Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey

Author:Claudia Dey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

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YOU TOLD ME your surroundings were blurry when you fell from the Mercedes sedan, the rush of transport from the highway to the lunch counter. The arms that held you were the wrong arms. The man’s smell was wrong. His skin against yours made you bristle. The body never lies. And then, through the door to Home of the Beef Candy, a chime of bells, and there he was standing at the lunch counter. The Heavy. He turned to you. You didn’t even see the ravaged face. What you saw was the body of a fighter. The sheer solidity of him. And then the eyes. Green, bottomless.

While you recovered in the Last House, and your name—Billie Jean—was spread throughout the territory, the women circled the dark blue Mercedes sedan (painted that color by you in the big and empty parking lot of a mall). It was a car that did not understand clearance. The territory demanded clearance. Opening the glove box, the women found a pair of underwear. One of the women held the pink underwear up with a finger and let the sun shine through them. “I could do that to my underwear with a pair of scissors,” she said, then reconsidered. “Our men can never see this underwear,” she warned and went to light them on fire before being stopped—“Fuck!” clutching her ankle—by me. They scoured the car floor but collected only a few old wrappings for foods they already knew. Hands on the upholstery, between the seats, under the visors, inside the armrests: nothing worthy of their time or contemplation. They went to the trunk, and when they found it sealed shut, key not working, grew excited. Crack, the supplicant whine of the hinges, and one woman, crowbar in hand, lifted out a white plastic bag containing something small. “Is it a baby?” The women emptied the bag. A white button-down. A black pencil skirt. SERVER stitched on the right breast pocket of the button-down. A change of clothes. Clothes for a different climate.

They scrapped the sedan. They would circle you, instead.

The women left the plastic bag by the front door of the Last House alongside a second plastic bag. Clothes for this climate. An indoor tracksuit, an outdoor tracksuit, beige bras, white underwear, wool socks, heavily treaded boots, a winter coat. They left a note explaining the clothes’ designations as they had been declared by John.

A woman’s white indoor tracksuit is meant for domestic operations inside the home. It should not be seen by anyone but immediate family. It is most appropriately worn first thing in the morning and just before bedtime. It should not be worn for longer than thirty-minute intervals, and is considered strictly a bridge outfit between nightwear and daywear. A woman’s camouflage outdoor tracksuit is solely for work on her property. It can be seen by neighbors though this is not optimal. To protect herself, limited use of a woman’s outdoor tracksuit is best.

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