Night at the Fiestas: Stories by Kirstin Valdez Quade Read Free Book Online Page B

but made her seem both crazier and shriller than she was.
    Funny, only now did Monica feel ashamed, mocking the woman’s impotence, mocking the despair and futility that would lead to such a pointless threat.
    “Can I get you anything?” She would have liked to offer the girl cookies and milk, but they’d just used the last of the milk and never had cookies.
    Amanda scratched the back of her hand with a dirty nail, leaving dry tracks in the skin. “I thought maybe you’d want to buy something from me,” she said finally.
    “Buy something?”
    “Is it expensive?” asked Cordelia.
    Beatrice patted Monica’s chest, ready to nurse.
    Amanda indicated her backpack, distracted by the sight of Monica’s breast as Monica maneuvered it out from the neck of the dress and into Beatrice’s waiting mouth.
    “What are you selling? Cookies? Magazines?” Amanda was still looking at her, and Monica suddenly felt very aware of the sensation of Beatrice’s mouth pulling on her nipple. “So,” she said. “Let’s see what you have.”
    Amanda pulled her gaze away and unzipped her backpack. She arranged her wares on the table: a porcelain figurine of a milkmaid with a pail in her one remaining hand, a slack-needled odometer with loose wires, a worn pornographic magazine without a cover, a quarter-full bottle of shampoo. She turned the odometer slightly, to better display its virtues. “A dollar each. Except this”—she indicated the magazine—“is three dollars.”
    “Let me see that,” said Cordelia, reaching for the magazine with its confusing fleshy close-ups.
    Monica pushed it away. “It’s inappropriate,” she said, and Cordelia slumped, glowering.
    Beatrice released Monica’s nipple with a pop and strained toward the objects.
    “Amanda, where did you get these things? Do they belong to you?”
    Amanda scowled. “Yes,” she said defensively, then added, “Duh.”
    Monica pictured the scenario: Amanda picking them from the park’s dumpster, or, more likely, selecting them from the objects in her own home, turning them in her hands, evaluating them, stepping around calves and overstuffed shoes, while her family sat oblivious, watching television. “Why are you selling them?”
    “Why are you here?” Amanda countered. “At Shady Lanes.”
    “For my husband’s work.” Monica gestured again at the box of samples. The real question, Monica thought, was what Amanda needed the money for. Candy? Cigarettes? Maybe she was saving up for her escape. Maybe she simply wanted to have the money, to know she could make choices.
    “Elliot’s getting his Ph.D.,” said Cordelia self-importantly. “In Santa Fe I lived one block from a swimming pool. We’re going back there.” She turned to Monica. “Aren’t we going back there?”
    “I’m not sure where we’ll end up,” said Monica.
    “Elliot got in a fight with his advisor,” Cordelia told Amanda, shaking her head with regret.
    “Where did you hear that?” asked Monica. “It wasn’t a real fight.”
    “It was,” said Cordelia. “That’s why it’s taking so long for him to get his Ph.D.”
    For the first time Amanda looked mildly interested. “Did he punch him?”
    “No,” Cordelia said with scorn.
    “It’s not true, Cordelia,” Monica said.
    “It is true,” Cordelia insisted. “You said. I heard you.”
    Monica was having trouble breathing. It wasn’t Elliot’s fault he’d had to switch topics and start all over, just because of some unfounded insinuations. No one ever said the words falsified data , but Elliot had insisted on starting all over, insisted it was the only way to clear his name. He’d made the decision on his own, swiftly, had refused to consider rethinking it. And now, a year later, his funding had run out, and he seemed further and further from completion. What if he never finished?
    What if they stayed out here—or if not here, in some equally godforsaken place—and this was her whole life? What if there was no