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leaving now?” Claire threw at Ollie’s back.
    Ollie ignored her. She wasn’t going to stand outside
in the middle of Dallas with tourists milling around and make a domestic scene
with her wife. Wife. What a friggin’ joke. They lived together for two
months before things became so sour that Claire kicked her out of the bedroom.
Hell, she had lived with G-ray longer than Claire. Even whacko G-Ray with his
tingly ass was easier to live with than Claire had ever been.
    Ollie threw open the door to the Texas Book
Depository and marched inside. She took the stairs two at a time.
    The thing she didn’t tell Claire was that she had
seen her with Scarlet. The first time was by accident, at the grocery store.
She saw Claire and Scarlet loading up their cart in the diet food section. They
were getting all the food that had no sugar, no carbs, no transfats and no
taste. Scarlet was as happy as a pig in slop. Claire looked sad. Ollie had even
seen her gaze longingly at a box of Ho-Ho’s.
    The second time she had seen Claire wasn’t an
accident. She was on her way to the beach when, without realizing it, she had
driven over to Claire’s new house. She stopped her van a block away and watched
Claire’s front door. She hadn’t even known she was doing it until she had already
parked. She waited outside in her van for two hours before she saw Claire and
Scarlet walk outside, get into Scarlet’s fancy red convertible and speed away.
    Ollie found herself parking outside Claire’s house
several times a week, watching Claire come and go. She told herself she wasn’t
stalking Claire. Stalking meant she was planning to do something icky. Ollie
had no plans to be creepy. She just wanted to see Claire. She thought if she
saw how happy Claire was with her new girlfriend that would put the kibosh on
her feelings. She would get over Claire and be able to move on with her life.
    But that wasn’t what she saw at all. She saw a
progression of Claire going from a normal, happy woman to a woman who was so
uptight and rigid that she looked like she had a pole stuck up her butt.
    Ollie had to admit that Scarlet had several things
going for her. She had nice tits. Great lips. A perfect nose. And her BMI was
like a ten. Which meant, in Ollie’s humble opinion, that she needed to eat a
cheeseburger or two. In fact, after some sleuthing (not to be confused with
stalking), Ollie had found out that Scarlet’s body had cost more in plastic
surgeries than Ollie had earned in her lifetime. She would have had to paint
and sell about two million hermit crab shells to pay for justone of those fake tits.
    And then came the inevitable day when Ollie saw
Claire come home with two black eyes and a bandaged nose. At first, Ollie
thought Claire had been in a fight. But it was worse than that. Claire had been
to the plastic surgeon and gotten her nose redone.
    Rhinoplasty.
    What an ugly word.
    “Let’s make a deal with each other,” Claire said.
    Ollie was now on the sixth floor looking out a
window at the passing Dallas traffic. It was the same window from where Lee
Harvey Oswald allegedly shot the president. She sighed, but didn’t turn and
look at Claire.
    Claire continued talking to Ollie’s back. “Let’s be
honest, absolutely honest, with each other. We have to live together until the
divorce, so it’s the least we can do.”
    Ollie turned and eyed Claire. “Honesty? That’s what
you want?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay, fine with me. Tell me something honest.”
    “You go first,” Claire said.
    Ollie didn’t even hesitate. “I hate your nose.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me,” Ollie said. “I hate your stupid,
perfect nose.”
    Claire cupped her hand over her nose, hiding it. “My
nose?”
    “It used to be cute. It had a tiny crook in the end.
It was so… you. Not perfect, but perfectly you. Now it’s gone. You’re changing.
It’s like you’re trying to become something you aren’t.” Ollie took a deep
breath. “How’s that for