Free Goody One Shoe by Julie Frayn Page B

the counter, raced to the
window and threw it open. She leaned out into the fresh morning air, her heart
hammering and her legs unsteady.
    Bruce’s face jumped into her mind, layered overtop the
description the news anchor gave of the castrator. Could he be behind this? Was
he living up to his namesake. Was he … Batman?
    Laughter shook Billie’s breasts. She wiped her brow with
trembling fingers and shook her head.
    Get a grip. Editing the news for proper justice was one
thing. But maybe she’d better stay in the shallow end of the fantasy pool, not
dive into the deep end and drown.

Wednesday
    THE SUBWAY CAR CAME to a
jerking halt. Billie scanned the platform for high school thugs, but not a one
darkened the station. Perhaps they chose to walk to avoid running into Bruce.
She grinned at the image of him in her head. Her own personal hero. Even if he
did only save her once. And he would have done it for anyone. It wasn’t as if
he liked her or anything. How could he? Plain, boring, dismembered Billie.
She’d probably never even see him again.
    She pulled the newspaper into her lap and stared at the
headline, read the article about the fate of those damn clowns for the eighth
time. Her fingers itched to pull out her pen and fix the sloppy writing,
elevate the grade level. But the outcome, the ending, this time, was like Baby
Bear’s bed. It was just right. Those clowns would never harm another child.
    The plastic seat jolted and creaked with the weight of
another passenger’s butt. All those empty seats and the idiot has to sit right
beside her?
    “Hey, I read that this morning.” A thick finger poked at her
newspaper.
    She held her breath at the rumble of bass vocals and did
something she always tried to avoid. Made eye contact.
    “Morning, Billie.” Bruce’s wide grin exposed a
mostly-gleaming set of teeth with some evidence of years of smoking — evidence
she could smell in his clothes. The crowded ivories on the bottom of his mouth
were crooked. Perhaps his parents could never afford dental work. She ran a
tongue over her own cramped teeth.
    “Good morning.” She looked at her lap, unable to hold his
blatant stare, to return his gregarious smile.
    He tapped the paper. “A little crazy, hey?”
    She shrugged. “How so?”
    He leaned his head next to hers, his wiry curls brushing
against the smooth surface of the hair at her temple, pulled tight into a bun
and sprayed smooth. She sniffed a slow, deep breath. His subtle cologne found
its way past the cigarette smoke and filled her head. Was that … British
Sterling? No, her mind was playing tricks on her. Did they even make that
anymore?
    His warm breath kissed her cheek. “Because they were
castrated,” he whispered.
    Her knees went cold and her stomach hollowed.
    “It’s just like you wrote. Like your edits. Wild, right?” He
sat up straight and extended an arm across the back of her seat. The warm
pocket of air he’d created between them cooled.
    “I guess it’s a little wild.” She’d never described anything
she’d done as wild before. “But,” she dropped her chin and twisted her head to
look back at him. “Just coincidence.” She focused on his face, on any cues to
his involvement. Any twitch of his eye or clench of his jaw. “Right? Just
coincidence?”
    He let out a guffaw. “Well yeah, unless by night you’re some
editing vigilante, righting wrongs that the justice system couldn’t. Fixing the
cops’ fuck-ups.” He put his other hand over his mouth. “Sorry. That was rude.”
    She grinned. Her, a vigilante. That’s a stretch. But at
least he didn’t seem to know about it. Just a coincidence. But a damn freaky
one.
    “So, I was wondering.” Bruce leaned forward and put his
forearms on his thighs, rocked on his toes. “Maybe one night, you and me.” He
leaned back and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe we could go
to dinner or something. Maybe a movie?”
    Billie stared at him. What kind of mean joke was