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Show Blue Run/89 10. Josephine i My flinch is pure instinct, the way a hand gets thrown up in front of a man-high fire, only it's no shield. O.W. shines the photo in my face. We lock eyes. Til death do vou part, the preacher'd said, all those years ago when Joey, the son from my first mistake in wedlock, stood between us as best man, dressed like O.W 's twin. He's supposed to be deadheading across Tennessee, O.W , bound for Rocky Mount and ten tons of slaughter turkey, instead of standing here beside the Jacuzzi, swiping steam with a snapshot of Shawn Terrence Lord, my one-time lover. Haifa bank statement shines in his front pocket-so he knows what's happened there too. "Where's pretty boy now?" He says it through shut teeth The sentence settles between us. And before I can talk it happens. He's threatened a thousand times, and we've gone at each other's throats more than once. I laid him open cheek to chin with a fingernail on the night I screamed for Joey to get help. I've kissed his tears, wiped his blood. Now, through the bubbles of my breath, his blue eyes sear like icepicks. But here in Jimmy's room?~surely to God he can't do it in Jimmy's room. |