Free The Longest Night by Andria Williams Page B

without a thought in your head, flashing your muff to the milkman.”
    There was a sharp crack as Jeannie’s hand flew, leaving a bright pink starfish on Mitch’s cheek.
    For a moment Mitch stood, staring. Then he clasped the side of his face in his hand. “Goddamn, what in the hell, woman?”
    Nat thought the slap might have been a sort of defense of womankind but Jeannie, shaking out her fingers, stepped back. “I am
not
like other women,” she said.
    She pivoted on her heel and suddenly Nat was square in her line of sight. “Oh!” Jeannie said, with a jump. Mitch turned his head. His eyes widened. Nat felt like a searchlight had just swung to her.
    “I didn’t know anyone was there,” Jeannie cried, for a split second losing her composure.
    “Nat Collier?” Mitch said.
    “I’m so sorry,” Nat stammered. “We were just out on a walk, and we heard shouting, and—”
    “How long have you
been
there?” He scrutinized Nat. “Did you get kicked out of your house?”
    “We were on a walk. I’m so sorry. Girls, let’s go.” Nat reached for her daughters’ hands. The girls, who if you asked them to could not stop wiggling for thirty seconds, had managed to stand motionless, riveted, during the entire exchange.
    Jeannie popped open her clutch, removed a flat gold cigarette case, and delicately plucked out a cigarette, lighting it with her purse tucked under her elbow. Eyeing Mitch and then Nat, she exhaled a cloud of disdain. She held her cigarette to the side of her face. “I see you’ve found a favorite dress, Nat,” she said.
    It took Nat a moment to understand Jeannie’s barb. Jeannie was insulting her for wearing the same dress she’d had on yesterday. How had she even noticed, in the heat of an argument with her husband? She was one of those women, Nat guessed, whose calculating mind was always at work on others of her sex, detecting their weaknesses like a mine-sniffing German shepherd.
    It was terrible and awesome to have seen Jeannie Richards this way, like watching the wrath of a minor god. Nat’s heart pounded. She couldn’t help siding with her, just a little; Jeannie might be unstable but Mitch was a buffoon. The idea that Mitch was Paul’s supervisor, that
he
was the one to make judgment calls, felt too disheartening to be true.
If we can just survive this tour and make it out of here,
Paul had said last night,
that’ll be enough.
    She didn’t realize how fast she was striding, head down, gripping poor Liddie’s wrist as the child struggled to keep up, until she reached her front walk and Sam said, “Mama, look.” Nat lifted her head and saw a pair of crows pecking at some pink, limp item in their front yard.
    It took Nat several seconds of watching the birds—fighting over the glossy, rose-colored thing on the lawn as if it were a steak; the winner flying with it to a low branch and watching Nat with robotic jerks of its wedge-shaped head—to realize with a squeal that what they fought over were her missing underpants, which she must have left outside the night before and which now hung from the crow’s beak, flapping gently in the breeze.

S pecialist Franks loved the midday game shows. When their three-man crew worked days, they spent lunch hours with
Tic-Tac-Dough
. Today’s episode pitted a friendly looking banker against a heavy-browed former army captain who capitalized on his clout by wearing his full uniform and ribbons on the set.
    “Go army!” said Franks through a mouthful of food.
    “I don’t know,” said Webb. “I don’t like his looks.”
    “That’s ’cause you don’t have any respect.”
    “I do!” Webb said.
    Paul didn’t mind the game shows in general, but he disliked the thirty-second spells of watching men think, set to ominously tinkling music. There they stood, mere inches from one another behind their podiums, all their involuntary tics and mannerisms writ large for America to see: the clenched jaw, surrendering eye roll, squirming, shifting,