Free Little Blue Lies by Chris Lynch Page B

heavier than what hangs around my house.
    I am sweating and breathing heavily as I reach the corner shop where she works. That is due to the exertion of getting myself here without wasting a single second more, but I’d be sweating and hyperventilating even if somebody’d hauled me in a rickshaw.
    I really need to see her.
    I burst through the big glass door with all the gusto of an armed robber.
    â€œDammit hell, O!” Junie shouts when she realizes she is not being robbed.
    â€œWell, dammit hello to you, too,” I say, and I know I am being maybe a tad too wise guy for the level of her actual fright, but I cannot contain myself. I would bet my heart is pounding two-to-one against hers, I am so ridiculously pumped to see her.
    There is nobody else in the small shop at the moment, and it feels very much like old times as I walk up to the counter and reach over to put my hand on her hand.
    It is very much new times when she says flatly, “What are you doing here?”
    â€œI came to see you,” I say helpfully.
    â€œBut why would . . . ,” she says, then switches directions as she scans up at my current look. “What’s going on with your head?” she says, bursting out laughing.
    I reach up to the spot she appears to be focused on, the side of my head that just got groomed.
    â€œOh,” I say, “I was just at Santo’s.”
    â€œI guess nobody ever told Santo not to run with those scissors, because he appears to have put one of his eyes out.”
    â€œHa. Jeez, I missed you. Where you been?”
    â€œAre you telling me that’s an actual haircut? My god, what did I do to you when I dumped you?”
    I am so easily wounded. I hate, damn, hate that I am so easily wounded.
    â€œDon’t say that, huh, Junie?”
    â€œSorry, O.” She pauses, looking at me apprehensively. “You mean about the dumping, or the stupid haircut?”
    â€œAh, the dumping.”
    â€œCool. So, what about the hair?”
    â€œThe hair is because I jumped right out of Santo’s chair when I heard you were here. Couldn’t even wait to get finished—”
    â€œI hear he takes a long time.”
    â€œCripes, it’s endless. So I couldn’t wait once I heard.”
    â€œWhat’s the big deal? This is where I work. I’m here a lot.”
    â€œWell, your father told me that—”
    â€œThat scuzzbag.”
    â€œIndeed, that scuzzbag.”
    â€œWhat did he tell you?”
    â€œThat you were here.”
    â€œOkay. Once again, not headline news, O.”
    â€œWell, it was after all the other stuff he said.”
    She waits, but not long.
    â€œOkay, Oliver ? I don’t know which is bothering me more right now, that haircut or the maddening way you are telling me details, but one way or another I am going to take a pair of scissors to your head if you don’t get to it.”
    I take a deep breath. I’m sure, subconsciously, I was talking so roundabout because I didn’t really want to repeatwhat the scuzz was saying, as I am ordinarily fairly straightforward. I exhale.
    â€œHe said you were having sex with a basketball team.”
    She stares at me, completely coldly.
    â€œDid he say which team?”
    I stare at her, completely coldly.
    â€œDon’t be a numbnuts, O.”
    I nod frantically. “Right, right, sorry.” I try to be all cool now. “So, that means you didn’t, right?”
    She stops even looking at me. She walks around from behind the counter, goes to a hanging display, a panel on the wall that holds an array of household items like nail clippers and sewing stuff, the kind of things you would always buy at a big normal store unless you had an emergency, in which case you get them at a place like this. She pulls down a pair of grooming shears and rips the package right open.
    â€œRight, you,” she says, and she presses the point of the shears into my cheek