Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

said D’or. “We’d just come back from a Holocaust workshop.”
    DeDe felt a smile flicker at the corner of her mouth.
    “I was so mortified I just went through with it. I don’t know why. I really don’t know why.” She paused a moment, throwing a pebble into the river. “I guess I wanted to show her there was … something I could do better than her.”
    Than she, thought DeDe.
    “She was so cold afterwards. Like she’d been humoring me all along.”
    DeDe thanked God for making Sabra Landauer such a callous, manipulative and thoroughly undependable person.
    D’or patted the sand between her legs. “I wish I’d finished college.”
    DeDe slipped her arm around D’or’s waist. “C’mon …”
    “I do. I feel so dumb sometimes.”
    “D’or … you made several hundred thousand dollars before you were twenty-five. You traveled, you met people….”
    “Yeah, but I don’t know anything. I’m really illiterate.”
    “Come off it. Just because Sabra was so tacky as to … Listen, have you actually ever read Medusa at the Prom?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I have,” she said, telling D’or the same lie she’d told Sabra. “It’s just plain awful. It’s trite and … lugubrious.”
    “See?” said D’or. “I don’t even know what that means.”
    “Ohhh.” DeDe gave her a little shove.
    D’or shoved her back, pinning her against the sand. “I love you so much,” she said.
    “You’re a mess,” said DeDe.
    “Maybe.”
    “Definitely.”
    “O.K.” She leaned down and gave DeDe a kiss. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
    “Can we get out of here tomorrow?”
    “First thing,” said D’or. “Do you forgive me?”
    “Ask me tomorrow,” said DeDe.
    “Where did you go tonight?”
    “Into town,” said DeDe, “where I consumed mass quantities of animal flesh.”
    “Oh.”
    “And I don’t want any grief.”
    “You won’t get any from me,” said D’or.
    In a burst of hideous insight, DeDe realized the depth of her commitment to this marriage.
    She had just traded adultery for a cheeseburger and an order of french fries.

The Littlest Pallbearers
    S OMEWHERE OUT THERE IN THE DARKNESS, A CREATURE was skittering through the underbrush. It sounded larger than a rabbit or raccoon, but it seemed to move in fits and starts, as if pausing for reconnaissance. It was joined, eventually, by an identical sound on the other side of the tent.
    What now? thought Booter. Should he attract attention or not? He could thrash about, maybe, make the tent move, create some sort of sound in his throat. What if it was just the bulldagger again? She could make things even worse for him.
    “Cuckoo,” came a call from the darkness.
    “Cuckoo,” came the reply.
    Not a bird sound, but a human one.
    Children?
    He tilted his head to listen.
    “Wait there,” whispered one of them. “Where?” asked the other. “You know … where I said.”
    “Well, how come you get …?”
    “Just shuddup. I told you I’m Platoon Leader. What did you get?”
    There was a rustling of paper.
    “Big deal. Another granola bar. Gag me.”
    “Look, she almost saw me.”
    “Well … so? You volunteered for this duty.”
    “Yeah, but I don’t—”
    “Just shuddup … and keep your head down. I’ll meet you back here in three minutes.”
    Moments later, he heard someone ease open the big zipper on the tent. A thin electric beam searched the space, splashing light on the orange polyester walls. He arched his neck and came face to face with a boy of eight or nine, fat-cheeked and ginger-haired.
    Booter groaned at him and made a thrashing motion. The boy’s jaw went slack. For a moment, before he dropped the flashlight, his startled face became a levitating jack-o’-lantern, comic yet terrible in its intensity.
    Then he ran away.
    Booter kept groaning through the gag.
    He heard the boy go yelping through the underbrush like a scalded pup. Then the silence closed in again, and he was left panting and sore, indignant in defeat. What the hell was the matter with the stupid brat?
    Then the voices came back.
    “If you’re lying, Philo …”
    “I’m not. I swear. His face was like … the Mummy or somethin’.”
    “Oh, sure.”
    “I swear.”
    “Which tent?”
    “That one.”
    “You better not be lying. I’ll report you to the Brigadier.” Only slightly less terrified than Philo, the tough one seemed to be stalling for time.
    Booter awaited them in silence. Moaning and twisting would only scare them off