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“But, Daddy, my head grew, and so did my tongue, and now my taste buds don’t like watermelon anymore.”

“Well, I’m not getting you another sucker. You’ll have to live with the one you’ve got.”

The child let out a shriek of protest and threw something over her shoulder. Nora flinched; she didn’t know what had caused the sting of pain until she reached up and felt the lollipop hanging from her hair. She could smell it too. Sickly sweet and tart, nothing like real watermelon.

LeDivic gasped.

“Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry.” He turned the child around by the shoulders. “Jenny, look what you did! Apologize to this lady. Tell her you’re sorry for throwing your sucker.”

The little girl scowled, refusing to speak. But Nora didn’t care. She was too shocked by LeDivic’s nearness, by his casual demeanor, by the deep timbre of his voice. It felt as though a silent marching band was parading through her head, the way she sometimes felt when she drank too much coffee and went out to weed the garden in the heat. She looked at the hairs on his forearms and the brown bag of potatoes in his cart. Slowly, she reached up and pulled the lollipop from her hair.

“Here, let me help you.” LeDivic took the lollipop from her. Then he pulled a napkin from his pocket and, before Nora could stop him, dabbed her hair where the lollipop had been. She felt his touch just above her ear, two quick movements before he made a hopeless noise.

“It’s one of those gum-pops,” he said. “There’s a little goo left, but it’ll wash right out.”

He laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head, looking dismayed by her lack of reaction, and by the fact that she was still standing there, blocking the aisle, one hand gripping the handle of her cart.

“I’m Nora Stevens,” she said in a thin voice. “I live off County Road 219.”

LeDivic looked at her. “So?”

“So I know what you did to those little country children.”

She wasn’t sure why she’d called them this; she’d never used the phrase before, and it sounded strange as soon as it left her lips. But LeDivic heard it loud and clear. He lifted the little girl out of the cart and told her sister to help her pick out a cookie from the bakery case. Then he moved closer to Nora. She noticed again the width of his shoulders and the muscles in his arms, which were tanned and scratched from outdoor work.

“Listen, lady. You need to mind your own business.”

“This is my business. I’m the one who rescued that little girl you tried to hurt!”

“Keep your voice down.” He stepped so close she could smell his deodorant or shaving cream or the soap he used in the shower. “Now you listen to me,” he said in a fierce, panicked-sounding whisper. “I’m an American citizen. I’m a Marine, a decorated serviceman. That thing you’re talking about was a long time ago. I was fifteen years old, and I got treatment for it. Every kind of treatment they could dream up. They drugged me and scanned me and electrocuted me and shoved shit up my nose into my brain, you understand? So don’t come meddling in my life, following me through stores, insulting me. And don’t you so much as look at my kids. They aren’t any part of this.”

LeDivic’s eyes held hers; they were flat and brown and unwavering. At either end of the aisle, people were coming and going. The music burbled overhead.

“That little boy still has fits because of you!” Nora hissed.

“No shit,” LeDivic said. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know my own cousin? And for your information, he’s not so little anymore. He’s six-foot-three and he plays on the football team. We go down to the field and watch his home games.”

Nora stared, unable to hide her shock. She couldn’t recall having heard anything about the families being related, not in her news clippings, or in all the talk she’d heard.

“And the girl? I suppose she’s your cousin too?”

LeDivic flashed a brief, incredulous smile. “Yeah. That’s how it works. Now is there anything else I can help you with?”

Nora gripped the cart, which was cold and sturdy before her. She looked down the aisle, at the people floating past the doughnut case, and at LeDivic’s girls, who were coming toward them now, eating cookies as they walked.

“Is she all right? Can you at least tell me that?”

“Who? Anita?” LeDivic’s shoulders loosened a bit, and he spoke in a measured voice. “Sure. She’s fine. In college back East somewhere. Fancy place, I forget the name. She got a scholarship. Made her mother proud. She’s just about the pride of the family, I think.”

He glanced over his shoulder at his daughters, who’d stopped to take some unauthorized item off the shelf.

“Unlike me,” he said. “I’m pretty much at the other end of the spectrum. Now, are we done here?”

When Nora didn’t speak, LeDivic clapped his hands, a sound like gunfire.

“Girls! Let’s go. Hurry up. Sam, put that back. Let’s get going.”

Nora hurried in the other direction. She abandoned her cart and didn’t get any groceries and had to come back in the middle of the week when she ran out of coffee. It was a month before she’d find the sticky napkin with a strand of her own dark hair in the pocket of her jacket.

At home that night, she watched television. First the news and then The Cosby Show. During a commercial, she got up and went to the kitchen drawer where she kept the old news clippings. Without looking at them, she threw them into the trash.

The next morning there was a chill in the air. Fall was coming, and she watched the deer make their daily pilgrimage to the apple orchard behind the house, pausing as they did to graze on the fescue that overgrew her father’s fields. She hadn’t replaced the last Rascal, so the deer strode fearlessly into the yard. They got so close to the windows that Nora could see the wetness of their eyes and the tufts of black hair around their ears. She watched as they stood on their hind legs to get the last stubborn apples from the trees, and she spoke to them from behind the glass, teasing them, giving them names.

She ate peanut butter cookies for dinner sometimes, because there were no more men around requiring meat, and in the evenings she read her father’s collection of Louis L’Amour novels, wherein rugged men fell in love with tender women, and the villains died quickly and without complaint.

On those rare occasions when the phone rang, she made her way into the kitchen, shuffling in warm socks. Sometimes the line was dead when she got there. Other times she thought she heard someone hang up. Once or twice it rang in the middle of the night, and she held it to her ear, listening to the tone. Alone in a big house, it was hard to keep her mind from blooming with dark thoughts. She saw movements in the shadows, slinking forms. She heard boots on the stairs and what might’ve been a knock at the front door, the soft rapping of knuckles. Imagined, no doubt, but paralyzing.

When morning came, as it always did, she pulled the curtains aside and looked out at the yard. Leaves were drifting down from the apple trees. Deer had slept there in the night and left impressions of their bodies in the grass. The sky was blanching. Another winter was coming. There was everything and nothing to be afraid of.

Duane Swierczynski

Lush

from Blood Work

Shots

I was doing shots of cold Żołądkowa Gorzka and snacking on herring in a small zakaskas when the torture squad came for me.

The scout was a familiar face, which tipped me off straightaway. Petite, dark-haired, top-heavy. Same lipstick, same dark hair brushed over the ears, same straining buttons on her eggshell-blue blouse. Had a first name that sounded like it should have been a last, but damned if I could remember it at that moment. We’d used her on various missions over the past sixteen months. Her appearance was no doubt meant to lull me into a false sense of security, or lull me directly into her bosom. But I knew better. There were four vodka shots lined up in front of me, and if I was going to be killed, I wanted to go out completely blotto.