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Show THE EXTERMINATOR-75 He came all that week, each time asking her if she was ready for him to get rid of the bugs, but she would not leave the house. She avoided the cylinder and hose, averting her gaze from them. "Marta was the one who took me out." she said to him. "She had special powers to hold off the sky, to keep it from sucking me outward. Now do you understand?" "And where is Marta now?" "She said she was tired of this life and she went away. I don't know where. She said she didn't care if I died. She was going to find her place in this world. That's what she said." "Yep." "Would you know?" "I'm..." She pressed a finger to his lips. "Don't say. Love me again that way?" On the seventh day he led her from the bed over to the shaft of sunlight and flung some handfuls of dust into it so that she would laugh for him. He fingered the bruises on her breasts and belly, the marks on her buttocks. "You are so beautiful," he said. "I have something to tell you." Her laughter stopped suddenly. She clasped her hands in her lap and rubbed her fingers over the l i t t le lines on the tops of her knuckles. "It's the tree. Nothing will work until it's gone." "Tree?" "Your box elder. That one. " He pointed to the window where the flickers beat their red underwings, to the branches that tangled up the moon sometimes. When she said nothing, he said. "Don't you know? Box elder trees bring box |