Lions by Bonnie Nadzam

good.”
    â€œ You look good.”
    â€œSixty-three days,” she said.
    â€œNot that you’re counting.”
    â€œIf I had two thousand dollars saved, I’d leave tomorrow.”
    â€œWhen you’re there you’ll wish you were here.”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œYou watch.” He reached over and interlaced his fingers with hers.
    She rolled her eyes, and told him about the woman in the Lucy Graves. He slowed the truck and looked at her.
    â€œWho was she?” he asked.
    â€œNever seen her before. She had South Dakota plates. It’s creeping me out. Do you ever feel like that? What she said? Like something’s bargaining with you?”
    â€œWhat,” he said. “Like the devil?” He set his gaze back to the road and smiled.
    Leigh scooted to the middle of the truck. “These things come in threes, you know.”
    â€œWhat things?”
    She held out her forefinger. “One,” she said, and pointed out the window as they passed the ground where the man had buried his dog earlier in the week. She glanced at him, then lifted her second finger. “Two, the woman at the Lucy Graves. So, what’s the third thing going to be?”
    â€œThe lady today doesn’t count.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause you’re the only one who knew. Besides me.”
    She agreed that something in the texture of it felt different.
    â€œAnd if you’re not sure there’s a second thing,” he said, “then you can’t really call the first thing the first thing.”
    â€œI guess not.”
    â€œSo no things coming in threes,” he said. “Come back to planet Earth. Blue pickup truck.” He pointed out the window beside her, and before them, the weeds and grass a pale yellow green, lavender green, and silver and lettuce and willow green, and Prussian blue and forget-me-not-blue and rose pink and gold.
    â€œThe thing is,” she began, and looked at him.
    â€œGo on,” he said, “get it out.”
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “It’s like a tightness right here.” She lifted her fingers to her chest and throat. “Anxiousness. Like there’s something important I’m ignoring. But I can’t place it.”
    Gordon stared straight ahead, not responding.
    â€œLet’s drive out to the buttes,” he finally said. She studied him. 
    â€œWhy weren’t you welding today?”
    â€œThere have to be a hundred kinds of birds out there now.”
    â€œIt’s a long drive,” she said, and put her arm across his neck and shoulders. 
    â€œGood. Scoot over.”
    It was one of a string of perfect nights, like beads threaded on a brilliant necklace that isn’t yours to keep. They sat in the cab of the truck, his back against the driver’s side door, her back against his chest, his arms around her. They kept the passenger side window down, and spoke little.
    â€œLet’s just sit here forever in the dark like this,” he said, and tightened his grip around her waist. Outside the truck the wind shushed through the grass and lengthening weeds.
    â€œNo morning?”
    â€œNo morning.”
    â€œNo evening? No factory? No school?”
    â€œNo. No nothing,” he said. “Just this.”
    The evening slowly drifted west and shadows crept across the cool grass. Night bled into the trees. By the time they drove back around toward the outskirts of town, it was midnight. The yellow square of the Walkers’ kitchen window was hovering before them.
    â€œWere you supposed to bring the truck back earlier or something?” She thought Gordon was in trouble. The stars themselves could set their clocks by the daily routines of John and Georgianna Walker. If John was up measuring coffee in his white shirt and blue jeans, it was 5 AM and the sun was just cracking the eastern sky with a long and even white line of light. If Georgianna was rinsing