He reached over my left shoulder, snatched the blanket off the scanner and stuffed it down into the gray plastic wastebasket next to the register.

“She isn’t buying one single thing,” David told Nancy.

“Give me the paper, David,” I said, turning around in the narrow lane to face him.

“Give me the paper and give me the pen.”

“You think you can drag me into some discount store on Highway Nine and make a fool of me?” he asked.

His cheeks went dark red, the smooth corporate calm he’d spent five years polishing falling apart right in front of the cashier.

He reached out, seized my left wrist and twisted my arm back until my fingers went numb.