Black Dog Short Stories Read Free Page A

put together to make a picture or build a castle. She lingered over one on display, already put together to make a great cathedral. Maybe Miguel would like this kind of puzzle? She longed to get him one, but was not sure. Her twin was obviously aburrió these days; he was restless, he didn’t have anything to do now that they had joined Dimilioc, when before he had spent a lot of time helping Papá keep track of what was going on with the war. It was hard for him now. Maybe a puzzle would make him happier.
         “A tedious exercise in pointlessness,” Keziah said dismissively. “When you finish, what do you have? A paper artwork that would be far more beautiful if it had never been cut to pieces in the first place.”  She insisted on moving on to a shop that sold clothing. She made Natividad wait while she tried on a loose-knit sweater, and a blouse with swirls of glitter on it, and a skirt cut on a sharp diagonal. That shop was more crowded, and many of the people seemed impatient. When Keziah reached for another skirt, the last one on the rack, a young woman older than she was tried to bump her out of the way and get it first. Keziah didn’t give way, of course. Not only did she not move, she caught the other woman’s wrist and forced her back a step. From the woman’s expression, which changed from outraged to shocked, Keziah’s grip was probably just short of crushing.
         “Careful!” Natividad said, and amended that quickly to, “You don’t want to drop that skirt!” so it wouldn’t seem like she was trying to give Keziah orders.
         Keziah’s gave Natividad a look and deliberately opened her hand, letting the skirt crumple to the floor. Then she stepped on it. The young woman gasped, maybe in surprise and maybe just in pain from her wrist. She looked like she was about to make up her mind to scream or shout or something, any minute.
         Natividad said hastily, “Let’s go somewhere else, okay? I’m hungry, aren’t you?”
         So Keziah let the woman go, fortunately without dropping her on the floor and stepping on her, and strolled out like she’d meant to leave right then anyway. Then they walked a few blocks west because Natividad wanted to see the lake. They ate Thai food at a place overlooking the lake.
         Natividad had never eaten Thai food before. Keziah ordered quickly for them both, coconut shrimp, and a noodle dish called pad thai, and a chicken curry. The shrimp were wonderful, and the noodles were made of rice which gave them a very different texture from the spaghetti they sometimes had at Dimilioc with tomato sauce, and there was coconut milk in the curry, along with things like lemongrass that Natividad had never heard of.  She discovered all this by asking the waitress many questions. The waitress was very nice. Her name was Joan and she was going to school at the University of Vermont and studying horticulture, and she had three younger siblings, and her mother loved complicated jigsaw puzzles—but Keziah made Natividad leave before she found out if the waitress’s mother liked the kind of puzzle that made a sculpture of a cathedral.
         So then they walked back to the shopping area. Keziah said she had decided to get the moonstone bracelet after all. She told Natividad, as though this was a brand-new idea and also as though she was doing her a favor, that Natividad could blood the silver for her so she could wear it. So they went back toward the end of the pedestrian walking area, which was where the jewelry shop was, and got the bracelet, and then came out again, and that was when a big green car jumped over the curb and rushed across the red brick pavers right at them. Keziah caught Natividad around the waist and leaped out of the car’s path so that instead of hitting them, the car ran straight across the street and smashed into a shop on the other side with a great shattering crash of broken glass and wood and a high-pitched squeal