Femme Fatale and other stories

Sean’s wife despises. His wife’s entire life centers on not having anything that anyone else has. She buys into the idea that there is one perfect everything, all the way down to the light plates. The problem is, Vivian’s process is so time-intensive that it never ends. Every time she “finishes” one room, another room is begging to be redecorated, having gone out of style or spawned low-end imitators, which means she is no longer one of a kind.
    “Gotta go,” McKey says. “Just push the button on the lock, don’t worry about the dead bolt. I don’t. Another perk of this location. It’s pretty safe.”
    She kisses him on his cheek and leaves, sending the water bed lurching again. After a few minutes, Sean manages to heave himself out of it without actually heaving, gathering up his shirt and socks, folded neatly in a chair, locating his shoes, oxfords that someone—well, OK, McKey—has untied and removed, finding his jacket and overcoat in the closet. She wanted to sleep with him. He can’t help feeling good about that.
    Only what did she tell him about Go-Go, exactly? Something about Go-Go and AA, why it wasn’t working for him. Why can’t he remember? Is it possible he simply doesn’t want to remember? Sean has always been very good about forgetting inconvenient things.

Summer 1978
C HAPTER E IGHT
    “Don’t touch my guitar, little boy.”
    The voice was as grimy as the hand, low and guttural and flecked with debris, but matter-of-fact, not particularly harsh or threatening. Although we had all yelped when the hand shot out—even Tim and Sean, although they later denied it—we felt strangely calm. Except, perhaps, Go-Go, who writhed in the hand’s grip but could not free himself. Go-Go was terrified.
    The man sat up, releasing Go-Go, although Go-Go continued to twist and turn as if held by invisible hands. The man was not really grimy, we saw, but extremely dark-skinned, black as ink, although with large patches of pink-white skin. His forehead, the area around his right eye, his right cheek, and chin were all ghostly, without pigmentation. Later, we managed to find a way to ask Gwen’s father about this without revealing why we were asking. He explained that a person with this skin condition wasn’t a burn victim, as some of us thought, or diseased in any way. But before that explanation was offered, we speculated at length on his appearance. Leprosy, Sean said. A horrible accident, Gwen said. Burned himself up smoking in bed, Tim said. Go-Go said he was a monster, and Mickey said he was just born that way, and she was closest to right.
    “What are you children doing in my house?” the man asked us, although the word sounded like
chillrun
in his mouth. We would come to understand that his words were as soft and mushy as the food required by his rotting teeth, which made his breath fearsome. He didn’t seem angry. He didn’t even seem particularly curious. And, unlike most adults who asked that question, he apparently wanted an answer, a real one. He wasn’t quizzing us as a pretext for scolding us, or setting us up, testing to see if we would lie to him. He honestly thought we might have a good reason for being there.
    “We didn’t know it was anyone’s house,” Mickey said.
    “We didn’t know it was anyone’s house,” Sean repeated, a little louder. Sean had a way of saying what someone else had already said, yet making the words his own.
    “You knew it was
somebody’s,
” the man said. His voice was mild, though. “Laundry on the line. Chickens. Didn’t you see my chickens?”
    He made a clucking sound, and the chickens crossed the threshold, almost as if in a parade. They gave us a wide berth, cutting as large a circle as possible in the small house. He picked up the one in the front, stroking it and cooing to it as if it were something much more cuddly, a kitten or a puppy.
    “Do you eat them?” Go-Go asked, and the rest of us wanted to shush him. But the man didn’t seem to mind Go-Go’s question. He didn’t seem to mind Go-Go, which was unusual in an adult. Go-Go got on grown-ups’ nerves quickly, very quickly.
    “Sure,” he said. “What else is chickens for?”
    “Eggs,” Tim said.
    “That’s true,” the man said. “And I eat eggs, too. But I got to make do with what I have. My garden, my chickens, things that folks bring me.”
    “What do you do when the cold weather comes?” Mickey asked, bold as ever.
    “Build a fire in the stove. Put an