She lit all twenty tapers with a long match from the pickle-colored box she’d bought along with the rose and burgundy candles at that little Indian specialties store over on Jackson Street where the owner and her daughter, both petitely wrapped in filmy saris watched her every move each time she came in, as if she’d planned to use her bulky frame to wipe out the shelves of their little trinkets and treasures as she moved around the shop. She’d poke and pick at things with chubby dexterous fingers and brush dangerously close enough to walls and counters to set the endless displays of golden bells tinkling with her slow progress through the aisles. Marilyn loved to think they held their breath the whole half hour she’d spend there, grumpy when she would finally arrive at the register with one small purchase, and thus kill their hopes of righteous scorn in all their pinched and pouty looks of disdain.
It was New Year’s Eve and she was waiting for her lover.
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The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology