If someone wanted a doll right away, she’d offer the old rag dolls.

 

 Most times, the detective said he’d wait.

 

 All this flood of new cases, but nobody submitted a single new case file to her.

 

 For almost that whole month, Cora only saw the boy and girl for a moment, only long enough to hand them over to the next detective. Then the next. And the next. And it was never clear who did what, but the little girl arrived and departed, one day with her ears pierced, then her belly button, then wearing lipstick, then reeking with perfume. The boy arrived, at some point, tattooed. A chain of thorns around his little calf muscle. At another point, with his nipples pierced by little silver rings. Then his penis. At some point, his blond hair smelling sour.

 

 Smelling like marigold flowers.

 

 Like the bags of marijuana in the evidence room. That room full of guns and knives. The bags of marijuana and cocaine that always weighed a little less than they should have. The evidence room always the next stop for a detective after he checked out one of the dolls. The girl tucked under one arm, he’d be fumbling with a bag of evidence. Tucking something into his pocket.

 

 In the director’s office, Cora showed the expense receipts that detectives would submit for reimbursement. One receipt for a hotel room, the same night the detective had taken the girl home for an interview the next morning. The hotel room was a stakeout, the detective had said. Another detective the next night, the girl again, one hotel room, one room-service meal. An adult movie ordered on the television. Another stakeout, he said.

 

 Director Sedlak had just looked at her. Cora standing there, leaning over the director’s wooden desk, shaking so hard the receipts fluttered in Cora’s fist.

 

 The director just looked at her and said, “What’s your point?”

 

 It was obvious, Cora said.

 

 And, sitting behind her wooden desk, the director just laughed and laughed.

 

 She said, “Consider this tit for tat.”

 

 “All those women,” the director says, “all chanting and protesting againstHustlermagazine, saying porno turns a woman into an object . . . Well,” she says, “what do you think a dildo is? Or donor sperm from some clinic?”

 

 Some men may only want pictures of naked women. But some women only want a man’s dick. Or his sperm. Or his money.

 

 Both sexes have the same problem with intimacy.

 

 “Stop fussing about some damned rubber dolls,” Director Sedlak told Cora. “If you’re jealous, go out and buy yourself a nice vibrator.”

 

 Again, it’s what human beings do . . .

 

 Nobody could see where this was headed.

 

 That same day, Cora went to lunch and bought some Superglue.

 

 And the next go-round, when the dolls came back to her, before she handed them off to another man, Cora squeezed Superglue inside the girl’s vagina. Inside both the kids’ mouths, sealing their tongue to the roof of their mouth. To seal their lips together. Then she squeezed glue inside them both, in back, to weld their butts shut. To save them.

 

 Still, the next day, a detective was asking: Did Cora have a razor blade he could use? An X-Acto knife? A switchblade?

 

 And when she asked, Why? What did he need it for?

 

 Then he says, “Nothing. Never mind. I’ll find something in the evidence room.”

 

 And the next day, the girl and boy were both cut open, still soft but covered with scars. Carved open. Dug out. Still smelling like glue, but more and more smelling like the ooze inside Breather Betty at home, leaking spots on Cora’s sofa.

 

 Those spots, Cora’s cat would sniff at for hours. Not lick, but sniff like Superglue. Or evidence-room cocaine.