Sloth

way you are.”

“And how’s that?”

“Hmmm… dirty. “ She rubs his chest, where a long, dark grease stain stretches across his shirt. “Smelly. “ She buries her face in his neck and breathes in deeply. “Grungy. “ She pulls his hands toward her face and kisses the tips of his fingers, ignoring the dirt lodged under each nail. “Mine. “

He grabs her around the waist and rolls her over on top of him, lifting his head up to meet her lips. They kiss with their eyes open, and he can see himself reflected in her pupils. Her weight flattens him against the ground and he lets his head fall back as she spreads his arms out and entwines her fingers in his.

They stop kissing after only a few minutes, but she continues to lie on him, resting her head on his chest.

“Happy?” he asks, because he knows she never is.

“Shhh. I’m listening. “

“To what?”

“Your heartbeat,” she whispers. They are both still. Then she laughs. “Did I just say that? What the hell are you doing to me?” She sighs and tries to roll off of him, but he wraps his arms around her and holds her in place.

“Turning you into a sap,” he teases. “I like it. “

“Don’t try to reform me,” she tells him. “It won’t take.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, echoing her words as she echoed his. “You’re good just the way you are.”

Too late, he forgets how she hates compliments from him, even in jest.

“It’s getting cold,” she says, and he can feel her muscles tense. “I’m getting out of here. “

“Don’t,” he tells her. “Stay.”

She breathes deeply, and as her chest expands, it pushes against his, forcing their breathing to fall into the same rhythm. “I don’t know what we’re doing here,” she says, touching the side of his face.

“Who cares?” he asks, laying his hand over hers. “Don’t go.”

She kisses him, hard, her tongue prying his lips open and slipping in, her hands gathering the light cotton blanket into tight fists. This time she closes her eyes, but he keeps his open. He can’t stop watching her, as if part of him harbors the childlike belief that if he closes his eyes, she might actually disappear.

He looked up at the sound of a siren-it blipped once, like a horn blast, as if to alert him that he was totally screwed, without waking the neighbors. (Not that there were any.) The flashing lights of the approaching car cast a yellowish-orange tinge over everything as Reed scrambled to stow his pot deep in the glove compartment and popped a breath mint, not that it would be of much help. Everything about him reeked of stoner, and even though he’d had his last joint an hour or two ago and was as alert as he ever got these days, if the cops wanted to bust him, they would. It’s not like they hadn’t done it before.

The car pulled onto the shoulder just behind his, and a figure stepped out. As he approached, Reed was surprised to note that it wasn’t Sal or Eddie, the two beat cops who loved nothing more than handing out parking tickets and hassling “street punks,” aka anyone under the age of eighteen who didn’t dress like they were auditioning for an Abercrombie ad. Sal and Eddie had, until recently, been actual street punks-or, as close as Grace got to urban blight-until their shoplifting had gotten them banned from pretty much every store on Main Street and a number of drunken brawls had had the same effect on their barhopping days. They’d joined the police force for the thrill of running red lights; the guns were just a bonus.

This cop, an overweight guy in his mid-forties with a mustache and an eye-twitch, tapped on Reed’s window. “Whatever you’re up to, forget about it,” he snapped, once Reed had rolled the window down. “Just get out of here.”

That wasn’t a cop uniform, Reed suddenly realized. It was gray, not navy blue, and a narrow label above the shirt pocket read CAPSTONE SECURITY. “What’s it to you?” he asked. Sucking up to authority figures was bad enough; sucking up to a paunchy rent-a-cop who probably had a stash of his own hidden in the cruiser next to his mail-ordered Taser gun? Not gonna happen.

“Gimme a break, kid.” The guy leaned against the truck, casually letting his jacket fall open to reveal the holster strapped underneath. It wasn’t holding a Taser gun. “You think I’m out here in Crapville, USA, for my health? They pay plenty to run punks like you off the property- so I’m telling you. Get.”

“No one lives here anymore,” Reed pointed out.

“Don’t mean no one owns it.” He glanced up at the deserted mansion and scowled. “And the guy who does is plenty pissed off. There’ve been some break-ins-but I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, eh?”

Reed just stared blankly at him.

“Yeah. Of course not. But now I’m here, and I’ve got my instructions.”

“Yeah?”

“No lurkers. No prowlers. No squatters. No punks.” He squinted into the truck and stared pointedly at a glass pipe that had rolled onto the floor. “I don’t care which one you are. Just get going and don’t come back.”

“Or what?” Reed asked, something in him spoiling for a fight. “You’ll call in the real cops?”

“Don’t need ‘em,” the guy said, ambling away from the window. But he didn’t head back to his car-instead, he circled the front of the truck and, looking up to give Reed a jaunty grin, smashed in the front headlight.

“Dude! What the hell are you doing?”

“Take my advice, kid. Just get out of here,” the guy yelled, waving with his arm still and his fingers glued together in the universal sign for buh-bye. “Just drive away and don’t look back.”

“Harper, can you come down here for a second?” Her mother’s normally lilting voice had a steely undertone that suggested her options were limited.

“Great, more family together time,” Harper muttered, burned out on bonding after a night that had already included ice-cream sundaes and four rounds of Boggle. Ever since the accident her parents had gone into maximum overdrive on the TLC front-failing to realize that, to Harper, tender loving care involved a few drinks, a sugar high, and plenty of uninterrupted alone time. Tonight the plan had been simple: barricade herself in her room, blast some Belle and Sebastian, bury her head under a pillow, and try to plan out her next step. She’d been a master strategist, once, and though it seemed like too long ago to remember, she was certain the skills had just gone into hibernation, waiting for a more hospitable climate before they re-emerged to save her. Family fun time didn’t fit into her schedule.

“What?” she grunted as she trudged down the stairs. She stopped, midway down, catching sight of Kane’s smooth hair and smoother style. He gave her a reptilian grin, then offered her parents a far warmer expression, compassion oozing from every orifice.

“It’s just so good to see her up and around again,” he told her parents, as if she weren’t even in the room.

“Yes, she’s thrilled to pieces,” Harper said dryly. “What the hell do you want?”

“Harper!” Her mother shot her a scandalized look. Much as Harper despised the depths to which her family had sunk over the generations, from American-style royalty (read: outrageously wealthy with an attitude to match) to middle-middle-class plodders carrying the torch of small-town mediocrity, Amanda Grace hated it more. So much so that she refused to acknowledge that the family she’d married into no longer guarded the flame of civility amongst the heathens of the wild west. “People look to us,” she’d often told a young Harper, lost in delusions of mannered grandeur, “and it’s important we live up to expectations.” Miss Manners had nothing on Amanda Grace; Emily Post would have been booted from the house for rude behavior. And a solicitous attitude toward guests, from visiting dignitaries (in her dreams) to collection agencies (a walking, and frequent, nightmare) was rule number one. Apparently even in her fragile, post-invalid state, Harper was still expected to abide by the Grace code of etiquette.

“As I was saying, Kane, it’s so lovely of you to drop by,” her mother said, placing a deceptively firm hand on Harper’s shoulder. “Isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” Harper echoed. Her mother got a dutiful smile; Kane got the death glare.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?” her mother asked, releasing her grip.

“Fine.” Harper scowled; if only everyone would stop asking her that a hundred times a day, maybe she’d actually have a prayer of it being true. Though that was doubtful, she conceded. How fine could she be when the