Free Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant Page A

here."
    "Strangely enough, that had come to my attention."
    "Don't be rude."
    Jack the Ripper has a black tattoo on the back of his neck, if you get close enough to see. It says: Mea Maxima Culpa. Jack the Ripper lights dead flies like candles on the shrine of my windowsill, so fire shoots stained-glass through them. He loves me more than anyone. I am very fond of Jack the Ripper, but I'm not interested. He isn't my type.
    "The clematis is beautiful this year,” I say, because it is. “Have you seen my herb garden? A black bird ate all my rue, but the rosemary and the mint are doing very well."
    Jack the Ripper does not have very many thoughts about herb gardens. He waves one white-gloved hand, impatiently. He would rather talk about my fingers and my wrists, my toes, heels, insteps. He would like to scatter these words around like birdseed. I know this. But you have to be strict with Jack the Ripper. It's the only way he'll learn.
    The clematis is beautiful this year. It drops down the greenhouse wall like a hanged man, glittering. It has a hundred eyes.
    Jack the Ripper leans in towards me. I can taste smoke in the air between us, even though he promised he's quit. “You want her,” he says. The way he says it makes it a threat or a promise. Up close, his nose tilts like an old tombstone. His teeth are white as bone.
    "Not at all,” I say.
    Jack the Ripper is not an intuitive man, but he knows when I'm lying.
    * * * *
    This house belonged to my father. When we moved in it had dirt floors, cabinets full of shed snakeskins, and a tarantula squatting on the kitchen sink to stand guard. We laid down pine floorboards and scrubbed out the cabinets and hung new gingham curtains in the kitchen windows, but left the tarantula to his business. We named him Petulance. Neither of us is good with spiders.
    This is not a story about spiders.
    My father's house had no bed, but there was plenty of hot water. This didn't come as a surprise to either of us. We slept all night in the bath, and woke up with new pink skins, ready to go meet the weather.
    * * * *
    I wait for Jack the Ripper to speak. He takes out a thin cigar and lights it effortlessly without matches, which is something you can do when you're Jack the Ripper. Smoke pours from his mouth. I am worried about his lungs. They must be black as peppercorns by now, and even though he can be troublesome sometimes, I don't know what I'd do without him.
    "You fought,” he says. It is not a question. Jack the Ripper does not believe in questions.
    "Maybe."
    "About me."
    "Don't flatter yourself,” I say.
    Fish glint in the veins of the fish pond. I clink ice in my tea and for a moment I'm thinking of carp nuzzling my mouth, my nose, rainbow fish looking out of my eyes and the whole world drowned. I'd be made of moss and bone. How could you love something made of moss and bone?
    "I don't know where she is,” I say.
    Jack the Ripper taps ash over his plate of crumbs. He says, “I know."
    * * * *
    How I met Lizzie Borden?
    At my mother's house I found an ancient wedding dress under a chest of drawers, yellow and dry like old Scotch tape, trailing lace from the hem. It fit me perfectly. There is only one thing you can do in a wedding dress like that one, and that's go swimming. I pumped up a plastic Tellytubbies paddling pool, filled it with water from the hose, and lay down with my arms folded over my chest. Lizzie Borden found me like this. She was visiting relatives in the neighbourhood who didn't appreciate her sense of humour or her taste in clothes or literature. “What the fuck,” Lizzie Borden said to me. This was the first thing she said.
    Lizzie Borden has arms like swastika arms and a nose like a question mark. That day she wore a navy blue pea-coat and I thought her mouth looked like a piano string stretched tight. I was distracted by her. “I'm drowning,” I said. Lizzie Borden raised her eyebrows.
    Where is Lizzie Borden?
    We slept in water and grew flowers in my