her behavior. In the old days she would have—the Dunleavys were chic and fashionable; the most sophisticated couple in town, Louise’s mother had always said. Scottie took after the men on his mother’s side of the family, unfortunately. You could see his high-strung, seedy grandfather just in the way Scottie’s fingers shook as he held the shoebox. Blood will out.
The shoe he brought her had a dark stain on the canvas. She tried it on out of politeness, keeping an eye on the window as she sat on a bench to slip off her loafer. Scottie hovered a bit too close. Rose’s truck pulled away, finally, and Ward stood on his porch, patting his belly nervously. Good to know she wasn’t the only one who found Rose unsettling.
“What do you think?” Scottie asked, and she looked up, surprised. But he was only asking about the shoe she had set back into its tired box.
“Not quite right.”
In Mondragon’s, Ward greeted her and Louise plucked the first birthday card she saw from the rack, slapping it on the counter. A framed photograph of the President hung above Ward’s back counter, eyes gazing over their heads into nothingness, the man’s thin lips pulled back in a smile-grimace, a look that Louise recognized: I’d rather be elsewhere. Next to the President was a plaque that Ward had been awarded by the Chamber of Commerce: Small Businessman of the Year, dated fifteen years before.
Normally, she would have tried to get information from Ward, coming in at an angle and coaxing it out of him. Was that Rose I saw leaving? She looked so spent, didn’t she? It must be so hard for you and Stella… But she felt too flustered to pull it off today. Something in the way Ward slowly counted change into her palm made her hold her tongue. They exchanged a bit of halting small talk, and he reached for the phone before she made it all the way out the door.
Louise retraced her steps to the bank, eyes on her feet in their scuffed loafers, moving faster now. She felt but didn’t see the abandoned Anderson’s B&B as she passed. She could pace out all of Main Street if she wanted, and know where she was by feel and the cracks in the sidewalk. I might as well be blind, Louise thought. The horrible crows that had driven out the songbirds flapped overhead, and shadows stretched along the cement. She checked her watch—Bill and Dayana would be wondering where she was; there was no time to stop for coffee.
“My hair’s extra frizzy, is yours?” Dayana called as Louise swung open the door. An empty Cup o’ Noodles rested on the counter behind Dayana’s station. Though they weren’t supposed to eat at their windows, they both routinely broke that rule.
“Got it,” Louise said, patting her purse, a weak smile creeping across her face.
“You’re the best.” Dayana didn’t seem to notice Louise’s state. She shot a look at the back office, lowering her voice. “Bill wants to have meetings with each of us late tomorrow. You at 4:30, me at 5:00.”
“About?”
Dayana shrugged. They both knew: cuts, efficiencies, belt-tightening measures. The corporate office sent new memos every week. Dayana had the bilingual advantage, handling all their Spanish-speaking customers; and she could probably take on Louise’s workload without breaking a sweat.
Louise felt her face redden and shook her head, annoyed. She slammed her purse into the cabinet under the counter. They signed the card to Bill and decided they’d give him the cake mid-afternoon, during the usual customer lull. It was slow even now. Dayana had tuned the radio to the weather station at Bill’s request, and the slickest of the newsmen was on, pleased with himself as he nattered on about storm conditions—his voice was vaguely familiar.
For a couple of hours they looked busy and the sky thickened. The radioman mentioned storm conditions and alerts. One or two customers came in. Tom Muldoon was the last, his craggy face more creviced than ever; his eyes darted to Dayana’s cleavage as he stepped up to the counter. So predictable. Bill sat and swiveled on his office chair, building and then disassembling a tower of paperclips on his magnetized desk toy. Louise could still feel the path she’d walked on her lunch break, dull vibrations in the soles of her feet, and the faint shame she’d felt as she passed the old Anderson place.
“Yipes,” Dayana said, pointing at the plate glass. The sky outside, even considering the dim panes, was disturbingly dark. Bruised, Louise thought. Bill should have called the maintenance guy and had him board the windows. The clock on the wall read 3:15.
“You’d think it was closing time. Tell Bill to go ahead and open the vault,” she said to Dayana, “I’ll do the door and the lights.” A storm siren started to blare. Bill rummaged in the tiny employee kitchen next to his office, looking for the emergency kit—tardy in following protocol but of course he’d get away with it.
The birthday cake waited on the back counter. Louise opened the lid of the cardboard box, wondering if she should bring it into the vault and present it to Bill. It would give them all something to talk about: that time they celebrated Bill’s birthday surrounded by safety deposit boxes while the world spun outside. The green frosting was too bright, likely leftover from St. Patrick’s Day. She went to the front door and flipped the sign to Closed, sliding the bolt. There was no one to lock it against; the street was empty. On the corner up ahead, the streetlight turned from yellow to red, directing a nonexistent flow of traffic. Anyone in his right mind out there now would floor it through a red light.
In the back, Bill said something that made Dayana laugh. They got along pretty well, those two. Louise pressed her forehead against the glass. She shivered for no good reason, and thought of a soup she’d eaten at The Bluebird months before, a wonder of chicken and rice that had warmed her from the inside out. “I wish I were…” She closed her eyes. The thick pane wasn’t entirely still, and she wondered whether its faint vibrations were from the air pressure outside or from her own breath.
If I had the guts I’d say something to Rose. Her hair was a shock of white. It doesn’t seem possible, but I saw it. I’d walk right up to that truck, not shrink past. I’d walk up, rap on the hood, and make her eyes focus on something. Rose, I’d say. Rose, I know you thought you were special. But none of us are. He was a beautiful boy…If it were my son…But what you make of it is your choice—She shuddered and opened her eyes. The sky to the east was churning, a wall of gray. A finger dipped out of the clouds and her stomach lurched.
“Come on, Louise,” Bill called, and she hurried to her station, pulling her purse from its spot under the cubby.
She took one more look at the cake and picked up the heavy, multi-document stapler from the back counter, hoisting it six inches above the open box. If she let go, it would make contact with a soft slurp and lodge in the thick frosting at an angle, bisecting the lettering. The storm siren urged her on. That’s all the ugliness needed, to be rearranged. She set the stapler down and left the cake untouched, flicking off the lights as she went to the back.
*
Streams, swimming pools, reservoirs, creeks—water senses water. Molecules pull taut and ripple gently. Submerged rocks settle themselves and pebbles clack. In clear currents and brown standing water, in farm runoff and underground streams, microscopic life teems unabated. Surfaces swell and vibrate under the weight of bugs, twigs, and lapping tongues. Leaves fall, swirling into tiny eddies.
Patterns become insistent. When the sediment at the creek’s bottom is disturbed it surges, spreading outward—darkness at the center, lightening further out, with mottled, constantly moving layers. And the colors: browns and grays and blacks—but also, depending on the sun, shot through with blues, greens, even pinks and reds. What had seemed flat and negotiable becomes elemental—a witch’s cauldron; primordial soup; the end of things, or the beginning. A chucked pebble or fallen tree branch sets off a submerged implosion that replicates in miniature the supercell storm cloud gathering overhead—billowing darkness, the light refracting, its churning restlessness. Elements rearrange themselves, breaking open and reconfiguring, feeling a pressure that tugs toward the center. Gravity loosens its grip.
At Johnson’s Creek a waterbug launches into the air, leaving a fleeting concentric footprint behind. A rotting log collapses neatly into itself,