The Well II

II

Linda sat in the car watching the light fading in the corner of the windscreen. She switched the ignition off and listened to the engine ticking and cooling as she watched her friend disappear into the house. There was a cold feeling in her gut. Even as everything in the street buzzed and cracked under the oppressive heat of the vanishing afternoon. Night begining to descend like a warm blanket over the houses and trees and telephone wires.

She hoped Kate wouldnt be in there too long. Of course, she had been trying to get her to leave Terry for almost as long as they had been together. Even when things were really bad, like the time she had to go into hiding for a few weeks, it had been a task that Linda knew was going to be impossible. She always returned to him. For some reason, he was like the air she needed to breathe. To feel alive.

It was on this occasion, however, as she sat with her in the lunch room at work on Tuesday morning, while groups of tatooed men in white coats and steel capped boots filed in and out, and amidst the sound of conveyor belts and the smell of carcass, that Linda sensed a change in her friend. There was a small thumb shaped bruise on her wrist that kept drawing Lindas attention, like a birth mark. Kate seemed really shaken this time. Desperate.

There had been many more times before, when, Linda had been so abhored by it all, that she just wanted to stop caring. Kate seemed to have this wifllful determination to be hurt. Maybe even to die. She had wondered so many times if it were possible for light to be forced into Kates eyes. If tough love would really work. But each time she had sat with her at work, or in the car, or at some out of the way bar, or cafe, where he wouldnt think to look for her, Linda already knew that tough love was not what Kate needed. The bruises under her eye were evidence of that.