Crucifax Read Free Page B

even though he wasn't holding together just yet.
    Erin had been holding three jobs for almost two years; one of them paid better than making puppets, but neither of them made her feel as good as she felt when a puppet was finished and she had transformed an assortment of cloth and screws and hinges and a few pieces of wood into a little person. Some were better than others, but they all gave her a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that she didn't get from her other jobs. She would gladly devote all of her time to making puppets and drop the other work, but two kids, rent, utilities, and a dozen other expenses kept her from it.
    When Ronald left, he had taken not only the television set, the VCR, and the car, but also the only income Erin, Jeff, and Mallory had. The three of them had moved into this smaller apartment in North Hollywood, and Erin had immediately taken an old friend, Kyla Reilly, up on a long-standing offer.
    When Mallory was a baby, Erin had made a few dolls. Erin's friend Kyla saw them one day and had gasped enthusiastically.
    "Erin! These are beautiful! I didn't know you did this. These are gorgeous! You should make puppets for the theater! We could pay you. Not much, but we could pay you something."
    At that time, Kyla had been working nights as a stripper at the Playland Bar in Van Nuys. During the day, she and a couple friends ran the Holiday Puppet Theater. Parents hired them to perform at their children's birthday parties and at Halloween and Christmas parties. Kyla started the business with a great deal of doubt, but it had been more successful than she'd expected. Despite the growth of the Holiday Puppet Theater, Erin continued to turn down Kyla's offers.
    When Ronald left, Erin not only started making puppets for Kyla but took a job as a stripper at the Playland. Not long after that, Kyla gave up stripping in order to satisfy the growing demand for the Holiday Puppet Theater throughout the Valley and Los Angeles and even rented a small building in which to give regular afternoon performances during the summer.
    The pay for Erin's puppets was minimal, to say the least, so she was still working nights at the Playland. She wasn't crazy about it, but if the men who gathered there were willing to give her ridiculously large tips for getting on stage and taking her shirt off, she wasn't going to deprive them of whatever fun they managed to derive from grabbing their crotches and making loud zoo noises.
    She worked seven-hour shifts four nights a week, and so far she had managed to keep it from Jeff and Mallory. They thought she was waiting cocktails. Although Erin did spend half her time at the bar waitressing, she was uncomfortable with the untruth. She didn't like keeping things from them, but she'd like it less if they knew she was stripping.
    Jeff would… well, Erin wasn't sure what Jeff would do. He was a sensitive boy. No—young man. Jeff had passed up boy some time ago. His initial reaction would probably not be strong, but she suspected that something—maybe something within Jeff, maybe something between them, maybe both—would change. She didn't want that. Jeff was much too important to her; she needed him too much.
    Mallory, on the other hand…
    Oh, wouldn't Mallory be tickled pink to find out, Erin thought, wincing at the bitterness of the words as they were spoken in her mind.
    No. She wouldn't do that, wouldn't be that way. It was true, Mallory would be pleased because it would, in Mallory's eyes, confirm everything she thought of Erin. But Erin didn't want to handle it with bitterness. She was biding her time, knowing that, once Mallory had grown a bit and was able to see things from a different angle—like how some husbands don't just leave their wives, they leave their kids, their whole lives behind, not because the little woman burns the roast or doesn't particularly enjoy performing fellatio, but simply because they want to leave, goddammit!—once that happened, things would