C4 antho - Chamber Four

The Next Thing on Benefit
_____________________
by Castle Freeman, Jr.
from The New England Review
When the police in Miami―if police is what they
were―asked Sharon how long she had been on Benefit Island,
she found she didn’t know for sure.
“Three days?” she said. “Four days? A week? Not more
than a week.”
When they showed her a log of some kind from the base
at San Juan that had her party cleared through there in early
February, she said, “Oh.”
They had her. They had her, but they didn’t seem to want
her. They didn’t seem to care much about the little she had to
tell them. When they asked her how she knew the man she
had been on the island with, she told them, through her
work. When they asked her what that work was, and she answered
physical therapist, they looked at her. They looked at
her, but they didn’t seem to care much about that, either.
They didn’t keep her long. Patrick had said they
wouldn’t, and they didn’t. She was with them for half an
hour. Then they drove her to the airport and put her on a
flight to Newark. She had no ticket, no reservation, no bags,
no money. Nothing was asked for. Patrick hadn’t said anything
about that. Can the police do that? The police of what?
* * * *
Duncan Munro did not at first look to Sharon like the
next thing. “Duncan’s a trip,” her friend Wanda told her