Something Going Around Read Free Page B

of her shoes. You don’t like to look at death up close and personal. You don’t like to, but sometimes you can’t help it. I noticed her skin was brown.
    One of her shoes lay on the hood of a car a startlingly long way down the street. It glittered under the streetlamp—it was sequined to a fare-thee-well.
    Now I was the one who choked out, “Oh, my God!” I started to turn to the cop, but what could I have told him? Nothing he’d believe. Nothing I even knew, not really.
    I went into Mandelbaum’s instead. Excuse me—I ran into Mandelbaum’s instead. Yes, Victor was behind the bar. “Hey, Stan,” he said, and then, “Stan? Are you all right?”
    â€œNo.” I bolted into the men’s room at the back. In there, I knelt down in front of the toilet and gave back everything I’d eaten for the past week and a half. I haven’t heaved like that since I don’t know when. Somehow, I was very neat. It all went into the bowl. When the spasm finally passed, I stood up and flushed it away. I washed my face at the sink. Half a dozen different kinds of tears were streaming down my cheeks. I dried myself with paper towels.
    Then I rinsed my mouth again and again, for all the good it did. The taste doesn’t go away so fast. You only wish it would. And after that, with soap and the hottest water I could stand, I washed my hands and washed them and washed them some more. Lady Macbeth would have been proud of me.
    Of course, blood wasn’t what I was trying to get rid of. And I had no idea whether breaks in the skin there were what might let it in to begin with. But all you can do is try.
    Wish me luck, Indira.
    END

    Copyright (C) 2014 by Harry Turtledove
    Art copyright (C) 2014 by Greg Ruth