If someone said, “Show up on Wednesday,” seven imaginary boxes appeared, like the row of a calendar grid, starting with Monday and ending with Sunday. Wednesday occupied dead center, which was impossible. Its center position was as much a trick of her mind as the row of calendar boxes itself, because to the left of Wednesday, sat only Monday and Tuesday, while Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday all fell to the right. If her mental calendar’s row was a seesaw with Wednesday as its fulcrum, there’d be a little girl with bones like a bird’s sitting high in the air on the left, and a football squad’s offensive lineman squatting on the dirt to the right.
Still, Wednesday felt in the middle.
Maybe because Wednesday sat in the middle of the work week. The theory made sense, except Shee had never held a Monday-to-Friday job in her life. Maybe the thing that centered Wednesday in her mind was the same thing that made her confuse her left and right.
That mental block had nearly gotten her killed more than once.
When it came to direction, she preferred military parlance.
“Check your nine!”
Left. Duh.
If someone screamed left! more often than not she looked right. That’s usually when something clobbered the left side of her skull.
Negative feedback didn’t prevent her from making the same blunder the next time, though.
Even rats change their behavior if shocked often enough.
Not me. Ole ‘dumber than a rat’ Shee.
She fared better with time than direction. Time was a thing. A clock. She saw her internal clockface, white with bronze serif-font numbers. She faced toward the twelve, and she could see nine to her left and move without hesitation.
On your nine!
No problem.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world hadn’t received the memo. Joggers approaching from behind who barked on your left! a moment before collision usually ended up on the ground in a tangled ball of limbs.
It didn’t matter. And luckily for the joggers of the world, at the moment, Shee sat in a restaurant booth in Jupiter Beach, Florida. Very few joggers in the booth.
“Sigh-oh-fra?” asked the server with Alyssa on her nametag, squinting at Shee’s credit card. The girl’s nose wrinkled as if she smelled something off. Something like the seafood at the next table, for example. One of the oysters had a bad attitude. Shee had smelled it as the platter passed by.
I should really say something.
“Shee-fra,” she corrected the server, the sound of her own full name, Siofra, jarring to her ear. She hadn’t used it for fifteen years. Most recently she’d been Hunter. Before that she’d picked Charity to see if men treated women with stripper names differently.
They did.
The waitress appeared dubious about Shee’s real name. “Really?” she asked.
Shee dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Pretty sure.”
“What kind of name is that?” The girl’s tone suggested Shee had to pass a quiz to claim her own name. Maybe after fifteen years, she did.
“Irish. Siofra was my grandmother’s name on my father’s side.”
“Oh, neat. Are you Irish?”
Shee blinked at her.
Does she not know how grandmothers work?
She couldn’t help herself. “Nope, One hundred percent Mexican.”
“Really?”
“No. I’m Irish. Grandma was from Ireland Irish. I’m plain-old American Irish.”
“Oh. Cool. I’m part Irish on my mom’s side.”
Shee nodded and cocked an ear toward the slurping behind her.
Uh oh.
She flashed Alyssa a smile hoping the girl would sense the end of their conversation, but the server’s hip cocked and Shee knew she was in it for the long haul.
Alyssa pointed at her with the credit card. “You were here last week, weren’t you? Maybe Saturday? I work Saturdays.”
Blue.
Saturdays are royal blue. Sundays are light blue because they’re gentler than Saturdays.
Orange rose like a sunrise in her mind. “Thursday.”
Alyssa nodded. “Cool. Brunch here is awesome. Okay. I’ll go run this for you.”
“Thanks, Ally-Sah.”
The girl stopped and pointed at her name tag. “Alyssa.” She took another step and then spun on her heel, an open-mouthed grin on her face. “Oh I get it. Like I said your name wrong.” Laughing, she rolled her eyes and headed off again.
Shee’s attention locked on the credit card swinging in the girl’s hand as she walked toward the bar. Alyssa’s stride bounced like the floor was made of gym mat. The young didn’t know what to do with all that energy. Shee looked at the back of her right—no, left—hand and followed the network of lines ridging around her knuckles, the flesh spotted with what she liked to think of as hefty freckles.
Late forties didn’t bounce.
In so many ways.
She sniffed as the perfume of the woman sitting behind her made a visit to her booth. It hadn’t smelled floral a moment ago. It had smelled like—
Oh right. Oysters.
She twisted to see her neighbors.
“Hi, I’m sorry, I think one of your—”
Her attention dropped to the plate of oysters positioned between the couple. The oyster shells remained resting in the silver serving tray’s divots, glistening and empty.
The couple had unwittingly played oyster Russian roulette.
Who ate Stinky?
The man looked at her expectantly, and Shee smiled.
Ah well. I tried.
She pulled the napkin from her own lap and dipped as if plucking it from the ground. The action happened too low for the man to see from his angle.
“I think you dropped one of your napkins,” she said, handing it to them.
Oh and by the way, you might want to shove your fingers down your throat.
The woman’s mouth pinched into an exaggerated ‘o’ of surprise as she accepted the napkin. The lipstick smudge across the center wasn’t her color. She didn’t notice.
“Oh, thank you.”
Shee turned back to her table, confident
