Free When Watched by Leopoldine Core

felt to Frances like someone holding a dagger behind a curtain.
    â€œJust this drummer I like. He’s a great guy.”
    â€œWell he can get in line.”
    â€œWhat is that supposed to mean?”
    â€œYou think everyone’s great. And you want to have sex with everyone. Men included, apparently.”
    Frances opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself. It seemed like a lot of work.
    Peanut looked out at crowds of cows in a field. The sun was setting. There was a glare of pink light in the rearview mirror. “What did you want to do to him?” she asked, fascinated.
    â€œNothing. I don’t know. I was just curious. If I wasn’t with you I probably would have fooled around with him. He seemed interested too.”
    â€œDid you wish you weren’t with me at that moment?” Peanut asked sternly, panic flashing in her eyes. “I mean, did you fantasize?”
    â€œIt’s okay to fantasize. Are you saying you never fantasize?”
    â€œDid you kiss him?”
    â€œNo. Not really. I mean, it was a friendly goodbye kiss.”
    â€œNot really? Well it’s a good thing I ask you these questions because otherwise I wouldn’t have a fucking clue.” Peanutlooked fiercely at her legs. “You haven’t slept with a man in over twenty years.”
    â€œI didn’t want to sleep with him. It was just a vague sort of animal interest. I’m attracted to men all the time but I don’t want to see what they become in sex.” White headlights whooshed by. “I don’t want to be
feminine
,” Frances said firmly. “I don’t want to be the counterpart to their virility. I’d wind up feeling like some slain lamb.”
    Peanut laughed, surprising both of them.
    â€œI’m not kidding. I remember going to the butcher with my mom as a kid during the spring and seeing this skinned lamb in the window with an Easter lily in its mouth.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œIt was the early sixties.”
    â€œI know that.”
    Gram Parsons sang his last raspy heartsick song and the two didn’t talk. Frances seemed to be controlling the silence between them and this maddened Peanut. She faced the window and cried discreetly, then patted her face with her fist.
    Frances felt trapped in the car and wished she were home alone, away from Peanut, her vortex of need. She tunneled into herself and wrote a song.
She’s a little biting daisy, tipping into insanity from seventeen directions. Bite. Bite. Bite.
Frances strained to commit the words to memory, hating Peanut for having two free hands and not knowing how to drive.
    Soon they stopped at an Exxon gas station and went inside in silence, past glaring truckers with fat guts. Peanut bought a giant iced coffee and jalapeño potato chips. She walked back to the car in a huff and began eating the chips without pleasure, sipping coffee between bites.
    A tall man tapped on her window. It was open a crack andPeanut could hear him breathing. She looked up and a shrill, exhilarated look came across his face. He had a brown handlebar mustache and sunburned nose. Peanut looked away. The man was around Frances’s age, she guessed, though he had aged differently, with his craggy face and distended stomach. He was ugly.
    Previously, Peanut had considered people either young or old. If they were young, there were many stages to consider. But after fifty, she had never bothered to gauge one’s exact age. She said
Santa
. She said
old
and looked away. After meeting Frances, however, this snide disregard had veered into complete fascination. She fixated on everyone over fifty. She measured gradations of oldness, tracking them on the street. She would see a white-haired man straining to climb a step and want to know how old he was. She would want to ask. To say, “Please, sir, I need to know. Because whatever age you say, I’ll file it away and fear that year.” She also felt compelled to