The Times Are Never So Bad by Andre Dubus

like in any other place. She fired, not trying to think cardboard , yielding to the target’s shape and going further, seeing it not as any man but Ray, so that now as holes appeared and her arm recoiled from the shots muted by cotton and she breathed the smell of gunpowder, and reloaded and fired seven more times and seven more, she saw him attacking her and falling, attacking her and falling, and she faced the target and aimed with both hands at head and throat and chest, and once heard, herself exhale: ‘ Yes .’
    Two weeks later her father brought her license home, but he had told her not to wait for it, no judge would send her to jail, knowing she had applied, and knowing why. So from that afternoon’s shooting on, she carried it everywhere: in her purse, jeans, shorts, beach bag, in her skirt pocket at work and on the car seat beside her as, at two in the morning, she drove home, where she put it in the drawer of her bedside table and left her windows open to the summer air. At Timmy’s on that sunlit afternoon in July she rested her hand on it, rubbed its handle under the soft leather of her purse. She knew she was probably drunk by police or medical standards, but not by her own. Her skin seemed thickened, so she could feel more sharply the leather and the pistol handle beneath it than her fingers themselves when she rubbed them together. For a good while she had been unaware of having legs and feet; her cheeks and lips were numb; sometimes she felt an elbow on the table, or the base of her spine, or her thighs when they pressed on the chair’s edge, then she shifted her weight. But she was not drunk because she knew she was: she knew her reflexes were too slow for driving, and she would have to concentrate to walk without weaving to the ladies’ room. She also knew that the monologue coming to her was true; they always were. She listened to what her mind told her when it was free of the flesh: sometimes after making love, or waking in the morning, or lying on the beach for those minutes before the sun warmed her to sleep, or when she had drunk enough, either alone or with someone who would listen with her; but for a long time there had been no one like that.
    Only three men were at the bar now. She brought her glass and ashtray to it, told Al to fill one and empty the other, and took two cocktail napkins. She paid and tipped, then sat at the table and wiped it dry with the napkins, and waited for Steve. At ten to five he came in, wearing a short-sleeved plaid shirt, his stomach not hanging but protruding over his jeans. Halfway to the bar he saw her watching him and smiled, his hand lifting. She waved him to her and looked at his narrow hips as he came.
    â€˜Steve? Can I talk to you a minute?’
    He glanced over her at the bar, said he was early, and sat. Even now in July, his arms and face looked newly sunburned, his hair and beard, which grew below his open collar, more golden.
    â€˜You’re one of those guys who look good everywhere,’ she said.
    â€˜Doing sports outside, drinking in a bar—you know what I mean? Like some guys look right for a bar, but you see them on a boat or something, and they look like somebody on vacation.’
    â€˜Some girls too.’
    She focused on his lips and teeth.
    â€˜You’re always smiling, Steve. Don’t you ever get down? I’ve never seen you down.’
    â€˜No time for it.’
    â€˜No time for it. What did you do today, with all your time?’
    â€˜Went out for cod this morning—’
    â€˜Did you catch any?’
    â€˜Six. Came back to the lake, charcoaled a couple of fillets, and crapped out in the hammock. What’s wrong—you down?’
    â€˜Me? No, I’m buzzed. But let me tell you: I’ve been thinking. I’m going to ask you a favor, and if it’s any kind of hassle , you say no, all right? But I think it might be good for both of us. Okay? But if it’s