Free The Face Thief by Eli Gottlieb Page A

and found common cause in pronouncing themselves bored to tears.
    At the end of her second year, her mother died. The funeral was held on a warm spring day. The smell of the grass was suffocating. The gravesite was flanked on every side by mild elevations. These gave the impression that one slid downhill into waiting death. A scattering of relatives had flown in from all over the country. Minister Cartwright led the service, and then her father, swaying erratically, read a eulogy describing the “sacred compact and Christian joy” of marriage. Margot said nothing at the funeral. She solemnly accepted the condolences of relatives and filled their glasses at the reception held in their living room. Tears tracked down her cheeks, and she watched them fall. Experimentally, she tried to imagine that she would never see her mother again in life but couldn’t conceive of it. Then that night, back in college, she did two lines of powerful coke and blew her bearded English professor, a man by the name of Neil Walsh who knew more about certain poems of Walt Whitman than any man alive.
    At the beginning of her third year in college, her major was still undeclared. But in early September the phone rang in her room. Her father was on the other end and told her that he’d been fired from his job in the public defender’s office. Stephen McMahon the city ombudsman was a low-life gutter-crawling Judas who would rue the day he’d brought down the last honest man in Massachusetts. He’d worked his heart out for the people and now the people, in the person of this vile cur, had killed him dead. It’s a good thing your dear mother isn’t around to see this.
    She heard the ice cubes tinkling in his glass as he began to cry. When he recovered his composure and blew his nose, he told her how sorry he was about what this meant for her.
    When she asked what did this mean for her, he told her he’d been effectively blackballed, and how the hell did she think a fifty-six-year-old out-of-work lawyer would find a job? The best thing, he added, would be for her to take a loan out for the coming semester.
    She wasn’t certain she’d heard him right and asked for clarification.
    “Honey,” he said, “we’re broke.”
    The next day, she made an appointment with her guidance counselor and over his objections changed her concentration to a split literature/business focus, signing up for courses in marketing, accounting and finance. In the meantime, to console herself, she decided to blame her father for everything.

Chapter Eleven
    H e’d accepted her dinner invitation. Why had he accepted? His life was replete. He loved his wife. Why was he sitting at this restaurant dressed in his worsted wool suit, while enjoying the pressure in the air of her glance on his face; her lit, roving, happy glance?
    “You were saying?” she was asking. Her face glowed under the subtle mask of its makeup.
    He took a bead on himself. All the internal pressure seals were holding just fine. “I was saying,” he said, “that the way I got into it was through studying psychology, at first, because, it simply seemed the kind of thing you were supposed to study if you wanted to know the way the mind worked.”
    “Right,” she said, “but what led you to that, I’m asking?”
    “I was just a curious kid, I guess.”
    “Well, that doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
    Their food was served. He tried, again, to quell his potentially bolting nerves. He was simply out of practice. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been alone with a woman in an extended social situation, sanctioned by his wife—even if his wife hadn’t understood exactly what he was doing, and had airily said, as he was leaving, “Have fun, darling.”
    “But there’s something so boring about psychology,” he started to say when she interrupted him.
    “Don’t talk,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I want to watch you eat.”
    “Beg your pardon?” A mottled blush,