LITMIR.BIZ

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this is Stan Rafferty. He’s my husband. You used to watch him play football in high school.’

      ‘What? You married a football player?’

      ‘Yes, Dad. You gave me away, remember? St Jude’s. It was July, a hot day. All the bridesmaids in pink. You and Mother were so happy. You remember that. I know you do.’

      ‘St Jude’s?’

      The pistol began to sag. Alexandra put her hand on his arm and lowered it. Her wedding day was one of the moments he still recalled vividly.

      ‘Pink,’ he said. ‘All the bridesmaids. Yeah, and it was hot, and there was some damn bird in the chapel, a laughing gull trapped in there, flying around, squawking. We all thought that was a sign of something. But I never was any good at reading signs.’

      Alexandra tried to pry the pistol out of his hand, but her father pulled away from her and holstered the weapon and buttoned the safety strap.

      Stan shook his head and turned the page of the paper, folded it in half the way he liked, got the creases even, and continued to read.

      ‘You say his name’s Stan?’

      ‘That’s right, Stan.’

      Her father narrowed his eyes, trying to catch her in this lie.

      ‘What position did he play?’

      ‘Cornerback at South Miami,’ she said. ‘He was allstate.’

      ‘Damn right,’ Stan said. ‘MVP in the regionals, too.’

      ‘Where are my grandchildren? They at school already?’

      ‘There aren’t any, Dad. Stan and I don’t have any children.’

      ‘No children? Nine years married and no children?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘You got something wrong with you, son? You got a sperm problem, do you?’

      Stan looked up from his newspaper. He stared at Alexandra for a few seconds and shook his head again.

      ‘He probably got adopted by one of those weight-lifting monsters at Raiford. Guy wants to have butt-hole sex five times a day. Before you know it, he’s banged your prostate to death. No wonder you two don’t have any kids.’

      Stan slapped his paper down.

      ‘Hey, shut the hell up, Lawton. You hear me? Can you understand what I’m saying? Just shut the hell up about my prostate and the rest of that garbage.’

      ‘Don’t talk to him that way, Stan,’ she said quietly.

      ‘Yeah, yeah. So tell him to stop saying that trash to me, why don’t you?’

      ‘You know better. Just calm down, control yourself.’

      ‘Butt-hole sex,’ Stan said. ‘Jesus, I have to listen to this shit at breakfast?’

      He was about to say something else, but Alex caught his eye.

      ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘From both of you.’

      Stan sighed, smoothed some wrinkles from the paper.

      ‘Hell, what difference does it make? I could call the old fool every goddamn name I ever heard and he wouldn’t remember it ten seconds later. There’s no water in the well. Drop a brick from ten feet up, there’s no splash.’

      ‘Well, today’s the day,’ her dad said. He cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, and his eyes were suddenly bright and clear. ‘I’m relocating.’

      He stooped over and picked up his suitcase and started for the door.

      ‘Wait a minute, Dad. Come on, sit down, have something to eat.’

      ‘No time to eat. I’m out of here, on my way up the road.’

      ‘Dad, Dad. You can’t go relocating on an empty stomach, right? Breakfast is the most important meal.’

      He stopped at the back door and stared at her.

      ‘It’s very important,’ she said. ‘Keeps you going the rest of the day.’

      ‘Well, yes. That’s a good point. I suppose I should have something warm in my belly before I start out.’

      Stan groaned and bent back to his plate, sopping up the runny egg yolks with the last of his toast. He was a big man. Jet-black hair that he wore just long enough for a part. Short arms, brawny from his barbells and morning push-ups, small hands with blunt fingers. He was television-handsome, with a muscular face and light blue eyes. He’d hardly aged in the eleven years she’d known him. One of the two or three most popular boys at South Miami High, co-captain of the football team, senior class treasurer, big-time practical joker. Iguanas and corn snakes set loose in the teachers lounge. Once coaxing half the football team into hoisting the principal’s Volkswagen up onto the bed of the vice-principal’s pickup.

      But it wasn’t his status that won her heart, or his looks, or his prowess before thousands of cheering fans. It was the way he treated his sister, Margie. She was a year younger and suffered from an acute case of multiple sclerosis. Stan Rafferty had been fiercely protective of her, leaving his classes five minutes before the bell so he could run to Margie’s classroom and help her move down the hall to her next period. They joked and spoke in whispers and Stan seemed to be her one solace and relief from pain. Every game ball he received, he held high above his head and trotted up into the stadium to present it to his smiling sister. The summer after their senior year, Margie died, and Stan sobbed openly. Alexandra was deeply touched. Such a strong, independent boy capable of such mature and sheltering warmth and unguarded displays of emotion.

      And for the first few years of living together, sharing Stan’s small apartment, and later in the house on Silver Palm, things had been fine. Both of them nineteen, Stan at work for Brinks, helping her parents pay Alexandra’s tuition to the local state university. It was a pleasant time. Not blissful, not a swooning romance, but good and sweet. Stan, a tender lover, almost too tender. He seemed skittish and vulnerable. Touching her body with a lightness and caution that seemed childlike and full of wonder, as if her body were made of fine crystal that might break at the slightest miscue. But in some ways, it was exactly what she’d needed. The muscular football jock with the feathery hands, the watchful and delicate strokes. The perfect man to set the record straight.

      Over the years, she’d come to find that Stan Rafferty was a mostly decent man, a little childish sometimes perhaps, a streak of self-centeredness. They didn’t bicker, rarely snapped at each other. But there were no longer any fond stray touches, either – no foot massages or back rubs, as there had been in the first couple of years, no hand-holding in the dark, no kisses that heated to combustion. Even their regular Sunday-morning lovemaking had become as perfunctory and timed as his calisthenics drills. Not sufficient reason for divorce, but less and less reason to stay married.

      Last month, she’d gone to see one of the shrinks who worked for the department. A Latin woman in her midforties whom Alex had seen for years around the hallways of Miami PD. They’d had a cordial, nodding relationship, mild water-fountain gossip. The woman welcomed Alexandra into her office and listened to her description of her nine-year marriage. The loss of passion, the growing distance, whole days passing by with fewer than ten words between them. When Alex was finished, Maria Gonzalez stared idly down at the papers on her desk. For a moment, Alex thought she’d dozed off.

      ‘Maria?’

      The therapist looked up from her notes.

      ‘This is all?’ she said. ‘He doesn’t hit you?’

      ‘No, he doesn’t hit. I wouldn’t stay a day if he hit.’

      ‘No arguments, no screaming, no throwing things. He doesn’t berate you, belittle you in any way?’

      ‘No, it’s all very quiet. Very low-key.’

      ‘And

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