there’s a place for them, a niche they can’t find with family,
because they don’t have any. Not a real family, I mean.
They’re the new outcasts, and they can only prove their worth
by blowing some other poor kid away.”
“It’s an awfully stupid way to prove anything,” Judith said,
turning back to the stove where mussels boiled in a big pot.
“You usually catch them, though.”
“That’s the frustrating part,” Joe said, taking a deep drink.
“The perps end up in the slammer for fifteen, twenty years,
wasting their young lives. What’s even worse is that the rest
of them don’t learn by what happens to the ones we send
away. There are times when I hate my job. Do you realize I
could retire in three years?”
Judith, who was draining the mussels into a colander, almost dropped the pot. She’d never heard Joe mention retirement before. “Do you want to?” she gulped.
Joe sighed again, his green eyes troubled. “I’ve been
thinking about it lately. Hell, I’ve been on the force for thirtythree years. Plenty of guys burn out by fifty-five. I’m past
that already. I figure I’m lucky to have lasted this long.”
So was Judith. Only in the five and a half years of her
marriage to Joe had she been able to count on financial
support from a spouse. During her nineteen years with the
unemployed and unemployable Dan McMonigle, Judith had
worked two jobs. By day she had served as a librarian, and
at night, she had toiled behind the bar at the Meat and
Mingle. The daytime and evening clientele neither met nor
mingled. Most of the hard-fisted drinkers were lucky they
could read the bar specials posted on a chalkboard set next
to the blinking sign depicting a hula-skirted chipmunk.
“Well,” Judith said, tossing the mussels into a bowl of
vermicelli and rice, “it’s your decision.” She gave her husband
a quick, keen look. The red hair had more gray in it, the
forehead was growing higher, the laugh and worry lines were
etched more deeply. Joe was still the most attractive man in
the world to Judith, but he
noticed. After a twenty-five-year separation, their time together had seemed so brief. “You’ll know when it’s time to quit,”
she added a bit lamely.
“Hmm.” Joe sipped more Scotch. “The retirement package
is fairly good, all things considered.”
Which, Judith realized, Joe
dental?”
“Right. I’d have Social Security, too.”
There had been no security with Dan, social or otherwise.
At over four hundred pounds, her first husband had offered
only verbal abuse and demands for more vodka, Ding-Dongs,
apple fritters, and whatever else he could stuff into his fat,
lazy face.
“I guess we’ll have to think about it,” Judith said, sounding
