The Days of Anna Madrigal Read Free Page A

in a glass of iced tea. These hot afternoons made him languid and dreamy. They made him think about the Basque boy at the drugstore, with the raven locks and long eyelashes.
    â€œListen up, ladies!”
    Margaret’s voice. Addressing the various cabinettes.
    â€œWho nabbed my Lysol?”
    Not a good time to open the shade .
    â€œDo you hear me, ladies?”
    No reply.
    â€œIf I get knocked up—”
    Explosive laughter. Probably Sadie’s.
    â€œI mean it,” yelled Margaret.
    â€œYou ain’t havin’ no baby, Grandma.” This time it was Violet being mean. Margaret was forty-five, the oldest girl at the Blue Moon, older even than Andy’s mama, who ran the place, so the other girls could be spiteful. Andy figured they were jealous that Margaret had repeat customers. She was even asked for by name when college boys drove in from Reno, drunk as lords on casino gin.
    Violet’s wisecrack brought raucous laughter from the cabinettes, but there was no response at all from Margaret. Andy felt bad for her, so he cupped his hands and yelled through the shade. “There’s a bottle of Lysol in the crapper.”
    Another silence, then Margaret spoke in a more subdued tone. “Now there’s a gentleman.”
    Andy knew where this was leading. “Want me to get it?”
    â€œWould you, lamb? If I move an inch, this tapioca is gonna make its way to glory.” The urgency of the mission was underscored by the clanky flatulence of a jalopy coming to life just beyond the cabinettes. The customer was already leaving.
    Andy hurried out to the crapper and found the bottle. By the time he got to Margaret’s cabinette with a basin, there was only a distant plume of dust trailing out to the highway. Margaret was sitting on the edge of the bed in her peach camisole. She looked weary and resigned when he set the basin down beside her on the bed.
    â€œThat’s gotta be watered down,” she said.
    He nodded. “Already done it.”
    â€œYou have ?” She touched the pee-colored solution with a look of tender amazement, as if he had just presented her with the Hope Diamond. “If that don’t beat all,” she murmured. “Where can I find one like you, Andy?”
    He shrugged, since it wasn’t really a question.
    Margaret grabbed a sponge off the nightstand and dipped it into the basin, turning away from him as she began to scrub vigorously between her legs. Andy headed straight for the door, eyes to the floor, but Margaret was still talking.
    â€œI swear. What did ladies do before Lysol?”
    Another shrug.
    â€œI ain’t takin’ any chances. That Okie has thirteen kids of his own.”
    Andy knew that already. Two of the girls were classmates at Humboldt High, compulsive gigglers who lived with their aunt on Mizpah Street. One of them had flirted with Andy on the bus the day before. He wondered if she would be trouble.
    â€œAnyway,” said Margaret, “we’ll have us some eggs for breakfast.”
    â€œThat’ll be swell,” he mumbled.
    Margaret was still scrubbing away. “I know you like your eggs,” she said.
    M argaret knew lots of things about Andy. She knew things that happened before he was born, back when Mama was teaching piano in Rapid City and Margaret was her friend, working at the five-and-dime. Margaret had always claimed that they were both ready to get out of there, and the opportunity presented itself when Mama got pregnant by a piano pupil whose father was, in Margaret’s words, “a big muckety-muck in the Chamber of Commerce and a hotheaded Greek to boot.” Margaret’s mean-as-a-snake husband had keeled over dead at the cement plant a week earlier, so she paid her debt to the Almighty by helping Mama through her ordeal. “She was our salvation in our flight from the Pharisees” was how Mama had put it, implicating the unborn Andy in this biblical-sounding event,