Fat Man and Little Boy by Mike Meginnis Page B

their blue slippers. She goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. There’s a faint chill on the air like an unwelcome secret. She tips back the glass, finishes the water in one gulp, and licks the dewy moisture from her lips. Her husband never believed in marriage, as he acknowledged on the night of his proposal. He asked her anyway, during all the excitement, when people did these things. But clearly children are out of the question.
    She pours herself another glass of water and walks back to bed. Should he come home early, Francine doesn’t want to seem to have been waiting up. She isn’t waiting for anybody. She only woke up thirsty.
    Francine reflects that her husband would not leave her alone all night simply for sex. “He’s more discreet than that,” she whispers to her glass. She revises her confidence again. Her husband is still in a hotel, but now it’s more expensive, and yet no one’s having fun. He sits up in the bed, back to the headboard, married brunette head in his lap. He’s just paid for her abortion, so he strokes her hair and twists the ends between his fingers. The brunette rubs her stomach very slowly and wonders how it would be to feel a kicking thing inside her. He whispers drowsily how everything will be all right, like drooling honey in her ear. He’s drooling honey, that’s his fault, but the brunette doesn’t turn her head to block the flow. They’ll spend the night together. He’ll leave early in the morning while she pretends to sleep, buy them a sweet breakfast and chocolates, and carry the food back to the hotel in a small brown basket. This might be the end of their affair, or not.
    Francine won’t know about that until circumstances call again for certitude, for deciding for herself what she can’t know and won’t ask.
    Francine has finished her water. She rolls a cigarette. She puts it between her lips and chews the paper without chewing hard enough to break it. That feels like breaking skin. When she can’t wait anymore she strikes a match and lights it. She breathes deeply and blows smoke through her nose. She’s never been like the leisure-soaked, cold-blooded women who can drag out a cigarette for nearly an hour, lace an evening, threading wisps of smoke through conversation. She huffs and puffs, Francine. She pauses only to cough. The taste still tickles her throat.
    It must be a stranger knocking at her door. It must be a small stranger: the door makes a small sound. Francine finishes her cigarette and drops the stub in the trash before going to the door. On second thought, she brings a large knife with her. The small hand knocks again. Put-pat. She peeps through the peephole. There’s the top of a dirty blond head in the hole and a thin white hand drawn back, waiting, shaking. It looks like a girl’s hand, if the girl chewed her nails and her knuckles were knobby and pale. The hand moves as if to knock again and then falls out of sight, defeated. The dirty blond head turns away.
    Francine opens the door. There is the blond boy sucking his thumbnail. He shivers pointedly. A fat man steps into view, a real behemoth. He shivers too. When he opens his fat mouth and hazards a greeting in clumsy, fat French, she knows he’s American. He holds out his hands open-palmed, showing her they’re empty, except for a charred blackness and a floppy blue hat that hangs from his fingers.
    â€œDon’t worry,” she says, “I know some English. Come in, come in.” She waves them in with her hands and steps back from the doorway, like guiding toddlers. She leaves the knife on the kitchen counter. They follow her inside. The little one rubs his hands on his pink cheeks. He sucks his thumbnail and bites at what spare rind is left.
    She tells them to sit at the dinner table and they do. She asks them what they’d like to drink. They both say water. The fat one asks her does she have something