Free Double Cross [2] by Carolyn Crane

nurse you are.” She pushes the coffee back toward me. “God, I have to get out of here. I’m wasting my life away in this stupid job, and for what? For Morgan-Brooksteens parasites to set up an all-you-can-eat buffet in my liver? Fuck that.”
    The man nearby looks over. I’m sure our conversation sounds bizarre.
    “You don’t know for sure,” I say.
    “Another nonanswer! You think I’m dying! No, don’t answer. Because I am going to get out of here, and I am going to set the goddamn world on fire. I am going to setevery little corner of the world on fire, and the parasites won’t beat me.”
    I take the coffee back, wondering how exactly I’m supposed to take this fire bit. I lift the bag. “Muffin?”
    She eyes it.
    “Banana nut.”
    She reaches out her hand and I push it through.
    “So, you’re thinking of switching careers?”
    She pulls back the paper muffin wrapper. “Huh?”
    “Getting out of here and setting the world on fire?”
    A silence. “Yeah.”
    “To what? What career?”
    “I’ve got a few possibilities.”
    “What’s your favorite possibility?”
    “Not this, that’s what. I sure never planned on being this.”
    I nod. “I know the feeling.”
    “How can you say that? You’re a nurse. You help people. You didn’t want to end up being a nurse?”
    “No, I always wanted to be a nurse.” I pick a nut off the top of my muffin, feeling shitty. “Come on. What do you most want? If there was some perfect Ez life, your ideal situation, what would it be?”
    She concentrates on her muffin.
    I feel like kicking myself. What the hell do I hope to hear? That she dreams of turning over a new leaf to be a law-abiding person? Or that she plans to make more people into sleepwalking cannibals? So I can feel justified in zinging her?
    She glares at me. “Like, be an actress in the Midcity Rep and marry some guy? And have kids and a Jack Russell terrier, and a lakefront condo, and we all play on the beach and have cookouts? Like that?” She breaks her muffin in half. “Right.”
    The speed with which she produces this portrait of a possible life suggests that maybe that
is
her ideal situation.I could actually see her as an actress—she enunciates her words so carefully, and moves gracefully, as though she’s conscious of her body in space. “Do you mean you don’t want that, or you can’t have it?”
    “Don’t act like you know me.”
    “I’m trying to know you.”
    She gasps. “You’re trying to get me to not think of parasites!”
    I’m about to protest, but then I think,
This is where I want her.
    “You think I have MBP. You’re just trying to improve my last days!” She shoves the muffin away. “Oh my God!”
    I go on to halfheartedly dissuade her, feeling guiltier than ever. Ten minutes in, we’ve worked up to me taking her hand to reexamine her skin and zing her, but a man comes up and practically knocks me out of the way.
    “Hiya, Harry,” she says.
    I move aside.
Great
.
    “Afternoon, Ez.” He puts his coat in the carousel and she spins it to her side. He says something about the Midcity Maven’s game last night and they have a jokey exchange.
    I wait, not wanting to cramp her style or her tip proceeds. I’d hoped to finish and get the hell out, but now we almost have to start over. Zinging really is a bit like sex. You would never just release your dark emotions into somebody out of the blue; instead you talk with them, get them into the mood.
    “That guy that was here the other day and yanked you away—was he your boss?”
    “Pretty much,” I say.
    “A doc?”
    “Kind of,” I say. “But where were we? Because there was something important I was going to tell you.”
    “How long have you known him?”
    “Not even a year. But Ez, on this liver thing—”
    “Was he ever on a battlefield of any kind?” she asks.
    “A battlefield?”
    “Exposed to, like, atrocities?”
    I stare at her. Is that what she made of the dream memory? Could she have picked