Hot Springs by Geoffrey Becker

smeary eyes. That, she had said, was the real world. Our brains and eyes just compensated for it so we wouldn’t be too scared.
    “How about telling me what’s up with you?” she asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean something’s up. It’s pretty obvious. You rob a bank?”
    He was tempted to explain, but thought it would probably be a mistake. He put a third cream into his coffee. “How’s Tate doing, anyway?”

    She stared at him hard. “If you know that sonofabitch, you also know that no one who knows him gives a shit how he’s doing.”
    “The last gig he called me for was some college kids who didn’t think they even had to pay—they just figured the sound guy came free. I had to have a long talk with one of them, if you know what I mean.”
    “You’re dodging the subject. That’s OK, though. Dodge away. You don’t have to tell me.”
    He poked at his eggs. “Say you had a locking mailbox, and you didn’t feel like locking it,” he said. “But the mailman, he won’t deliver to an unlocked box. Regulations, or something. What would you do?”
    “Lock the box,” she said. “You thinking about becoming a postman?”
    “I’m with this woman.”
    “We already established that. I guess that’s why you don’t feel like playing dentist, huh?”
    “She’s got a kid. Only she gave it up for adoption. And then she changed her mind. Kid’s five now, lives here in town. Except we sort of boosted her the other morning.”
    “You boosted someone else’s kid?”
    “Yeah.”
    “There’s another word for that.”
    “Not someone else’s. My girlfriend’s. I told her this was the wrong way to go about it, but she wouldn’t listen. I think she’d had this plan for a while, but I don’t know if she’d have done it without help.”
    “Which has what to do with mailboxes?”
    “That’s this chick. She wouldn’t lock her mailbox, and she’d rather not get her mail than lose a stupid fight with the postman. Do you see? I didn’t have much choice. This was going to happen, and I had to either go along or get out. I didn’t want to get out.” He thought
about how Bernice would sometimes disappear into her apartment for days at a time, turning out the lights, refusing to answer the phone, spending hours in bed under the covers. He’d attributed this to her not having Emily—to the frustration of being so close to her.
    “What happened with the mail?”
    “Eventually, the postman gave up and just started sticking it in the box anyway.”
    “So, she won. She got her way.”
    “She did. She’s all about proving things, and she doesn’t like being told what to do.”
    “This is serious,” said Robin, laying down her fork. “Where did you boost the kid to?”
    “I can’t say.”
    “OK. Do you have someone you can talk to?”
    “I just talked to you.”
    “I mean, like a friend or something?”
    “You think I’m making a mistake?”
    “Probably. But it seems like you’ve already made it.”
    “I don’t want to go to jail.”
    “Yeah.” She put out a hand and touched his briefly, then withdrew it. “I think you’re a nice guy. Maybe too nice. What’s the kid like?”
    “Weird,” he said. He thought about how she’d smelled vaguely of talcum powder and chewing gum, how she’d slept quietly most of the trip to Tucson, her mouth partway open. “A little on the religious side.”
    She wrote something on a napkin. “Here’s my cell. I’m going to take you back to your car now. We’ve had enough fun for one night. But you can call me, OK? I hope you do. Maybe things won’t work out with this crazy chick, or maybe they will. I like you. And in spite
of what you may think after tonight, I’m real normal. Honest. I hope you’ll call me.”
    Landis took the napkin. To the o in her name, Robin had added two eyes with a little smile underneath. He folded it and put it in his wallet.
    “You know,” said Robin, “that whole mailbox business? You say it was about proving