side. But he stood straight, gaze fixed firmly on the camera. Not smiling, not frowning. It was impossible to tell if he was resigned, ashamed or simply bored.
The clients had requested some shadow removal, along with the standard pimple erasure and taking away the reflection on the father’s glasses. The last one was the hardest thing to do, so she left it for last. Stella focused on getting rid of a few flyaway hairs and bulges, things not even checked on the client’s list and that they wouldn’t even notice had been improved. But they’d notice if they weren’t, she knew that much.
Her gaze kept coming back to the marine’s face and the digging curve of his mother’s fingers. Stoic, she decided. That’s how he looked. Not bored or anything else. Simply stoic.
His mother, however, looked faded and tired, her mouth pursed, her hair limp. Maybe she’d sat by his bed while he recovered from his injuries, holding his hand. Or maybe he’d suffered alone, healing enough to be sent home. How terrible it must’ve been, no matter how it happened, the first time his mother had to look at that ravaged face.
Stella closed her eyes suddenly, fingers stilling on the mouse she’d been manipulating. She took her hand away and folded both in her lap while she gathered herself together. Slow breath. Deep breath. Counting to five, then seven, then ten.
It would never stop haunting her, she thought with a mental shake she echoed with a physical one. Opening her eyes, Stella let out an embarrassed laugh when she saw her coworker Jen peeking around the edge of her cubicle. Wordlessly, Jen held up a coffee mug and an e-cigarette.
“Sure,” Stella said. “Give me a minute.”
Stella had taken up smoking in college, but quit when she got pregnant. She’d never stopped missing it. She sometimes took a cigarette when she was flying, depending on the situation and who was offering her the smoke. So far as she knew, Jen didn’t really smoke either, other than the e-cigarette she’d bought a few months ago and used with nicotine-less cartridges. They’d simply both figured out last year that smokers got breaks and nonsmokers didn’t.
Grabbing a fresh cup of coffee from the break room, Stella pushed through the back doors of the building and found Jen waiting. Phone in one hand, coffee in the other, she lifted her chin in greeting as Stella came out.
“Chilly as fuck out here,” she said around the e-cigarette tucked between her lips. “My nipples could cut glass.”
Stella rubbed at her arms, grateful she’d grabbed a cardigan today. She sipped hot coffee, making a face. “This is swill.”
Jen laughed and pulled the e-cig from her lips. “No kidding. I guess they think if they make better coffee we’ll drink more of it? And then spend more time in the bathroom, therefore getting less work done?”
“Diabolical.” Stella laughed, though it made sense. “Remember when they had the coffee and sandwich service?”
Jen sighed wistfully. “Yes. That guy was so cute. I spent more money on shitty, stale bagels than I made in this place.”
Stella didn’t want to sit at the splintery picnic table, so she settled for leaning against the brick wall while she warmed her hands on the already cooling mug. “I don’t know why they stopped him from coming.”
“Because they can take a percentage from the vending machines,” Jen said matter-of-factly.
Stella hadn’t thought of that.
Touching up photos for the Memory Factory was far from a terrible job, especially if you could get past the deathlike near silence in which they worked. The hours were good, and the pay based on completion of training levels meant that Stella was earning the top rate. More than she’d make in an office anywhere else. But it was no secret that the company itself, which had started off as a small mom-and-pop photography service and was bought by a national corporation, was money hungry. Famished, actually.
Jen drew again on the e-cig, blowing out a plume of mist into the October chill. “I heard Randall’s going to be pulling people in for performance reviews soon. Guess we got too many complaints this past quarter.”
“I’m not worried about that. Are you?”
“Girrrrl,” Jen said with a grin, “no way. But some of the temps are shaking in their boots. Which is good, because maybe they’ll get fired, and we can get some hours back.”
The previous holiday season, the company had hired on a bunch of temps to handle the extra workload that always happened around Christmas and lasted until just after New Year’s. For whatever reason, four of the temps had been asked to stay on. None of them were any good, none had passed more than the basic level of training and none of them got along with anyone else in the office.
