Traps Read Online Free Page B

printed directions to the chapel in San Marino where she will meet Ian after work. She will tell him in the parking lot in case he does not want her to stay. She adds this to the stack, and fits all of it neatly into a large flat pocket at the back of her backpack.
    Then Dana irons her dress, setting up the board and iron in the center of her living room and doing a good job, taking care at the seams not to make the cloth pucker, and she zips it back into the clear bag and hangs it again in her closet.
    When she slips into bed she is wearing just plain cotton underpants and a long white T-shirt. A black sleep mask and a pair of earplugs lie on the nightstand at the base of the lamp. She twists a switch to lower the light to a cavelike dimness, and she presses a button on her iPod, and the man’s voice is so soft and gentle it is almost shaky. There are long pauses, a minute or more, between the things he says.
    “First, lie on your back with your arms and legs at a distance from each other that allows you to relax them completely.…”
    “Notice if you are holding any tension anywhere else in your body.…”
    “Notice your jaw.…”
    “Notice your tongue.…”
    During the pauses there is only her breathing, and the distracting bass thumping from Ian’s party, but lying there in the orderly dim, centered on the big bed beneath the print of triangle tiles that waver and change into birds, Dana ignores the backbeat and follows her plan.

2

Old Dogs

    S ix miles from Dana’s apartment, a second woman stands shoulder to shoulder with her husband at the kitchen sink, setting down a bread plate for him to wash. He reaches around to press a hand to the side of her head and pull her in and kiss her above the ear, on her dark golden hair. Then she walks to the table to get more. Cut strawberries and a wooden bowl of salad and the last of the salmon steaks he’d made. Two mugs of milk half empty. Two glasses of wine. Their kitchen is big—with a butcher-block island and a clay pizza oven—but so clotted with clutter it does not seem so. On the windowsill an avocado pit balances over a coffee mug next to a wilting Chia pet in the shape of Shrek’s head. On the floor three hairy dog beds and stainless-steel water bowls flank a milk crate of wheels and popsicle sticks and doll arms marked “Broken Things.” On a wall of shelves, picture books have been crammed in at every odd angle, and a clear bin of toys bears a stuffed elephant, a Mrs. Potato Head, and an Oscar statuette in a Barbie dress. And here on the counter, lying still and small and seemingly harmless among the dirty dinner plates and the unfinished homework assignments and the baskets of dog medication and overripe fruit, is a cell phone this woman looks at each time she passes to and from the sink. When she has cleared thewhole table—when she is passing back with a yellow sponge to work at the drips of ketchup and coins of carrot on the vinyl bench cushion—it rings.
    Her husband looks at her. She is kneeling on the bench, not looking up from her work, a beautiful woman in a bulky sweatshirt and threadbare man’s slippers with a face contorted by sorrow and tension. This is Jessica. She lets the phone ring, and he steps to the counter and glances at the number flashing in the display—a number with a 702 area code. She is pinching up the carrot pieces with her fingers, and when she backs off the bench, he sees that her eyes are welling.
    He says, “Don’t forget why you’re doing it.”
    It stops then, and she crosses to dump the carrot pieces in the sink. He kisses her again on the hair just as two dark-haired girls enter the kitchen in matching pajamas. The younger one wears a pair of sparkly red party shoes, and she has a stuffed dog tucked under her arm. Each of her steps leaves behind a ghost of glitter on the Mexican tile.
    Jessica wipes under her eyes with thumb and forefinger before she turns to them.
    “Guess what I have for