Cardinal Numbers: Stories Read Free

Cub Scouts all over the place. Everyone seems to put in the extra effort on a Saturday. Their jaws ache from smiling.
    [4]
    Courtney and Jenelle together in a bath. Pubic hair is ugly, but they’re afraid to shave. Many products for the hair, each based on a wholesome foodstuff. Plastic bottles bobbing.
    J: I wish my toes were long and thin like yours.
    [4A]
    Courtney and Jenelle in a stall shower, embracing in soap foam. Why they’re late all the time. Mist.
    [4B]
    Courtney and Jenelle washing clothes by the Orinoco. (Black-and-white, dubbed.)
    C: Why can’t I get my skirts as bright as yours?
    J: You’re not beating them hard enough.
    Rising smoke in the distance, music of chain saws.
    [5]
    She had enough imagination to feel molten plastic when she took the albums from the carton. These were red mostly, with lettering in white. There was a song about land reform, another about mascara. She thought of wearing leather next to the skin.
    “Where would I find language instruction tapes?” She shelved the travel guides in overstock, felt once more this alien regret at not being able to type. Letters to show the way. Orange signs in her sightline: Romance Cooking Health & Fitness. She thought about her eyes in someone else’s face on posters all over town.
    “Do you have How to Avoid Probate ?”
    [6]
    Jenelle’s mother lives by herself in Cherry Hill in a house that’s almost paid for. Dad is trying to make a cleaning service go in south Alabama; he calls often, seems not to be doing well. She has brown hair, type O blood, allergies to shellfish and aluminum foil.
    Courtney’s mother is Japanese, a war bride. Her father died last summer of asbestosis. Her brother is in his third year of biochemistry at Drexel. She is right-handed, underweight, wears glasses to correct a mild astigmatism.
    [7]
    They could be married to men like sleds on rails: top ten percent of the class, membership in a rowing club, an ability to anticipate currency fluctuations. They could be plain in Quaker bonnets, humming as they card wool, shaded sweetly by belief.
    [7A]
    Rod turned back to her in his belted leather coat of a too-shiny material that was not leather. His wide dark eyes glistened with forgiveness. Courtney inhaled the coat’s laboratory musk as he gathered her up in his arms.
    [7B]
    Jenelle heard the whispers in passing, her gray skirts brushing the cobbles, the black book cradled in her hand. She had broken the silence in fear, but her quiet simple words had then seemed to lift all eyes in the meetinghouse.
    [8]
    Was it a party? Jenelle is lying in bed, cold cucumber slices balanced on her face. She has unplugged the stereo, forbidden music. Wondering if he really will phone tonight, Courtney wishes for an interesting birthmark. Someone downstairs is raking leaves. Jenelle has an enema and feels better.
    J: Why don’t we have towels that match? With our initials intertwined in a contrasting color?
    C: I don’t know.
    [o]
    Strollers were unconsciously arranged around the fountain; the mothers could not wake their children. Earring Emporium had not had a customer all day. An NCR repairman set down his tool kit and wandered aimlessly. The sound track was muddy for Cinema III’s matinee. A man with no family bought a badminton set and charged it. An aquarium burst spontaneously at Petsateria; there was a brief waterfall over jagged glass, and then little flips on the carpet….
    Courtney took the taped package out from behind the stockroom fire extinguisher. Her mouth was dry. The package felt funny. Too heavy? Too light? She was late for the rendezvous….
    Jenelle put the mustard on her pretzel left-to-right, signing everything was go. Slowly, as if browsing, they moved toward the Westgate exit, past Jeans World, Muffy’s, the Cookie Castle. They were being followed. The two men wore state trooper glasses and trim black chin beards, but weren’t as young as they thought. Were they DEA? Libyans? No hesitation. Jenelle took the