Free Rundown by Michael Cadnum Page B

DaGama.
    Byron yawned.
    â€œThis is very good!” said Mr. DaGama. “A yawn is a sign of normal sleepiness!”
    This seemed to me like a slim reason for celebration, but I went out into the shop to tell Marta that Byron was yawning. Marta was stuffing sprays of millet seed into a paper bag.
    I wanted to avoid Mr. DaGama for a little while. He had been stern with people since hearing about the attack on me the day before, although pointedly kind to me. He told me to take all the breaks I needed, and moved a chair into the back room in case I felt like sitting down. But even dogs brought in for a shampoo and trim sensed his mood, nervously quiet as he gave them a pat on the head.
    â€œThat’s progress,” Marta was saying. “Byron is doing better.”
    Millet is a pretty seed. It grows on stalks like plumes of grain, amber yellow. The trouble is that seeds fall off the stalk every time you touch it, so preparing a package of millet stalks takes care.
    I helped Marta, bundling the stalks, running tape around the protruding stems, $1.49 per package, a good buy. All the Amazon family of parrots love it, eating the seeds with avid expressions.
    â€œMom says any time you want to dive Monterey she’ll pack the wet suits,” said Marta. “Tomorrow, or next week, any time you feel the need.”
    I could use a dive now, the growing pressure of the deep water in my ears, sunlight falling upward as I sank.
    Sometimes when you bag up parrot seed—open a seventy-five pound wholesale sack, and weigh it out into smaller quantities—you run across moths. The insects live and breed in the big bags of dried corn kernels and pumpkin seed. I hate to kill them, and so does Marta, so we let them drift upward, gray fluttery creatures.
    I didn’t tell her I had talked to Quinn.

Chapter 15
    I like the fragrance of the Hair Now! shampoo doctored to smell like papaya or coconut. Even the chemical-warfare scent of dye and hair-straighteners smells fresh and clean to me.
    Some haircutters engage in talk, gesturing with their scissors, agreeing with their clients, nice to see the sun, we sure need this rain. Paula cuts and observes, saying little. I sat obediently in her padded chair, and she didn’t say anything, surveying my image in the mirror. She waits before she goes to work, a sculptor studying the clay.
    She lifted up various portions of my tresses and said, “How long since you were here?”
    â€œTwo months?” It had been three, at least. I never get it very short, just freshen up the ends and let it be.
    She pinched bird fluff off the back of my head and held it up.
    I told her I was in a little bit of a hurry, a luncheon date, actually saying the word “luncheon,” like I would be wearing white gloves.
    â€œOh, one of those,” said Paula, tilting back her head to study my follicles through her reading glasses.
    I tilted back in the shampoo chair, and she said, “A little more,” tilted farther, and she said, “More,” and at last, “I thought you were in a hurry.” I was all the way back, and stared up at the black blades of the ceiling fan. I can never fit my neck in the right way into the crescent in the sink.
    The scissors sounded loud, right next to my ear, an unsettling hush hush of steel blades, and by the time Paula was done, snips of my hair were all over the shiny tile floor.
    I sprinted, fast even for me, but an unfamiliar red car was already parked in the driveway. This strange auto looked rakish and dangerous, the kind of car a cop is always pulling over.
    He was in the kitchen. I took my time in the hall, listening to him talk about tomatoes. They were growing some in their back yard, he was saying, fertilizer mixed in with desert sand.
    â€œI want Mr. Thayer to let me grow tomatoes,” said Bernice. “All these flowers—what good are they? Try to eat a hydrangea.”
    Quinn tried to avoid argument, but I could