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from becoming constantly contaminated with vomit, but since the fundoplication surgery she could only dry-heave, and Flicka had been letting it grow out. “There’s a girl with a little faith!”
    “But what would he do?” Carol pressed. “Make clever water fountains for the Third World? Shep’s not the kind of man to be happy lying around in a hammock.”
    “Maybe not fountains, but, hell, he could dig wells. Shep’s useful . He can’t help it. If I was living in a little mud hut, he’s the guy I’d want for a next-door neighbor.”
    “Flicka, get away from the stove!”
    “I’m nowhere near the damn stove,” said Flicka in her usual slurred deadpan. She always sounded not only adenoidal but slightly drunk, like Stephen Hawking after a bottle of Wild Turkey. She also sounded surly, and that part was real. It was one of the things that Jackson adored about her. She refused to play the sunny, chin-up disabled kid who lit up everybody’s day with her amazing pluck.
    “Cut it out!” said Carol, removing the paring knife from Flicka’s hand and slamming it back on the counter.
    Flicka lurched back to the table with a gait that most people considered awkward but that Jackson always found strangely graceful: her trunk slopping to one side and then the other, while her hands compensated with an elegant little flail, feet placed carefully heel to toe as if walking a tightrope. “Whadda ya think,” she said. “I’m gonna lop my fingers into the salad ’cause I mistook them for little carrots?”
    “That’s not funny,” said Carol.
    It wasn’t funny. When Flicka was nine, she’d tried to help out by making coleslaw, and it was only due to the fact that the cabbage had changed varieties—from green to red—that Jackson had noticed the end of her left forefinger was missing. They’d sewn it back on in the ER, but he’d never been able to stomach coleslaw since. Maybe it seemed a mercy that your kid’s limbs were so insensitive to pain that stitches required no local anesthetic, but when he forced his co-workers to really think about it, they blanched. Some of these kids, he’d explain, can break a leg, drag it behind them for blocks, and only notice something’s wrong because it keeps getting in the way. For Flicka, of course, banging into things and bleeding everywhere was purely an annoyance, along the lines of tearing a hole in a bag of rice and having to sweep up the floor.
    “I’ve never understood why you seem so eager for Shep to leave the country,” Carol resumed. “He’s your best friend. Wouldn’t you miss him?”
    “Sure, babe. I’ll miss him like a son of a bitch.” Jackson grabbed himself a beer, reflecting that one thing he would not miss would be defending Shep to all the doubting Thomases at Knack. (The company was still Knack of All Trades to Jackson, whatever embarrassing, cheesy, goofball name that fat prick wanted to call it.) Maybe he should have waited until Shep was on the plane, but he hadn’t been able to contain himself after lunch today when the website designer made another snide remark. So it was with enormous satisfaction that Jackson had announced, no, actually, Shep had already bought the ticket, loser , and would never see the inside of this overheated office as of this very afternoon. That had shut up the cretin pronto. Besides, he hadn’t introduced the idea to Carol yet, but he had a notion that they could visit when Shep had had a chance to establish himself. In fact, though it wasn’t a picture he was willing to confront yet, he’d a hazier notion of taking his family and joining the guy in Pemba for keeps. Obviously, Carol wouldn’t think about it now, but there was looming on the horizon a dark time when a change of scene could be therapeutic.
    “Still, somebody’s gotta be able to get out of here, to do better than this, right?” he continued after a slug, putting his feet up. “Jesus, let the immigrants have it. I love the idea of the whole