Free Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 26 by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant Page A

say as she gulps down what’s in her mouth and releases a fresh flow.
    While I finish welding the engine mount I’d been working on, Aida fastens the cylinder to the shed wall. “The Rev told me this spinning prayer wheel sends blessings in the ten directions.”
    “Ten?” I say. But Aida has passed out.
    I bunch a pair of coveralls under her head for a pillow and send her weld messages, Let’s be rabbits. Your hutch or mine? though she’s deaf to my love telepathy. I plant a kiss on her dusty cheek then get to work clearing the shed of every mount on the schedule for today.
    In vocational school, my best pal Zubin turned into a letch, a compulsive butt-squeezer. The beauty school girls complained so the principal threatened to expel my friend. On a Friday I invited Zubin over for a box of therapeutic Liebfraumilch. Halfway through the carton, he owned up that no girl would ever fall for him and he felt justified in pawing any female he took a shine to. That’s when I summoned my cousin Mona (who liked to brag her favorite flavor was scrotum) to help us kill the rest of our box. After that, Zubin never groped another voc co-ed.
    Enhanced Liebfraumilch, Zubin and Mona are why I can’t report Aida, so once again I submit: No, None, Negative.
    Next day, there’s no fume extractor, but there is a Post-it: From Parker Pinkley:

We’re never returning the fume extractor. Why? Because we did real college, real med school, real internships. While you did what? Got a GED? Ha! On the job training? Instant gratification? Don’t even start in on the virtue of waiting. We wrote that book. We have ORs to maintain. Awards to win. Reps to build. Welding is poisonous. Our maverick state-of-the art techniques work, so: No More Shenanigans. We’re a team—you’re our players, we’re your coaches. Now get out there and weld, solder, braze, breathe, tremble, report.

An end to your buffoonery.
    How do you really feel, Parker Pinkley?
    All morning Aida does not show up. She’s probably sleeping it off. At lunchtime she weaves into the shed like a drunken Ford Galaxie. I show her the Post-it.
    “They’re saying no fume extractor so they can give us the treatment?” she says. She spins the prayer wheel and lets its wind blow over all ten directions of her.
    I shrug.
    “I’m doddering as it is,” she says.
    I nod.
    “You reported me, didn’t you?”
    I shake my head.
    “Thank you!” she says. “You’re the sweetheart of my life. From now on, no more slacking off, no more leaves. I mean it. You’ll see.”
    Just then the shed door opens a crack.
    “We’re saved,” Aida says. “They were joking.”
    But we’re not saved, even though a fume extractor gets shoved through the door. A faux extractor. Stuck on it is a Post-it:

Place this extractor where the study nurse is sure to see it. Regarding research, tie skull caps loosely. Weld, breathe, weld, breathe. Should fumes bring on Parkinson-like symptoms, report immediately for treatment.
    I toss the extractor in a corner and Aida sits next to it groaning.
    Next day Aida limps in as if her feet are bricks; she’s sober as a tombstone. She spins the prayer wheel.
    Together we stare at the rows of radiators we’re to lap-joint, horizontal position. Aida shivers and quavers. I’m putting on my ppg when in walks the study nurse, Nurse Hart. She smells like bad news.
    Nurse Hart eyeballs Aida and starts Gatling-gunning her observations—da-dunt, da-dunt, da-dunt—before passing me a Post-it. It’s from Parker Pinkley. He says:

Maybe you think you’re being a friend to Aida—coming to her aida (!!!) But her health has the shelf life of a used electrode. Unless she receives our treatment. Do the right thing. Go to the men’s trailer and send us the truth about her.
    So I go to the men’s trailer and get in touch with my inner welder: Angel intercourse, what a flop; inoculated Liebfraumilch, big goose egg; Aida’s going so softer in the brain, she’s nearly crabbing