Honeydew: Stories

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Tenderfoot was a pedicure parlor on Main Street near Channing. Two reclining chairs — usually only one was in use — faced the street through a large plate-glass window. And so customers, alone with Paige, got a kind of public privacy — anybody could see them, no one but Paige could hear them. Paige was an expert listener — rarely commenting on what she heard, never repeating it.

She was a widow, forty-nine and childless. She lived behind and above her store. She played poker with five other women every Saturday night. They called one another by their last names and smoked cigars. She had lost her husband, a talented mechanic, to the war. Carl was in favor of the war, more or less; but he’d joined up mainly to get further mechanical training at the military’s expense. She’d objected to his risking their joint future, their happiness…but she’d let the argument drop. The Marines took him despite his age. And then, three days into the desert, the tank he was riding met a mine. Each of his parts was severed from the others, and his whole — his former whole — was severed from Paige.

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