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 nevitably, grocery
day rolled around. Henry's nagging reached a crescendo. Edna had stopped
speaking to him altogether but he was undeterred. Without agreeing to
anything, she got in the car and backed it around to leave. When she turned
her head to watch behind her, she saw Henry's manila envelope on the back
seat.
On the way to the store, she had to
drop her younger cat at the vet to be spayed. The kitty kept up a stream
of deep mournful meows all the way to town. Edna meowed back sympathetically.
At the vets she had to wait for a few minutes, surrounded by people cuddling
their unhappy pets and whispering assurances in their ears.
The grocery store was packed. Nobody
spoke to her but there was lots of tricky cart navigation and evil stares
between shoppers. To Edna's extreme consternation, on aisle twenty-five,
she saw the woman in the photograph that she had guessed was the wife.
The lady was restocking the canned cat food section. Her hair was different,
but it was definitely the same person. She was about five feet four inches
tall, slightly overweight and had graying hair. Her face was attractive
and she looked intelligent and friendly. In the photo she had shoulder
length hair; now it was very short.
Edna went by her without stopping.
She finished filling her shopping cart, but then rolled back against the
tide of shoppers to get another look at her. The woman came out of the
aisle, almost bumping into her, and went towards the restrooms. Edna was
fascinated by her; she was surprised by the intensity of her curiosity.
She followed her into the Ladys' Room. When the woman came out of her
stall and was washing her hands, Edna smiled at her in the mirror and
nodded to her, washing her own hands.
“I am supposed to be looking for you.”
The woman stood very still, holding
her soapy hands out of the water. She looked right at Edna. Her face was
white, but her expression was defiant. Then she laughed and continued
washing. “Well, I guess you found me.”
“You know who sent me?”
“Do you know who sent
you?”
“Some very small, very strange little
creatures that look like they escaped from a ‘B’ sci-fi movie?”
She made a wry face, shaking her head
and ripped off a handful of paper towels. “We need to talk. Let's
go over to the coffee shop.”
“Isn't it risky for you to be seen
with me? I won't tell them I saw you.”
“They want you to believe they have
an eye on you but they're not in this busy store. They may be up in the
ceiling and down in the city's drainage pipes, but they can't keep track
of you in this crowd. They're scared to death of humans.”
 ushing her cart,
Edna followed the woman. She had difficulty keeping up, weaving through
the river of shoppers. At the coffee shop, which adjoined the bakery,
Edna got coffee and her companion got coffee and a bagel. The lady running
the cash register was so enormously fat that her arms could barely reach
the keys.
The two women found a booth on the
side of the shop adjoining the grocery aisles. Edna wanted to keep an
eye on her cart. Alice sat opposite her with her back to the shoppers.
As soon as they were seated, Edna extended her hand. “I'm Edna.”
“Please don't touch me. No offense.
My name is Alice.” She smiled as she spoke but she was staring at
Edna's hand and did not relax until it was withdrawn.
After a moment of silence, Alice asked
what Edna had been told about her. She was interested that they had admitted
that they wanted to kill her. “Did they tell you why?”
“You killed one of them.”
“Yes, I did. One of the more satisfying
moments of my life.”
“They murdered your husband?”
“They did me a favor. The jerk deserved
to die, although being fried to death may have been excessive.”
Edna raised her eyebrows.
“Louis, that was my husband, was a
total asshole. His other three wives will tell you the same thing. But
I need to tell you the whole story from the beginning.”
She ate as she talked. Then she smoked
one cigarette after another. It was a long story.
cont. on page eighteen
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ut
she didn't think about it. She vacuumed the house and