“Damn!”

I jumped when I heard Cindy’s cry, then I rushed to see what was the matter.

“Just a nick,” she said. “But I’m bleeding all over the carrots.” She sucked her finger.

“Special sauce?” I inquired. “May I have a taste?”

Cindy gave me one of those looks. “Do you have any Band-Aids?”

She let me help her put it on. “I used to really like Band-Aids as a kid,” I told her. “Not the Band-Aids so much as the slick flaps which covered the sticky part. We’d pretend they were money. Or tickets.”

“Parking tickets?”

“Airplane tickets,” I said. “To exotic places like Borneo and Idaho.”

“Mmm,” Cindy said.

“You mean you never played with Band-Aids?”

“Actually, I did,” Cindy said. “Once.”

“Once? What happened.”

Cindy laughed. I don’t know if I know you well enough to tell you.”

“Come on,” I pleaded.

But Cindy wouldn’t say. “So did you ever get to any of those exotic places?”

“How’s your cut?” I asked her a few days later. We were walking to a movie. “All better?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “No more Band-Aid.” She showed me her hand.

I took her finger. Brought it slowly to my mouth and kissed the pad. “Yup,” I said. “It tastes all healed.” I kissed it again and then I sucked it further in. “Mm,” I said. “Just the slightest flavor of carrot.”

We held hands all through the film. A Heart in Winter. “Did you like it?” I asked as we walked home.

“I don’t know,” Cindy said. “I liked the music.”

“Maybe next time we should go to a concert.”

“No, I liked it. Though a concert would be okay, too.”

We passed a small park. Children swinging. We held hands again as we watched them.

“I was about five,” Cindy said. “Five or six. I was playing with my best friend. Now I can’t even remember his name. Freddie. He had curly red hair. We played a lot together. This one time he had a box of Band-Aids.”

Cindy didn’t say anything. She just watched the kids swinging.

I was thinking about asking her what happened, but I knew that would be a mistake. I squeezed her hand.

“We fixed each other up.” Cindy said. “It was funny, really. He pasted Band-Aids on my nipples, and I pasted Band-Aids on his. We didn’t take them off. We were so proud of them.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Cindy said. “They’re still there.”

“Come on,” I said. “What happened? Something bad?”

“Sorta bad,” Cindy said. “At my bath that night my grandma found them. She was very upset. I tried to explain how Freddie had fixed me and I’d fixed him. She just got more upset. I’d never seen her like that. ‘You mustn’t ever!’ she said. ‘You’ll never be able to have babies, you do things like that. God will punish you.’ That’s what she said. ‘You’ll never be able to have babies. God will punish you.’ I believed her. For a long time I believed her.”