Free Threshold by Caitlin R. Kiernan

headache afterwards. His father complaining about the bills the doctors sent when there was nothing even wrong with the kid, but no one asking Deacon about the keys again, and a month, two months, and the whole thing forgotten by Christmas.
    But that was the beginning, that’s where it started, not nearly as dramatic as the story about Davey Barber’s beagle puppy, nothing grisly or sad about lost car keys, and later everyone would always point back to the dead dog, never the sunny afternoon and the lost car keys.

    Five minutes left until Sheryl’s shift is over before anyone remembers that Deacon locked the door, convenient amnesia, and then a fist pounding hard on the glass, bang, bang, bang, and Deacon thinks maybe it’s the fat guy come back with the cops and so maybe he won’t have to go to work at the laundromat tonight after all. Sheryl glaring at the door and cursing Deacon, glancing up at the Budweiser clock over the bar and cursing because Bunky Tolbert is late again. She steps out from behind the counter and Deacon swivels on his stool, turns to face the door just in case it really is The Second Coming of the Fat Guy.
    “You locked the fucking door, Deke,” Sheryl says, then she yells at whoever it is outside to please stop banging on the glass, give her one second for Christ’s sake.
    “You ain’t heard nobody complaining,” Deacon says coolly.
    “You’re gonna get me fired, you asshole,” she snaps back, door open now, and it’s not the fat guy after all. Just Sadie in black polyester and the eyeliner she never bothers to wash off, easier just to put more on so she always looks a little like an anemic raccoon. Sadie Jasper, with her silver purse shaped like a coffin, and Deacon smiles for her, easy drunken smile, only a little disappointed that it isn’t Mr. Kill-All-The-Motherfuckers and he still has to go to work.
    “Hey babe,” he says, and Sadie sits down on the stool next to him, kisses Deacon on the cheek, and she smells like clove cigarettes and vanilla oil, comfortable, safe smells, and “You didn’t happen to see a really fat son of a bitch dead in the street out there, did you?” he asks her. Sadie stares at him with those eyes that still give him the willies every now and then, heavy-lidded and her pale, blue irises surrounded by all that smudged eyeliner and her coalblack hair.
    “No,” she replies. “But I wasn’t paying all that much attention,” deadpan solemn but enough of a smile that Deke can tell she knows he’s joking, and “More’s the pity,” he says and kisses her back, tastes her waxy black lipstick, and he can think of so many things he’d rather spend the night doing than watching Highland Avenue yuppies separate their whites from their colors.
    “You want anything, Sadie?” Sheryl asks, talking to Sadie but looking at the clock and she should have been out of here five minutes ago. Sadie scowls at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, squints hard at the long row of bottles lined up back there, all concentration like she ever orders anything different, and “I think I’ll have a White Russian, please,” she says, finally, and Deacon would bet ten dollars she’s never had anything else, that somewhere, sometime, a White Russian was Sadie’s first taste of alcohol and she’s never seen any point in trying anything different.
    Sadie opens her shiny coffin purse and digs out a wrinkled five, lays it on the counter while Sheryl adds vodka to ice cubes and half-and-half. “And give dumb-ass here another glass of that cow piss,” she says and grins at the bartender.
    “Jesus, it must be my goddamn birthday,” Deke says. “Two free beers in one afternoon,” and he finishes his PBR, sets the mug down and slides it towards Sheryl as she puts Sadie’s White Russian on a cocktail napkin with a flaming eight ball printed on one side.
    “No, just guilt money from home,” Sadie says and takes a mint-green slip of paper from her purse, a check with