hoping not to encourage him further.
“Did you hear about Khet? It was cancer. Started a few months after her nose job. Might have something to do with the material they put in there.” Somboun was always coming up with reasons as to why a nose job was a bad idea. “Just something to think about,” he said, grinning as if the cancer was a blessing in disguise, opening up an opportunity for him to talk with Red.
She walked faster and he soon fell behind.
IT WAS TIME to break for lunch. They only got twenty minutes. Enough time to use the washroom and gobble down some food. Red often used the time to be alone. The smell of raw chicken flesh and loosened guts and all that killing and packaging sometimes made her forget she was alive and living in the world too. She was on her way out of the line when she saw Tommy come by and tap the shoulder of one of the girls who worked for him. This was something he often did. That girl was the one selected for that day. Red made her way outside. A short time later, Tommy and the girl came out and walked to his car, where all of it took place. Red wondered what that felt like, to be seen, to feel the mouth of someone who wanted you. It didn’t matter if what Tommy did wasn’t for forever. He did it and you got to be something to him for a little while.
Just as they were getting into the car, Tommy’s wife pulled into the parking lot.
She didn’t even bother to park properly.
Nicole wore a white fur coat, her blond curls bounced fresh from the salon. She had bright red lipstick on and rouged cheeks. She looked so glamorous and beautiful.
She was yelling at him about something. Furious.
Then Nicole grabbed Tommy by the arm. He pulled his arm back and shoved her away. She didn’t fall. She clung to a sleeve, her white heels dragging in the snow. What she wanted didn’t matter to Tommy. He shut the door and drove away with the girl in the car. The bottom of Nicole’s white fur coat was dirty with mud. If Red had not seen the whole thing, she might have thought the mud was shit. Might have asked how the shit got all over her like that.
From where Red stood, she could tell Nicole’s eyes were smeared with mascara, and her quivering lips looked a clownish red now. Women like Nicole are who the romantic movies were made for. They are always the star of their own lives and they always got their man in the end. But beauty, for all it could get you and all that fussing it took to get it, seemed so awful a burden to have to carry and maintain. There was so much to lose. In that moment, Red felt grateful for what she was to others—ugly. It’s one thing to be ugly and not know it. It’s another to know.
That public declaration of love in front of family and friends like Nicole and Tommy had—Red knew it wasn’t something that would ever happen for her. It didn’t matter what Tommy did outside of that promise. It had been made, and he would always come back to it sooner or later.
The only love Red knew was that simple, uncomplicated, lonely love one feels for oneself in the quiet moments of the day. It was there, steady and solid in the laughter and talk of the television and with her in the grocery aisles on the weekends. It was there every night, in the dark, spectacular and sprawling in the quiet. And it all belonged to her.
Nicole spotted Red and ran to her. She grabbed Red and held her like they were the closest of friends, and buried her pointy nose in Red’s neck. She could feel the poke. Nicole probably would have grabbed on to anyone standing there. Probably. They stood there together in each other’s arms. It was the first time someone had ever been that close to Red, had touched her. Both women cried, but for different reasons.
Slingshot
I WAS SEVENTY when I met Richard. He was thirty-two. He told me he was a young man, and I didn’t say anything about that because I really didn’t know what that was, to be a young man, if that was a good thing to be or a bad one. He had moved in