Dani’s hands are dirty. She digs in soil beneath the rose bushes in the condo’s community garden, ignoring Blake, who’s weeding next to her. She forgot her gloves, and her fingernails collect grime. She tries not to picture her nails raking Blake’s back just an hour before. The audacity, she thinks, trying to avoid other ‘A’ words that crowd her mind.
She’s still surprised she’s attracted to a man the same age as her father, a detail she’s concealed from him on their weekly calls. Another concealed detail: Blake is married. The disease Blake’s wife has: Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t absolve Dani, but she uses the knowledge to assuage her guilt.
Mrs Crandle, the condo association president, gives her a purse-lipped smile, and Dani nods, looks away. She imagines that everyone sees a scarlet ‘A’ emblazoned across her chest. She recalls the family-folklore her dad tells: how at age three she ate a little wooden ‘A’ tile from the Scrabble game. She wonders now if that incident branded her somehow, marked her as a future Adulteress.
A prickly weed pokes her finger and she yanks her hand upward, scraping it against the bush’s thorns. A line of red dots appears on her knuckles. Blake removes one glove, pulls a white handkerchief from his pocket, offers it to her, their arms brushing in the exchange. She pulls away as if her skin has been singed.
She remembers her highest scoring Scrabble word ever, during a game with her dad when she was younger: Vixen, the X on a triple letter, plus double word. She was so proud of herself, the word holding no meaning then other than Score!, a time when her plan didn’t include being a mistress, when all ‘A’ stood for was Apple.
