Traps by MacKenzie Bezos Page A

me.”
    “Marla’s girl told me she was going to start a shelter like you after she finishes at State.”
    “Poor dear.”
    “She wrote her college essay about you.”
    “Mixup in the admissions office, I guess.”
    “Sounds to me like you gave up some heart real estate.”
    “I got dogs for my heart space.”
    Ruth Ann takes the card and twists on her stool to pull a tack from the board. “They leave you too, Lynn Doran! You’ve made it your livelihood for them to leave!”
    “Fair enough.” She licks a finger and counts out the money for the bean dip. “But a dog never chooses to go.”
    Across the room near the grill a cheer goes up. Ruth Ann glances over to see a cluster of truckers high-fiving each other over a table strewn with sugar packets, but Lynn goes on counting change.
    Ruth Ann studies her.
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I’ll manage.”
    “It’s ten o’clock and I know for a fact you just finished your chores because you still smell like Alpo.”
    “Maybe that’s just my natural smell.”
    “Look at you, it’s all over your coat, even. And I bet that’s with a half day of help before she bolted too, isn’t it?”
    Lynn shrugs.
    “What are you going to do days you have a vet run or pickup to do?”
    “Easy, Chicken Little.”
    “Well, tell me then. Name a single idea.”
    Lynn slides the money across the counter. “I’ll get Johnny or Bob to stop over if I get in a bind.”
    “Both of them have construction jobs now, and you know it.”
    “Another girl will come along.”
    “There aren’t more than thirty in the whole county, and every one of them that hasn’t already quit you has a warm bed and parents with a full can of marbles.”
    Lynn points at the register, and Ruth Ann rolls her eyes and punches a button, popping the cash drawer open.
    She licks a finger and starts counting out bills. “Tell me this at least. If I come by on Saturday myself to shovel shit and slop the dogs will you at least put on a clean jacket and come out to the Railhead with me?”
    “The artichoke dip at the Railhead tastes like cat food.”
    “I admit it would be an adjustment. All the guys you danced with last time you came out with me work the floor in walkers now.”
    “Now you see why I save all my dancing for my big nights on the strip.”
    Ruth Ann puts her hand with the change on one hip. “All right, a movie then.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Because I can’t come in for any more of your tea and green smoothies. A girl like me prefers pay in beer or movie candy.”
    Lynn smiles.
    “And a laugh, for God’s sake,” Ruth Ann says, handing her the change finally. “It’s like a crypt over there the way you keep it. It gives me the creeps.”
    To Lynn the house is a bright spot she can see from the dark of the road, and she turns and follows the twin beams of her truck lights down the dirt-and-gravel drive. The dogs greet her with their barking, and she calls out, “Hey now. Hush now, ladies and gents,” and she clomps up the porch steps in her boots and removes them inside so she is in her sock feet.
    In the garage, in the corner, is a wall of shelves stacked with flattened boxes. She takes a smallish one, and she crisscrosses the bottom flaps to make it—a box their heartworm pills came in that says “Heartgard” along the side. Then she takes it through the living room to a pair of double doors that stand open to a room too dark to see.
    She flips a switch. A king-sized bed with two windows flanking and two matching nightstands holding fringed lamps, and a bathroom with double sinks beyond. A master bedroom once. Lynn sees that the girl made the bed before she left, with the yellow-and-black star quilt smoothed down and the pillows fluffed, but there are traces. A hair clip on the nightstand. A pair of socks balled up near the skirt of the bed. A tube of watermelon lip gloss on top of the dresser. And on the biggest wall two posters—one of a group of three boys with their arms