Magic Street Read Free Page B

just like it must have been in the womb. That was the first time it occurred to Byron that all those grocery bags were exactly womb-sized. He wondered if that's how they decided how big to make them.
    "He'll suffocate in that bag," said Byron.
    "Can't suffocate if you ain't breathing," said Bag Man cheerfully. "You kind of slow, ain't you, Byron? Anyway, nobody suffocates in my bags." He looked at Nadine's naked unconscious body and Byron hated him.
    "For looking at your wife naked?"
    "For putting that dead baby in her."
    "I didn't do it," said Bag Man. "You think I got the power to do this? Drop dead, fool, this ain't my style." He grinned when he said it, but this time Byron refused to be placated.
    "Get out of my house," said Byron.
    "That's what I was planning to do," said Bag Man. "But first I got a question for you."
    "Just get out."
    "You want to forget this, or remember?"
    "I'm never gonna forget you and what you did. If I see you in the street, I'll run you down."
    "Oh, don't worry, you ain't gonna see me, not for a long time, anyway, but go ahead and run me down if you can."
    "I told you to get out."
    "So... one for remembering, the rest for not," said Bag Man. "Your order will be ready in a minute, sir." Bag Man winked and went back out the door, carrying the dead newborn in the plastic bag.
    Is this where those dumpster babies come from? Not pregnant teenagers at all.
    And those really fat women who give birth without ever knowing they were pregnant. Nadine once said, How can they not know? Well, what if it was like this? What if some voodoo man did it?
    Or maybe he really was a hypnotist. Maybe none of this happened. Maybe when I wake up it'll turn out not to be real.
    Except when he touched them, the sheets were wet with amniotic fluid and blood.
    He got Nadine awake enough to move while he got the sheet and mattress pad out from under her. As he feared, it had gone clear through to the mattress. It was never coming out of there. They'd have to buy a new one.
    And these sheets? They weren't going in the laundry. He got a plastic garbage bag from the cabinet under the bathroom sink and stuffed the bottom sheet and the mattress pad into it.
    As he went back into the bedroom, Nadine padded by him toward the bathroom. "That's a good idea," she murmured.
    "Washing the sheets. Time to change the sheets," she said. "Did you get dinner?"
    "I Cugini, as ordered," he said. Could she really be this calm?
    "Mmmm," she said. "I'm gonna shower now, By. Let's eat when I get out."
    She didn't remember. She had no idea that any of this had happened.
    "You were real sweet, baby," she said.
    She thinks we made love, thought Byron.
    Well, if a woman can give birth, fall asleep, and wake up five minutes later thinking all she had was great sex, that was some kind of hypnotism, that's for sure.
    If it happened at all.
    I've got the bloody sheet in this bag, he told himself impatiently.
    He opened the garbage bag again just to be sure. Bloody all right. And wet. And slimy. A mess.
    He heard the shower start. He tied the bag again and carried it out of the room and through the kitchen, on his way to the city garbage can in the garage.
    "Dad," said Andrea, the oldest. "Is Mom okay?"
    "She's fine," said Byron. "Just a little sick to her stomach, but she's feeling better now."
    "Did she puke?" asked seven-year-old Danielle. "I always feel better if I'm sick and then I puke.
    Not during the puke, after."
    "I don't know if she puked," said Byron. "She's in the bathroom with the door closed."
    "Puking's nasty," said Danielle.
    "Not as nasty as licking it up afterward," said Word.
    Byron didn't tell him off. The girls were saying Gross, Disgusting, You're as funny as a dead slug: the koine of intersibling conversation. Byron only wanted to get to the garbage can and jam this bag of bloody sheet and mattress pad as far down into it as possible.
    What was the old man going to do with that dead baby? What was this all about? Why did this witch