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a fingertip over her arm and saw it was a nice blush effect. Nadia knew it was for tonight when some guys from the office were coming over; it was Old Movie Night and the television would treat the populace to the story of the beginning of the Urban Wars, Dr. Strangelove, and it would be nice to have a social life, wouldn’t it? After their childhood of fright and terror and midnight arrests, just to have a damned social life? Widdy said, Leave it alone, Nadia, please?
    Nadia said, Were there other messages from Anna?
    Widdy set the saucepan on the table. One. We tore it up. Widdy’s face became stiff with guilt.
    Well, rot in hell! said Nadia. She slammed her hand on the table.
    And there was another about old man Kenobi. Widdy washed her hands at the sink. Nadia stared at her. Yes, where he was or was buried. Leave it alone, Nadia. I tore it up.
    Josie smirked. She took the label from Nadia and struck a match and set it on fire.
    N adia took hold of the cart handles and started her rounds: the pens, paper, joke books, copies of the Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary, and mail packets from the courier . She carried a deep, fatalistic knowledge that she would continue on this downward slide until she hit bottom. An eventless place without joy. The cactus farms.
    Nadia hid food and never signed anything. She had an escape kit prepared in case Josie ratted on her or the oversupervisor decided to drop her, Nadia, down the memory hole. She kept a copy of the Girl Scout Handbook, 1957 edition, in her large tote purse along with copies of her favorite poems. She had a Day-Glo pink feather duster and a heavy piece of tapestry-like material. Also a little sewing kit in a metal cough-drop box that held needles, thread, and the silver St. Jude dangle. She collected old dimes and quarters because she would have to pay for things on the street. She went without things like new shoes but she carried the tote bag with her every day to the office and wore her garnet earrings. She had thrown away her youth in a brainless affair. Thin Sam Kenobi had been right.
    Tucked in her tote was the last note that the Class Two adjective adviser to the assistant secretary for Cactea Opuntia Processing’s PR group, Earl Jay Warren, had written her.
    We can’t go on like this, the note said. He was apparently unaware that this had been said before. My wife knows. Ditto . She will destroy you. I have to try to repair what is left of my marriage but I will never forget you and your bubbly personality and your little cart. Likewise our romantic rooftop meetings. Be who you are and the city will love you as I always will from an official distance. In the meantime you had best apply for relocation or she will send you to the dryers. Love is a many splendid thing and fades like the waning moon. May fortune guide you.
    Nadia wadded the note. No point in keeping it, a reminder of grimy tar on a rooftop and a wilted secret flower on her desk like a snigger. He said he and his wife were separated but they were not . Why was the world so full of liars? Why did she always believe them?
    Nadia passed by Oversupervisor Blanche Warren’s office. The woman looked up with grief and pain in her face and tears in her eyes. A personal fan ripped at the papers on her desk in a way that made it seem that nothing ever written on any sheet of paper mattered anymore, nothing mattered when married love was destroyed, torn to pieces. And here was the guilty Jezebel, the vandal, passing by her door pushing a cart and looking completely normal. The city dying of thirst. What do a lot of stupid papers mean? What do these black marks mean? The criminal must die.
    You Jezebel, said Oversupervisor Blanche Warren. You vile dirty bitch.
    Nadia hurried on down the hall.

 
    Chapter 7
    O ne day in September when García Lorca and Blasco Ibáñez and other Spaniards would have been on Big Radio, Nadia saw the water in her water jug shivering in rings. This only happened