A leg. A head.
She was beaten, bruised, eyes swollen and two teeth missing, ear torn,
hair caked with blood. Her beautiful head fell from his shaking cold
hands. He didn't want to dig anymore, but he had to, because it was the
secret, and it had to be kept, and --
-- he buried her in Caleb, piled dirt grass snow on her parts, and his
eyes were dry and he didn't sob.
#
It was a long autumn and a long winter and a long spring that year,
unwiring the Market. Alan fell into the familiar rhythm of the work of a
new venture, rising early, dossing late, always doing two or three
things at once: setting up meetings, sweet-talking merchants, debugging
his process on the fly.
His first victory came from the Greek, who was no pushover. The man was
over seventy, and had been pouring lethal coffee and cheap beer down the
throats of Kensington's hipsters for decades and had steadfastly refused
every single crackpot scheme hatched by his customers.
"Larry," Andy said, "I have a proposal for you and you're going to hate
it."
"I hate it already," the Greek said. His dapper little mustache
twitched. It was not even seven a.m. yet, and the Greek was tinkering
with the guts of his espresso delivery system, making it emit loud
hisses and tossing out evil congealed masses of sin-black coffee
grounds.
"What if I told you it wouldn't cost you anything?"
"Maybe I'd hate it a little less.
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