A Hard Witching by Jacqueline Baker Page B

baby.”
    “I thought you said she wasn’t home.”
    Lucy clucked her tongue against her teeth and sat up, the top of her swimsuit dipping low across her chest, the skin there mapped with the creases of the silver blanket. Owen stared at the white rim of flesh. It was the prettiest thing. Like the inside of a seashell.
    “What are you looking at?” she demanded. “You little perv.” She didn’t move to pull the straps up.
    “I’m not a perv.”
    “Yes, you are. Perv.” She smirked, leaning forward. “Snatch.”
    Owen stood up, brushed the grass from his knees and pulled his shirt on. The sun had made him dizzy, and he wobbled a bit as he bent for the tray.
    “I’m not finished yet,” Lucy said, grabbing her mug. She tilted her head back and drained the mug, exposing the sweat-streaky white flesh of her neck and chest. Letting her top slip down so he could see the smooth tops of her breasts. He looked quickly away.
    “Thanks,” she said as she handed him the mug, sucking on an ice cube wedged in the corner of her mouth. “Perv.”
II
    Lucy’d seen Lillie Gower’s kid straddling the wall long before he’d finally jumped down and come over. She’d known it wasjust a matter of time; he’d sat there every day this week. She hadn’t seen him around much since they’d moved in last fall, wouldn’t have known him from Adam if she’d passed him on the street. But she knew Lillie. Everybody did. The kid had her build, real small-boned. And that hair, not quite blond, not quite brown. Sort of cardboard-coloured.
    She looked back at him through the sliding glass doors. He stood in the middle of the yard, hands jammed deep in the pockets of those ridiculous pants. Who would dress their kid like that in this heat? He turned toward the house then, shading his eyes, and she stepped away from the doors. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that, flashed him that way. It wasn’t really like her. There was just something about the way he’d kept gawking, thinking she didn’t even notice. Something sly.
    Still, with a mother like that, the kid was bound to be a little weird. A cocktail waitress, at her age, in those skimpy shorts, two kids later. Who was she kidding? She must be at least thirty. No, was she that old? She didn’t really look it, not in the face, not really. It was hard to tell. Lucy had seen her up close only that one time, in the alley outside the bar. And it had been dark, with just the yellow bulb over the back door. And Lucy had drunk the beer that Rick’s cousin had snuck out for him under his jacket. When she thinks about that night, she can still taste the beer. Awful. It had made her eyes water. But she’d drunk it anyway, tried to guzzle it to make it go down fast. And Rick had grabbed her, laughing, falling against her into the wall. And the cousin, laughing, too, cracking open another beer.
This one’s on Lillie.
    Bullshit,
Rick had said,
you’re full of shit.
    I’m not shitting you, man.
    Shit,
Rick said, shaking his head.
So what’re you doing here?
    And the cousin grinned, stepping back into the bar, Rick laughing.
    And she had laughed, too, though she hadn’t found anything particularly funny, and she remembered there was glass under her shoes, she could hear it crunching, and she was scared it might punch right through her runners into her foot. She’d heard about that, about people stepping on rusty nails or dirty glass, so she’d pushed Rick backwards a little, just to get away from it. She didn’t know why he got so mad then, shoving her back up against the wall. She’d knocked her head on the bricks, but it hadn’t hurt, not really. And for a minute she’d thought it was all right, of course it was, this was just Rick. Only she was crying. She was dizzy and crying and her sweater was off and tangled somewhere down in the dirt. She was freezing, with glass under her feet and all that yellow light like stars falling, and then Lillie was right there, trashy Lillie Gower who