With an exclamation, the cashier grabs for it, too late, and it falls past her to the floor. As the woman stoops to retrieve it, the Mutant, in sudden fluid motion past Sam, is up on her toes and snatching a pack of butts from the rack. She is gone down the nearest aisle before the cashier straightens up with the box of breast pads in triumphant custody. As if he has just come in from a long time in extreme cold, dull heat kindles in Sam’s face and ears. His own fingers feel suddenly thick and guilty.
There’s no sign of the miscreant by the time he’s outside. Behind the wheel of the truck, he considers his options. He could claim a table at the restaurant and drink Chinese tea and read the book he dozed off over in the library. He could check out the Corner downtown, still open and at this hour full of kids snacking on pizza and fries, feeding the video games, hustling each other, hanging out. Still undecided, he catches a pinpoint wink of red, hanging impossibly in the dark void beyond the wooden railing fencing the small shopping center from the gorge of Mill Brook.
Two-armed standards lift arc lights over the parking lot, spilling a fringe of light down the side of the gorge. A handrailed wooden stairway stutters down the steep slope to Mill Brook, from a break in the weathered-grey post-and-rail fence. The waterway snakes through Greenspark like a tapeworm. Downtown, where Mill Brook is a placid stream that stays between level banks most of the year, some of its spring floodplain is a pleasant strip of park. Along the stream at the perimeter of the few blocks of downtown, the park grows wilder as the banks rise, until the brook and its overgrown, jungly margins lie below the paved streets of the small town. The shopping center—laundromat, supermarket, pharmacy and feedstore—is built above the very place where the tame stretch of the park, with an elaborate, newly constructed Creative Playground, sinks away under the overpass of Grant Street into the gorge of the widening, rising banks toward the ruins of the old red-brick and grey-stone Mill. The lights of the Playground are not yet operative and so it is closed at night.
Vaulting the fence rail, Sam crunches through the frozen crosshatch of tall grasses and weeds to the stairs. Below him, off the stairway now and moving in the direction of the crenelated, towered Playground, the dot of red blinks at him. He catches a whiff of cigarette smoke rising up the chimney of the stairs. The overpass rumbles with traffic. Shrugging his jacket higher against the back of his neck, Sam follows the turning stairway down to Mill Brook. As he descends and the artificial light and susurrations of the overpass fade, his vision adjusts. At the bottom of the stairs an enormous bank of wild rosebushes overhangs the steps with a flagellant grab of thorny branches.
The miniature red star glows from the unlighted Playground. He makes no attempt to quiet his steps on the gravel path. It is a moment before the single red eye opens again. By then, his night vision is sharp. He sees the Mutant’s outline, the fringe of the scarf swaying as she tosses her head and then the red wink of the cigarette reflected and twinned in her eyes, the faint rust it paints on her nose ring and the nearest links of facial chain. The leather of her swing creaks gently as she rocks in it.
“Samson!” she drawls in mocking surprise.
Calmly he cocks his chin to her in greeting. “Gimme a butt.”
Raising her eyebrows, she reaches automatically into the breast pocket of her reefer coat.
As quickly as she snatched the pack from behind the cashier’s back, Sam plucks both pack and lighted cigarette from her fingers. He pitches the butt toward the Mill Brook. The red tumbles and disintegrates into multiple points of fire.
The Mutant jumps to her feet, trying to grab back the pack he holds beyond her reach. “You fuck!”
Sam launches the packet toward the brook. From the darkness comes a soft chilly splash. Sheer luck—it’s found the blind bucket of open water between the ice crusting from the banks.
The Mutant pounds both fists into Sam’s gut. “Son of a bitch motherfucker!”
He steps backward, making her follow him to land her blows. As she lunges forward, he feints to one side, catches her by the wrist and twists it behind her to put her into a neat armlock. Still swearing, she kicks back at him. As the force of her kick unbalances her, Sam lets go. The Mutant sprawls face down on the fine sand of the Playground.
Panting, she rolls over and glares up at him. “You Nazi bastard,” she spits.
Sam shivers and works his fingers into his jacket pockets.
“I put my ass on the line for you,” he tells her, “you go straight out and boost yourself some butts. Never mind the frigging things are bad for your wind and you signed a contract you wouldn’t use them in training. You get busted shoplifting, you won’t just be suspended for a couple weeks. You’ll be off the team with no chance of reinstatement, ever.”
She vibrates with undiluted rage. “Fuck you, asshole! It’s my goddamn business! I didn’t ask you to put dick on the line for me. I don’t need any fucking favors from you!”
“Your goddamn business!” Sam is incredulous. “You thieving wench, you used me to pull that ripoff! If you’d gotten busted, it could have looked like I was in on it. You could have got me busted too and cost me my eligibility. Looks to me like you made it my goddamn business.”
Sitting up, she hugs herself. Realizing the ground must be fiercely cold, he reaches down to give her a hand up. The
