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Show Woodworth/225 deflated water balloon. It used to be full, round. Sometimes, even in public places, she could see men staring at her chest. When she was nursing, they were so big that it hurt and even leaked some. She felt like some cow, or a walking food line, even if Ned did tell her that it was sexy that they were so big. Now they just lie there like flab rolls and maybe, like some friends, they will be taken off. All she will have then is two scars like old pursed lips of a wrinkled secret. She realizes that she is massaging her breasts, and stops. Dllops her hand to her side as if caught. Drinks from her glass. It's not the taste, it never was the taste. Never got used to the burning. But the dulling, like the way the skin around a cut goes numb until you can't even feel it when you poke it with a fingernail, or try to pull a bandaid off too slowly. Damn Marty anyway. Flaunting it in her face, throwing it in her face that way, as if there is something she should do. Why do they do that? What do they want her to do? What does Marty mean that she is pretending that she is some guy's husband? Who does he think he is that he can ask her to come along, lying like that, just so she can lie in his bed, some cheap god damn motel bed, and do...Anger grabs her with both hands, pulling her. Where does it pull? She's never known, never explored. If she just let it happen, what is there in that great black chasm? She can't look without falling, and if she were over there, in it, there might be Jake, a baby, his blue membranous head throbbing with the heartbeat that he stole from her body. Or there might be Jake, lying in a casket, no doubt with his hands folded, all the^&ieces carefully\arranged, but with no heartbeat |