(@KeersteeMack) is a writer and editor in chief of Major 7th Magazine. Her writing has been published in Rejection Letters, trampset, Autofocus, Maudlin House, Identity Theory and elsewhere. Her best work can be found in dive bar bathroom stalls. You can read the rest here.
First guy says: you’re gonna see a UFO. Like, BOOM. He lays this on me. Right now you’re probably thinking well, if that doesn’t torpedo the whole thing for you. But it didn’t. Okay? It didn’t. I sat there and let him tell me I was gonna see a UFO because sometimes you’re in the middle of a divorce and sometimes staring down the barrel of your life and sometimes you’d pay someone, anyone, to tell you that you’re not completely fucked. “Where do I go with this,” he says. “Do you believe?”“In UFOs?” I ask. “Sure, what the hell.”“You’re gonna have some kind of experience,” he says. “Very abnormal.”Buddy led me into a room in the back of a woo shop three blocks from our apartment. The room was dark but for a salt lamp. Took my hands into his. Told me he was blind from birth, that he sees things. Takes someone’s hand and sees flashes, impressions. Big life events. Traumas, he calls them, both good and bad. His hands smelled of menthol.“Looks like a spaceship,” he says. “With an octopus on it.”“Feels a little on the nose,” I say.“You will have trouble believing it,” he says. “And even more trouble convincing other people.”“No shit,” I say.When he was a kid this guy took the hand of a school teacher and told her she lost her ring, and that she’d find it in the couch cushions. Sure enough. My problem is that I am prone to believing these things. I am, as my ex says, suggestible. Open-minded at best, gullible at worst. I sit down and say hit me, motherfucker. “It’s not gonna hurt me, right,” I say. “Mm,” he says, unconvinced.“I don’t care if I see it,” I say. “Just don’t hurt me.”You might not believe this, but there’s logic to it. People visit psychics and card readers for control. To know everything is gonna turn out okay. Like if I only know what’s coming, I can prepare. The bad will hurt less. The good will sustain me. But nothing prepares you for a fucking UFO, and nothing prepared me for what he said next. “Have you ever had a kiss, like, BANG,” he says. “Fireworks.”“No,” I say.“Not yet,” he says.“With the alien?” I ask, helplessly.
***
Nobody tells you you’re going to get divorced while snorkelling with sea turtles in Maui. Not right that second, not exactly. But maybe one day you’ll be on a tourist boat cannonballing along the broad side of a crater into water so blue it makes you seize up, like you’d drown happy. There isn’t a word for how blue the water is. Around you there will be other sweaty tourists flapping in the water, huffing through masks, pointing and waving at sea turtles. Your husband kicks gently toward them and as you watch him hover above, giving them space, just curious, not an intrusive jackass like the others, you will see him engulfed in the blue and your first thought will be oh, no.Maybe, I mean. Not exactly like that. But something like it. There’s always a moment. The first in a long line of them which leads you to lawyers, and long talks with family, and whispered goodbyes to his back in the middle of the night, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.
***
In the middle of the reading, menthol guy goes to blow his nose. I record the reading so I can remember everything and the part that I keep coming back to is the part where he leaves to blow his nose. I whisper what the fuck just barely loud enough for the audio. I remember that what the fuck because it felt like being knocked out. One haymaker after another, sitting there, being told all these, I don’t know—things—about you.“I like this one,” he says. “You go to take hands and dance. He puts his hand on your back, like—and I can see you through his eyes. He really treats you like a lady.”“Oh?” I say.“There are rings involved,” he says. “You pick them out together.”“Oh,” I whisper.He turns a little bit red in the face.“You really enjoy undressing him,” he says. “You waste no time, girl.”“OH,” I cried, belting laughter. There were other things, more specific things. I wanted to know everything about you. I wanted to know but was struck too dumb to ask anything useful. All I did was repeat, oh, okay when he found a new memory, or future, or whatever it was he was seeing, all these beautiful scraps of you, and when I did finally get the courage to ask what you looked like I inhaled sharply—the sound of it, a hiss on the recording—because the big dumb asshole he described looked exactly like the one I’d asked for when I stood in front of god.
***
When I left the woo shop we went to the grocery store. We were still living together. We gave ourselves a year and it was okay, because we were still best friends, still needed each other. Made shopping lists and fed the cat and hollered at our sports team. But I couldn’t tell him about the psychic because he doesn’t believe in them. Fair play to him. He’s very studied in science and medicine. Things that you can prove, things that don’t need wild faith or willing delusion.So I stood in the toilet paper aisle feeling tilted. Like I’d been knocked off an axis. The lights were screaming fluorescent. Carts and people flowing around me. If this were a movie there would be some kind of excellent soundtrack, something profound playing while I had my little spiritual crisis, but this is hot stupid life and so I stood there stunned while Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” droned on around me like my own personal Vietnam.No proof, but possibility. You are a possibility, now. Something I can’t unknow.
***
I didn’t mean to go to more psychics. I swear. But it became something like an experiment. The idea was to cross-reference the data. Like if someone could tell me, again, what you looked like, or about the slow dance, or the rings, or the tearing your clothes off—maybe I could believe it for real. This was how I found myself in some grandma’s garage on a hot July day, an hour and a half out of town in a suburb. You don’t want to know what the Uber bill was. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, honey. He’s a mess.”“Uh,” I say.“Does he cry a lot?” she asks. “I get the feeling he cries a lot.”We had a couple of iced teas between us, sweating in the humidity. Her husband had half the garage, some kind of snarling muscle car with her guts falling out all over. The other half was decorated with plants and crystals and stone buddhas and wall hangings that highlighted rainbow chakra points. This lady used to have a call in show on local cable. She had been in the paper. She sat before me in a bathing suit, fanning herself with a handful of junkmail.“I just want to squeeze him,” she says. “He’s a real turkey.”“What does he look like,” I ask. She considers.“You know,” she says, “my youngest daughter is about to get engaged.”“Congrats,” I say. “I called my son-in-law the day he bought the ring, knowing without knowing, and told him he’d better size that thing down. He called me a spooky old bitch.”She took a big gulp of her iced tea and drummed her nails against her forehead, frowning. Her grandbabies were in the pool out back. Screams and splashing over a steady cicada buzz. Heat rose in waves on her freshly paved driveway. “He’s in a relationship,” she says. “He’s not ready to leave yet.”“Oh,” I say.“He’s sad all the time,” she says. “Feels like he has to see it through.”“Oh,” I say. “His eyes, though,” she says. “Goddamn.”“Oh?” I ask.“Bluest you’ve ever seen,” she says. “Like you’d drown happy.”
***
When the divorce was done I took a trip out west. Found myself in the tourist part of a California town. Mexican restaurants and breweries and things. Thumping baseballs at a place near the beach, a batting cage. They weren’t coming fast enough. I turned the speed up, up, up. Each crack of the bat a release I didn’t know I needed. Step in, hips before hands, follow through on that swing. My hands hurt, after. I found the third one because what the hell, I was on vacation with money to blow and there is not a single thing anyone could tell me that would surprise me anymore. She had a little shop at the end of the pier, a real tourist trap. I was probably better off firing money into those old Zoltar machines. The lady was dressed all in black, like you’d expect these people would be. She had some kind of accent that felt Romanian but was more likely fake. She looked haunted as shit. “You have aura,” she says. “Psychic aura.”“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”“It’s purple,” she says. “Tinged with white.”Something that might interest you to know is that I didn’t bring you up to any of these people. The psychics, I mean. Part of rolling in there like hit me, motherfucker is daring a stranger to tell you about yourself without giving anything away. The trouble is that people are predictable. They want the holy trinity of prediction: love, wealth, health. So you could say that about anyone, the love thing. I could use a good word about health or wealth but I never get it because all they ever tell me about is you.“There’s this man,” she says. “Jesus,” I say. “Again?”“He’s going to be in the palm of your hand,” she says. She held her palm out. Without warning, she brought her other one down on it with a sharp SMACK. It made me jump.“He’s scared to get crushed,” she says.“I’ll hold my applause,” I say.
***
There is a lady I see sometimes, on a Zoom call. I found her online. She has a big thundering laugh and platinum blonde hair and very thin eyebrows. She swears a lot and calls me hun and tells me I am not crazy; that you do, in fact, exist. You were the first thing she saw about me. I frowned at my laptop and stonewalled her. “He’s in your energy, hun,” she says. “Ohhh, he’s coming.”“But my wealth,” I say.“Hm,” she says. “You’re going to get a promotion. In about two months.”Sure enough. “But my health,” I say.“Fix your guts,” she says. “Jesus Christ.”Sure enough.She describes you exactly like the first guy did, and then some. Tells me what you look like—That hair! That build! That smile!—how sweet and funny you are, how you talk and talk and talk. Tells me about your big goofy feet and your kind eyes. How I’ll know you anywhere, when you finally get here. She lights up when she talks about you. Says one day I will email her with a picture, and she will get to say a big fat fucking I TOLD YOU SO. “When,” I say.“Soon enough,” she says. “These things happen in perfect time.”She takes my money, keeps the faith. I pay her when I want to visit you. You’re not just data, now. You’re a composite sketch, someone I could describe to a police department (are you a criminal? Nobody ever says anything bad about you.) I wonder if you are just someone that everyone wants to hear about—the sweet, the funny, the eyes. Love stories recycled for a fool. “Big feet,” she says, cackling. “Lucky girl.”
***
Two years after the divorce, I took a trip out east. I ate slices of pizza dripping with grease and bummed around the East Village until I found a tiny shop. Hole in the wall with a big obvious sign. No bigger than a closet. Two chairs, a big blanket covering the wall with a zodiac wheel on it. Incense smell. Told myself it would be the last time, though, of course, it never is. The guy draped himself over his chair and pulled tarot cards. He told me the wrong interpretations. I know, because I pull them myself. “Oh,” he says. “There’s a man.” “Bullshit,” I say.“There’s always a man,” he says.Logically, I know that he is a grifter. Most of them probably are. But I’m compelled, now. It’s like I can’t stop. Love stories are a drug I can’t quit; just one more fix, one more fix. I’m a sucker for a future that may never come.“He hasn’t shown up yet,” he says, “because you have a block.”“Oh,” I say.“I can help you get rid of it,” he says.“Oh,” I say. “Oh, I’m sure.”“There’s a darkness in your heart,” he says. “You’re faithless.”I’m tempted to believe him. It’s easier to think that it’s my fault, somehow. That I am undeserving of the love I want. The stupid part about this psychic thing, about playing chicken with fate, is that you’re living in the anticlimax. That if these things ever come—the bad you prepared for, the good that sustained you—you will only say, oh, okay. And if they don’t come—well, it doesn’t matter, does it? You survive just the same.“Five hundred,” he says.“No,” I say, and leave.
***
The day I sat my ex down and told him I wanted a divorce was like any other. There wasn’t anything special about it. It was just a day. We went to work and came home and I told him. I don’t remember the weather. March, it was March. So the weather could have been anything, really. I don’t remember what I ate. I don’t remember feeling much of anything. Except sad, I think. I was really sad.“Why,” he asked.“We’re not in love anymore,” I said.“Oh,” he said.He didn’t fight me on it. There was the love thing, and then the kids thing. The hard stop. The way he deserves them, if anyone on earth deserves them it’s him and I was never going to be the one to give that to him. We loved each other enough to let go. “What do you want,” he said.I almost choked on it. It felt too big an ask.“I want fucking fireworks,” I said.He considered for a moment.“Does that even exist?” he asked.I don’t know who I felt more sorry for. Him, for not believing. Or me, for wanting to. But I said that six whole months before seeing that first guy, the menthol guy. And buddy took my hands and, without knowing a single thing about me, told me one day I’d have them—the fireworks. Maybe you think I am stupid, or naïve. But maybe you could forgive me, too, for needing to know I had good reason to make my life go BOOM.
***
There is about as much chance of me getting that fireworks kiss as seeing a UFO. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to say. That I’m rooting for it. The alien, I mean. I want to stare that octopus motherfucker down and know, somewhere, somehow, that you do exist. That one day you’ll light up the night sky, too.
“Told you,” says Dirt. “I knew he’d lose his shit.”I’m not losing my shit. Annie doesn’t say anything. She keeps her eyes trained on the gym bag under the desk. “Pay up,” says Dirt.“Fuck off,” says Annie. Dirt’s desk chair squeals as he leans back, lacing his fingers behind his bald head. The chairs are old and broken, an afterthought. Like everything else here. I’ve got my jacket halfway off and a glass container with dinner in my hand. I put the container on the desk, then grab it again.“He can’t get it,” scoffs Dirt. “He’s a raccoon, not Garfield.”“How do you know it’s a he,” says Annie.Dirt rolls his eyes. I put the container down again. “I dunno,” says Annie. “They’ll do anything for food. They get garbage bin lids open, those fancy ones in Toronto. With their little paws.”I scoop the container again, furious. “I thought you said it was knocked out.”“It is,” she shrugs. “But if it gets hungry, I’ll feed it.” She taps a granola bar laying in front of her dusty keyboard. “I’m thinking rabies,” Dirt says, “and this guy’s first thought is but my lasagna.”“No,” I say, “what if there’s an emergency?”“This is an emergency,” Annie says.“Like a real one,” I say. Annie cuts me a look under her beaten Habs ballcap. She folds her hands across her belly, straining against her camouflage vest. Plants her hikers and rolls her desk chair back and forth, back and forth across the carpet, carpet so worn it’s greasy under the wheels. The job requires a certain kind of tolerance for mess. Nobody’s here unless they fuck up, or they’re fucked up. You’d think, given the gravity of it—intercepting terrorism, foreign interference, war strikes, cyber attacks, all that shit—they’d give us better digs, but no. Somehow the most important, least important station there is. The gym bag shifts slightly under her desk. Dirt eyeballs it, but Annie stares me down. “Guess you’ll handle it, bud,” she says evenly.
***
“Annie showed up real early,” Dirt says. Dirt is always on time. It’s his one redeeming quality and the only thing Annie and Dirt have in common. “They drilled that shit into us,” he repeats, like I don’t know they’re both former military.“Hate rush hour,” Annie says. “Leave early, when the roads are—”Dirt goes, “Jesus Christ, Annie, I’m trying to tell a story here.”“You’re telling it wrong,” Annie says.Dirt goes, “I get here and you know what Annie does? She shushes me. I think she’s being a bitch so I go, fuck off Annie, real loud, right? Then she goes, Two things: One, shut your mouth. Two, I called animal control. And I’m about to go off cuz I think she means she’s calling me an animal. But she points to her GoodLife bag under there. Now I’m confused, like, maybe, it’s the first day since basic training Annie decides she wants to grind out some pushups—”“Holy fuck,” Annie says, “you’re a moron.”“You tell it then!” Dirt says.“He didn’t believe me so I unzipped the—”“—and I go, shit you weren’t kidding—”“—anyway it was just lying there on the road, and I jammed on my brakes, and poor thing, its foot was at a funny angle and it was breathing funny so I called animal control, and they said they can’t be bothered with roadkill, they’re backed up with a coyote problem in Gloucester and someone reported a black bear in Orleans so I’m standing there arguing, like what kind of person would I be if I just left—”“—so she grabs the GoodLife and a granola bar, what a fuckin’ hero our Annie —”Annie holds up a finger. “Dirt,” she goes, “you’re a sick bastard and you’re a troll, but I know you wouldn’t have left him behind, neither.”“No,” Dirt says, after a beat. Annie cuts me an emphatic look. “—so,” Dirt says, “she rolled this little guy into an old sweatshirt in the GoodLife bag and fired him into the passenger seat and drove to work, still got the operator on Bluetooth in the car, mind you, kept this poor sucker on the phone til she got downtown, parked, marched her ass upstairs holding the bag like a newborn—”“—trying not to shake him—”“—him!–”“—it, whatever—”“—and she swiped her pass all the way up and into the office and she put the bag under the desk and said to the operator, get this—”“—now it’s no longer a roadkill problem; there’s a live raccoon in a government building and I am requesting your assistance; here’s the address. See you soon—”“—and she hangs up.”
***
Dirt follows me into the break room, leans against the counter rattling a protein shaker. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk. Stories followed him from DND. Burpees and jump squats and incline sit ups with his feet hooked on stairwell railings. The grunting, the smell. Dirt’s first computer monitor is for work; his second one is for gambling; his third one is for porn. Sick shit, too. We know because he leaves his computer unlocked when he takes a shit, unlocked when he goes on mid-shift dates, which are frequent. Somebody at DND threatened to report him—the smell, the gambling, the porn, the dates—and legend has it Dirt got his name because he just laughed and said go ahead, make my day.Dirt’s the one who told the legend, so take it with a grain. “She’s not supposed to tell them where we are,” I say, watching my lasagna spin in the microwave. “That’s like, rule number one.”“They have to get that thing out of here,” Dirt shrugs. “They don’t need to know what we do. She’ll just meet them in the lobby.”“Why haven’t they come yet?” Dirt gestures broadly with his shaker. “Coyote problem. Black bears.”I pull my lasagna before the microwave beeps. Burn my tongue on the edges but the middle is still cold. Another thirty seconds to get it right.“What if it gets loose?” I ask.“Yes,” Dirt says. “Gimme rabies. Time off. Big fat workers comp settlement.”“She could get fired,” I say.“Not Annie,” says Dirt. I chew my lasagna slow, shaking my head.“Annie’s name isn’t Annie,” he says. “You should ask how she wound up in this shithole.” Stories didn’t follow Annie the way they did Dirt. All anyone ever says is that she’s a tough broad. Good soldier. Best kind. Everyone here has some kind of story: they buried the wrong document or threatened a director or brushed their teeth with a fifth of something high proof before the 9 a.m. priorities call. Not Annie, though. This is the first I’ve heard anything of Annie’s story. “Still,” I say. “Nobody here gets fired, man,” Dirt laughs, spraying chocolate shake. “You know that better than anybody, after what you did.”
***
“Dare you to look,” says Annie. I grimace and shake my head, staring at my phone. “Tim’s run says it’s hentai this week,” she says. “Thought I heard squeaking earlier.”Dirt left for his midshift date. We have five minutes after he leaves. On my first shift, Annie asked me to lock Dirt’s computer and laughed and laughed when I found the gambling, the porn. Said everyone who stays here long enough winds up a bit of a sicko, so don’t judge.Annie looks like some kind of back-camping, born-again Christian bush mom so I thought she’d be shocked, but she just bets me double-doubles on what kind of kick he’s been on, or whether he’s losing money on the Oilers again. “Squeaking,” I mutter. “That’s probably your new pet.”“Jesus,” she says with some degree of awe. “You’ve really got a stick up your ass about this.”“You brought a fucking raccoon into the office—”“What would you have done?”“I don’t know,” I say. “Leave it?”Annie snaps her fingers into a gun, fires it at me. Cold expression settling into her weathered face. “You sure about that?”“Look,” I say, “Something bad happens in the country, anywhere in the world, we’re the first to know about it. We’re supposed to focus—”“Don’t need you explaining the job, bud.”“—so doesn’t it seem like if a raccoon gets loose in an office—this specific office—it’d draw a lot of attention? Nobody takes us seriously. Now you drag a raccoon in here? If that thing gets loose it’s not only a cliche—it’s a legit national security risk—like, total shitshow—”“Yeah, no, for sure,” she says. “Don’t want another one of those, do you.”I suck my cheeks in. Bite down hard. Not gonna take the bait.Annie dons a pair of leather driving gloves, takes the granola bar from her keyboard and breaks the wrapper. She reaches under the desk and I hear the zipper peel back slowly. Slowly. Faster now, all the way to the end. There’s no squeaking, or rustling, or munching sounds. “Shit,” she mutters.“Dead,” I scoff. “Nope,” she says. “Shit. Shit.”
***
Annie gave me the sweatshirt and gym bag as defense. I didn’t want to touch them at first, and she called me a pussy. Sometimes Dirt takes naps under his desk with this ratty old quilt and she asked if I’d rather have that. It looks and smells like PigPen’s blanket. I put my jacket back on and took the sweatshirt and bag.“He couldn’t have gone far on that foot,” Annie reassures me. “He was pretty out of it.”“Probably juiced on adrenaline,” I say, like I know what the fuck I’m talking about. We creep around the office. Annie takes the lead because, logically, she was the one to pick him–it, whatever–up in the first place. Maybe she has some kind of bond with it. Maybe it’ll recognize her smell, or something. “Any word from Dirt?”I check my phone. Dirt’s got a system for the mid-shift dates. Takes ‘em to a movie theatre around the corner, mostly to hook up. He has Annie text 9-1-1 half an hour into the date. If they’re ugly or boring, he checks his phone and uses the text as an excuse to bail. Tells ‘em it’s amatter of national security. But today the text came from me, and the response I got was nice try, fucko so either his date’s really hot or he doesn’t take my 9-1-1for real seriously because national security events never happen that often. Well, almost never. “I don’t wanna mention about the raccoon because he’s on his work phone,” I say.“Like texting 9-1-1 every single shift isn’t heatbag enough?” gripes Annie. “Nobody’s monitoring our texts.”“What if it gets in the news?” I protest. “What if some animal control person spills that there’s a fuckin’ raccoon in the national security comms centre?”“Right,” she sighs. “I forgot they sent you from narc city.”We creep around cubicles, checking all the corners, and under the desks. We have the whole floor to ourselves but only a corner of it gets used. Most of the office looks like what I imagine a crypt might. Everything covered in a thin layer of dust from the ancient central air system. Even the cleaners know we only use part of the floor; they’ve given up on the offices that line the outside of the building. I move to open one but Annie sighs.“Don’t bother with the closed doors,” she says. “Raccoons can’t open doors. This isn’t Jurassic Park.”Feeling like an idiot, I take my hand from the knob. I lean against the office door, scanning the hallway. Dull fluorescents hum overhead. Red EXIT/SORTIE sign glaring at the end of the hallway. It’s the exit Dirt uses for his incline sit-ups, for his dates. Only one with a broken security camera. Straight shot from our desks. “What if he—it, whatever—tailed Dirt out of the office?” “Maybe that’s his date today,” snorts Annie. “Better than his Tinder. He swipes right on some real uggos.”“Look, Annie,” I say, “Dirt says your name isn’t—”But Annie’s neck snaps to the left, toward our cubicles. Something grey and black streaks across the hallway toward the break room. Surprisingly fast for something fat and furry and limping. Annie takes off after it and I take off after Annie and when we round the corner we see it scramble up the break room cupboards, clamoring for my dirty lasagna container on the counter. It looks at us with big, panicked eyes and for the first time I can see why Annie couldn’t leave the stupid thing behind. Annie gives me a shove.“Get it into the sink and get the bag over it!” she yells.Her cellphone starts ringing.And goddamn her, she answers.I lunge toward the counter, but between me and the cellphone the raccoon shrieks and lunges at me so I shriek and feint with the bag covering my face and it bolts off the counter, shrieking even more as it lands on its busted foot and skitters under the table between metal chair legs and I drop to a crouch and hold the bag open muttering it’s okay you know her smell now and all the while Annie’s hollering the address and directions and can’t you get here any faster for fuckssake it’s been hours and just as she hangs up I lunge again and the raccoon shrieks and blazes past me and I shriek and bump my head on the break table, hard, swearing, as it tears past Annie and back into the hallway.She hangs up, shaking her head.“They’re on their way,” she says, adjusting her ballcap. “Lost it again,” I huff, rubbing my head.“I think I know where we’re gonna find him,” she says.
***
We crouched first. Came down slowly, so we wouldn’t scare him. It, whatever. He watches us with sad eyes while his paws work the granola. It’s one of those Nature Valley bars, the ones that crumble the second you touch them.He scoops little bits out of the green wrapper and shoves them in his mouth. We’re blocking his exit from the cubicle, bag and sweatshirt ready to grab him if he makes a move. Annie peels her gloves off.“Think that’s wise?” I ask.“He’s too tired to bolt,” she says. “Guy told me he’d be here in twenty minutes anyway.” We sit silent and watch him. He finishes the granola bar but paws at the cellophane, looking for more. He’s dextrous enough that I think he probably could have opened a door, if he wanted to. Like if he’d been on the shoulders of another raccoon. Or little stilts. “Get your gun,” she says.“What? I don’t—”“My name isn’t Annie,” she says. “They named me Annie Get Your Gun a while back. When I was still serving.”I can’t take my eyes off the raccoon, but I glance at her. “You know that day on the Hill?”“The shooter?”“Yep.”I whistle. The raccoon’s ears prickle, and he crouches defensively.“Some shit went down that day that you don’t hear about,” she says. “I know about the shit.”“That’s why—?”She nods.I swallow hard. “I know I said sorry before, but I just wanna say again—or like, thank you—I don’t know, sorry and thank you, I guess—”She waves me off, then points to the raccoon. He’s still crouched, watching us with sad, wet eyes.“When I walked into that shift you looked exactly like that,” she says. “Scared shitless. And you know what, yeah. You fucked up real bad. Three nations? False alarm? Holy shit did you fuck up.” I wince. Tears prickle the back of my eyes.“But they’re never gonna fire me,” she says. “Union says so, for one thing. But more importantly—”“You know about the shit.”She nods.“That’s why you—? For me—?”“Yep,” she says. “Dirt says you’re nuts,” I say, staring at the raccoon. His eyes are drooping and I pray to fuck he’s just tired and not dying. “Says he would have thrown me under the bus in a heartbeat.”“Well, they’ve got enough to can him,” she says. “The porn, the sports betting. Don’t think they don’t know about the movie hookups, either.” “But they can’t touch you,” I whisper. “Nope.”I study the stitching on the GoodLife bag, trying not to cry.“So you fucked up,” she says. “So what.”“Twice.” “That just means you won’t fuck up again.” She snorts, shaking her head. Rough smoker’s laugh rattles her chest. “China and Iran, fuck. You really know how to pick ‘em. Mister International Incident.”Somewhere down the hall, the door opens. All three of us turn our heads toward the noise.“Animal control?” “No,” she says. “I have to meet them in the lobby.”“We should tell him,” I say.“Nah,” she says, pointing at the monitor above the raccoon. Dirt’s ragged stressball and protein shaker are next to the set up. It’s his cubicle. She slaps my shoulder and rises, creeping around the partition, motioning for me to follow her. “Not yet. Tim’s run says he screams like a girl.”
