The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman Page B

a court establish he was no longer Joey’s father and stop paying child support, although he would have a hell of a time getting back what he had paid in. But if he did that, he would have to abandon the relationship, too. It was real fucked-up stuff. Rick, of course, did the right thing. He decided he didn’t care what the blood test said. He was Joey’s father and he would continue to be, even if that meant paying support to a kid that he seldom got to see. Her scheming skank of a mother really played that poor guy.
    Scheming skank of a mother? Have those words really run through McKey’s head as she gathers newspapers and trash from the passengers who were sentient enough not to throw their teeth into the bag? She’s being unfair. Her mother wasn’t a schemer, wasn’t skanky. Well, maybe a little skanky. She had been sleeping with Rick and Joey’s father at the same time. But she made a genuine mistake about Joey’s paternity, and it was harder to test for those things then. Besides, that mistake kept Rick in the fold until McKey went to high school, and she was glad for that. He was a good man. He protected her. He believed her, always.
    She catches a man coming out of the lavatory, the smell of smoke clearly on him. She pulls him aside. He looks so furtive and guilty that she doesn’t have the resolve to write him up, but she explains to him in an urgent, intimate whisper that she’s doing him a favor, that he could be flagged in the reservation system if she reported the infraction as required.
    His furtive look switches to flirtatious. Great, now he thinks she’s hot for him because she cut him a break, when it was merely her generosity toward her mother overflowing into the world. She goes back to the galley, tells a surprised Wendy that she will take over denture duty, which is still under way, if Wendy will help her keep her distance from Mr. Not-So-Smoking-Hot.
    The thing is, she felt kindly toward her outlaw smoker because his face reminded her of Sean’s this morning. Not in its particulars, but in the emotions. She had planned to keep Sean in suspense about the night before, but he looked so guilty that she couldn’t bear to goad him. She thought, hoped, it might happen, but even as she was piloting him up the stairs, she realized he would be no good to her. A shame. She always had a crush on him. She was surprised, in fact, when he chose Gwen to be his girlfriend, because she assumed he was hers for the taking should she decide she wanted him. She always chalked his relationship with Gwen up to the circumstances, which had been so very Picture for a Sunday Afternoon . Sean, carrying Gwen in his arms. Heck, the summer before he couldn’t have made it three steps holding her, given how much she once weighed. Gwen clinging to his chest, crying, dazed, that pretty little trickle of blood on her forehead. Who could compete with that? Mickey thought she could, but she was wrong. For a few months there, they acted like they were married, or were going to be. It was nauseating.
    Yet Sean and Gwen didn’t even make it to Christmas of that year as a couple. And Mickey was glad . She wonders how Gwen feels, seeing him now. Childhood sweethearts seem to hold a lot of power over people. McKey’s forever hearing of this friend or coworker who has rediscovered someone at a reunion or on the Internet and ends up running off with them. McKey finds that baffling. Who would want to be with the person who remembered you as you once were? She has cut her ties with almost everyone who knew Mickey and she can imagine a day when McKey morphs into yet another persona, shedding her current set of acquaintances and coworkers.
    Still, she wishes she had found a way to sleep with Sean, drunk as he was. Just the once. She bets she’s better than Gwen, despite Gwen’s success rate at landing impressive husbands. Of course, the first one turned out to be a faggot, and McKey has a feeling that even Dr. Wonderful, who put in a