Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 20 Read Online Free PDF Page B

us unicorns. We will kick your ass.
    Dear Aunt Gwenda,
    My partner is considering a position at an educational institution (by choice, not judge-mandated) in another state. What special considerations should we take with our book collection?
    Yours,
    F.W.
    AG: Book collection? See, alarm bells start to go off immediately. Book “collections” make me nervous. What are you—the Vatican's secret agents? The rest of us just call them books. Cull the doubles and give them away. Pack the rest in boxes. As long as it's not a rogue state, you shouldn't have any trouble crossing the border with them.
    Dear Attorney General,
    How long, how long, can you hang on?
    AG: This is misaddressed. A hazard of initials. Aunt Gwenda will outlast Gonzalez and the cockroaches.
    Dear Aunt Gwenda,
    When the best fantasists in the world are in power in the USA, where does that leave a clean-living, story every week professional?
    AG: Oh, I hate you overly productive types.
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Under the Skin
    Steven Bratman
    Just as he took the casserole out of the oven, Scott heard his seven-year-old daughter Caitlin come hurrying across the deck, calling, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. He has horns. Big pink horns."
    She banged the door open, ran for the kitchen, and grabbed her father around the waist as he cast around anxiously for somewhere to set the hot pan. He found a place for it between the pot of boiling pasta and an empty pressure cooker and kneeled and stroked her hair. Caitlin's lips were purplish, her skin dusky.
    "Slow down,” he said. “Catch your breath."
    This could be it, he thought, the moment she pushes herself too hard and it happens.
    Caitlin pulled her head away, her round face more astonished than scared. “Daddy, that man—the one across from the Carsons, you know that strange guy, the one who never comes out of his house? Well he came out today while Laurel and I were playing house in the woods. There's great big horns coming out of his forehead, as big as my thumb. Bigger than my thumb."
    "Horns? What do you mean? Horns like a deer?"
    "No. Skin-color horns. Laurel says it's because he listens to the devil's music and it's the devil coming out in him."
    He gently patted his daughter's shoulder through the bright pink. “Laurel always talks about the devil. Remember when she said Carol and Judy were from the devil because they're lesbians? Then you met them, and they were perfectly nice?"
    "Yes. Well Judy, not Carol. But he does have horns, just like the devil."
    He wondered how Laurel's parents, Reverend Michael and his wife Jennifer, would deal with this. Not too well. “There isn't any such thing as the devil, Caitlin. Maybe it's under-the-skin jewelry?"
    She looked at him, wide eyed.
    "It's starting to get popular. You put a piece of metal or something under the skin and it makes a bulge."
    "Why?"
    "You have your ears pierced, don't you?” he said. He fingered the pink hearts in her earlobes. “It's the same idea. Though on the other hand, he might have cancer. Cancer can make things grow out of your skin."
    "What's cancer?"
    While he explained, her lips turned back to their usual healthy red. So it wouldn't happen right now, her impossibly deformed heart killing her. But soon. Maybe she would live a little longer if he forced her to stay in bed, if he didn't let her live the life of a little girl growing up in the woods. That's what her mother had insisted on, back before she divorced him and disappeared. But after Dawn left he'd decided that, even if Caitlin didn't have long to live, he'd allow her a full life for the time she had.
    The phone rang, and Jennifer's voice came on over the answering machine. Before she could get started Scott picked up and said, “Caitlin just told me. How about she sleeps over your house tonight, and I go down to talk to him? I'm thinking there's a logical explanation, like maybe skin cancer."
    Caitlin put her little hands around Scott's waist. “Don't go! What if he really