Free Threats by Amelia Gray

and produced a pad of sticky notes. She wrote something on one. The water came to a full boil while David was reaching his hand into the sugar bag to grasp the corner of the paper. He kept his back square between the bag and the detective.
    â€œWho cut your hair?” Chico asked.
    The page in the sugar was not a card or a strip, but a full piece of notebook paper. When he had unearthed enough of it, David closed the top edge of the page in his fist and pulled it out whole. The action spilled sugar on the counter, his robe, the floor, the range. The sugar blackened and burned under the pot of boiling water. In one motion, he stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket and leaned down to blow on the smoke rising from the burning sugar. “It was a whole group of them,” he said. He felt the grains of sugar coating his hand and wiped it on his chest. “They seemed like nice girls. Maybe they were students. They were all young.”
    â€œThe girls cut your hair.”
    David poured water into the cups and spooned sugar into one. Steam blushed the spoon’s edge. “One cut my toenails. I told them all not to bother, but they said they were here to do it as a favor to my wife.” The threat felt warm in his pocket.
    â€œCould I get their names?” Chico asked.
    â€œI don’t know their names,” David said. He reasoned that if he had left the threat in the sugar, it might have dissolved and vanished. It was too important to be ruled by the normal properties of paper. Taking hold of it had been important.
    Dr. Walls was beside him. “David, your hair is past your ears.”
    â€œIt was longer,” David said, handing her a cup. He touched the fuzzed nape of his neck. “You wouldn’t believe.”
    â€œWhere do you keep the tea?” she asked.
    David patted the front of his robe, produced one of the bags, and dropped it into her cup. He had the sense that this woman was here to trick him. He didn’t trust the things she said or the way she watched him. He crossed his arms, covering his pockets so that she couldn’t reach in. The woman went back to sit at the table in the seat where guests sat, the one without a place mat. She was trying to be polite. David slipped the other tea bags into the other cups.
    â€œI’m sorry we’re asking so many questions,” Chico said, accepting his tea. “I’m sure you want to get to the bottom of this as much as we do.”
    â€œImportant items have special properties,” David said.
    â€œYou have been so helpful,” said Dr. Walls.
    â€œI believe I’ve maintained a tradition of cooperation with members of local law enforcement and public works operatives,” he said. “I believe that civilians ought not fear the guiding hand of the state.” He lifted the cup to his lips.
    â€œWhat was that page you pulled out of the bag of sugar?” Chico asked.
    David effused a small amount of bile into his tea.
    â€œGood God,” said Dr. Walls.
    â€œWhat is your name?” David asked the woman. He wiped his face with his sleeve. “What is your full name?”
    The woman’s teacup rattled on its saucer, though she was touching neither cup nor saucer. He saw her leg jiggling the table from underneath. “Marie Walls,” the woman said.
    â€œMarie,” he said. “I’m sorry about all this.”
    â€œIt’s all right, David.”
    â€œI haven’t been the same since my wife left.”
    â€œDavid,” she said.
    â€œI hate to state the obvious,” said Chico, “but you vomited into that cup after I asked you a question.”
    â€œDavid,” Marie said. Her face elongated before him. Her eyebrows went first, pinching a delicate fold into her forehead. Her eyelids snapped up to follow and she tipped her head back slightly to accommodate the movement. She observed him from behind her cheekbones.
    David was holding the paper protectively