SUMMARY: She'd just like to feel safer.

"her heart's like crazy paving
upside down and back to front
she says, oh, it's so hard to love
when love was your great disappointment"

She wakes up on what might be Tuesday. It might be any day at all,
and it might be the day she's going to die, because the inside of her
skull has been drenched in kerosene, left to burn.

The radio says, "It's ten after five, and here's Callie Connor with
your traffic."

She lifts her head an inch and is punished by sun in her eyes and
another alarm, attached to a car that deserves to be stolen. Already
hot, and she's lying in her own sweat, the sheet pasted to the backs
of her legs until she squirms free. She pulls off the orange T-shirt
she slept in and tosses it blindly to the floor.

The tiny bathroom is welcoming, surprisingly cool; she hurries the
door shut behind her to keep it in. Quickly: contact lenses, a smear
of Neutrogena on her forehead; toothpaste mixed with tap water that
tastes of rust. She turns the shower on, grabs her comb, climbs in.
Long showers are her biggest luxury, half an hour budgeted into each
of her mornings, the perfect temperature and a double rinse. Her
water bills are scandalous.

Time runs out. She rushes a fluffy hotel towel over her body, wraps
her hair up in a sloppy twist. The last of the water evaporates from
her skin as she walks from the bathroom to her closet. It doesn't
take her long to choose. Acceptable choices are limited anyway,
always long sleeves, even in this humid heat. She dresses as lightly
as she can, forces herself into pantyhose and heels. Her makeup job
is fast and practiced and perfect. She fixes her hair even though
it's hopeless, turning to fluff between the teeth of the comb and the
breath of the blow-dryer.

Last night she laid everything out, notes, her cell phone, her keys,
her ID, even sunglasses. It still takes her ten minutes to find
everything and dump it into her purse. She locks up, the deadbolt
sliding into place like the last piece of a puzzle, and flies down
the stairs.

A cute kid, ten years too young for her, checks her legs out on the
Metro. She smiles at him through her headache, wondering where he's
going at this hour. The whole ride she's standing up, one hand
wrapped around the silver rail and one holding her purse close to her
hip. Just in case. Finally her stop, and she hurries out of the
stifling station into the open air, which hangs just as still as she
pushes, almost breaking a heel, toward the gate.

She begins with muddy coffee in her chipped blue mug and a call to
Security: the office is open. Her desk is always neat this early, no
clutter, just the schedules and a straight row of Post-It notes she's
left for herself, cancellations and corrections in her round
schoolgirl script. Toby blusters in, all caffeine and sexual
frustration. He passes her, spitting broken sentences like bloody
teeth: "Morning. Chicago's coming up, gonna need the latest numbers
from HUD and--" He fades into his office, still talking. She
doesn't try to pick it up. She already knows what he needs from her.

"Do you have the schedule?" Toby asks when he emerges.

"Which one?"

"The bus schedule. So I can get to Pyramus--Ginger, the Chicago
trip?"

He makes her name a scolding; she resists the temptation to crawl
under her desk. "There," she says, nodding toward the table.

Toby waits, glowering, to make her get up and bring him a sheet of
bright pink copy paper. She's barely sitting down before he
says, "This isn't updated?"

"I don't know," she lies.

"I need the new one." He crumples the schedule, tosses it at her.
She fumbles the catch, stares daggers at him as he turns away.

Her computer takes a minute to start up, whirring and beeping, as
unhappy to wake as she was. She pulls up her e-mail. It loads
slowly on the slightly outmoded machine. There are notes from
Margaret, scrupulously tagged 'Do Not Forward,' interoffice mail,
yesterday's news. She starts at the top. The first message is about
a charity softball game, cheerful and earnest. Wouldn't it be
great? Ginger glances at Toby's door and checks a laugh: yeah, she
wants to spend more time with these people, all the time she can
spare. She closes the window. File under F-squared: fuck off and
forget.

She scans the subject lines and stops for one that only says "hey."
The typos are as familiar as the voice. Janeane works in Hoynes'
office, but anyone could tell her notes are not secretarial: they
contain the word 'honey', punchlines to already-forgotten jokes, here
and there an asterisk-kiss. Sometimes Ginger replies, and they
bounce a sentence or two at a time between the West Wing and the
OEOB, all day between meetings and errands and crises. Like jugglers
advancing to each other while the pins fly through the air, they have
spent six months taking tiny steps toward something serious. Today
Janeane has invited her to lunch.

Ginger's clear-polished fingernails are fast and noisy on the
computer's keys, clacking out her response: I can't make it today; I
have Frank Tenney during my hour. She hopes Janeane remembers so it
doesn't have to be explained. She doesn't want to explain it; she's
in no mood for verbal self-defense.

This morning's headache and this morning's work take over. She finds
the statistics Toby wanted, knowing that once he's got Chicago he'll
want Detroit. Then Sam shows up, late for six important meetings
with ten important people and chasing some idea from Ways and Means
to Judiciary to God knows what. But they pay her to anticipate. She
hurries from printer to fax to copier to cafeteria, a busy worker
ant.

A few hours later, she remembers to check her e-mail. She turns in
her chair, the phone pinioned between her ear and shoulder, her right
arm falling slowly and unpleasantly asleep. Janeane's written back,
terse but reassuring: We can talk about it later if you want, over
some wine? Ginger isn't sure she'll want that. It's ten in the
morning and already her tongue is tired, her throat is sore. But
wine, wine sounds good. As she types her reply, she gets taken off
hold. She's talking to Sheila in the Attorney General's office,
straightening out an appointment. Everything conflicts, everything.
Sheila puts her back on hold and Ginger drops the phone hard into its
cradle.

Bonnie, walking by, clicks her tongue in sympathy. "If you give a
mouse a cookie..."

She looks up. "Is that code?"

"Not yet, anyway." Bonnie laughs. "It's a book I got for my
brother's kids. The mouse asks for a cookie, then he wants a glass
of milk, and it goes on and on until they've made a huge mess. Then
they clean it all up and celebrate with milk and cookies."

"Sounds like my kind of book." Ginger holds her chin up with her
left hand, hits the Send button, looks past her monitor at the twin
office doors. It amuses her to picture Sam and Toby as mice,
scurrying and squeaking and hoarding cheese. Toby shuffles into his
doorway, trying to get rid of the HUD undersecretary. He glances
desperately in her direction. Whiskers, she thinks, and permits
herself a nervous giggle. She reaches for the intercom and tells him
he has an important call. Sometimes they pay her to fake it.

Her stomach rumbles, a reminder of her bad diet, always skipping
breakfast for the extra sleep. She arches her back in her chair,
flexes her fingers, checks the clock. And it's time.

"I'll be back before one," she reminds Bonnie, half-hoping she's
lying, that she'll find an excuse to stall, to hide. She ducks into
the ladies' room first, pulls her hair back hard and traps it in a
tortoise-shell clip, touches up her lips: for this, she should look
perfectly professional. Perfectly sane.

Though the humidity is trying to make her a madwoman.

All the way downstairs she watches nothing but the floor beneath her
feet, avoiding faces she might recognize, returning greetings with
monosyllabic murmurs not even meant to be words. They may think
she's rude, sleepy, shell-shocked. She hopes they blame her bosses.

Down here the air-conditioning is sporadic, more symbolic than real,
and the air is sliced to slivers by fans whirring on windowsills and
the corners of desks. Ginger is waiting in an office with three of
them, turning their round heads toward her and away in a slow
negative motion. Saying no. But she's out of their range. She
stands still with her arms straight by her sides. Underneath nylon
and cotton, sweat is starting to prickle through her skin.

A noise from behind surprises her into betraying herself, Judas
nerves jumping as she turns around. The words on her tongue are
unbidden and inappropriate: "What are you doing here?"

Ron Butterfield looks at her the way she imagines a little boy looks
at a bug through a magnifying glass: what have we here?

"I mean," she says quickly, "I didn't think--I wasn't expecting to
see you. Here." And she's making it worse, so she clamps her mouth
shut.

His eyes almost, maybe, twinkle. "You have an appointment with Frank
Tenney."

"Yes," she manages, her voice thin.

"Frank's stuck in a meeting," he tells her. "I've got a couple of
things to take care of around here, maybe I can tell you whatever you
need to know."

He walks past her and sits down in a chair that can't possibly be
his, the swivel seat's screwed much too high for his knees, and he
pulls out a folder to read someone's secrets. At a desk, in an
office, he does not seem imposing, not frightening, more like the
kindly policemen in children's stories. Which doesn't mean she wants
to talk to him.

"Ginger?"

Caught staring. She hugs herself, half guilty, half surprised he
remembers her name. She can't. It isn't her place, because he was
*there*--took a bullet--and she'll never know, never, how it was.

"If something's bothering you," he says, "I can save you a wait."

The fans hum louder, no, no, no.

Then she hears herself say, "I want to know if I can buy a gun."

So she's put the words into the world and nothing's different: the
same pressure in her temples, ugly rectangles of fluorescent light
staring from the ceiling, secret moisture beneath her arms and
breasts. Startling, that he isn't startled, that he raises his eyes
slowly and gives her a long patient look.

"You can relax, you know," he says mildly. "You're not the first to
ask."

She looks for a chair. There's one right in front of her, of course;
she touches the back with her fingertips and stays, brave, on her
feet. Reminding herself to breathe. "Really?"

"It isn't the most common request, but it isn't the most unusual
either. Why don't you have a seat?"

Permission granted. She steps around and sinks into the seat. Her
eyes follow his to the folder splayed open on the desk and she
realizes it's her file and feels naked, folds her hands over her lap,
nails stabbing knuckles so she will not shake. "I wasn't sure," she
says.

"Yeah. You live--" Eyes pausing on her address. "Not the nicest
neighborhood."

"I can't deal with roommates," she explains. Lame. Pathetic as the
fans' efforts to ease the heat.

"Well, within the District, it's against the law to own a handgun.
If you lived in Virginia or Maryland--"

"I wouldn't have the problem," she says, then looks down at her shoes.

He doesn't respond to that. "You can legally own a shotgun or a
rifle. You'll have to put in a pre-purchase application to the
police, register the weapon and keep it locked or unloaded in your
home. We'll run a background check, but since you've already been
through six or seven of those you shouldn't worry too much about
that. Ginger, has someone threatened you?"

She works for Toby and it's not an unfamiliar trick, but the
question, gentle at the end of the speech, throws her. She doesn't
trust herself to raise her eyes. Doesn't trust herself not to blurt
out too many true things: the boy who shoved her down the stairs of
their high school, the married man who left a handprint between her
shoulder blades, the songwriter girlfriend who once twisted her arm
until it was banded in blue. Ancient history. Butterfield is
waiting and she opens her mouth, measures her words and her
tone: "There have been break-ins in my building"--this is true--"and
I'd just like to feel safer."

"You have the right," he says, still looking straight at her,
speculating.

Jumpy nerves again, and she finds herself standing, retreating a
little though it's not his fault, nothing's wrong, everything's fine,
but she's saying, "I should really get back upstairs."

He stands up with her. "You can call the Police Department for the
necessary paperwork," he says. He will not stop looking at her. She
hurries out, scuttling away, like an insect exposed to daylight.

Back at her desk and she's still shivery, chanting inside her head,
stay cool, stay cool. Hoping that nobody will say anything to her,
not for a while, until she's calmed herself rearranging folders and
magnetic paper clip containers and adjusting the lamp as if this is
the most important work in the world.

"You're back early," Bonnie says, right away.

Ginger tries not to cringe. "Yeah."

"I thought it was going to take you all of lunch."

"No, it's--" She swallows hard. "It's all done."

"What's all done?"

It's Sam, slipping out of a meeting for coffee and a breather,
looking a little wilted though his features are as frustratingly
perfect as ever. Leaning cheerfully on the corner of Bonnie's desk.

She stares past him and says, "I just had a thing, that's all."

And instantly, she knows she's underestimated how weary he is and how
eager for an excuse, desperate to delay going back into that meeting,
even by a few seconds. She knows this because he stands and steps
toward her, a little too fast and much too interested.

"What kind of a thing?" he asks.

"Nothing." She directs a glare at her computer, the screensaver
swarming with tiny pixellated stars.

"It was going to take you all of lunch." Sam's voice is mild, his
forehead creased with something, she thinks, more interest than
concern.

The stars go out when she jabs a key, and she wishes she could delete
Sam that easily, simply clear the space he's standing in. There are
eleven new e-mails. One from Janeane. She looks up and Sam is still
there. His tie is slightly rumpled; even he can't entirely escape
the weather. But: crisp lapels, clear edges hovering over her.

"You're okay, right?"

The burn behind her eyes is spreading, making the back of her neck
prickle, and she can feel her hair curling away from her scalp. She
must look a mess to him. She hates that it matters. And maybe it's
the rising heat that makes her do it. Maybe it's Sam, pushing her,
grating a little more than usual, so that her patience turns to
powder. Probably she's just tired.

But she's always tired. This time she's right.

It must be easier, to say it again. She lifts her chin, sets her
eyes steady on his. "I was finding out about guns."

"Really? Why--"

She doesn't wait for him to ask. "I'm thinking of buying one."

His face turns chalky and his mouth thins to a dash. Almost guilt--
after all, she wasn't *there*--and then she orders herself to stop.

"Ah," he squeaks. Like a mouse; his nostrils even twitch. "Well, I
guess the Second Amendment didn't stop applying to you when you got a
job here."

"I guess not." Though she wonders about her right to privacy.

"I wouldn't--" He takes his hands out of his pockets, clenches and
releases fists, lets them fall to his side. "I wouldn't interfere."

Her own hands on the desk's surface are hard, flat, rosy at the
knuckles. "Okay."

"Just so you know," he says, "A gun in the home is twenty-two times
more likely to, to kill a family member or friend than--"

"Be used against an intruder?" she finishes for him, irritated
exactly enough to make her brave. "I do know that. Did you know
that two and a half million crimes are prevented by guns every year?"

A frown distorts his face. "Hang on."

She will not hang on. She glances at her inbox, so much she's got to
get done, and she's pushing her sleeves up to the elbow, crossing her
arms over her chest. "I can, actually, do research when you haven't
issued a directive."

He hasn't moved but he seems closer, larger, jaw locked as square and
cold as the corner of an ice cube. "Listen, I'm not sure what NRA-
nut website you dredged that up from, but there's absolutely no
evidence--"

"You don't have to worry about this." She pushes the desk so that
her chair rolls backwards. On her feet, almost exactly Sam's height
in her heels, she's ready with the argument she's made to herself,
late at night with a pillow over her head. "Accidents happen with
cars and no one outlaws cars. I'm not a kid and I don't have kids,
and if I read the owner's manual I'm pretty sure I won't shoot myself
in the foot."

Ginger's breathing rings loud as the rush of blood in her ears.
Bonnie's gone, she notices, the bullpen nearly empty and the
stragglers cringing away from her. She's cleared them out. And she
doesn't care, there is even guilty pleasure, her turn with the self-
righteousness the staff wears around their necks.

Through teeth tight with exasperation, Sam says, "If you want, we can
sit down later on and discuss the statistics on gun violence."

"Oh, I think that's the last thing I want in the world."

"Hey, I'm just saying." There are lines in his preternaturally young
face she's never noticed before. "I can't really think of a better
argument for gun control than the idea of someone who's
inexperienced, who's choosing to stay ignorant--"

"Tell me how numbers are going to matter," she demands. A crack in
her voice, a flush creeping over her whole body, but her head is
still high. "However bad my chances are with a gun, if someone, a
stranger"--or, worse, someone she knows--"breaks into my apartment,
and I don't have *anything,* then the chances are worse, aren't they?"

"I don't--"

"You don't know!" The thought is flying from her lips before she's
even done thinking it. "You've never had to worry about it."

Sam's face slackens, smoothes somehow, and he lowers his eyes, looks
at her through too-long lashes. He shrugs and almost smiles, sorry
for her. "You really believe you'll feel safer."

That snaps something inside her, a too-taut guitar string giving one
last twang, giving out. She can't look at him another second, can't
look at anything, so she shoves half of what's on her desk into her
handbag, and shoulders her way past Sam, almost blind. Almost
running. No idea what she's doing until she's out of the building,
and the humid air slows her, sucking away her breath. She's
forgotten her sunglasses, and all the way to the Metro station she
has to squint into the painful sun.

On the train a heavyset woman sits down next to her, huddles too
close, clucks to herself as she reads a Harry Potter paperback.
Ginger inches away and looks at her hands on the plastic seat. They
are trembling. The shiver travels through her entire body, like the
ripples on the surface of boiling water. She barely remembers to get
off at her stop.

The guy at the package store on the corner knows her, and gives her a
discount on a moderately good Merlot. She takes it home, takes her
time on the stairs. In the hallway she smells someone cooking with
curry, hears talk show voices as she fumbles with the keys to let
herself in. The shades are down, but the apartment is stifling. She
peels off clothes almost as soon as she's inside, shoes and stockings
first. Strips to a blouse and her underwear. Her wineglasses are
dirty in the dishwasher, so she pours a coffee mug full of wine.

By the time she's drained it, the shaking has stopped, and she's
surprised at herself more than anything, shocked to be sitting on her
own counter in the middle of a weekday, fanning herself with the TV
guide. A second drink on an empty stomach, and surprise turns to
pleasure, even pride. She doesn't need to spend the day defending
herself to them; she doesn't need them. Let Toby do his own
homework. Let Sam--her too-loud laugh turns into a cough, she's
swallowed wrong--let Sam go to hell for all she cares.

About half the wine is gone, and gone to her head. A noise startles
her, and she takes a moment to place it as someone knocking,
steadily, on her door.

She slides off the counter and pads to the door, eye to the
peephole. Janeane is there, dark hair let down, rippled from the
heat, two paper bags balanced on one round hip. "There you are," she
says. "Let me in."

Ginger debates going for her skirt, making herself decent, for
perhaps five seconds before she realizes she doesn't care. She hides
behind the door as she opens it. "How did you--"

"The little hole went dark. Excuse me." Janeane sidles past her and
into the apartment. The bags she's carrying turn out to be
groceries: two big tomatoes, an onion, five jalapenos colored cartoon
red, a wide round of cheese. Janeane spreads these things out on the
kitchen counter with her quick efficient hands, setting aside the
wine bottle, raising one eyebrow. "Looks like you started without
me," she says. "I'm assuming you have olive oil?"

"Maybe?" Ginger doesn't need to ask how Janeane knew she'd gone
home: by now the story's made the rounds, probably gone cold. She
rubs her eyes with a thumb and forefinger, rests her back against the
refrigerator door. "How'd you get off work?"

"You know, it's the strangest thing," Janeane says, opening the
dishwasher for a real glass, which she rinses in the sink. "I
*asked.*"

"I mean--"

"Sam asked Bonnie to go talk to you; Bonnie wisely figured that you'd
bite her head off and called me instead. I was worried, I asked for
some personal time this afternoon, I got it." She pours the wine,
sloshing crimson around the clean glass. "He's concerned about you."

Ginger blinks. "The Vice President?"

"Sam. So, do you want to talk about it?"

"No." She puts her hand out for the half-full coffee cup, takes a
bigger swallow than she should, coughs. Her eyes water and
sting. "I'm tired of feeling like this. I mean, all the time."

"Like how?"

Exhausted. Scared. Small. "Like I'm being watched," she says.

Janeane shows a calm little smile over the rim of her glass. "You
mean judged."

"Thank you." She unbuttons her blouse, cradles the mug against her
chest; it's cool. "For correcting me, 'cause I really need that."

The smile disappears. "I meant, that's what bothers you, isn't it?
That you think people at work are judging you because of this gun
thing?"

"What bothers me," Ginger says, "is that I hate my job."

"I don't believe that," Janeane says.

She takes a deep breath that rustles the open halves of her
shirt. "Whatever."

"You don't hate your job. You love working there. You love working
for Toby, and even Sam. You make a difference, and you know that, or
else you wouldn't still work there. It's not like you're working for
Big Brother, honey. They're not bad people."

Ginger thinks about this. About Toby taking things out on her,
stupid things, minor frustrations with minor officials, big things
she doesn't hear about until too late. About Toby, finding out the
President had a brain disease, telling Josh's assistant before his
own. About Sam, and how easily she fell into picking up the slack
when Cathy left, about Sam's eagerness and aura of concern. No,
they're not bad people. They're harmless as mice.

"I'm not like you," she says. "You'd be working for Hoynes if he was
processing zoning applications in Midland, Texas."

"Mm." Janeane pulls the coffee mug away from her, brown eyes wide
and deep. "But you haven't quit yet. So what's wrong today? Why
aren't you happy?"

This question, somehow sharper than any other; Ginger feels its
sadness like sandpaper around her heart. Why isn't she happy?
Everyone wants the answer from her; that's what ruined her workday.
She doesn't know.

But there are peppers on her counter, so she looks up and says: "You
make me happy."

Janeane squeezes past her and turns the mug over in the sink, leaving
drops like blood on stainless steel. Ginger finds herself squinting
at them, staring at them, until she tears herself away and turns into
the embrace. Janeane reaches behind Ginger's head and draws the clip
out of her hair; it tumbles in flyaway strawberry strands around her
face. Then they are kissing, sticky wine-slick tongues together, and
soon Ginger finds that what remained of her clothing has fallen
away. Janeane's hands are warm on her waist, the good, safe kind of
warmth, but she senses the nearness of tears again and steps back a
small distance.

"No," Ginger murmurs. "You."

They keep kissing, and her fingers flicker down to open the buttons
of Janeane's blouse, better material than her own but then the Vice
President's suits are certainly nicer than Toby's, and why, Ginger
wonders, is she comparing clothes at all? They kiss against the
counter, leaning and leaning until finally Janeane vaults herself up.

Ginger helps her wiggle out of everything she's still wearing,
discarded like dancers' veils to reveal gentle curves, smooth brown
skin, imperfectly lovely breasts, heavy and heady in Ginger's pale
hands. Their hearts flutter frantically.

Janeane's skin tastes of cinnamon, spicier than sugar, and wet sounds
rise from her throat, emerge between perfectly round lips. Ginger
slides her chin down Janeane's belly, awkwardly almost kneeling
between knees that clamp behind her head; fingers and tongue moving
against and into damp softness.

And a hardness there, smaller than a pebble--as always, Ginger pulls
back, to see the tiny silver piercing, the exotic glint of metal like
a star nestled in the woman's flesh. She touches it with a fingertip
to elicit a moan. No one would know about this, guess this, seeing
Janeane at work: definitely not secretarial. She raises her eyes and
mouths, "you're beautiful," as always, because the reaction is even
more beautiful. Then Janeane urges her forward.

Ginger presses harder, and higher, tasting cinnamon and sweat, as her
own sweat plasters her hair to her face and neck. She doesn't
care. Oxygen deprivation blended with the wine will not let her
think; it's exactly what she wanted, what she needed, and she is
fiercely grateful.

When it's over, Ginger pulls herself up to her feet by the handle on
the unused oven's door. Her fingers--her whole body is slippery, and
her hair is snarled and wild. There are scratches on her shoulders,
cramps in her knees, a weak wobble in her right ankle. She turns her
head and watches Janeane, recovering her wits, lips and nipples pink
as blossoms swollen by rain. The kitchen's turned into a sauna.
There's a little bit of wine left, and Ginger drinks it from the
bottle.

"It's amazing that the tomatoes didn't get squashed," Janeane says,
with a low laugh.

Ginger nods, runs the tip of her tongue across her teeth. "Now what?"

"Now I make you some chili con queso. You probably haven't eaten
today, huh?" She doesn't wait for an answer, hopping off the
counter. "Where'd my bra go?"

Ginger points and doesn't bother gathering up her own clothes. Too
damned hot. She pushes her hair back off her forehead, bites the
cuticle of her right thumb. "I meant about work," she says.

"Yeah," Janeane says. "Well, I would say it'd be smarter to talk
about all of that once we've eaten, maybe taken a nap and opened up
the windows to get some fresh air circulating in this place, but--"

"I want to talk about it now."

"But you want to talk about it now. So." Half-dressed now, Janeane
puts her hands on her hips. "You had a bad day. They happen. And
you probably needed the afternoon off. Maybe you need the rest of
the week off. You'll go back and everyone will have forgotten that
any of this happened, and pretty soon you'll forget about it too.
Honestly." She runs a finger along Ginger's upper arm. "It'll be
fine. You don't hate your job."

She wants to protest: I do. I hate it. I hate them. But Janeane
sounds convinced, and Ginger is so exhausted she simply shakes her
head. "I think I want a shower."

"I was saving that for later." Janeane winks at her, retracing the
invisible line down her arm. "But you might as well, you know--
there's barely room to cook in here. We'd be all over each other."

"Thanks. You know. Thank you." Ginger manages a tremulous smile,
leans forward.

They're close to a kiss when Janeane says, suddenly serious, "You
know you could move in with me."

A silence, a step back. Ginger looks at the floor, at a crack
spiking across the linoleum, keeps her voice noncommittal. "Yeah?"

"I mean, you didn't sound thrilled about it when I brought it up a
month ago, but--that was a month ago. And I know it's not because
you can't bear giving up this apartment." Janeane makes a circular
gesture that encompasses everything, that underlines how little it
is. "I'm not really sure what you're scared of."

Her stomach twists, that sensation of something breaking inside her,
all the way inside and beyond repair. She edges backwards, heels
touching the living room rug, and hears herself murmuring. "I just
really need that shower."

Janeane nods as if she understands, and maybe she does. "Food in
maybe twenty minutes."

"Okay." Ginger's ankle still aches and she nearly stumbles over her
own floor.

For a long time she just stands in front of the bathroom mirror,
tugging knots out of her hair with hooked fingers, staring at the
sloppy woman in the toothpaste-spotted reflection. She never looks
this close, too hurried in the morning, too tired at night. The
circles around her eyes are surprising, dark as stains, as bruises.

After a little while, the strong, peppery dinner smell begins to
compete with the sexual scent still hanging in her apartment. The
whoop of a siren slices through the walls; a rescue in progress, or a
chase. People get killed around here, for drugs or money, for
insults, for fun. She wants to be free of the worry, to lock up and
rest easy at the end of the day, wonders how she'd sleep with a rifle
under the bed. The headache is pounding now, heated iron hammered
into a band around her skull. She locks the bathroom door and turns
the shower on, climbs in.

Her forehead rests against her forearms against the wall, each
individual drop of water cool where it hits her and then colder,
trailing down her back. The sound of it deafens her to other noise,
drowns her thoughts, and she is comforted, almost believing she could
fall asleep.

*

The End. Feedback is welcomed with open arms.

Lyrics from "Rattlesnakes" by Lloyd Cole via Tori Amos. Inspiration
from Kathe Koja's "Skin." And without the valiant efforts of Sacha,
Jae, and Stephanie, this would be a dreadful story.

Thanks, Christine and Teanna!

*

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