Free Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link Page B

the swish and click
of the train on the tracks like a metronome.
    When the sandwiches were gone, the woman took out a hardcover
book. There was a man and a woman on the cover, embracing, his face
turned into her shoulder, her hair falling across her face. As if
they were ashamed to be caught like this, half-naked before the
eyes of strangers. Lily liked that sort of book. The name of the
author was Rose Read.
    It sounded like a conjuring name, an ingredient in a love spell,
a made-up, let's pretend name. Leaning over the woman's
speckled-egg arm, June looked at the photo on the back. Mile-long
curlicued eyelashes, and a plump, secretive smile. Probably the
author's real name was Agnes Frumple; probably those eyelashes
weren't real, either. The woman saw June staring. "It's
called 
Arrows of Beauty
. Quite good," she said. "All
about Helen of Troy, and it's very well researched."
    "Really," June said. She spent the next half an hour looking
across the aisle, out of the opposite window. There were several
Americans on the train, dressed in tourist plaids, their voices
flat and bright and bored. June wondered if her honeymooners would
come to this someday, traveling not out of love but boredom,
shifting restlessly in their narrow seats. 
Are we there
yet? Where are we?
    Shortly before the train pulled into Leuchars station, the woman
fell asleep. 
Arrows of Beauty 
dropped from her
slack fingers, and slid down the incline of her lap. June caught it
before it hit the floor. She got onto the station platform, the
book tucked under her arm.
    4. Fine Scents .
    The wind tipped and rattled at the tin sides of the St. Andrews
bus. It whipped at June's hair, until she scraped the loose
tendrils back to her scalp with a barrette. The golf course came
into view, the clipped lawns like squares of green velvet. Behind
the golf course was the North Sea, and somewhere over the sea, June
supposed, was Norway or Finland. She'd never even been to England.
It might be nice to travel: she pictured her mother waving goodbye
with a white handkerchief, 
so long, kid! Just like her
father, you know
. Goodbye, good riddance.
    St. Andrews was three streets wide, marching down to the curved
mouth of the harbor. A sea wall ran along the cliffs at the edge of
the town, from the broken-backed cathedral to a castle, hollowed
out like an old tooth, and green in the middle. Castle and
cathedral leaned towards each other, pinching the sea between them.
June got off the bus on Market Street.
    She bought a box of Black Magic chocolates in the Woolworth's
and then went down an alley cobbled with old stones from the
cathedral, worn down to glassy smoothness. Iron railings ran along
storefronts, the rails snapped off near the base, and she
remembered a school chaperone saying it had been done for the war
effort. Taken to be made into cannons and shrapnel and belt
buckles, just as the town had harvested stone from the cathedral.
Ancient history, scrapped and put to economical uses.
    An old-fashioned sign swinging above an open shop door caught
her eye. It read "Fine Scents. I.M. Kew, Prop." Through the window
she could see a man behind the counter, smiling anxiously at a
well-dressed woman. She was saying something to him that June
couldn't make out, but it was her velvety-rough voice that pulled
June into the store.
    "… don't know if the rest of the aunties can keep her off him.
It's her hobby, you know, pulling wings off flies. You know how
fond of him Minnie and I are, but Di and Prune are absolutely no
help, she'll do the poor boy just like his mother … "
    The marvelous voice trailed off, and the woman lifted a stopper
out of a bottle. "Really, darling, I don't like it. Sweet and wet
as two virgins kissing. It's not up to your usual standards."
    The man shrugged, still smiling. His fingers drummed on the
counter. "I thought you might like a change, is all," he said. "So
my Rose-By-Any-Other-Name, I'll make you up a standard batch. May I
help you,