The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl Read Free Page B

third time’s the charm.”
    “Don’t hold your breath, Lindsay love.”
    “He’s just nervous because he’s into you,” she said. “You know how guys get around pretty girls. You make him all fumble-fingered.”
    “Then why doesn’t he knock stuff over when he talks to you alone? Or is that a facet of your relationship you haven’t told me about?”
    “No, he’s cool around me, but I’m not
pretty
.”
    “Lindsay—”
    “I’m not being down on myself. It’s true. I’m not pretty. I’m
cute
. I have round cheeks. I’d look good in gingham. I could do television commercials, hold puppies and tell people to buy things, but I’m not
pretty,
just cute. I’m the best-friend-girl, the one guys talk to about the women they’re in love with.” She shrugged with an air of gracious resignation. “I’m used to it. Though it’s been a while since any guys have come mooning to me about
you
. Maybe I miss the secondhand attention, did you ever think of that? Even if I have sworn off boys.” She grinned, then glanced at the stairs. “Where’s my beer? I tell you, the service in this place . . .”
    “Whoa, what’s that?” Marzi said, pointing toward the street. A car had just pulled into one of the metered parallel spaces in front of the café. It was a hatchback, but Marzi couldn’t determine the make, model, or even color, as the car was covered entirely in thick mud, except for a rough oval of mostly clear glass on the windshield. “Did they drive through a monsoon or something to get here?”
    “A monsoon would’ve been cleaner,” Lindsay said. “It looks more like they drove through the middle of a mudslide.”
    The car door opened, and the driver climbed out, just as mud-spattered as the car. Marzi couldn’t even tell if she was wearing clothes; only the shape of hips and breasts identified her as a woman.
    “Maybe she’s some kind of performance artist,” Marzi said. The woman was disturbingly familiar—she reminded Marzi of a minor character from her comic. In that story line, the rainmaker Charles Hatfield nearly destroyed San Diego with a rainstorm—something that had actually happened, historically, though Marzi had her doubts that Hatfield was really responsible for the storm. One of the women who died in the flood became a ghost, and in her desperate wish for flesh and substance she fashioned a body for herself out of mud. Bits of the mud-ghost kept sloughing off, or drying up and flaking away, and she was eventually dissolved in the Colorado River, where she remained, becoming a sardonic, disembodied oracle of sorts—as well as one of Rangergirl’s only friends.
    But that was a comic book, and this was real life. This was no ghost, but an actual woman, walking around covered in mud. Her face was daubed with white clay, making her resemble a figure from some African tribal ceremony—she had the face of a skull.
    “That’s Jane,” Lindsay said. “Holy shit.”
    Of course. Lindsay knew everybody. “Who?”
    “Jane Canarray. She was the TA in my psych class last semester. She’s
brilliant
.”
    “Does she often cover herself in mud?”
    “Marzi, I’ve never even seen this woman with split ends or ragged fingernails. This . . . I can’t believe it. She used to go out with Denis, I heard. Do you think Mr. Clean Freak would go out with somebody who covers herself in mud?” Lindsay spoke quietly, watching Jane. For her part, Jane seemed content to stand by her open car door and gaze down the length of the street.
    “Maybe she’s performing a psychological experiment.”
    “Maybe,” Lindsay said doubtfully. “I know there’s an Abnormal Psych teacher who makes his students do publicly deviant things to, like, teach them about cultural prejudices. But the students usually just talk really loud in elevators or stand on corners yelling about flying saucers. This is above and beyond.”
    Jonathan appeared, beer in hand. “Huh,” he said, looking at the mud-covered woman.