Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos Page A

long time ago. She tugs on his hand to make sure he knows not to go in. There are iron bars on the windows of the buildings that back onto the alley. A scrawl of graffiti mars the wall of one of them, an illegible design that looks like a group of letters but might also be a pitchfork topped with a crown. There are more people here, mostly young, in their teens and twenties, packs of them crowding the sidewalk, girls outnumbering boys. Holly thinks of them as predators, searching, seeking, their laughter somehow sinister. At the light where they wait to cross the street, a huddle of girls in jeans and tube tops surrounds a woman in a white wedding dress, complete with headpiece and a long, gauzy train. Thelight changes and the women lurch into the busy street, laughing, as they struggle to avoid the idling cars and keep the train of the dress off the pavement.
    â€œI think I know them,” Rick says, glancing over his shoulder. “It’s Mitzi Kluger’s bachlorette party.”
    Holly doesn’t know them—doesn’t want to know them. The red door to her shop is there, ahead of them, a few feet away. She digs the keys out of her purse, fumbles for the one that opens the shop. She tries to jam it into the hole, misses in her hurry, gouging the red paint. Tries again and feels it slot in, tongues of grooved metal interlocking. Turns the key and they are inside, the echoing chamber of the stairway leading to the second-floor shop lit only by the diffuse light of the moon reflected through broad panes of glass high above them. She leads them up quickly, feels his face a few steps behind her, seeking, directly at the level of her thighs. With the moon bouncing around the many mirrored surfaces of the salon, there is enough light to make their way. She has spent so many hours of her life here, she could lead them even if there were only darkness. She takes him to her station, her sanctuary, the place where she performs her best work. They have screwed in the back seats of cars, against the wall of a building in the alley, in his apartment, and once on the hard dry dirt of a jogging path in a city park, but this is the best yet; leading him to her sanctuary. At first she thinks of the chair in which her customers sit to have their hair cut, then she has a better idea: The chair where she washes their hair tips all the way back.
    She stands next to the sink, turns to face him.
    â€œWait …” she says, trying it out, testing it, her mind still wanting to put it off a moment longer.
    He grabs her by the wrists and pins the small of her back against the edge of the table that holds her brushes and combs, presses her down onto it, scattering the framed pictures of the girls to the floor. She struggles against him, lifts her knee into his groin and pushes him away. In the small opening this creates, she slips out from under him, yanks her arm loose, feels his fingernails claw at her skin, and even as she twirls away from him, he latches on to her hand and leads me out past the snap dragons and the azaleas, the cone flowers and the stone dish of the bird bath, all faded pale in the new shadows of the moon, their colors dim and washed away, the whirring of the cicadas shimmering over the traffic sounds, the swish of the cars going by and the calls of the Mexicans out in the street singing their dancing words to each other. The bench of the swing holds us, her small body tucked against mine.
    â€œHigher,” she says, “make it go higher.” We kick, kick at the back of the arc, and the wind races through our ears,
down in the valley, valley so low,
we sang,
hang your head over, hear the wind blow.
We sang this Tris, our legs kicking up higher, higher.
If you don’t love me, love whom you please, throw your arms round me, give my heart
    ease back into the chair, feeling it slide down beneath her, tilting her head back onto the smooth lip of the sink, the U-shaped channel where the neck is