The Terror of Living by Urban Waite Page B

three bills. I can bench a quarter-pounder on a good day."
        "That's a lie."
        "I've been hearing that a lot lately," the kid said.
        "How'd you get in here?"
        "Cookie jars."
        "That's about right," the man said. "That's always about right."
        The kid felt the man move on the bench and he turned to look the man over. He was leaning away from him on the bench, judging the kid.
        "I'd say you were about a buck forty, maybe a little more."
        "Is this your thing?" the kid said. "You size up other men in your spare time?"
        "Among other things."
        "Why don't you take your skills back to the other side of the cell."
        "No reason to be rude, kid. You'd think you'd have learned already to respect your elders."
        "Fuck off."
        "I thought you'd have better manners for a kid from Monroe."
        "Where'd you hear that?" the kid said. He began to sit up and the man bent low and took his legs out from under him. The kid went down hard and the sound he heard was his jaw coming together against the floor. He tasted blood. The man was on top of him. The kid tried to turn over but felt his arm being pulled behind him. He started to yell out for the guard, but his face slammed into the concrete again. A tooth came loose. He could feel more blood.
        "I have other skills," the man said, "but they say they're not useful skills. I like to think differently." The kid heard a muffled pop and felt the pain coming from his arm. He tried to yell again, but the man bounced his head on the concrete. None of the other men moved. He was bleeding from the mouth and nose and he could feel the cement growing slippery and warm. He tried to turn over and look up at the man.
        "There you go, kid, there you go. Just a little cooperation." The man bent down and snapped the kid's neck on a quick swivel.
        
        
        NORA FIXED A BED FOR EDDIE ON THE COUCH AND went upstairs. She ran the shower for a while and stood in the bathroom with the steam collecting on the mirror. After a minute or two she tested the water, adjusted the knobs, and took off her shirt, then her pants. She wiped a hand across the mirror and looked at the reflection there, considering herself. Fifty years old, skin beginning to go with gravity, silver in her hair now. The steam filled the pocket in and she brushed her teeth. Afterward, she ran the tip of her tongue along her gums. She turned and stepped into the shower.
        Steam clouded the shower glass like breath on a windowpane. The water ran down her skin, the heat rose from the basin of the shower.
        When she'd first met Hunt, she hadn't been scared. She knew about what he did for a living, had heard he'd been to prison. He drank too much, she could see that. Everyone could. She took him home that first night and he woke up shivering the next morning. He woke up like that many mornings, shaking, his mouth dry, asking for another drink, and little by little she brought him back from that place. She could see he felt that he'd never measured up, that everything he touched somehow crumbled. He told her one morning that he'd never set out to be the man he was, it had just happened. One day he was just a kid, and then the next he was what she saw before her. He never set out to be an alcoholic, a murderer, an ex-convict. But he was all of those things, and even if he could get out from under them, he would still be that man. He could never change that.
        She nursed him, watched over him, and somewhere along the way he got clean. Other men had taken her to nice dinners at expensive restaurants, but Hunt had been different; bad or good, she knew him for who he was. He didn't need to impress her or feed her lies, he didn't need to sell her. For a month she cared for him, and as a thank-you he took her on a picnic to the state park, a basket between them, jams and deli meats, the smell of fresh bread in the