Thugs and Kisses by Sue Ann Jaffarian Page B

allowing me my silence as I put one foot in front of the other, pretending everything was normal.
    Normal.
    What is normal, anyway? Isn’t it just a standard, a routine, a conformity that people live by or with? It seems to me that what is normal for one person might seem perverse to another, or silly, or unimportant. One woman’s normal is another woman’s weird and unusual. If you don’t count a murder and a break up, everything in my life was normal, or at least normal for me.
    Maybe in my little corner of the world, being a corpse magnet is normal. Who’s to say it’s not?
    On that thought, my eyes traveled against their will to the photo of Greg and me taken one Christmas. It sat proudly on the upper right side of my desk in a lovely frame. The tears I had carefully squelched all morning rose to the surface like a storm-swollen river about to breach its banks.
    Kelsey was watching me. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said in a comforting voice.
    “My friend?” I choked out.
    “The guy at the reunion, the one that was killed. Must’ve been quite a shock. I mean, an old friend getting shot right there, with all of you around.”
    My mouth opened in a wail, but nothing came out. Tears followed as if pushed forward by a category 5 hurricane. Kelsey got up and shut my office door.
    “Oh, honey,” she said to me, rushing to my side.
    She bent over and encircled me with her arms. I clung to her and cried, much as Johnette had done to me the night of the reunion.
    “Was the guy an old boyfriend?”
    I shook my head, first sideways, then up and down, then gave up and just tried to get a grip. Eventually, the crying stopped. I grabbed a wad of tissues from the box I kept next to my computer screen. Just as I was mopping myself up, hiccups set in. Perfect.
    “It’s … not that … hic … guy … hic … hated him … Greg … ,” I tried to get it out.
    “Greg? Something’s happened to Greg?”
    I nodded, keeping my lips sealed tight as I held my breath.
    “What? What’s happened to him?” Kelsey’s eyes were wide open in fear.
    I let out the breath I was holding. “He … hic .” Crap. I took another deep breath, held it a moment, then released it. “ Hic .” I picked up the water bottle on my desk and shook it—empty.
    “Stay put,” Kelsey ordered. “I’m going to get you something to drink.”
    She left, closing the door behind her. I hiccupped my way through the few minutes until she returned, but at least the flood gates were dry. When the door opened, Kelsey walked in, holding a mug of coffee and a fresh bottle of water. Behind her was Joan, the firm’s litigation paralegal. The three of us were known as the Three Musketeers of Woobie.
    “Hope you don’t mind,” Kelsey said. “I brought reinforcements.”
    I smiled weakly at Joan, and she tried to smile back. I had no idea what I looked like, but it couldn’t be great, judging from the sheer fright in her expressive dark eyes. Reaching into my tote, I pulled out my cosmetic bag and retrieved my compact. Yikes! No wonder Kelsey felt like she needed to rally the troops. I looked like a puffy raccoon who’d tangled with a nasty Mary Kay dropout. Quickly, I administered some damage control with spit and a tissue, then patted powder lightly over everything. I looked at my two office buddies for approval and got nods that I interpreted as it’ll do. By then, the hiccups were gone.
    Picking up the coffee mug Kelsey had placed on my desk, I took a long, deep drink and felt the warm, comforting liquid ooze its way through me. After a second long drink, I finally looked at Kelsey and Joan. Joan was parked in the side chair across from me, and Kelsey was leaning against the tall file cabinet to my left. Both were waiting for me to explain my hysteria.
    I put down the mug and grabbed another wad of tissues as a precaution. In a flat voice, I announced, “Greg broke up with me this weekend.”
    Joan gasped, and her eyes immediately pooled