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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 84 Anthony sighed and said, "You promised you wouldn't do this anymore." He felt like continuing, but already people were telling him he couldn't cut to the front of the line, he'd have to wait his turn. Lindsay popped Popsicle out of her mouth like a circumcised sucker, and said, "Sorry." But she said it the way girls do when they're really not very sorry. * The Wounded Healer Her given name was Lindsay, and her daddy would be released from the hospital the week after the party. Her mom had called last night with the news, and Lindsay thought she should get ready for him. Popsicle's hair had been blue the last time Lindsay had given head to every guy at a party, after learning her dad's sentence had been commuted from the state penitentiary to a psychiatric hospital. This had been two years ago. She and her sister had spent the whole night holding each other as if any second they might hear his footsteps in the hall. "Don't worry," Lindsay had told her sister, "Dad won't come back. He'll stay in the hospital because he loves us and doesn't want to hurt us anymore." The next day Lindsay had developed a phallus-shaped itch in the space between her pate and her uvula. Anthony had found her in Travis' basement with a boy in each hand and the taste of them like toothpaste and sauerkraut still dissolving on her tongue. Anthony had cried. Lindsay had spent half the evening comforting him, and Anthony had refused to feel better until she'd promised not to do it again. |