Fiction

Welcome back. Kind blue light flushed the grey rags of morning. Strong, purposive light. Not a marketing tip, no service message. A customer reach, wedded to the a.m.

He examined his legs, slantways on the dull sheet. Essential to business, their definition assuring. He gripped the phone, terse in the stretch of his spine. He should fix that. Exercise. Warm-ups. It would take work.

A man wanted his windows clean. Fresh, to start the day. There was a chance of sun. Nothing said care, when the sun shone, like clean windows. The ladderman cooked bacon for breakfast. Folded in greased bread. He brewed coffee for now and enough for his jar. Store coffee dented the take. He wasn’t first or only at this. A hundred profiles drove a ladder. His username got recognition, his reviews – when people remembered – in the high points. But store coffee was slippage.

The vinyls on his truck promoted the app without suggesting a flesh connection. Task seekers were freelance. They owed the app. The app wasn’t liable. Their decals and materials should promote the app. But the app didn’t supervise nor guarantee. A self-regulating community. Reviews laid the pitch. His truck needed work. A rind of rust at the arches. A softness on the brake. A full overhaul cost more than pre-owned replacement. But then he’d need new vinyls. They stuck one time only. They couldn’t be lifted. A new truck meant a new plate, which went to verification. He might lose an hour’s work while it all went through. He idled each intersection, so drivers could scan the code. Sign ups from his code went to status. Medals stitched to his name.

Across four lanes they aimed their trucks at business. Plumbers, electricians, cleaners, helpers, surveyors, decorators, morticians. Hands to assemble flat-pack. Signatories for deliveries. Sitters for dogs and kids. Witnesses to occasions. Joined on the app. This work the factory joes and diner waitresses dreamed of. No more the same crew with the same complaints. No more one place the day through. No more that boss. This freewheeling future. A task here, a job there. Unpredictable routes. Unlimited distance. The choice to take or not take. Work as personal mission. Supple, not routine. Not coasting. No moments of slump. No backseat lawyering on corporate finagles. These were days of fulfilment.

Streets of okay, petty houses. This house a little worn in the boards, a little long in the lawn. The ladderman unhitched from the truck, the ladder’s stern, assuring weight at his shoulder. A good ladder. Flip to arch or clip to stretch. Aluminum grips and treads of black plastic. Still with its safety labels: stickman diagrams of right and wrong ways with a ladder. Green check marks and red kisses. Do and not do. A ladder’s not all fun, those labels said. Give ladders respect.

He showed his credentials to the door and waited. The ladderman was punctual; he liked when customers reciprocated. Some didn’t understand the time they bought was sliced from larger time. He had to assess task time, drive time, admin; he preferred not to wait. A slow start could infect the whole day.

The man at the door seemed unnaturally old. Older than decent. He stooped as though searching. His hair was smoke. One earlobe hung ragged from some life event the ladderman didn’t wish to share.

“Mr. Stevins?”

“Thank you for being prompt.” Stevins tried to make space and got in the way. “It’s a family matter.”

Fragile shelves of mementoes made fodder for a large ladder. The ladderman guided it in knee high, steering with his legs. He had to pay breakage. That was the deal. The app insisted task givers were always victims. A house so cluttered he couldn’t distinguish clothes from quilts from heaped today-only purchases, deals too hot to miss. That worked with old people. They wanted something to leave behind. Caught between walls, the ladderman waited for Stevins to navigate the hallway. “You booked a window clean, Mr. Stevins. Polish and shine.”

“Polish and shine.”

“How many windows?”

“All of ’em. They all need the treatment.”

“Maybe I start in here.” He rested the ladder’s feet.

“Not upstairs?” The old man’s screwy, pleated face held shock.

“Well, I’m in here.” The clock was ticking. The app beat time in his pocket.

“Don’t you clean a house head to heel?” Stevins’ tone suggested a lifetime habit upended.

Task givers held the cards. Tasks had to be done their way. Unable to turn in the heaped-up room, he reversed the ladder through the house, nearly back to the street. Then angled its nose for the heavy haul upstairs. Stairs narrowed by clumsy installation of a glider, its railed seat obstructive at the base of the climb. As he teased and twisted and tentatively crept by, its motor hummed to life, Stevins moving up like molasses at his ankles. Task givers had to be satisfied. Some liked to watch.

He began in the bedroom. The old man tried to make things okay. Pill boxes and brushes and junk on the shelves had been straightened. Knocked-about dust lay thickly curled at the rims. The smell of age clung against linens turned inside over, he guessed to hide stains. A pair of old suits slumped off a rail, wilted with disuse. He lined up the ladder and climbed to the top of the window. Here was the issue. These houses, built for light to counteract smallness, their windows touched the ceiling, out of reach for a regular guy. No job for a full-height ladder, but kick steps wouldn’t do it. In the bucket his cloths, his wiper and spray. No need for water. Water and windows was best avoided.

Stevins disentangled from the hoist. He clung at the door, expecting turbulence. “You do outside?”

“I’ll see what I manage from here. These flip right out.”

“It’s different from outside. Those corners are tricky.” Stevins walked to the bed – a flicker book, limbs jerked to move. He sat with earnest sadness that irked the ladderman. You didn’t show anger with task givers. The app was insistent.

“Fine little place you have.” It might be, with less junk.

“Does for me. Does well.” Stevins rummaged his phone, holding it close to his eyes though everything scaled. “It’s a family matter. Why I needed you early.”

The street was regular. Nothing to see. Old people. Young sharers. Little families: couples with their treasured addition. People with tenured jobs, corporate credentials. They could take a day sick and get paid. The ladderman didn’t care for family matters. “Nothing cheers a place like bright windows.”

“I want them to see that.” Slow fingers chumped the phone screen. “They’re here in two hours.”

In people’s homes, attending their tasks brought degrees of involvement. The ladderman liked practical chores. Paint a ceiling. Flush a roof. Any blend of altitude and attention. He didn’t need reasons. “This won’t be two hours.”

“I should tidy.” Stevins poked a bale of towels. They rose and settled. “Meant to, last night. I get tired.”

Tired people called the ladderman. Weary with everyday life, they wanted to buy what their bodies declined to manage. They said they were tired while they watched TV, eating candy. When infomercials for productivity aired, they remained, tossing sugar between slack lips. Their skin too coarse to feel the approaching hand. “You did your share.” That was the trick, with old people. Assure them no one expected more. “You can enjoy it.”

Stevins coughed untidily, spit across his chin. “They want this place. They think I don’t know their talk of helping me out means just that.”

The app provided resource against this risk. Tutorials and explainers, to mitigate and avoid. For tasks in domestic space, oversharing was heightened. A spill of personal information he wasn’t bonded to process. Step one was distract. “All clean here. I’ll do the bathroom, then downstairs. You don’t have another room up here?”

“For my wife’s things. She loved the sunlight.”

A second bedroom, fallow and undisturbed. A second bedroom those fertile couples might yearn for. No horror show. No shrine of splintered lace. Everything boxed and labelled. Stacked and ordered – clothes and accessories, make up and souvenirs. Objects that carried meaning to Stevins’ imaginings. The room’s residual furniture cowed with bygones. Slow and delicate to weave the ladder through. “This needs attention.” The window matted and filthy.

“That’s why I called you,” Stevins wheezed. “I want them to know I can manage.”

It would take more than clean windows. Stagnation filled the house. But prestige was no more than accumulated reviews, so he cut to it, scraping the glass to a mild vista of backyards. Bleaching the frames. Bringing the hinge its shine. And so with each window in that little house. When he took the ladder to the dusty backyard, to lay up against that dormant bedroom, Stevins was at the boxes, reading labels, smoothing packing tape, a gesture of cautious curation.

Credits transferred. The old man didn’t tip.

“Now the sun can get in.”

“I’ll show them.” Stevins shuffled aimlessly on the rug. “I can keep my windows clean. They don’t need to take me away.”

“No they don’t.”

“They’re grabby. But I’ll fix them.”

“You do.”

“They can’t take my home. Can they, huh? They can’t make me.”

Those neat stacked boxes. The guy who got that removal would need a spine.

Not late, not yet. He should hustle. Each day got late. An hour, could be, by time he was done. Status was a reward of punctuality. But that wasn’t always possible, not knowing the tasks. Even with an intelligent vehicle, the quickest route wasn’t always the slickest. Parking wasn’t assured. Especially at blocks like this: a foursquare concrete divot over retail. Cameras watched him cruise. More than twice around was suspect.

“Not there.” The super was a little guy with the tremendous delts of unquestioned authority. His stocky outrage from the lobby suggested pleasure no kindness could equal. “You can’t street park. You got to pay in the tower.”

The motor purred compliantly. “One of your residents booked a task.”

“They should have comped you a permit. No permit, pay in the tower.”

The elevators in these stack lots were often too short for the ladder. An elevator was non-earning space. The shafts were minimized. He found a spot on second and sledged the ladder down the fire stairs, feeling it run on the concrete treads, embroiled in its momentum. He clung tight. Better a sprained wrist than a busted ladder.

When the ladderman got there, the super had strength for fresh fun. “You don’t take that in the elevator.”

The ladderman ate a hard breath. “I not told you where I’m going.”

“I’m in charge.” The super gave a slow nod. “You don’t take that in the elevator unless you got sacks for the mirrors. You know the cost to fill a scratch? No sacks, you take the stairs.”

“I’m here for Ms. Kinsey.”

“Take the stairs.”

The hallways were plain and neat. It took a ladder to paint the ceiling, maintain the lights, check the integrity of cable trunking pinned above doors. Humans couldn’t live without climbing higher than they could reach. Some of these buildings were fancy. Some, basic but homey. All needed a ladder.

He was sorry Ms. Kinsey had a problem walking. Her ankle was bust. It slowed her. She might have said when she booked. It took her three minutes to reach the door. “I would offer coffee. I haven’t made a food order today.” Ms. Kinsey was around his age. Deceptively tall. Robust-looking. But her walk, down on one side, showed the extent of her collapse. She mountaineered around the apartment, lunging at any support. He rarely considered prospects, delivering tasks to women. The app beat time and, anyway, too much could be misunderstood. The app provided resource against this risk. Customer service was customer-friendly. Friendly had bounds.

“You booked home rearrangement.”

“I didn’t know how else to describe it.” She stood on one foot to relieve the weight, an oddly coy stance. “I need my suitcases down.”

More conscious of damage here than in the old man’s cluttered pit, he contrived a gentle, sailing gesture to persuade the ladder between shiny paint. He never thought, at any rich level, about being in someone’s bedroom. What a bedroom invitation might otherwise weigh. He worked till he stopped. He slept without effort. He welcomed each busy day. His truck purring around the city was credit earned. He didn’t question the task givers. The clock was ticking.

This bedroom was a light space. High enough for primary sun. Sympathetic reflections cut shapes in white paint. In white linen, corners tucked, edges smooth. The table glass shot light across grey carpet. Its cleanness astounding.

Ms. Kinsey, awkward at the dressing table, its sparse and sensible product all hygiene. She reached to rub her ankle, a creased look of annoyance. “I appreciate it’s not much of a job. I can’t trust myself on steps.” One wall of the room, floor to ceiling, side to side, was the closet. Glass-fronted below attic cupboards. The ladderman’s reflection held the ladder keenly, its feet truffled the carpet, its body tight to his side. Ms. Kinsey’s reflection was solemn as she picked around under her slippers, testing her feet, massaging persistent pain.

“In the top cupboards?”

“You move to a place. You unpack. What do you do?” She straightened, for the mirror. “You’re optimistic. You think you won’t need your cases a long time.”

The carpet by the closet spiked with heel points, between uncrushed fiber sprung like rye. “The ladder might draw some ruts. They should ease out.”

“It’s a rental. The last tenant had a dresser. See the archeology.”

Four cupped dents guarded an untrodden oblong.

“Suitcases up top?” He set the ladder’s feet, regretting how it humbled soft material.

“I’ll give a hand. I’m not wholly done.”

He waited halfway up while she got to her feet and a minute went, in sideways gait, crossing the room. No doubt she was in pain. No doubt it galled her. But she should have booked a longer slot. It was just stealing time.

The cupboard doors gave readily, against weight piled inside them. Spare pillows. Old umbrellas. Small linens – napkins and such. He passed down these objects. She stacked them around her.

“It’s a pity that super didn’t help.” Because he could have. The super had ladders no charge.

“I don’t want to involve him.” She spoke quiet. “He knows everyone.”

The ladderman stepped higher. Her luggage, crammed to the back of the cupboard, a respectable matching three. “You want them all?”

“I need them all.” She took to one foot, wobbling primly.

Customer service was customer-friendly. “You have vacation?”

“If you just fetch them down I’m obliged.”

The cases resisted a while. Lapped over each other, wedged to the corners, he had to gain height, reach deep. They came loose with a suck of pleather. “They need just a shine to revive them. I have spray.”

She stroked the cases like something overdue at the veterinarian. “Thought I’d dig roots. Much as one can. My contract here has two years.”

Conversation, that salaried privilege. The app had his next task. Three on the bounce earned a swill of coffee. “It’s good luggage. May as well use it. You want these other things back up top?” She didn’t seem ready to answer, so he moved the items cautiously, lofting them two-handed, where performance was all. He closed the cupboard doors, wiped his fingermarks, unwilling, as sometimes he was, to descend. To meet life at ground level.

Ms. Kinsey opened the cases. She flattened their sides, coaxing them to optimum capacity.

“Thank you for prompt payment.”

“It’s physical business, this, you do. I suppose you have a truck?”

He folded clever aluminum limbs. “These marks in the carpet. Really, they’ll fade.”

“You never take the subway?”

Some guys did. Some lofted all kinds of equipment. “Not with the ladder.”

“Not other times?”

“There’s no need. Really.” Did she want him to engrave it? Seekers were specialists. Part-substitutable. Reviews made status, not small talk. “Have a good vacation.”

“I always took the subway. To the job. No thought about it. Down underground each morning. Back to the surface at night. A job is a good thing. Gives the day purpose.”

They never grasped the time they bought was cut from bigger time. Non-earning time, moving the ladder place to place. Attending the ladder. Keeping it lucrative. He had the next task. He should be gone. “Be careful. With the ankle.” It wasn’t transgression. She told him.

“In your truck I guess it’s you. And devices. What you see is always far side of some material. But the subway is up close. Bodies. Looking to exit.”

“I hear it’s busy.” The ladder a friendly, authoritative weight. Nosing its way to the door.

“You know the moving stairs.” Her hands made a rising, step on step. Her wrists all rigidity. “Everyone jostles a little. I don’t mean I’m discourteous.” She quailed at this notion. “You don’t always see. There’s people, their luggage. And equipment. People with equipment.”

He set down the ladder to open the door. Its sudden absence like ice. “Yeah, I hear.”

“I got close of someone. We collided, I guess. The stairs, all the movement. I couldn’t stop.” Her voice the bright edge of grass. “I was moving. Those moving stairs don’t stop. I didn’t mean to offend her. My ankle collapsed. I nearly fell. They took me to hospital. She cursed me.”

He had the door open. He held the ladder. “I’ve a task. I must go.”

“Now I can’t walk. Nor climb. My ankle is gone. She cursed me.” Her eyes were all. “I must move from here. From her.”

He maneuvered to the hallway. “Enjoy your vacation.”

This third task brought a less familiar district. A commercial zone at the highway ribbon. He didn’t get commercial jobs. There were specialists. Big trucks. Expansive equipment. A short notice commercial job meant an error to correct. Some embarrassment that couldn’t be charged to the project. And what was a ladder for but getting out from holes.

A little chilly around his kidneys. An empty building. Buildings changed hands. Grew and, sometimes, receded. Retooling didn’t indicate a problem. But there was no scaffold, no tent wrap, no banners enticing with what would come next. No trucks. No guys in headgear. The wrong type of empty. Coarsened, wind blown, behind gates too bent to shut. No one challenged his arrival. No security dusted his device. No one gave him the site procedures, the safety talk. Barren, caged from big box neighbors, the building could scarce exist in such disrepair.

He left his truck in view of the road – he could activate its hazard strip if needed. There were always patrols by the big stores.

The door stayed shut. It didn’t slide back. Its sensors fuzzed with dirt. He messaged the giver. A statement of presence. The ladder caught air. It tilted against his shoulder. He was confident with the ladder.

The man at the door had old skin, though his hair was dark and shapeless. Dressed for business, too formal for construction. But that need not make a misgiving. The task was present. The task was paid.

The door creaked against its runners, unlocked at some grip in the wall. That was okay. Security guys might need that. In case of a glitch. The man seemed surprised at air on his skin. His lips took a second to form. “The ladder.”

“You are Mr. Luck?”

His limbs fetched around in his clothes. “You arrive at the opportune moment. The time as booked.”

“The task wasn’t explicit.” The device in his pocket. “You said ‘ceiling work’?”

“I did say that. Come forward. That thing must be heavy.”

“It’s light for its size.”

Mr. Luck’s eyes took a slow journey. “Ingenious.”

The ladderman worked in people’s homes. Nothing was certain with people. Despite apps and therapeutics, they might still be inattentive. Over-focused. Less than specific. But a home at least had other homes, with better citizens, round it. The big stores weren’t so far out but this building felt noxiously lonely. Buildings shouldn’t be left to decay. Ordinances precluded negligence. And no signs of construction. Just this man overdressed.

“We’ll take the stairs,” said Mr. Luck. “There are elevators, but I am abundantly cautious. I’ll help with your burden.”

Mr. Luck walked backward upstairs, gripping the head of the ladder. He addressed himself to it awkwardly – squared shoulders, canted chest – his muscles unenthused by manual labor. The ladderman, lofting the feet, felt improper hurry. In reverse Mr. Luck moved quickly – the ladderman’s arms drawn up, his charge dragged from his care. The ladder dipped and bobbed and threatened the walls at each mezzanine. The stairs crumbed with grit. The lights filthy. He squinted along the ladder. He counted its bolts. He had to, or meet Mr. Luck’s eyes. The man subsumed his distaste for this work in exceptional effort. His eyes bulged. His cheeks darkened. Faint, cellulose moisture lit his brow. Each knuckle set, as though hands could do nothing but grip the ladder. Meld the ladder to his clumsy structure. The ladderman pulled back, even as he climbed forward. One shove and Mr. Luck would fall.

Likely this floor was a piece with the rest. A torn out tip of cracked pasteboard and split tiles. Wires hung from gaping runs where sockets had been salvaged. Broken-armed brackets drooped from ceilings shedding glass fiber. Daylight reluctant to pass dust-iced windows. Lights on backup supply barely there.

Breath captured by exertion, Mr. Luck indicated to set the ladder beside a metal case, clear of debris. The clock was ticking. Time only stretched so far. “You said ‘ceiling work’?”

“I did.” Mr. Luck coughed himself straight. “I said that. Excuse me. The dust.”

“What is this place?”

“We work the same platform. I’m a surveyor.”

The place was due work. First call the surveyor.

“My assistant brings the equipment. The ladder.”

“Are they expected?” He didn’t like to task share. The app encouraged collabs but the cut was thin.

“They had an accident. Not serious. But I’m left with no elevation.”

“Unfortunate.”

“It is unfortunate. I’m glad you could attend at short notice.” Mr. Luck tried a brogue at the lowest rung.

The ladderman flinched. “If you don’t mind I’ll see to the height work. Liability.”

With arch impatience Mr. Luck moved his foot from the ladder to the metal case, toeing open its latch. He stooped to pick a plastic box, creases sparking his business attire. “Remember these? No. You wouldn’t.”

A plastic box, caved and bent. The clock was ticking. There was barely ever time.

“It’s a video cassette case. Old technology. I store articles in it.”

The ladderman gripped the ladder. It must be his hand on the ladder. “I need to deliver the task, Mr. Luck. I have other givers.”

“You have your equipment. Your ladder. I’m a surveyor. I have my equipment.” He held the box two-handed. A jagged card bulged from its plastic clips. A man with a look of surprise and satisfaction. A building on fire. Unreadable monochrome text. Red-block words: Die Hard. It looked like nothing. It had no reference to anything known.

To abandon a task, to abscond, raised a penalty on the app. A downrating. To climb back from a downrating might take a year. In his history. His feed. He had to see every task through.

Mr. Luck gained outsize pleasure from opening the box. He squeezed each plastic catch with a delicate finger. He drew the hinged lid with steady pressure, shielding its splintered spine. “Of course I don’t have the video cassette,” he murmured. “That would be absurd.”

The box hummed with ticking, circular forms. Metal discs with beveled sides, each inlaid on its upper face with a round black screen, fading red as it captured light. The discs agitated, drawn, apparently, to Mr. Luck’s hands.

“That’s your equipment?” The ladderman didn’t know why he said it. He had only general ideas of surveying.

“If you’d be so good as to activate the safety features of your ladder, I need to deliver my task.”

“The ladder?”

A sadness to Mr. Luck’s mouth. “You see the void? Where the ceiling is disassembled. I have to set these devices along that concrete channel. It is,” he nodded, “a surveyor’s task.”

“I have no liability for people on the ladder.”

“I have liability.” That hardened voice from tightened skin. “My work involves height ordinarily. I’m familiar.”

Not right. An imposition. This man on the ladder. His brogues on the rungs. His soft, office fingers at its grips. And the clock was ticking. No task. Not yet. But another might come. “We’re nearly at time.”

“Then we should get on.” Mr. Luck’s shoulders probed beyond the fractured ceiling. The animation of his torso emphatic through his arms. Each few seconds, his hand would descend to select from the box. Each device, as he chose it, moved smoothly through his fingers, stretching brief red light across his skin.

“You should keep hold, at least with one hand.”

The headless spine paused in its mechanics. “Your concern is admirable. I’ll mention it in my review.”

“Thank you.” He couldn’t dismiss it. There were others who did this. Bigger trucks. Longer ladders. “Is your task completing?”

Again, that freeze, like talk through nitrogen. “Precise completion is hard to determine.” Mr. Luck moved down. Enough to show wary eyes. “Full deployment may not be sufficient.”

“I’m concerned for my next task.”

“You have a next task?”

“I may soon.”

Mr. Luck descended the ladder, a little flighty with the last steps.

The ladderman winced to hear metal sing out.

“Why don’t you complete for me?” Mr. Luck offered the box. “If you’re concerned to do something.”

“It’s my ladder.”

“It is your ladder.”

He knew the void above the tiles was dirty. Buildings were cleaned. But this building looked untouched since, perhaps, the last business moved out. Even closed space drew dust. Tied wires and silent conduits, their informational codes unscannable, hung bleakly from silted bolts, awaiting disposal. A pipe had ruptured, its long body panting wide. And these tight orbits of metal and glass spun keen red light across inert channels. Chained in lines, they seemed to call to each other. The ladderman picked one and gave a cry, the device hot and slippy against his palm.

“Alright up there?”

“What are these, Mr. Luck?”

“They measure. They interrogate.”

“There’s heat.”

“No more than an orthodontic scan.” Unforgivably, Mr. Luck nudged the ladder. Perhaps in excitement, he jogged its frame. Pressure echoed through the ladderman’s spine. “Set loose the rest. I know you’re busy.”

It wasn’t that simple. He wanted to tell the voice below it wasn’t the cakewalk as planned. Of course Mr. Luck began at the length of his arm, to play his devices outward. And they slipped and slalomed. They moved away. When the ladderman tried to place one between others a polarity force resisted. When he tried to extend the line, it moved beyond his reach. “Do they have a sequence?”

“What you say?”

“Mr. Luck, do they follow some order?”

“There is an order.” The careful voice. “They acknowledge each other. Function adapts to position.”

“So I can put them anywhere?”

“Set them loose, as I told you.” The ladder trembled again. “A busy man is best methodical.”

The ladderman completed what he could. He encouraged the little discs along the channel, hesitant of their sanguine light, sensing their communication in his fingers. From this small box, it seemed a great many devices. Or perhaps their oscillation multiplied them. Shifting back to daylight, he thumbed the wounded card clipped to the box lid. Its grainy give, nothing to signify what it meant. No connection with anything served to his off-work moments. Perhaps it was a joke, of a kind. No building caught fire.

Mr. Luck displayed needless caution, taking hold of the box. The box was empty. The little machines doing no doubt valuable labor. “You wouldn’t remember.” With conviction. “You never saw a video cassette.”

No task in the app. Its vibration absent. “I have to go.” It seemed insufficient. “I’m sure you have tasks.”

“In what world would that concern you?” Mr. Luck watched the ladder fold down. “Do you think of the future?”

That wasn’t a question. “I like to help people. I’m grateful to the app.”

“Yes, they need help.” Mr. Luck looked to the broken ceiling, as though called by his machines.

A ring of sour flesh burned the ladderman’s neck. The task had run long. Off the clock. “Have a successful day.”

“I shall.”

The ladder clinked and shivered against his shoulder. Strong, with ready muscles, its weight should be easy. His chest shouldn’t sting. He shouldn’t watch his feet, for fear of falling.

The ladder stowed, the truck seat closed around him. The app stayed quiet. Perhaps he should eat. The ladderman let the truck take decisions. Each touch of the wheel brought heat. The feel of slippy, agitated metal.

The truck stopped for patrols. It was mandatory.

The young officer walked from his vehicle with smooth, perceptible pressure. Embodied rules, no need to lay out where his authority came from. He noted the ladderman’s license. His app credentials.

“I appreciate the truck’s a little old. I’m working to make a trade.”

“Got rust on the rims. It stopped a little sluggish. That’s not why we pulled you.”

Cops were always plural. “I hope there’s nothing wrong.” He wanted to go earnest. He sounded scared. Cops didn’t move from their vehicles without reason.

“You just came from this address.” The data he skimmed from the app.

“I had a task. Height work.”

The cop’s face lost mobility. “Says that on the truck. We got the feed. You drive in, drive out. What height work?”

Deep in monochrome text, terms and conditions said tasks were subject to conventional analytics. To gauge patterns of use. To improve the app. Anyhow, this task was commercial. “With a fellow specialist. A surveyor. Exploratory work. You saw me drive out.”

“We saw.”

However the cop might play it next got lost in a devastation of concrete. A blast so energetic it filled the street.

Instant, the cop acquired rapid, precise instructions. These rare events were prepped. Sirens swarmed the corner. Black tubes filled fireproof gloves, wrapped on hard hands.

The ladderman went five steps when the first blow took him. Sour-tasting blacktop scorched his face. Obedient, he let the kick come in, knowing soon they’d hoist him away. The truck burst open. The ladder broke on the ground. All the while, the cops said the same thing. The same thing.

When I kick my legs out to stretch, my right foot knocks the gas pedal. The engine revs, gaining the uneasy attention of the Greelan day workers sitting outside City Depot. The sun is too much. I wipe sleepy dirt from my bloodshot eyes and check my phone for traffic through narrow slits.

             I can hear the words that would steamroll off my mother’s tongue if I missed my flight. The intensity of her displeasure. The questions it would raise.

            The toothpaste smells like my grandmother’s garden, and I hold it in my mouth as long as I can before cracking the door. The heat usurps the air conditioning immediately, and sweat slips past my pores like a prison guard.

            A Greelan in a baseball cap watches me rinse and spit with soft eyes. The dude is waiting outside in this heat just for a chance at manual labor. Suffering to sign up for more suffering. I wonder if some people are born with a natural propensity to endure, or if it’s a learned skill.

            The button-down shirt I have hanging from the backseat door handle is is a wrinkled mess. My life: the slowest moving car accident. You’d think I could avoid it. I flex my bicep and suck my tongue to make my jawline pop, then peek to see if baseball cap is looking.

            Instead, I see a large white van pull in front of the Greelans, and three guys who look like they didn’t make the football team in high school pop out. They wear plainclothes, vests on their chests, guns on their waists, and form a triangle to pin the baseball-cap-wearing Greelan.

            My phone vibrates with a text from my sister. I confirm the time I land, type a text asking about Mom, then delete it.

            Baseball cap gives the plainclothes men an easy smile and holds up his hands in placation. A hot wind ruffles his hair. In a breath, the plainclothes men throw him to the sun-soaked asphalt, shackle his arms and legs, and toss him into the back of the unmarked van.

            I hit the ignition and shift to drive. At the light, I pull parallel to the unmarked van. I’m a little scared to look over, and when I do, I see the plainclothes men dancing to the stereo. Cracking the window, I recognize the beat—hyper-sexual bubblegum pop, but I can’t quite place the song.

*

Airport parking is awful. The far lot requires a bus and a hike. It’s worth it though, if I come back to a parking bill more expensive than I can pay, it will quite literally ruin my life.

            I feel the TSA agent’s judgment when I take off my shoes. God forbid a man has some smelly socks. I’d be fine keeping my shoes on. That was their decision.

            The universe smiled down when seating me between two little old ladies in the back row, right by the bathroom. I lean back and close my eyes. I need sleep terribly, but my brain won’t stop reformulating my proposition over and over in my mind. How best to word it, when to ask it, what level of honesty should accompany it, what level of lying I can successfully execute.

            When I was young, my dad was easy to lie to. He grew up as such a good kid—honest, never breaking rules—that his naïveté created an atmosphere conducive to my bullshit. Not my mom. She knew I’d do drugs before I did. She didn’t freak out or overreact. She protected me, kept me safe.

            But times are different now. And so is she.  

            I try focusing on my body. Letting go of the stress of going home, the impending conversation, the nagging torment of how deep I am in my situation, the grief of the very event that brings me home, and the fact that I am sitting on a plane made by a company that has been famously pumping out aircrafts that are losing parts mid-flight, and crashing from an imperfect component rolled out before perfected by the disgruntled engineers. Because safety is important, of course, but not if it gets in the way of profit, and the Holy price of their stock.

*

“You look—” this might be the hardest I’ve ever seen her face twist “—great. So good, Hunt.” My sister is a sweet soul. And a terrible liar. “It’s so good to see you.”

            The middle console jabs my hip as I lean in to hug her. “You actually look good, amazing even.” I’m a little hurt that she looks so much better than me, like it’s a competition, and the thought shames me. “You look like you’re in great shape. Are you running?”

            “Stress.” Her laugh is a little manic.

            “Ah.”

            It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other. When we’re together, we fall back into that ease we’ve always shared. The comfort you feel being around someone who genuinely loves you, without condition. We laugh and give vague life updates, meticulously dancing around the failures, alluding to hardship but nothing that will kill the mood of the reunion. Tears are for Sundays.

            My life updates are all bullshit, of course. Except work stuff. And Caroline. I’ve needed to talk about her.

            I don’t realize we’ve pulled into the driveway until there is a lull after my work story about a man being paid triple my salary, unable to understand what a browser is and how it’s different from the internet.

            “Should we head in? I’m sure they’re dying to get to bed.”

            Her eyes harden, go far away. “I can’t. I just—”

            “Come on, Lil. You’re gonna make me face them alone?” I laugh. She does not join me.

            “You haven’t been here. She’s gotten really bad.” Lilly’s ringed fingers tighten around the steering wheel, showing the whites of her knuckles. “Doing what I do all day and hearing her—” Lilly’s hand gripping the wheel cranks like she’s ripping the throttle of a motorcycle, then snaps her neck back like something hot hit her nose. “I’ll get enough of it tomorrow. Tonight, I just—”

            My sister is a sweet soul. Even in this state of emotional exhaustion, desperation clear in her voice, she can’t bring herself to say a disparaging word. I want to be her when I grow up.

            “No worries.” Center console back in my hip as I lean in to grip her shoulder. “Excited to see you tomorrow.”

            She squeezes the garage door opener clipped to her car’s visor. A little wave over my shoulder, and I pause in the laundry room after I walk in. Deep breath in, feeling my feet in my tattered shoes before removing them. I can’t believe they still have my middle school art hanging in here.

            “Hunter! Baby! Is that you?”

*

Before I take a step into the living room, she’s on her feet and gripping me like I’m her skydiving instructor mid-drop. She yanks me to the kitchen and displays her preparations: all my favorite snacks in the pantry, glass bottles of ginger kombucha, plastic bottles of chocolate milk because I am a child, oranges already peeled and refrigerated in little baggies, and two PB&J sandwiches already made with the crusts cut off.

            “All your shower stuff is in the basement,” she gives me a pointed look, communicating the desperation of my need for such a thing. “And I have a brand new toothbrush, paste, and floss. You’re of course welcome to your old room if you’d like?”

            She took over my old room years ago, gaining a private space from my father. Her offer is genuine. She’ll give it to me if I ask.

            “Of course not, mom. The basement sounds great.” She wraps me up again, then holds me at arm’s length, taking an inquisitive look at my shame.

            “Thank you so much.”

            “Anything for you, Hunter, baby.” Her not commenting on my appearance is not a good sign. “Now you go get some sleep. It starts at ten tomorrow, and it’s just under an hour drive, so your dad wants to be on the road by eight-thirty.”

            “Why so early?”

            My father gives a deep laugh from the recliner chair. I irritate him terribly. My mother tells me to just be ready, kisses me twenty-seven times, and gives me a stoic smile as I take my PB&Js to the basement. I put on an indie film from the nineties I’ve seen a million times and scroll on my phone. Social media is littered with dystopia, as usual. I get stuck on a video of a Greelan woman walking out of immigration court to an ambush from plainclothes men—masks on their faces, ball caps pulled low. Her daughters protest in vain.

            The comment section is split. Outrage at the disappearance of members of our community, at the inhumane living conditions of the camps they are being held in, and the record breaking profits of those who own them. Other comments are full of pride and patriotic fervor. Lots of references to the law, cleaning out the filth, and deep love for the retaking of this great land.

*

I thought about bringing it up on the drive. If not diving into the full proposition, at least testing the waters. Float it like a joke, see how it lands. But I was ten minutes late getting into the already running car, my father sitting in the driveway in reverse, his impatient foot pressing the brake directly into the earth’s core.

            My mother, instead, asks me about Caroline. “When did she move out of the apartment, baby?”

            “Like eight, nine months ago.” I take another bite of the breakfast burrito my mother made for me. It’s delicious.

            “I’m so sorry, sweetie. Did you renew the lease just yourself then?” She spins in her chair and puts a warm hand on my knee.

            “Um.” We hit a pothole and I smear salsa on my lips like spicy lipstick. I clean it with the backside of my napkin. The front side says: Mom loves you baby, in my mother’s illegible handwriting.

            “Is it hard to afford on your own?”

            I’m saved by my father’s anxiety, and it expressing itself through the heinous smell permeating throughout the closed confines of the air-conditioned car. “Oh, no, honey. Are you okay?” My mom rubs small circles into the back of my father’s polo shirt. “Here, I’ve got some antacids. I knew Lilly would forget hers. She always does at big events like this and ends up spending half the time in the bathroom.” My mother digs through her purse, pulls out a little circular piece of sherbet-colored chalk, drops it on my father’s tongue, and seals it with a kiss. He accepts the kiss with a wince.

            “Don’t listen to him,” she says. “He loves me.”

            I was under the impression the venue is a church, but the cabin-style event room we pull up to reminds me of my childhood summer camp. Memories sit in the body, and I feel the same shiver in my tailbone I did at twelve, opening the door to the wood smell mixing with the pine of my youth. I feel a sudden tenderness for my parents and slip an arm around each. My father puts a hand on my back, and my mother melts into me completely.

            At the entrance is a table with blown-up pictures: her climbing Machu Picchu, her bundled up like a marshmallow and looking frozen in Antarctica, her striding through Saint Petersburg with a walking stick. I get a little hot behind the eyes taking in the pictures. My grandmother is the person who made me fall in love with literature. The person who convinced me to first put pen to paper. Who pushed me to keep writing when I had to sell my soul and forty hours of my week to a job for a financial institution that would have afforded me a nice house and a sports car thirty years ago, but today keeps me firmly in the impoverished category.

            My grandmother was born on a reservation in Oklahoma—displaced by the dust bowl. She still calls World War Two: the war. In the middle of the table on large cardboard it says in sprawling font: Celebrating the life of Shirley Thompson.

              There’s another black-and-white picture of her in college, sitting at a typewriter. She looks like my mother. I find myself reaching out, tracing the edges until I feel someone slap my hand.

            “Show some respect for the photograph.” I rip my hand back like it’s burned and turn to face my five-foot accuser. “That photograph has made it a long way.” She pulls at her nose, swinging her long silver hair in the air conditioning and smiles. She’s having entirely too much fun. “I was just a girl.”

            “It’s so good to see you, Nana.” I pull all ninety-five pounds of her into my chest and hold her while she giggles at her own cleverness. “You look beautiful.”

            “You look like shit, kid.” She hits me so hard in the arm I have to pretend not to be in pain.

            “I know.”

            “That’s what happens when you move half way around the country and don’t have your grandma to keep you straight.”

            I smile and try throwing a witticism back. But much to my surprise, as I open my mouth, I realize I’m crying.

            She holds me and rubs my back like she did when I was a depressed teen. She gives me a moment to collect myself, allowing me the silence. A small grace. Then pulls the conversation back to her. Another grace.

            “It’s weird attending your own funeral, kid.”

            “It’s a celebration of life, Nana. The point is to show you how much we love you while you’re still here. What good is it when you’re gone?”

            “It’s so nice to be referred to as: still here.”

            “Sorry.”

            “You know, Hunter. When you’re old, people talk to you like you’re a collection of your accomplishments.” Her eyes are all for me. Green and full of intensity. “And they want to validate your life like you’re a walking resume waiting for an acceptance stamp. Approval in the eyes of silly babies.”

            She takes a piece of chocolate from her paper plate and eats it with defiance in her face. “I’m not looking for these people to stamp my ticket, kid. I just want to have fun, do things that bring me happiness. While I’m still here.”

*

“I just watched her make Uncle Jack take off his sweater because she didn’t like it.” Lilly does this thing with her mouth when she’s surprised. It looks like she’s about to catch a piece of popcorn on her tongue. “She said, nothing that ugly at my countdown to death.”

            “I love her so much.” I feel the tears making a comeback.

            “Me, too,” Lilly leans close enough to comfort me with her heat, without touching.

            We hit the food and fill paper plates with meats and cheeses. I’m not hungry, it’s just nice to have something to do with my hands. While we flick food around our plates, Lilly tells me about her morning—taking out her cocker spaniel to pee and smell the world before the concrete gets too hot.

            “They were sitting in an unmarked white van,” she says. “Plainclothes, baseball caps, masks on their faces.” She pantomimes a facial covering.

            “It’s crushing my soul. I can’t even get on social media anymore.”

            “I mean, what would we do without Greelans in our community? I honestly don’t think we could make it through: Economically. Emotionally,” she counts on her fingers.

            Both our eyes travel to our mother. She’s helping Nana—who looks a little pale in the face—into a chair. One hand rubs her mother’s back, the other delicately brushes the silver hair from her face. My mother is patient as Nana smacks away the food she attempts to feed her, the water she attempts to pour between closed lips.

            They fall into an embrace. Mother and daughter holding each other as one does another they could not do without.

            “She’s getting so bad,” Lilly says, watching their embrace.

            “I know.”

            “It’s to the point I can barely stand being around her.” She scoffs. “What happened to our mother?”

            “She’s always been such an amazing person.” It’s like I’m trying to reassure myself, the weight of my proposal sitting heavy on my chest.

            I don’t talk to my sister enough. I’ve actually been nervous to see her. But in this silence, I feel that unbreakable something between us. The inarticulable bond of growing up in the same house as someone, fortified by years of watching the other struggle next to you through the drywall separating your little spaces. I have no idea how to show affection. Especially these days, and when I reach out and do something resembling a punch to her arm, I know it’s the wrong thing. I also know she knows what I mean.

            My sister’s eyes travel to the food table where Uncle Jack is standing like the kid nobody invited to the party. “What happened to your sweater?” She asks.

            Jack smirks and saunters over. “She’s out for blood today.”

            “I know. I saw,” Lilly says. “Now you look underdressed.”

            “Oh, you haven’t heard?” Jack’s face pulls tight, his free hand falls limp at his side. “Plain clothes are all the rage these days.”

*

We don’t see it happen. Uncle Jack’s emotion propelling Lilly and me forward. The desperation of our political climate, the general feeling that nothing is ever going to be okay.

            “How are we letting this happen?” one of us says.

            We’re all so stuck echoing each other in something closer to a therapy session than a conversation that it takes her speaking for us to realize: we’ve gained a fourth.

            “Oh, sweethearts, just be patient.” Three necks snap like rubber bands. “It’s all for the best.”

            Lilly is the one that takes the bait. “How the fuck can you say that?”

            “Sweetie. Language.”

            “No, mom. What the fuck?”

            My mother smoothes her off-white dress, smiles with patience. “Honey, we’ve been over this. Our streets have been so dangerous for so long. Then our great leader came along and finally wants to clean things up. I know people are saying a lot of things, but you’ll see—”

            “He’s a fascist, mother. And a fucking racist.” Lilly spits the words, saliva falling in scattered droplets by our feet.

            “They’re just getting the bad ones, baby. The criminals that are here to take advantage of how soft we’ve gotten.” My mother’s cadence is sing-song.

            “Bad ones?” Lilly shakes her head, kicking her buckled loafers at nothing in particular. “Mom, they’re profiling every single Greelan. And when you say criminals, what do you mean?”

            “People that committed crimes, sweetie.” She reaches for her daughters hand and grabs nothing but air. “Rapists. Murderers.”

            “Rapists like the man you voted for?” My mother tries to answer, but Lilly doesn’t allow her. “Most of the people’s only crime is being here and not being able to successfully navigate a broken system. And people that are trying, walk out of immigration court to plainclothes men waiting for them.”

            “The law is the law, baby.”

            “We’ve broken the law, mom.” Lilly points her eyes at me. “Traffic tickets, drugs, worse.”

            “Sweetheart.”

            “Are we criminals, mom? Are we the bad ones?”

            “Baby. That’s different.”

            A pressure has been mounting in me since the conversation began. I almost forgot I was in the room—a living, perceivable thing. Not just an invisible spectator. I think it’s why I allow myself to burst. When I see all four pairs of eyes snap to me, I drop my head into my hands, hiding my wet, salty shame.

            It’s the warm hands of my mother I feel first. She rubs my back and coos sweetly, just loud enough for me to hear. Then Lilly on my other side. Her head digs into my shoulder like she’s keeping me from floating away.

            I let myself exist in the moment. Three exhausted organisms standing on the precipice of relationship-ending finality—looming over us not just in this conversation, but since the moment I landed, and it will continue long after I’m back in my car, flipping the ignition and praying to a god I don’t believe in that it turns over, taking me to my next place of rest. In this moment though, we are removed from all that. Nestled in the warm cocoon of three people that love each other, and have for as long as we’ve lived.

*

It’s the feeling right before you approach someone at a bar, or ask for their number. Full of want and desperate for reciprocity. Steeling yourself for a rejection you can’t handle. It makes my mouth taste sour.

            My father listens to talk radio while he drives. The men are debating fiercely. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but hear lots of numbers and percentages. Didn’t know my dad liked math. My mother scrolls social media, clicking her tongue, making knowing sounds like an intoxicated individual hearing a story they already know the ending to.

            It is not a good time. It is not the right time. But it is, nonetheless, the time.

            I haven’t been totally truthful, mom. No that’s terrible. Maybe something like: I’m in a situation. Ah. I could just tell the truth: So, turns out I’m a failure.

            “Hey, mom?”

            My mother makes another noise like she’s watching someone deliver a monologue she wrote and they’re not doing an especially good job, then flicks her index finger against the rectangular glow in her other hand.

            “Mom. Hey, can we talk real quick?”

            She scoffs. “They’ll just say anything now,” she says, shaking her head, glasses too far down her nose.

            “Mom! I need to talk to you!” The volume of my voice makes everyone flinch, including me. My father turns down the music, mother takes off her glasses and spins in her seat, touches my eyes with hers, then looks back out the windshield.

            “Is everything okay, sweetheart?” I know she’s irritated, but her voice is full of warmth.

            “Yeah, sorry. I just—how are things at the house?”

            She pauses for a moment. “Fine, honey. Your dad has started snoring so loudly we’re getting complaints from the neighbors.” She bumps his elbow. He squeezes her leg.

            “Good. That’s good.” I try holding the plan in my mind, but can’t remember it with all this beating of my heart. “You know, I was thinking. Caroline—”

            “Oh, you’re going to get her back, baby. Don’t you worry. She’s missing you like crazy.” She turns and winks. “Mother’s intuition.”

            “Yeah, I don’t—look. Since she moved out—”

            “Oh, that’s right. You haven’t told me, sweetie.” As she speaks, she unwraps a granola bar, slips it my direction. “Are you still living in the same place?”

            I feel my silence start to build. How long has it been since she asked the question?

            “Hunter, did you renew the lease, baby? I actually have some things I want to send you, but wasn’t sure if it’s the same address.”

            I look down to see the skin between my index finger and thumb is a few strokes away from breaking blood. I take a deep breath.

            “Mom—” I barely get the word out. The sound of my mother’s scream rattles the windows. I throw myself back into my seat and my father slams the brakes. Tires screech against the asphalt in a hopeless panic. The car teeters one side to the other as the breaks fight momentum, until my father carefully maneuvers into the road’s shoulder. Smoke rises off the street into the midday heat and the three of us catch our breath.

            “Ann. Was that really—”

            But she’s already out of the car and walking behind us into the deserted road. My father takes a patient breath, looks back at me. “She means well, you know?” He reaches out and punches my knee. It’s harder than I expect and I wait until he leaves the car to rub the pain away.

            On the road, my mother is in a crouched position, holding out her hands like she’s casting a spell. “Oh, sweet baby. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

            “Ann. I think it’s just in shock.”

            “It’s dying, Daniel. Can’t you see it’s dying!”

            The snow-white bunny is completely still, stuck in the thick air like a bug in amber. No signs of injury. Blood does not paint its fur. Bone does not protrude its shape.

            “Where’s the nearest animal hospital? Daniel, do you have service?”

            “Ann.”

            “Hunter! Grab a blanket from the trunk, sweetie.” She looks back at the ubiquitous little mammal—not lying on its side, not in some peculiar position. It’s frozen in prone. Fight-or-flight response in its reptilian brain giving way to the futility, settling into the immobilization response.

            “Mom.” I step close and put a hand on her back. She shudders. Tears drip down her blushed cheeks, her shoulders begin to heave and fall in rhythm. It’s like the shaking of her sobs sucks the irritation and anxiety out of my body. For a moment, I let go of it all. I push off what I’m trying to accomplish and the cacophony of competing needs fighting in my head. I crouch there with my mother on the deserted road, flanked on both sides by dense aspen trees, and allow the moment.

            “We have to protect the little creature, Hunter.”

            “I know, mom.”

            It takes a shaking step to full height. Its snow-white fur trembles, letting out the energetic response of its near-death experience, then hops off into the world, light as a feather.

            “If we don’t look out for these sweet little souls, who will, baby?”

            This type of bunny normally has a small, nubby tail—furry and barely perceptible. As our little friend hops away, I notice that not only is its tail longer and almost squirrel-like, it has two of them. The two tails flutter in the piney air, moving in competing motions.

            “I agree, mom. You’re a good person.”

*

Back in the car, my mother finally calms. Her eyes dry, and I know she’s feeling better when my father says that she smothers the family with love and still has enough left over to smother a wild animal, and she smiles.

            I ask if they saw the two tails, and my mother says, “Don’t be silly, Hunter. That’s impossible.”

            I feel the sweat beneath my shirt accumulate as I attempt formulating a new way to approach the topic. My mother decides to do it for me. “So, baby. You were saying? Are you still at the apartment, or did you move?”

            I take a deep breath, let it go slowly. “You know, when you were my age, a job like mine would be enough to afford a house.” I feel the skin on my hand begin to break, and a brilliant blob of ruby smiles up at me. “My wife could probably have even stayed home.”

            “Hunter, don’t be sexist. But Caroline would make a great wife. Give her a call, baby. I’d love to say hello.”

            “No, mom. Conceptual wife. We’re not talking—” I hold out my hand as if to grab hold of the conversation and, gently, steer it. “Life is so expensive now.”

            “It’s all the Greelans lowering the wages, honey. Pity.”

            “Mom!”

            “I’m just saying, Hunter. It’s the way it is. I’ve been on this earth a lot longer than you. I’ve watched it happen.”

            “Damn, mom. Can you just?” A lifted truck passes us and careens into our lane, making my father slam on the brakes and curse under his breath. A flag flies from the truck bed, flapping in the breeze. “I wasn’t able to afford the apartment anymore, okay?” The flag has a snake on it. A bunny—white as snow, is pinched between its teeth.

            “That’s fine, Hunter.”

            The blood now trickles in a spotted stream down to my wrist, kissing the roots of my opening arm hairs. “I’ve been doing my best.”

            “Of course, baby.” My mother spins to the backseat, putting a hand on my knee. “So, where are you living now?”

Play time was over.  The children formed a line between the monkeybars and the tower slide.  Like a troop of stuffed animals they followed Mrs. Waverly through the open door and down the hallway.  Puffy in their winter coats.  Soft in their hats and mittens.  They sat criss-cross applesauce on the reading rug.  Snow and ice melted from their boots and sneakers.  Cheeks red, many of their faces were marked with small, white welts, as if they had been stung by bees.  Mallory looked out the window.  The playscape a series of soft white shapes.  From the rooftop wind-driven waves of frosty snow particles, white, but sometimes blue, dipped and danced.  Even the breeze was an outline.  Like you would see in a particularly interesting picture book.  Or a famous painting.     

Now it was just sniffling and snuffling.  Now it was hair sticking up and itchy ears and uncovered coughs.  Now it was Mrs. Waverly instructing the class to speak softly with one another while they warmed up and waited for the morning’s special presentation.  Twelve girls and ten boys.  Seven or eight-years-old.  Chubby or rail thin, average or quite tall, they had blond or brown hair.  One girl, Jeannie, had a shock of bright red hair, her face a field of freckles.  As a group their needs were simple and their wants immediate.  A drink, now.  A band-aid, now.  I have to go pee.  The class, like an involuntary action, cultivated the tendency to act, not think.  Trooper Longtree would tap this energy. 

He flagged his assistants.  Two tall, wiry young men trotted over.  His sons.  Mallory’s brothers.  In their army boots, cargo pants, and black hooded sweatshirts they talked quickly, quietly, their backs to the children.  They unpacked items from canvas duffel bags, mindful to place each object out of sight. 

Yesterday, class was fun.  Mrs. Waverly brought a rose to school.  The class sat in a circle.  Every child had a chance to hold the flower.  After lunch, the students drew and colored pictures of the rose.  Then they had one hour to write poems.  When everyone was finished, the students read their poems into their computers.  The software improved their diction, rhyme, and meter.  Only Mallory chose to type her response.  She did not care what the computer thought of her writing. 

            “Hey, now,” Trooper Longtree said, turning to face the class.  He was wearing black cargo pants and black combat boots.  He wore a black ribbed turtleneck and a black baseball cap with yellow stitching that read Longtree’s Life Protection.  He had a bit of a gut, but was otherwise muscular and in shape.  His gun rested on a hip.  “Quick show of hands.  How many of you have ever had fun at one of these things?”

Mallory looked at her teacher.  Mrs. Waverly sat at her desk and offered a smile.      

“That’s what I thought,” Trooper Longtree said.  Lips pursed, he raised his phone horizontally above his head, and shot a picture of the class.  He holstered the phone to a clip on his belt suited for the purpose.  “Well, what would you say if I promised that not only are you about to have more fun than you’ve had all week, I am going to teach you how to save your life?  And not only that, but how to save the life of the person sitting next to you?”

            A beat.

            He smiled. 

“That’s okay.  I don’t expect you to answer.  Because look.  I know this is scary.  But gang, I’m not here to pull punches.  That ship has sailed.  We live in a scary world.  We live in a world made up of Good Guys and Bad Guys, and it’s getting damn near impossible to tell the difference.  Let me ask you something.”  He tapped the side of his mouth with an index finger, pretending to think. 

“So you’ve been in school for something like, what?  Eighty days?  And in those eighty days ….  Well.”  He stared at the students.  “So during those days since you first got off the bus, wearing your brand new sneakers and bright colorful outfits.  Since that first day of school.  When you got out of Mommy’s SUV with your bright water bottles and brand new backpacks.  Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many mass shootings we’ve had since September?” 

Jenny Carlisle raised her hand.

“Little miss?” 

“What’s in those bags?”  She pointed.       

Trooper Longtree frowned.  “What?”  He shook his head.  “That’s not—”  He looked at Mrs. Waverly.  She didn’t look up from her computer.

 “Any other takers?”  He stared at the class.  After a moment he shrugged.  “That’s okay.  Tough question.  So check this.  One hundred and eighty.  Well, technically, one hundred and ninety-two, for those keeping track at home.  That’s right, ladies and gentlemen.  That’s a one.  A nine.  And a two.  One hundred and ninety-two mass shootings since September.  Now I’m sure I’m not as smart as your Mrs. Waverly, but even a dumb cop like me knows that that’s more than two mass shootings a day since the start of school.  Thanks for participating though.  Catch.” 

One of his sons tossed Sylvie a silver stress ball.  It bounced off her lap and rolled beside a bookshelf.  On one side of the ball the company’s contact information printed in a bold, blue font.  On the other, Longtree’s logo, a yellow triangle made from two pumped biceps.  Each clenched fist informed part of the makeshift ouroboros, and glittered within the room’s bright, fluorescent light. 

“Know what else?”  He shook his head.  Took a deep breath.  “You know, I debated even getting into this, but what the hell.  Facts, right?”  He looked at the ceiling, then centered his gaze on the children.  “So I’m driving here on my way to your beautiful school this morning, and my best friend from high school calls.  Know what he says?” 

Trooper Longtree waved off a fury of raised hands.   

“That’d be rhetorical, gang.  Anyways.”  Trooper Longtree clapped his hands.  “So what he tells me, my best buddy Marcus, what he says is that there’s been another school shooting, just a couple of hours ago.  And we’re not talking Texas.  We’re not talking Florida.  We’re not talking about some crazy far away place.  No.  We’re talking about a school just a few hours from here.  Just outside the city, as a point of fact.  Ten confirmed dead, plus your gunman, and at least a dozen more shot.  Critically injured.  Elementary school students.  Just like you.  Unfrickingbelievable.”  He took off his hat and ran a hand through his short, spiky hair. 

“Now, ladies and gentlemen”—he squared his hat atop his head—“you know what that is?”   

Most of the class didn’t. 

“That’s ten more mothers and ten more fathers learning, right now, while you’re sitting here warm and “secure” in your classroom, that they have to bury their children.  Ten.  At least.  And for what?”

The children looked at one another, their bright eyes wide and wet.  A few slowly raised their hands, shoulder high.         

“As much as I don’t enjoy telling you this, I have to tell you this.  Because you know what?” 

            No one did.  Well, other than Mallory, Trooper Longtree’s daughter.  

“You can stop worrying about if a Bad Guy is going to come into your classroom and start shooting you, your friends, and your teachers.  You can stop worrying about that right now.  Today.  And do you wish to know why?” 

            No one raised a hand. 

Trooper Longtree nodded.  “I’ll tell you why.  The reason why is because the time for worrying is gone.  The time to be concerned is over.  Hasta la vista, baby.  What I need you young men and women to start preparing for is when.  Because if I’m here to tell you anything, it’s this.  It will happen.  Sure.  It might not be Columbine.  It might not be Sandy Hook.  But it?”  He made a gun out of a hand and raised this to the ceiling.  “As God as my witness, it’s going to happen.”  He pointed a finger at the class.  “And you’ve got a long way to go before you get that cap and gown.  Before you cross that stage with your diploma.”     

“Here’s an easy one.”  Trooper Longtree freed his sidearm.  He held it before him.  “Does anyone want to tell me what this is?” 

            The little kids raised their hands.  Trooper Longtree pointed through the girls up front and called on a boy in the back.  “You, there.  In the red coat.”

            “Me?” Tommy Wilkerson said.

            “Do you see anyone else wearing a red coat?”

            “What?”

            “That would be affirmative, son.  Yes, you.” 

“A gun?”

            “That’s right, my man.  A gun.  Bun not just any gun.  This is a special gun.  This is my gun.  A Colt M1911.  Any idea how it got its name?”   

He looked at his sons and smiled.  Snapping his fingers, he pointed towards the students.  Catherine Asberdine said, “Because you thought it was a good name?” 

He turned to face the little girl.  “Because I thought it was a good name.” 

Trooper Longtree pursed and blew air through his lips, slowly nodded, and looked at his weapon while holstering the gun. 

“Manufacturers name their models, sweetness.  But ….”  He looked at the class.  “Well, you’re not too far off the mark.  Some Bad Guy comes after me?  Well, because I have chosen to protect myself, that son of a bitch will be the one calling 9-1-1.  That bastard will be the one with—”  He smiled and raised his hands, shoulder high.  “Hey.  Don’t blame me.  I’m just a cop.  I started Longtree Life Protection of my own volition because I am sick and tired.  I am sick and tired of Bad Guys running around like they have some sort of right to shoot up shopping centers.  To gun down public schools.     

“Do me a favor,” Trooper Longtree said.  Take a look around.  He made a circle with a finger, indicating the bright, colorful room.  “Raise your hand if you’ve ever hidden in one of these corners.”      

Most of the class raised their hands.  Mallory stared at her father.       

“Great.  High.  Higher!  Hold!”  He lifted his phone and shot their picture.  “Okay, now, each of you.”  He holstered his phone.  “I want every single one of you looking around the room.  Look at each of these supposedly ‘safe spaces.’  Great!  Okay.  Go ahead and lower them.  Go on, lower those hands.  Now, do me another favor.  Hang tight for just a few minutes.  Take off your hats and jackets.  You gotta be warmed up by now, right?  We’re just getting started, and I need a couple of minutes with this technology.  Not quite what we work with, over at barracks.  But it will do.  I mean, it’s got to, right?”         

Trooper Longtree turned to the Promethean Board.  He woke the giant screen, fingered some icons, then waved over his sons.  Stumped, he looked at the students.  Mallory made eye contact.  She stared until he looked away.  He called for Mrs. Waverly.   

“Gang,” Trooper Longtree said.  “While we’re waiting for this technology to catch up with us, I want you to think about those four corners.  The time for cowering is over.  The time for running is over.  Fuck you, Bad Guy!  Screw you, Mass Shooter!  I’m sorry, Mrs. Waverly, you’ll have to pardon my French.  But I didn’t come here to apologize.  I came here to save lives.”  He paced in front of the children as they returned from their cubbies and took their places on the carpet.  His black boots thudded.   

“Think you can come into my school, Mr. Bad Guy?  Think you can come into my classroom and shoot my teachers and shoot my friends.  You think you’re going to walk into my library and my cafeteria and shoot me?  Eff that!  Enough is enough.  Let me ask you a question.  Well.”  With two hands he reached towards his sons, and received fistfulls of stressballs.  “I guess it’s more of a fill in the blank.”   

“Fill in the blank, okay?  Are you all with me?  Good.  What comes next?  What word comes after Run ….  Hide ….” 

            “Fight!”  Most of the class cheered.    

“Damn straight!” 

Trooper Longtree tossed the balls in the air.  The balls fell where they landed, bouncing off and rolling between the students, coming to rest against beanbags and the legs of desks.  Unlike the rest of her classmates, Mallory didn’t move.   

“That’s damn right,” Trooper Longtree muttered. 

Mrs. Waverly returned to her seat. 

“Thank you,” he said.  And then, to Mallory, “Go ahead and get yourself one of those stress balls.”  He pointed towards the back of the room.  “You’re going to need it.”      

–

“It’s like they woke up and decided to get shot or something,” Trooper Longtree snorted.  He extended a hand, and one of his sons handed him a large gun.  Turning from the screen, he cradled the weapon like a newborn. 

“Jaby Besus.  It’s breathtaking.  Watching how these people act, it’s like they’re living in the 1920s.  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a saying where I work.  I can’t repeat it, here, but you have my contact information, there, on your stress balls.  Everyone have a stress ball now?” 

He looked at Mallory. 

“If not, see one of my friends here.  We’ll be using them, in a little bit, when we get into tactical maneuvers.  But yeah.  Send me an email, with your parent’s permission, of course, and I’ll be happy to share.  That goes for any other questions you might have.  We’re going to cover a lot of ground this afternoon.”  Trooper Longtree stared at the children, assessing engagement. 

He closed his eyes.  Took a deep breath. 

“Okay now, eyes up.  I promise that you’ll have time to play.  That’s right.  I said play.  You’ll have time with your balls later.”

A few of the boys giggled.  Some of the girls covered their mouths with their hands.   

He waited for the children to quiet.  He said, “Our program.  All of it.  The entire premise.  Everything that we do.  Longtree Life Protection is predicated upon fun.  Fun, and, of course, action.  And who here wouldn’t rather be doing something instead of,” he looked around the room, eyed the word wall, and said, “sitting around reading a poem.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I love Dr. Seuss.  But it’s hard to read when you’re dead.   

“Gang.  What I’m trying to say is that right now I need all of you watching this.  Actively.  I need all of you paying very close attention.  I need all of you studying this clip as if your life depended on it.  You know why?”  He brought his weapon’s sight to an eye, turned, and peered at the screen.  “Because it does.” 

He mouthed the word Pow.   

Mallory looked to the side of the Promethean Board.  Earlier that morning, Mrs. Waverly had mounted their Rose Poems on red or black pieces of construction paper.  She had created a very special word wall.  One that resembled a giant checkerboard.  The other students had not seemed to notice.  Or care.  Mallory’s response was in the middle.  Mrs. Waverly had printed her words dark red, and used a much larger font.   

“Okay,” Trooper Longtree said.  “Let’s examine our first scenario.  And don’t worry.  We’re not going to show anyone getting killed.  Well, you know what I mean.  Not really.  But I am going to show you some real, actual, Bad Guys, and I am going to show you the bad things they’ve done.  More importantly, I will explain how.  Like, see?  Just look at how this Bad Guy, right here, in black ….”  He produced a laser from his pocket, and circled the man’s face.  The barrel of Trooper Longtree’s weapon went round and round.     

“I mean, just look!  He’s dressed like me.  Also, just like me, he’s holding one of these.”  Trooper Longtree extended his Colt M4 Carbine to one of his sons – the assistant who would later slip out of the classroom and return, wearing the company’s Redman Training XP Instructor Suit. 

“Now, let me be clear.  This is not your everyday law enforcement weapon, although I certainly keep a couple in my patrol car.  In the past, these were only issued to SWAT teams.  These guns were only given to those Good Guys who deal with some of the most dangerous Bad Guys us cops can face.  Because if a weapon, assault-style or otherwise, offers custom add-on capabilities, like scopes, and night vision devices and lasers, our bosses—”

The falling snow had transitioned to ice.  The ice clicked against the windows.  The class looked out the window.  The American flag whipped red and blue against the wind and the white.  A gust flattened against the glass, and a shelf of snow fell from the roof to the ground.    Those children who weren’t looking out the window were playing with their shoelaces.  A few had leaned back, and were staring at the ceiling.  Trooper Longree was losing them.  Time to get things moving. 

“Time.  Time, young men and women.  We just don’t have enough of it.  But I can tell you this.  Before?  Well, these particular weapons, like that serious gun I just gave my assistant, well, these were kept ‘on hand’ for worst case scenarios.”  He adjusted his hat.  Sighed.  

“Well, kids, I hate to break it to you, but this?  Your school?  Your classroom?  This, sad as it is to say, this is now a ‘worst case scenario.’  Bombs?  Fires?  Give me a freaking break.  I doubt even Mrs. Waverly can tell you the last time a student got killed by a bomb, or by some fire, at school.  It’s silly.” 

Trooper Longtree made a silly face.  Most of the little kids laughed. 

“Fun fact.  Forget the ice.  The snow.  Those windows right there?  Not bulletproof.  Don’t get me wrong.  Your administration, your superintendent?  That’s one good man, right there.  He’s done what he can.  That glass is pretty thick.  More importantly, it’s covered, like all your school’s windows, including those in the doors, with BulletShield, a DefenseLite derivative.”  He smiled.  “I know what you’re thinking.  Slow down Trooper Longtree!  Sorry.  But that’s just how passionate I am about protecting ….” his voice trailed off and he looked at the window as if it were a television. 

“Anyways, all that’s just a fancy way of saying your school has installed clear glass security over existing door and window glass.  If you really want to impress your grandparents this Christmas, tell them that your school acquired body armor for your windows.  Material that’s independently tested to meet UL 752 ratings for ballistic protection, and that—”   

Mallory silently read her poem, a finger tapping the beat.

The ground grabs her flowers,

It is not a game, they do not play.

Clouds come to scream at the sun,

She is hidden, she does not run. 

And the petals fall and start bleeding,

And it rains and the puddles turn pink.

And my desk is hard as a thorn

And, sitting here, I sink

And think, This floor is soft like mud. 

“Now ….”  Trooper Langree had started the video.  After a few moments he stepped to the board and tapped the man in black.  “Now, don’t watch him.  We don’t like him, and we’re not like him.  Does anyone here want to grow up to become a mass shooter?” 

Most of the kindergarteners shouted “No!” 

He paused the tape. 

“Okay.  Good.  Didn’t think so.  So.  Now.  While this is tough, and if we were at barracks I’d iso this for you, but you can wish in one hand ….

“Anyways.”  He shook his head, as if to clear a thought.  “Do your best to not look at the Bad Guy.  Instead, look at, concentrate on the woman sitting at the desk.  I’m going to play the video again.  Same speed.  From the beginning.  Remember.  This is in actual time.  Everyone ready?” 

Trooper Longree pressed play.  The kindergartener’s watched.  The shooter, wielding his weapon, walked into an office.  He seemed unsure what to do.  There was a sound to his left.  The entrance to a hallway.  The shooter turned and fired.  A great bright burst.  A man, shot in the shoulder, spun from view.  The woman sitting at the desk dropped beneath her desk.  The shooter walked towards the hallway.  The sound of a man screaming rained through the classroom’s surround sound, speakers built into the ceiling.  Another sound, indeterminate.  Unintelligible.  And then a burst of gunfire.  The shooter disappeared from view.  And then nothing.  A few moments later the secretary surfaced, grabbed her phone and purse, and ran in the direction from which the shooter had entered the space.  Trooper Longtree stopped the film.         

“Okay.  Now, which one of you bright young boys and girls can tell me what the woman at her desk did wrong?” 

            The secretary, Mallory silently mouthed, looking at her brothers, the sound of her father booming in her head.  Listening to him overcorrecting.  Always overcorrecting.  Telling the other kids how they were exactly wrong.  The secretary failed to …. 

And then she closed her eyes.  She worked to hear the wind, instead.   

*

The class went wild. 

They had not seen Trooper Longtree’s youngest son slip from the classroom, and so when he reentered, bright red and shiny in his Other Arms fighting suit, they pointed and laughed.  They covered their mouths and grabbed one another.  This, of course, was to be expected, and Trooper Longtree would give it a minute. 

The thing with kids these days wasn’t the kids ….  It was the parents.  Trooper Longtree had managed to exist for more than forty years on planet Earth before encountering the phrase “peanut allergy.”  The idea that reciting The Pledge of Allegiance was somehow a bad thing, that “Baby It’s Cold Outside” incited rape, and that men could – forget should – have babies? 

What in the actual fuck? 

What began as a melting pot had been reduced to a bloody alphabet soup.  Trooper Longtree was no bigot.  His creed was King’s, and judging a person by the content of their character was easy.  He understood why people were angry.  Maybe more than this, he understood why people were sad.  While it was no excuse, he also understood the harsh reality that people, sick people—evil people—sought their identities by shooting as many other people as possible.  But Longtree Life Protection wasn’t founded on those principles associated with victimhood.  And he wasn’t in the business of figuring out why.  At this point, he didn’t even care.  At least not really.  There was right, and there was wrong.  And Trooper Longtree didn’t need anything by way of “discourse” to discern the difference.   

“Okay, okay,” he said.  He raised his hands.  He smiled.  And then he frowned.  He said, “Alright, now.  Enough.  Ladies.  Gentlemen.  That’s enough.”     

Feet flush with the floor, hugging her legs, Mallory rested her chin on her knees.  She was tired.  What the woman on the video did wrong was “hide.”  What the man in the next video did wrong was “run.”  In the video after that, what the kids did wrong, a group of seventh-graders from a school across the country, kids not much older than herself who could hear their classmates screaming as, two doors down, a senior sprayed their bodies with bullets, was climb through a safety window. 

Who’s to say there isn’t another shooter outside, waiting to pick them off, one by one, like so many ducks in a barrel? 

There were other scenarios.  More questions from her father.  Mallory listened to her classmates offer all sorts of wrong answers, because she knew, from her dad, that you were supposed to fight.  That her dad, with help from her brothers, was here to teach the class there was no other way.  There was no other answer.  It—dead kids—was now a numbers game.  Most killers were cowards.  Not to mention dumb.  The way to minimize casualties was to disrupt the shooter.  While he only said this at home, or in the car on the way home from church, the hard truth was that someone, many times someones, had to take it for the team. 

When the class wouldn’t quiet, Trooper Longtree nodded to his son.  His son handed him a Chromebook.  Trooper Longtree stepped to his other son, Mark, the one in the red suit, and swung the computer, violently striking him in the head.  The face. 

This had the desired effect. 

Jamey started crying.  Alex curled into a ball.  A child raised her hand.  And then another.  Trooper Longtree returned the Chromebook.  He positioned himself in front of the class. 

“Thank you,” Trooper Longtree said.  “Now, class.  Don’t you worry about Mr. Mark over there.  He is just fine, so you can lower your hands.  I’m just glad that I now seem to have commanded your attention.  Because we’re moving past theory to enter practice.”   

Trooper Longtree explained that Other Arms Fight Suits are used for self-defense simulation, taser, and baton training exercises.  He emphasized just how widely the equipment is used in law enforcement, martial arts, and military training.  Hands on hips he added, “And, most importantly, offensive tactics.” 

Most of the kindergarteners had regained their composure.  Only a few students wiped away tears, or looked out the window, following the mixed precipitation as it transitioned, primarily, to snow.  Trooper Longtree’s phone pinged.  He checked his device.  He read the text.  Superintendent Jenne would soon make an announcement that, due to deteriorating weather conditions, students would be dismissed early. 

“Well, that changes things,” Trooper Longtree said to himself.  “Looks like we may have to come back.  But we’re okay, for now.” 

He looked at the class.  He decided what best to do. 

The Promethean Board, due to inactivity, blinked off and into darkness.  

“Now, I know you’re all excited about this weather.  So I’ll let you in on a secret.”  He managed a smile.  “A little birdie told me there won’t be school tomorrow.  That you’ve got yourselves a little unexpected three-day vacation.” 

Mrs. Waverly sighed, and began straightening her desk.  He waited for the children to stop cheering. 

“So what I need from you is your undivided attention.  Can you give me that?” 

Most of the kindergarteners said they could. 

“Now, Mr. Mark here is completely safe.  He’s wearing the top of the line training suit, one whose versatility is completely unmatched.  Preparing for the worst demands that we work with the best.  The best equipment.  The best materials.  The best people.  Mrs. Waverly wouldn’t give you paper and then a pencil with no lead, right?  Or ….”  He seemed to struggle to come up with another analogy, smiled, and shrugged.   

“Anyways, you don’t have to worry about him.  He has all the important padding he could possibly need, and then some.  Plus, as you can see ….”

Mark pantomimed a series of maneuvers.  One moment a samurai.  The next, a creepy school shooter.  And then, after his father nodded, he imitated a popular cartoon character.  Most of the class laughed. 

“Yep.  He’s got all of this without sacrificing any necessary flexibility.”

Mallory knew what came next. 

The Fun Part. 

First, her dad was going to show the class how, if necessary, their Chromebooks could be turned into weapons.  Given their size, by which he meant Mallory and the other children, these weren’t ideal.  But, he would point out, for every problem, there was a solution.  Or solutions. 

Next, he called for a volunteer.  Trooper Longtree looked at the raised hands, and, while sifting through faces for the perfect subject, he made a big show of the process, covering for Mark who reached behind one of the canvas bags, grabbed and concealed what he needed, then stepped from the room, unnoticed.     

The class watched Cassidy Newhouse walk to the front of the room.  The children clapped and cheered as Trooper Longtree, doing a bit of a jig, hooted, hollered, and pumped his fist.  Mallory felt bad.  Cassidy thought that she would, but she was not going to like The Fun Part.  Dad always picked the softest, gentlest kid, first.  You can tell by their eyes, Mallory had heard him explain to her brothers.  Over dinner.  On rides to the dojo.  You wouldn’t necessarily think it, but how well they’ll perform?  This has very little to do with their stature.  Their size.    

“This,” he explained, “is because only the strongest, bravest kids in class will dare to volunteer next, and we need maximum energy to convince the others to take part in what, more than anything, is a numbers game, if not quite a suicide mission.”     

Closing her eyes, Mallory listened as her father asked Cassidy a series of questions.  Did she have any siblings?  Pets?  Four dogs?  Really?  No way!  What are their names?  These questions, Mallory knew, were designed more to distract the class than anything.  To make them forget about Mark.  That he—

“Bang!” Mark screamed. 

Calmly, he stepped into the classroom (Mallory thought he looked like a big red ant), and, training his modified Nerf gun on Cassidy’s arms and thighs, sprayed her with soft, pink bullets.  The bullets, Mallory’s father always maintained, did not hurt.  He would, following the “cell phone” demonstration, allow the class to shoot him.  Freely.  But that was only if his volunteer was still crying.  But her dad wasn’t so smart.  He had forgotten what, when you were little, really hurt. 

Stunned, the little girl fell to the ground.  She curled into a ball.  Mark approached, pulled a Nerf pistol from a holster hidden behind him, popped her once in the head, then, stepping over her, slowly turned to face the class. 

No one moved. 

Elementary students, unlike other age groups, while certainly annoying in their own ways, didn’t, as a rule, go for a laugh.  They looked up to their teachers.  They respected authority.  They were a year away—or, if lucky, two—from possessing anything by way of pure (what Trooper Longtree considered calculated) cruelty.  They, in a word, loved. 

Once you got past sixth grade, though, children were almost worthless.  You had to wait until high school, really, before you could look at a kid and expect anything by way of reason and accountability.  Trooper Longtree watched Mark with pride.  Admiration.  He wondered what he’d do next. 

The room was silent.  The class did not move.  The ice had completely transitioned to snow and fell so heavily that the light inside the classroom seemed brighter.  Mark walked around the children in a wide arc.  In each hand a weapon, both pointed towards the ground.  Opportunity presented itself as everything.  Mrs. Waverly stood from her chair.  Face flushed, she was angry.  She opened her mouth to speak, and Mark holstered his handgun, pointed the larger toy in her direction, and blasted the woman with bullets, screaming “Bang!” repeatedly until, defeated, unable to speak over Mark Longtree, Mrs. Waverly, pink bullets popping from her shoulders and legs, took her seat, holding her head in her hands. 

Most of the kids were crying.  Several had closed their eyes.  A vestigial response that could be traced to near infancy.  What they didn’t see couldn’t be happening, and so they were safe from harm.  This mentality was not unusual.  This—Trooper Longtree eyed the clock and decided he would give Mark a few more minutes—was the problem. 

Yesterday, Longtree Life Protection conducted the same training with a bunch of telemarketers.  While the men and women obviously weren’t crying, they might as well have been.  If a person wasn’t told exactly what to do, and when, that person did nothing.  Which is why Trooper Longtree’s message was simple:  Fight.  No running.  No hiding.  No thinking.  Just fighting.  That was all.  He hoped Superintendent Jenne had them back.  There was so much left to cover.       

Mallory watched her brother.  She knew he was waiting for someone to do something.  Anything.  She had heard her father tell stories of how some kids, in other schools, ran.  How others, knowing it was a training, threw pens or pencils at her brother – a means to distract him.  (This behavior, which her father called Active Distraction, was encouraged, and taught during a different part of the presentation.)  Later, Mallory knew, her father would show the students how to hold their pens or pencils like tomahawks, and how to aim for their attackers’ temple – or, as the case may be, his groin.  Her father would preach that in the event of an active shooter situation they should, instead of running for cover, attack the door, forming a line just off to the side, wielding whatever they were able to find by way of weapon.  He would teach them how, if the man entered the room, at least four of them should attack him, going first for his weapon.   

“Knowing what we know now,” and he would list what he now knew, “running is, at least if you want to live, a last resort.” 

And then he would run through the statistics. 

“These are cowards we’re dealing with,” he’d point out.  “They don’t need much of an opportunity to bow out, to find someone unwilling to fight.” 

But all that was later.   

Mark dropped to a knee.  He fired a few bullets at his father, who fell to the floor.  His brother charged him, and Mark calmly turned and used his remaining bullets to dispose of the only other adult in the room.  He dropped the weapon onto a bean bag.  Somewhere outside the room and down the hall the sound of children laughing.  He turned and made for the door, freeing his Nerf handgun. 

Only Mark stopped.  Turned.  Faced the class.  As if rooted in place by a new thought, he slowly ….

*

It’s just me, now.  It’s Mallory. 

            Listen.  You can trust me – I’m no longer in class.  

            I’m at home. 

In fact, I am a senior in high school.  I’m still alive.   

I bet many of you can imagine how my dad’s presentation ends.  But don’t.  Imagine.  Look through the glass and watch the snow fall and swirl and turn your head and hear the wind push and pull those flakes bright as stars and sharp as sand.  See how it’s all so real it feels fake. 

Watch that instead. 

Listen to that instead. 

You might think so, but you really don’t want to watch my brother, Mark, dressed shiny and red like an ant, some stooge who has raised his gun as he makes for our reading rug and then stomps through us little boys and girls in his red suit and how he does not stop just yet because there is still a child—me—who wrote of the mud and not of the rose because wouldn’t you, if you were me, always be thinking about other things? 

He will keep moving because I am still sitting.  

Because listen. 

Any moment now he will raise his gun and shoot me in the head and later, at home, I will get in big trouble if I don’t play dead, and so I’ll roll over and I won’t move.  I will play dead.   

And yes.  The school can train us. 

And yes.  My dad can train us. 

And my dad can say that when this is done and over and they leave ….  My dad can say that if what we heard and what we learned today goes on to save one life, all of this will be worth it. 

And yeah, maybe, possibly ….  I guess what he says might be true. 

But, statistically – to use one of my dad’s favorite words – the only thing I know for sure is that he is the only one who is happy. 

And when my dad is happy? 

            I’d much rather be sad. 

‘The sunflowers looked at him rather than at the sun.’  Milorad Pavić

My father was a handsome and charming man. I say this as a matter of fact, not out of pride, or to claim any reflected glory, because my father cared very little about me. Throughout my childhood he rarely spoke to me, or to my sister Anna. But although he paid no attention to me, as a small boy I was always intensely aware of my father, who walked like a giant through my early life. And that awareness was greater because, as a consulting engineer, my father regularly worked at home, in one of the front rooms, which he had converted into his study.

This study was the warmest room in the house. It had three windows, including a wide bay window looking out to the street. Bookshelves covered two of its walls from floor to ceiling. There was a heavy walnut desk set across one corner, an inclined draughting table at which my father stood to work, and a dark green leather couch. I think, but I cannot say for certain, from time to time my father slept on that couch rather than go to the bedroom where my mother slept. There are many things in my childhood I now, with hindsight, think may have occurred, but which at the time I did not understand, did not know how to interpret, or perhaps simply refused to register.

The door of the study was always closed, whether my father was there or not, and my sister and I could not enter without permission. That rule came not from him, but from my mother, who spoke of the study as if it began with a capital letter. The air in there, too, was different to the air in the rest of the house; dry, faintly dusty, smelling of leather, sun-warmed even in winter. But within that sacrosanct room was something even more sacred, the walnut desk and, even more yet, its drawers. The desk was broad, with three or four drawers, bearing elaborately curled brass handles, arranged on either side of the chair.

I retain the knowledge, even the physical sensation, that these desk drawers were utterly forbidden from one particular event. I was six or seven years old. I had gone into the study, with permission from my mother, instructed to retrieve something, perhaps a coffee pot. My father was not there, and I had the idea he was out of the house. I took advantage of this rare opportunity to approach the desk – a stripe of sunlight was falling diagonally across the burgundy leather inlay on its top – and look inside its drawers. I stealthily slid out each drawer in turn, slowly, so my mother would not hear anything. I was too aware of the enormity of what I was doing to open them more than half-way.

I recall the smell of the drawers rather than their contents; a mixed smell of wood and pencil-shavings and ink. I am sure there were rulers and dividers and pens and rubber stamps and letterhead paper and so on; I cannot say I remember. But what I do remember is that, in one of the bottom drawers, in an unlocked metal box, I found a revolver. Startlingly black and shiny, it lay on a piece of green cloth. I took it out and looked at it carefully. I knew what it was; I had toy wooden guns, and one of my uncles had a cigar lighter made in the shape of a pistol. This then was the real version, the archetype, of a toy, and therefore a very wonderful toy indeed. I also understood it was a secret object, hidden, something I would never see on one of Father’s crammed bookshelves or lying on the desktop.

I remember the touch of the revolver even today, the hardness and surprising coldness of it, and its smell of oiled metal. It was fully loaded. I know that because I also remember the shiny brass firing caps of the bullets in their revolving chamber. It was heavy, far, far heavier than my wooden toy pistols. I had to use both hands to hold it steady out in front of me, pointing it at various things in the room; the lampshade, the telephone, the clock on the wall.

I was so caught up in amazement at this magical object that I forgot I was meant to get in and out of the study quickly. I was still standing in the middle of the room, holding the gun, when my father entered. I saw him come through the doorway, his shape filling most of it. I froze. I expected, no, I knew, I would be in terrible, unimaginable trouble for being in the study and touching his things. Especially this secret powerful thing. But my father smiled, and walked toward me with his hands held wide apart. He spoke to me – I suppose he said my name, though I can’t recall that – then reached out and very gently took the revolver out of my hand.

He put it down somewhere, then he took my arm, also gently, and we walked out of the study together. He closed the door; it seemed even more than usual a definitive shutting-off of that room from the rest of the house. I was astonished that he displayed no anger at all.

 Once we were out in the living room he knelt on the carpet in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. He looked me full in the face. I was startled, because he focussed his entire attention onto me, which he had never done before. I remember the feeling of that attention, I remember noticing his eyes were blue, which I can’t recall knowing at any other time, and I remember thinking whatever was to come, at least my father was fully aware of me. And then he spoke.

‘Martin, if you ever touch the drawers of my desk again, I will give you a thrashing you will never forget for your whole life. Do you understand me?’ His voice was not loud; indeed he spoke quietly, but it was compressed and forceful. Every word hit me like a blow. No, not a blow, that gives the wrong impression, because the effect was not brutal; every word was like an electric shock. Reinforced by the blaze of his blue eyes close to mine, eyes which suddenly seemed very large, huge, his words went straight into the centre of my being. I have heard them over again a thousand times since.

‘Yes, father,’ I answered. He nodded, stood up and walked away. I remember seeing his back as he went out of the living room, toward the kitchen. Standing, he was once again very big, very much taller than me. I heard him speaking to my mother, but I didn’t make out what was said. No doubt he was telling her what had happened – but no, as I write this I wonder whether my mother actually knew of the existence of the revolver. Perhaps he was just telling her he had found me in his study. Or perhaps something quite unrelated to me at all.

I ran to my room and sat on my bed, trembling. I resolved that I would never touch his desk again. I intended absolutely to obey my father, but more, I wanted him to see that I obeyed him, that I was capable of discipline. ‘In a year from now,’ I thought, ‘he will see I have not touched his desk for a year, and he will be proud of me.’ Proud of me? No, I didn’t think that, to be honest. ‘He will acknowledge I have obeyed his instructions,’ is what I actually thought, because that was how I thought of my relationship with my father.

It’s funny; I always called him ‘Father,’ which even in those days was a very old-fashioned form of address. My mother at one time encouraged Anna and me to call him ‘Dad’ – we called her ‘Mum’ – but the first time I said it to him, he lowered the newspaper he was reading, looked at me, then raised the paper again without answering. The next time I addressed him, I called him ‘Father’ again, and he responded.

I realise my account of these incidents makes him sound hard, or callous. He was not. He threatened me, that once, with a thrashing, but he never actually punished me throughout my entire childhood, never even raised his voice to me. He fundamentally had no interest in me. I couldn’t understand that then; I thought parents had to be interested in their children, because they had created them. My sister and I were aware of our mother’s attention to us in a thousand ways. But having no interest in us, and no instinctive sense of how to deal with us, our father adopted – heaven knows where he acquired it, probably from his own father, now I think of it – a completely formulaic way of relating to his children, and left it at that. I dimly understood he was not very interested in my mother, either, although even that understanding is perhaps overlaid with my perception as an adult, and in the light of what happened later.

I wanted my father to like me, of course, partly because he was my father, but also because he was the largest thing in my world; a big man, certainly, but when to his size you added his deep voice, his cigars and hair-oil and heavy square-shouldered overcoat and highly-polished shoes, his Horch touring car, his rolled-up blueprints and his leather document-case, to me he had the size and gravity of a mountain.

And it was not merely physical size; he embodied authority, in the home but also in the world. I observed – I watched surreptitiously when clients came to our house – that men, well-dressed men, some in uniform, who arrived in shiny black cars with drivers who opened the door for them, treated him with deference. Mother frequently told us Father was a very important man, usually in the course of telling us he was not to be disturbed at a given moment. And he spoke about powerful people dismissively – not the empty, boastful criticism of the weak, but as from a position of strength. ‘Woyzeck is a fool, and I didn’t hesitate to tell him so,’ I heard him say to my mother once on returning home from a meeting of some kind. Woyzeck was Doctor Julius Woyzeck, whom I knew from school lessons to be our Governor. I didn’t doubt for a moment that Father had said exactly that to him.

My father was certainly attractive. I mean that literally; people were attracted to him, as if he were a magnet. In any group, he always seemed to be in the middle, with everyone else’s eyes on him, and it was the same in every photograph of him I saw. I took it to be natural, as his right.

He once told us he had acted in plays at university, and that sometimes he wished he had become an actor. I remember him saying this, sitting at the head of the table just before dinner one evening, with a silver soup tureen in front of him, and a white napkin tucked into his collar. I remember because it seemed a remarkable confession from my father; it amounted to saying he’d made a mistake, or had a regret, neither of which were things I could associate with him. I always believed him to be master of his whole life. But perhaps his youthful theatrical training had proved useful, teaching him to command the stage, to time the delivery of his words for maximum effect.

I did see some evidence of my father’s theatrical abilities. My mother regularly held musical recitals in our home, to which friends and neighbours were invited. They were conducted in the parlour, a big room with yellow striped wallpaper. It contained an upright piano and a number of chairs, covered in red plush, which were used only for these salons. My mother would play piano, Schubert and Mozart, and a neighbour, a small man with glasses whose name I have forgotten, played violin, I believe very capably. My father did not always attend, but when he did, he sang Lieder, with my mother as accompanist, or read from Goethe, usually Faust. Listening to someone read doesn’t sound very exciting, but – I think this is an accurate memory – people always attended to him expectantly and in silence. He read accurately and resonantly, without exaggeration or affectation.

From the age of about eight I was allowed to attend these soirees, sitting behind all the guests on a single straight-backed chair near the door; Anna, three years younger, was not, a source of pain to her even in her adult life. ‘You’re so lucky,’ she said to me several times, on one occasion close to tears. ‘You can remember more of him than I. I never got to see him sing, or read, or anything. I wish I had.’ I did not disturb her assumption that I welcomed these memories.

These evenings were my mother’s only public appearance, and perhaps her greatest pleasure. She set out an elaborate table, with a variety of food and drink. Tokay wine I remember particularly, because I was fascinated by the improbable Hungarian words on the label, but there were no doubt other drinks, as I recall light reflecting from crystal decanters, and there were certainly little pies and pastries, rolls, cheese and smoked meat, cakes of different kinds, jellied fruits and bowls of wrapped sweets. After the music, there was coffee and animated conversation, often until late. And I noticed, in that more relaxed atmosphere, that women paid attention to my father, and he responded to them. In those days, women dressed colourfully, or at least that is my memory; standing round my father like flowers planted around a monument, they turned their faces to him as sunflowers to the sun.

On these evenings I saw a side of my father I saw at no other time; smiling, his dark eyebrows mobile, his white teeth flashing. There were jests and repartee. I even saw him clap a man on the shoulder, laughing, although I don’t remember ever seeing anyone touch him so familiarly. But my predominant memory of those evenings is of women finding my father entertaining, attractive, I’d say now. If it was obvious to me, it must have been even more obvious to my mother, but I didn’t think of that at the time.

And I remember that after these salons, when all the guests had gone, I would secretly – why I thought it had to be secretly I don’t exactly know – slip back into the parlour, where I could smell women’s perfume, several different perfumes, it seemed, mingled with wine and stale cigarette smoke. I associated this sweet, almost sickly, scent, hanging in the warm, tired air of the room, with something forbidden. Again, I may be overlaying that memory now with hindsight. But the contrast between my father’s behaviour on those evenings and his conduct in the home all the rest of the time was very marked.

Our father’s indifference to his children affected my sister more than me. I was at boarding school from the age of twelve, went to Vienna immediately on passing my baccalaureate, and for ten years after that had no contact with my father. I had to find other role models. But Anna stayed at home, attending a local day-school, and all through her adolescence had to bear his disregard. From what little she has told me, that disregard, to her and our mother, if possible increased over the last three or four years before he finally left the family. And of course as a daughter, Anna naturally craved her father’s attention and affection, and was the more distressed when she didn’t receive it.

Indeed, I don’t doubt our father’s inattention to her affected Anna’s life profoundly. After finishing school, she remained living with my mother into her late twenties, until she went to Leonding to be married to a man I didn’t know, and as I understand it she scarcely knew either. Three years later, the marriage having failed, she returned home to Linz and lived with my mother again until she bought a small apartment in the Franckviertel district. There she retreated into deeper and deeper layers of secrecy and incommunicability.

But this is not a story about Anna, or about me. It is about my father.

As I say, he left the family. I was seventeen then. It was during the school term, so I was not at home when he departed. I received a letter from my mother, telling me in two dry, matter-of-fact pages that my father had met someone else, that she had agreed not to contest a divorce, that we would be moving out of our villa into a smaller house Father had bought, and that he had already left for Graz, to live with the woman who was to be his next wife. At the end of term I went home, or rather to my mother’s new house, small but pleasant, with a well-tended garden, and found my books and childhood toys packed up in boxes. I left them there when I went back to school; I never retrieved them.

The way I have described my father’s leaving sounds absurdly simple and unemotional, but that is how it appeared to me at the time. Now, of course, I know it was far from simple and unemotional for my mother, who, quite apart from any interior pain, felt publicly shamed. Nor was it so for my sister. But at the time I simply accepted the constellations had rearranged. I didn’t attempt to contact my father in Graz – after all, he hadn’t even told me he was leaving – and he didn’t contact me. I finished school, enrolled in university, and went on to try and shape my own life, relying on my own resources. Of course I made mistakes, but I also learned, quickly enough, what life required of me.

And I rather looked down on my university colleagues who spoke about their parents, or quoted their father’s opinions; I considered them undeveloped, immature. Surely at twenty, I thought, you had to put your parents behind you. Perhaps for that reason I formed few friendships there. I applied myself to my studies and graduated with a good degree in law. I inherited none of my father’s musical ability, but I did achieve a reasonable proficiency at chess. With those qualifications I set out to establish myself in the world.

 It was a decade later than this that I saw my father again. He must have been nearly sixty. This was just after the Anschluss, about two years before the war. I had established my law practice in Vienna, had a position in well-established chambers, and was, if I may say so, regarded as up-and-coming.

Returning from court one afternoon I was given a note, in copperplate handwriting I recognised as my father’s. He wrote that he was staying at the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth, and asked if it would be convenient for him to visit me the next day. Even then, already an adult professional, the idea of my father asking if something suited me struck me as strange. I sent a telegram suggesting eleven o’clock.

I had a good deal of work to do that evening, but I was continually distracted by the prospect of my father’s impending visit. Of course, I could imagine him only as I’d last seen him, and I visualised a man a head and a half taller than me striding through my door the next morning. Why he wanted to see me, and what I would say to him, were equally unguessable. That night I even dreamed of his visit; he was wearing a chalk-striped Italian overcoat which I remembered from my boyhood. In my sleep I could smell his hair oil.

The next morning, I reassured myself that my anxiety was baseless; my father was just another man, whatever position he might hold. I was used to dealing with people in authority, and indeed was now a man with some degree of authority myself.

I know that in the conventional father-son story, I would have found my father, on meeting him again after fifteen years, smaller, less impressive. He would have had some reversal of fortune, and would perhaps ask me for a favour, for legal advice, possibly even a loan. Or again, he might look at me pensively and say, ‘I haven’t been much of a father to you, have I?’ And I would forgive him, we might even embrace, and then we would each go on our way having dealt with the father-son problem to finality. That is what occurs in the conventional narrative. But it wasn’t like that at all.

At precisely eleven, he was announced. He came through the door of my chambers, still wearing his hat and overcoat, making both the doorway and my whole room seem small. When I stood to greet him I saw we were now the same height, but the impression of his size did not abate. From his outward appearance, he was an even more important man than before. His suit was immaculately tailored, his tiepin diamond, and he wore a small gold Hakenkreuz badge in his lapel.

He looked around my rooms, the walls full of books, the heavy desk, the Persian carpet, the leather client chairs, and nodded. He tossed his overcoat and hat onto one chair, and sat heavily in the other, across the desk from me. Not knowing what else to say, I began to tell him about my practice, and he nodded from time to time, but nevertheless seemed to be only half listening.

It struck me forcefully that I felt nothing on seeing my father. Absolutely nothing, neither fear nor affection, nor nostalgia for my childhood, nor even curiosity about his life and occupation. I was no more engaged in talking to him than I would have been speaking to a reporter, or some uncle of a colleague. After all my concerns of the night before, now that he was here, my father’s visit seemed no more than a formality to be dealt with. I even began to calculate how soon I could get back to my work. I realised I still didn’t know why he had come, but I decided whatever it was, it could have nothing really to do with me.

‘Yes, I see you have done well for yourself, Martin,’ he said when I came to a pause, and while at one time in my life those words would have meant the world to me, I took nothing from them now. In fact, I bridled at the idea that my reason for being a lawyer was to do well for myself.

‘If I’ve done well, Father, as you’re pleased to say, it’s because I work hard, and because I try to give a voice to those who need it, who have no voice of their own,’ I said. Finally allowing myself to feel annoyed with him, and caught up in my own rhetoric, I went on:

‘You wouldn’t know this about me, but I actually believe in fairness, in justice. And I do my best to see it’s brought about.’

My father smiled, and shook his head slightly. He leaned forward in his chair and looked at me directly; I couldn’t remember him looking straight into my eyes since that day, more than twenty years before, when he’d found me in his study.

‘Martin,’ he said, then, pausing between each word, ‘life is not like that.’ Still smiling, he leant back again, gesturing dismissively with one hand.

‘Life does not balance its books. There is no higher ledger recording right and wrong. I know you are a lawyer and I am not, but let me tell you, there is no justice in this world. Your scrabbling around trying to see what you call justice done is about as important to the real world as a tadpole swimming in a puddle. I understand how you think, Martin, because most people think like you. Be honest, before I arrived you were entertaining some thoughts of forgiving me, weren’t you? The truth is you could not forgive me even if you really desired to. You don’t have what forgiveness requires. Only the strong can forgive, and that strength comes from the exercise of power, not from good intentions, or a diploma.’

Before I could compose a retort, he stood, raked his fingers through his hair, still glossy and black, put on his hat, and picked up his overcoat.

‘Don’t misunderstand me. I’m glad you’ve had success. You have ability, I’m sure you do work hard, and hard work and ability will usually find their reward. D’you smoke cigars? No? A pity; I brought you a box of real Fonsecas. Never mind, I’ll put them to good use,’ he said, patting his breast pocket. Smiling again, he held out his hand. I shook it, for the first and last time in my adult life, a strong, warm grip. Then he left.

After he had gone, I realised I had no idea why he had come. He had asked me nothing, and told me nothing about himself. I could only assume he’d wanted to see whether I had so far succeeded in life, but why? Out of some belated sense of paternal pride, or to assuage his conscience for abandoning me, abandoning his family? Or for some other reason entirely; perhaps to see if I could be useful to the new Europe?

Whatever its purpose, my father’s visit profoundly disconcerted me. Once I had subdued my anger at his contemptuous dismissal of my beliefs, his assertion that justice was unimportant troubled me in another way; it left me fearful for the future, as my father was obviously very close to those who shaped the events of the world. If this emerging world was to be one without justice, without compassion, I trembled for it. Only the next day, back in court, did I recover some of my self-assurance, but even then, his words still resonated disturbingly.

The war came, of course, and interrupted everyone’s lives. I served, was injured – not heroically but in an artillery training accident – and returned to civilian life. The years immediately after the war in Austria are not worth speaking about, except that my mother died, knocked down by a Russian jeep when crossing the road in front of her house. I found it harder and harder to resist my father’s assertion that there is in this life no justice. Nevertheless, the structure of things slowly returned toward something like normality.

I had no news of my father during the six years of the war. I assumed he was involved in some way, probably in some engineering project that didn’t bring his name into the news. It may seem odd that I didn’t try to find out, then or later, but the fact was I had spoken to him only once in the last twenty years, and the war and its aftermath gave me a great deal more to be concerned with than inquiring after a man I hardly knew, even if he were my father.

I do know that he survived the war, because once, just once, I heard from him again. I had settled back into my law practice, and the courts were operating as before, so it must have been ten years after our last meeting. I had married and had a son and daughter of my own by that time, and to be honest I thought as little about my childhood and family as possible.

But I definitely remember this final communication from him. Although I can’t be certain of the year, the day remains in my memory, because it was one of those glaring, brassy late August days when everybody in Vienna is thoroughly sick of the summer heat and wishes to heaven autumn would arrive. Even in my rooms, with an electric fan going, my shirt collar was sticking uncomfortably to my neck.

An envelope arrived for me bearing my father’s immediately recognisable handwriting. It had no return address, but bore an American stamp and a Chicago postmark. Inside was a card, with an inscription wishing me a happy birthday, signed ‘Your Father.’

My birthday is, in fact, in November. I dropped the envelope and card into the waste paper basket at my feet. At home that evening, I saw no reason to mention the matter to my wife.

I have not heard from my father, or about him, again. Whether his being in America proves there is justice in the world or not, I cannot say. As I am now sixty, he must almost certainly have passed on, but I have no idea where or when or how. I prefer not to think of my father at all. I have only set down this account to put it behind me, in the hope I do not have to think about him again. But he was, I have to say, the most handsome and charming man I ever knew.

It’s sunny at the end of the world. Maude wants to tell someone, but she has no one to tell. The sentence ticks through her mind as she settles into one of the many empty chairs in the cruise ship’s glass-walled library, surrounded on all sides by the roll of forty-foot waves. Yesterday, she stood at the stern with the other passengers and watched the familiar greens and browns of Argentina recede into a monochromatic, blue-on-blue view. Now, seemingly every other passenger is stuck horizontal through this lurching loop.

Most endure the nausea in their cabins, only occasionally emerging, pale-faced and wobbly-legged, for oatmeal and mashed potatoes. It’ll take the ship three days to get through the Drake Passage, on its way to the Antarctic Peninsula. Maude plans to take advantage of the nearly empty ship for as long as she can. Maybe writing as the ground seesaws beneath her will finally force her unbudgeable writing project to budge. She watches the froth of water as the ship bucks through the waves—cresting, dropping, cresting, dropping. She can’t decide what is worse: the relentless view or the blank document open on her computer. The cursor blinks, taunts.

            She types and deletes: The molar jiggled; a tectonic plate shifted.

            She tries again: They incinerated her teeth with the rest of her bones.

            Dana would have made fun of her––don’t be so maudlin, Maude––but Dana wasn’t here. Maude missed her, but she also hated her. She hated Dana for that early-morning phone call from Dana’s dad, hated Dana for letting her SUV roll on her way to a weekend retreat. She hated Dana for the conversation Maude had with Dana’s dad after the funeral, when he explained about the tickets to Antarctica and he knew Dana would still want Maude to go. Maude hated Dana because she knew she couldn’t cancel, not with Dana in her ear, whispering, Don’t be such a baby, you bitch.

            For years, Maude had been developing an idea for her second novel, an idea she only told Dana about in fragments. Tooth Rift would be about an iceberg that was slowly cleaving from the continent and a woman who realizes this rift exists in her mouth as a loose molar. Whenever she presses her tongue to the dental crown, the rift grows wider. Dana glommed onto the idea because, she insisted, they would need to go to Antarctica for research purposes. She had her family money; she’d buy their tickets; Maude didn’t have to worry about that part of it. They’d go together and they’d vacation in parkas. Dana would drink martinis and Maude would write. Dana insisted it was a perfect plan, but Maude refused. She didn’t want Dana’s charity, and she knew that, even if the publisher of her first book was interested in this next one, any advance she got would only end up being equal to whatever she still owed the IRS from the year before. Over drinks, Maude would mention a new plot point she’d come up with––how, if the woman’s gums bled, the blood would taste like salt and metal and ice––and Dana would pull out her phone and say, “Great, I just have to book it.”

Maude wishes she knew what finally made Dana purchase their cabin on this particular trip, if it was something Maude had said or done or if Dana had just gotten drunk one night and thought, “fuck what Maude wants.” She always thought she knew Maude better than Maude knew herself. Probably, she did.

The ship tips sideways and Maude is brought back into the library, into her body. A body she resents because it’s still here, whole, still demanding food and care, even though all Maude wants is to disappear beneath the weight of Dana’s absence. The words aren’t coming. She slams the computer shut and, using the rope tied up along the walls for support, slowly makes her way back to her cabin.

At dinner, Maude finds an empty seat at a table in the far corner, next to guests she doesn’t recognize. As a bowl of bread circulates, a middle-aged woman with box-dyed red hair talks about how she’s slept through the last two days thank god and a man sitting next to Maude says that he had to go get a scopolamine patch from the doctor and there was a woman down there, puking into some poor guy’s boot.

            Across from Maude, a man says, “Oh yes, that’s me. Thank you.” It’s like her radio has been switched back to the table’s channel. The man is talking to a woman with long silver hair and a turquoise statement necklace. In a glass-thin voice, the woman says, “You know what, I thought so. I loved your book and then I saw you do an interview with Good Morning America and I thought, a man that handsome shouldn’t get to be good with words, too.”

            Maude blinks. She blinks again. She knows who this man is. His blond hair, that slalom bend in his nose, the butt dimple in his chin, and that same humble frown she recognizes from the author photo published alongside every glowing review of his debut novel. Matthew Carruth. One of “America’s Great Novelists,” if you believe any of the interviews he gave after the release of Amniotic, a family saga told from the perspective of an unborn fetus. Maude had read it and considered it fine, pretty readable, but definitely putdownable. The publisher knew what they were doing when they led publicity with Matthew’s face. Amniotic came out two months after Maude’s debut, a novella with an independent press, which maybe a hundred people read. Feral, about a boil growing on a queen’s inner thigh.

            The woman is still talking. “I was just so impressed. Who knew someone could be capable of capturing the voice of an unborn baby, but golly, you did it!” Matthew’s face is twisted into a version of gratitude. “Are you here for research? You must tell me.”

            “Sort of,” Matthew says. He looks askance at Maude, who does her best to keep her face neutral. She doesn’t want him to know that she knows who he is.

            “I can’t imagine a writer coming here and not writing about it,” the woman says.

            Matthew scratches at his chin. Maude recognizes this move. He regrets that he’s about to make the table uncomfortable. “My dad died in June. We’d talked about coming down here together. The last great frontier, all of that. He obviously didn’t make it, but. And, well, here I am. I guess I will probably write about it.” He gestures out through the windows. “It’s a grossly idyllic place to mourn.”

            Maude follows the table’s gaze, out toward where Matthew gestured at the snowcaps bobbing through the low roll of waves. She tries to think of the crayon colors for all that blue—indigo, bluebell, cornflower, denim—but grows bored with the sameness of it all. Where are the browns and reds of her loss? The green and orange of grief? Anger shivers across her skin, under her fingernails. She says, “Do you really think writing about him would help?”

Maude wants to swallow her words as soon as they’re out. The woman with the turquoise necklace looks furious, maybe in Matthew’s defense or maybe because Maude has shifted Matthew’s attention. Matthew is the only one who doesn’t seem shocked or appalled. He’s smiling.

            “It couldn’t hurt, could it?”

            “Too much too soon.” Maude pushes a potato into her mouth and chews.

            “Well, I’ll take that into consideration.” Matthew sets his knife on the rim of his plate. “Can I ask what brought you here?”

“I won a raffle.”

            “That’s a pretty generous raffle.” Matthew’s looking across at her and Maude understands what that gaze means. She looks away. The woman with the turquoise necklace glares in Maude’s direction. Maude wants to snap the necklace off her neck, wants the clasp to pinch at her skin, wants this woman to understand the sting of loss. In response to the woman’s question, “You have to tell us about your next book,” Matthew asks which expeditions she’s the most excited for. Maude bites into a butter-slick square of steak. A string of meat wedges itself between her back teeth. 

Maude dips her paddle through the clear water and looks down, trying to discern some shape, some movement, but it’s like the water’s clarity is so complete, it swallows itself. She weaves her way between the brash ice that peppers the cove. Water slaps against the kayak’s fiberglass hull. Sun bounces off the bright white of the untouched snow, so Maude has to squint in order to look around her at the other guests in their kayaks taking selfies with the ship behind them, then at the sheared-off faces of icebergs looming above. At a naturalist’s lecture yesterday, Maude learned that the bluest faces are newly calved, still fresh and dense and unbleached by the sun.

         A couple years before, Dana sent Maude an email with the text, “reminded me of you,” and a link to a video. Two scientists stand at the top of a bluff, next to a camera they’ve set to record an ice field. They’re recording a time lapse, so there’s space for them to wander around, take their own photos, sink their boots into the snow, open their mouths and taste the chill air. One of them is on the phone and the other says, “It’s starting, Adam, I think. Adam? It’s starting…” The way the ice cracks down the middle like an egg, revealing centuries of hidden snow. A boom. A break. An entire city-sized chunk: cleaved.

          Now, Maude pictures Dana as her calved bit, how much the cold air stings at the fresh face of that loss. She rows her kayak backward, keeping the big iceberg in her view, hoping it’ll break apart right here, right now. Knowing it won’t.

Maude is sitting in one of the lounge’s corner chairs, a visual history of dentistry splayed open on her lap and a wide view of that uncalved berg in front of her. Dana’s here, even if she isn’t, sitting in the empty chair at her side, wincing at every new illustration of extractions and long-rooted molars. Dana hated teeth but loved being creeped out. Once, after going to the dentist, she’d returned to their apartment and dumped a bag full of floss, lollipops, and one mold cast of a perfect row of teeth out onto Maude’s bed. Dana could afford whatever she wanted, and still, she stole little mementos wherever she went. “I deserve a reward,” she’d said before popping a lollipop between her lips. What she really meant was that she needed control, and taking these mementoes was the one real way she’d found to have it.

         A man’s hand descends into view, his pointer finger tapping at an illustration of a gaping mouth and mold-spotted teeth. “How it feels to write, yeah?”

         Maude watches Matthew put down two glasses of wine—one red, one white—on the small, round table between them, next to a clear bud vase with a single purple flower poking out. If Dana were here, she’d carefully pluck up that bud vase and lower it into her purse “for safe keeping.” Instead, Matthew lowers himself into Dana’s empty chair. He pulls his ankle up to rest on the opposite knee. His nose and cheeks are a burnished red. He gestures at the wine glasses. “Didn’t know which you’d prefer, so got both.”

         Maude picks up the glass of red, even though she prefers white. She can hear Dana telling her to hit on Matthew, to touch his elbow, go on, don’t be such a wuss. Just see what would happen. Men: another way Dana found control. As much as Maude hates Dana not being here, at least it means she doesn’t have to pretend to listen to her bad romance advice.

         “So, I have something to confess.” He clears his throat. “I, uh, knew who you were. Have known since before we left. I recognized you from that interview you gave last year to Bookforum, from that photo they took of you posing in the middle of Atlantic Avenue. Then I read Feral and—I haven’t read a book like that in I don’t know how long. Thank god she’s here, I thought when I saw you. I’d been feeling like such an outsider, and then, there you were! Another outsider.”

         Maude tries not to let him see her surprise. Matthew Carruth read her book. Matthew Carruth recognized her before she recognized Matthew Carruth. She shivers with discomfort and wonders what she’d been doing, when she didn’t know that someone was watching. She says the first thing that comes to mind. “I’m sorry about what I said at dinner.”

         “What? No. It’s okay. I loved the look on Lisa’s face.” Matthew scratches at his chin with the back of his hand. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I still disagree.”

         “Maybe you should think about it some more.”

         Matthew’s high trill of a laugh startles Maude. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “I’ll get back to you.” 

Back in her cabin, Maude pulls the room’s long, black desk until it faces the window, places the green bud vase with its purple morning glory in the corner—she hadn’t bothered hiding it in her purse, like Dana would have, just picked it up and walked out of the lounge with it—and opens her laptop. Dana bought these tickets so Maude would finally write her book, so Maude’s going to force herself to finally write her book. She’ll write with the view of floating floes and sunny, cold-bright sky. She’ll write with that absence like a growing maw beside her.

         At the top of the blank page, Maude places the tip of the character’s tongue against the molar and pushes. Nothing happens. The sentence is empty, cold. She deletes it and tries again. A description of roots burrowing into gums. A flaccid attempt at letting chunks of ice break off from the continent. A body that feels wrong, claimed by every country, not claimed by anyone. All of it is bad. Maude deletes, types, deletes, deletes, deletes. 

         Two truths and a lie.

         Dana’s voice, again. She scratches behind her ear like she can flick the voice away. But maybe she needs to exorcize Maude before she can turn her attention to that fictional, fickle molar. She’ll play this game that they played until they knew too much about each other. Before it became ‘three lies and no truths’ or ‘one truth and two lies’ or ‘no truths and no lies.’

         Okay, Maude thinks, I can start there. She puts her fingers on the keyboard and types, “Dana.” That’s all she has. She puts a full-stop after her name. At least that part feels right.

         Come on, M. I’m bored up here. Humor me. Two truths and a lie.

         Maude can’t not respond. She never ignored Dana, no matter how much she wanted to, and that can’t change now, even if Dana is just a voice in her head.

         I can’t play with someone who isn’t here.

         Sure you can. Try. Here, I’ll go first. Okay, two truths and a lie: I’m dead, I’ve slept with Clint Eastwood, and I have a birthmark shaped like Italy.

         That’s too easy.

         Just because I never showed you the birthmark doesn’t mean I don’t have it.

The boat passes through the Lemaire Channel at 6 a.m. and over the Antarctic Line at 11 p.m. The sun won’t set again until they turn around and head north. Passengers crowd into the bridge to watch the boat move from one side of the invisible line to the other. A waiter walks around with champagne to refill glass flutes. The captain rings a large bell and announces that they’ve passed over the line. When nothing else happens, the bridge empties. Passengers filter back into their cabins, pull their curtains against the bright, steady sun, and tuck themselves into bed.

         Maude doesn’t bother going back to her cabin. She knows she won’t be able to sleep. Exhaustion feels as far away as grass and trees and dirt. With her book, she heads to the top of the ship, sure she’ll have the library to herself and her memory of Dana. But then there’s Matthew, bent over a table, folding a blank sheet of paper. Before she can turn to leave, he’s saying, “Oh, Maude! Hi!” and “Guess I’m not the only one who couldn’t sleep.”

         Maude takes a seat and looks at the mess of papers across the table. She can only sort of guess what he was trying to do, based on the crumpled balls around his feet. A triangular, wrinkled thing sits on top of a stack of papers.

         “Not quitting my day job,” he says.

         “This seems pretty expert to me.”

         “My dad used to do origami all the time. I never asked him to show me how, and now.” Matthew picks up the deformed crane and flicks it through the air. It doesn’t fly far, isn’t even halfway graceful, before it tumbles, bounces off the table, and lands upside down on the carpet.

         “What was your dad like?”

         It’s not so much like Matthew had been waiting for someone to ask, but more like Maude’s question interrupted an inner tally he’s been keeping, just waiting to vocalize it. Matthew describes his father’s garden first, how it grew down the hillside behind his house, how his father spent every morning out back, checking on the flowers and the blueberry bushes and the hydrangeas. The orchard was his favorite, a small square of earth at the far end of the property, where he grew Asian pears and lemons. “He was the best librarian that high school had ever seen,” Matthew says. “When he retired, they threw a party for him at Applebee’s and then renamed the library in his honor. I haven’t been back since. But I’ve seen pictures.”

         As Matthew talks, Maude compares his dad to Dana. Dana refused to go into their school’s library because, she said, it smelled like old ham. Matthew’s dad loved watching Law & Order in the morning with his coffee; Dana watched episodes of SVU muted so she could make up her own dialogue. Matthew’s dad’s favorite meal was mushroom risotto; Dana’s was box macaroni and cheese with extra cheese stirred in.

         “I thought I knew what it’d be like to lose someone. But you don’t know. Not until you do.” From the expression on Matthew’s face, Maude can tell he thinks he’s giving her a warning, not describing her life back to her. It takes everything she has not to throw her book in his face.

Maude puts the poorly made origami crane on her desk and opens her computer. Still, that same page, blank except for “Dana.” Matthew didn’t worry that putting his dad to the page would erase pieces of who his dad had been. Maude wishes she had that confidence.

         Maybe the thing Maude is having the hardest time squaring is the before and the after and how that schism should look on the page. It feels false in a way fiction never does to Maude. The disarticulated accident would look like: Dana, driving; Dana, crashing; Dana, empty-eyed; Dana, gone. And then what?

         In the document, Maude starts to list the things she remembers Dana stealing: three petri dishes, a ceramic frog, a stack of metal condiment cups, a book of hymns from her lab partner’s mom’s memorial, two Planned Parenthood pens, a butterfly hair clip.

         Maude deletes the list and goes into the bathroom. Beneath a steaming shower, she worries at her back tooth. She wonders what her tongue might dislodge.

On shore, a naturalist named Tomas, a forty-something Argentinian, leads Maude’s group toward a rocky crag at the top of a steep hill. Maude does her best to keep her gaze on the colonies and mother penguins they pass, and not on the red patch of Matthew’s parka, just a few people ahead of her. When they reach the top, Maude drops her parka onto a round of snow. It’s warm and bright so high up. The wind has dropped off. Matthew settles on the rock and Maude sits beside him. Red mites swarm over the exposed rock between them.

         To their right, a glacier stands tall and long over the cold, clear water. “You know,” Matthew says, “calving is a form of ice ablation.” Matthew presses two fingers against his parka’s front pocket, as if pointing at his heart. “The ice separating from the glacier. Every time I think of that, I think of my dad, getting a cardiac ablation to fix his a-fib.”

         “Ablation with the double meaning. Like cleaving,” Maude says. Matthew rubs his palms down his thighs. Maude wants him to look back at her. She’s about to tell him about her project—the ice rift, the cavity—when Tomas kneels on the snow next to her.

         “Good,” Tomas says. “I think I’ve timed this right. I was hoping.” He gestures for the other passengers to gather round and points at the glacier. As they watch, the glacier face cracks. It happens slow, and then all at once. Already, Maude can sense the blue behind it, the ice that hasn’t seen air in decades. The glacier’s break ricochets through the bay.

*

Maude’s list of things that Dana stole—an ex-boyfriend’s work ID card, a shawl from a boutique where the clerk had yelled at her for tracking in mud, a set of wax taper candles, two air plants that she immediately (accidentally) killed—becomes a list of every word that’s made Maude feel closer to the landscape outside— bergy bits, air bubbles, cataclysm, glaciation, erosion, katabatic, tectonic, rookery—becomes a cavity, a growth, a semi-colon, an ellipse, a blank page.

“Hold on!” Thuds, muttered curses, the soft pattering of feet across carpet, and then the cabin door swings open and Matthew is there, wearing a loose white t-shirt and flannel pajama pants. When Maude sees his heavy blinks and the soft slouch of his shoulders, she takes a step back. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I just. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought. I should…”

         Before Maude can turn, Matthew reaches out, wraps his large hand around her forearm, and pulls her inside. His cabin is three times the size of hers, with its small living room that opens out into a bedroom and tall windows that frame the banks of brightly lit snow the boat drifts past, headed toward its morning mooring. 

         “I would’ve cleaned,” Matthew says. Maude is about to protest, but his hand takes hers and wraps it around a rocks glass he’s just filled with a finger of whiskey. He grabs his parka and long johns from where they’re piled on the couch and gestures for her to sit. There’s enough room for him to join her on the couch, but instead he pulls over a chair from the dining table.

         Now that she’s here and he’s there, looking across at her, waiting for her to say something, Maude doesn’t know what she was thinking. She leans forward and grabs the book next to his heel, expecting a nonfiction history of the sociology of whales, but instead it’s a ragged copy of a Clive Cussler mystery. “My dad’s favorite,” Matthew says. His voice sounds hoarse, tired. Maude flips through the pages. Some of them are marked up with a ballpoint pen—a star here, an underline there. Remnants of Matthew’s dad.

         “Dana was an Agatha Christie girlie. Read all of them twice, I’m pretty sure.” Maude traces a line of pencil across the page, not realizing she said Dana’s name out loud until Matthew leans forward and asks, “Who’s Dana?” She wants to take it back immediately, but there Dana is, out in the open. Dana would’ve loved that. Maude slaps the book closed and says, “My best friend.”

         “Where’s she, then? She make you come here alone?”

         “Something like that.” Part of Maude wants to tell him the truth, wants to tell him about the car crash. But a bigger part of Maude feels like a black hole. She tips the whiskey into it, then crosses the room for a refill. She offers the bottle to Matthew, but he shakes his head.

         “Did you go to the lecture yesterday?” Maude asks. She paces in a wide circle, tracing her finger over the pieces of him strewn around the room. She feels him watching her, but he doesn’t make a move to stand or ask her to stop. “I didn’t see you there.”

         “I had a hard one yesterday. Decided to stay in.”

         A slick of hatred coils around Maude’s heart. He claims his grief so easily. Yesterday at the lecture, Tomas had talked about how rising temperatures meant centuries old snow was melting away, revealing long-preserved unknowns. Scientists had unearthed a mummified colony of penguins; their eight-hundred-year-old corpses looked like they’d just died, their feathers still sewn to the penguin meat. Traces of a supernova had been found near a German research station––ancient cosmic dust. A satellite recently mapped a mess of tectonic plates beneath Antarctica, revealing what the naturalist called a “graveyard of continents.” Part of Maude loves all these stories bobbing to the surface like bones. Part of her wishes they’d stayed hidden, like maybe there are some stories we’re not meant to know.

         Maude reaches a sideboard, where a dozen malformed origami tumble in an open box. She pulls out one yolk-yellow creation that looks like a giraffe or a boat, when she feels Matthew standing beside her. “Please,” he says, taking the origami from her and placing it back in the box.

         “You’re getting better.”

         “I’m not.”

         For the first time since meeting Matthew, Maude senses an edge in his answer. A small spark she’s been waiting to feel grows in the base of her belly. He’s standing close enough for their arms to touch, for her to smell his cologne—Cedarwood? Bergamot? Dana would’ve known—for her to see the outline of his muscles beneath the plain white T he’s wearing. It’s enough. She takes a step toward him. His nostrils flare, but he doesn’t step away.

         The kiss is soft, nice. Maude opens her lips, teases her tongue against his. The first thought Maude has is that they should’ve been doing this a lot sooner. The second is that she can’t wait to tell Dana about Matthew’s technique—nice, sloppy, could use some work. She reaches her hands forward to clasp at his shirt, surprised to find that her body is eager to feel itself flush against his, but her hands meet air and Matthew’s standing a foot back, his chin lowered into his chest, his ears a bright, hot red.

         Every self-protective nerve in Maude lights on fire. He holds up his hand and shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. From the lilt in his voice, the soft drop of each syllable, it’s clear that he is. Maude hates him. “I’m not really myself right now. Maybe later? When things aren’t so fresh.” Matthew cups his palm over the back of his neck and looks up at Maude through unnecessarily thick eyelashes. She stops herself from rolling her eyes.

         “I get it,” she says, even though she doesn’t. She wants to yell at him that she’s raw too, that’s the whole point. They’re both lesser versions of themselves, and wouldn’t sleeping together fix that for a little while? But he’s already retreated, pulled on a linty sweater with a faded college logo on the front, grabbed a water bottle from the mini fridge. 

         “I can’t trust myself right now, and my feelings.” He’s still talking. Had he been talking this whole time, and Maude had just stopped listening? “And I don’t want you to get caught up in the wreckage of grief.”

         “I don’t mind wreckage,” Maude says. She hears how weak the words sound. The chuckle Matthew allows her is small and wet. They stand like that, looking at each other from across the room, for a minute. Maybe longer. Maude wishes she knew what Matthew saw when he looked at her. If she seems as pathetic and weak as she feels, standing there, less than she’d ever been before and getting smaller every day.

The ship’s gift shop is bright and gaudy and heavy with merchandise: ship-branded pullovers and fleeces and vests and gloves and t-shirts, gourmet chocolate, stuffed seals, stacks of postcards, even cufflinks and necklaces with whale fin charms. The cashier is busy flicking through a gossip rag and smacking on her gum, thoroughly ignoring Maude as Maude trails her hand over mugs printed with maps and maps printed with cartoon penguins.

         Maude stops in front of a display of leatherbound journals, embossed with the outline of Antarctica. She presses her thumb over the peninsula, trying to smother the area where the ship is now. Dana would’ve bought this journal for Maude, would’ve wrapped it up and written a nice note on the first page about filling the journal with all of Maude’s “brilliant thoughts,” and Maude would’ve thanked her and quietly deposited it with all the other unused journals that Dana had bought her.

         Dana’s absence gapes, widens. Maude picks up an iceberg-scented candle, rolls it from one palm to the other.

Over the intercom, the captain says, “Get your jackets on. Get your boots on. Come meet us in the mudroom.” Maude glances outside––it’s still morning or it’s midnight or it’s noon––and sees a cove, which has frozen over into a wide tract of ice. Somehow, the ship has wedged itself into the thick layer of ice, like a pick lodged in a slab of stone. Maude’s not eager to be around the other passengers and the idea of seeing Matthew makes her shudder.

         The passengers fan out across the ice in clusters. Some take photos of mountains in the distance, some take photos of the boat, some train their cameras on the lumbering ice at the other end of the cove. Maude moves off to the side, jumps a few times to test the ice beneath her, then sits and crosses her legs. She likes being at this distance, being able to see the threats well before they approach. At least Antarctica has that going for it––mostly, you see your predator as soon as they see you.

         Of course, until Maude hears the crackle of a radio to her left and Tomas lowers himself to the ground beside her. He tells her that the ice sheet they’re on is an acre wide and will be gone within the month. He lists everything he’s seen that he doesn’t think he’ll see again: huge glaciers that have vanished between trips, receding ice shelves, ice slabs covering the water. He says he misses the continent already, even while he’s here, standing on its snow, looking up at its mountain ridges, breathing its air. She wonders where that loss lives in his body and if it aches like Dana’s loss does in hers.

         Maude fills her palm with a crackle of hardened snow. She wishes she could take it back onto the boat with her, tuck it into a glass bottle and keep it. She wishes so many things.

Maude loves scotch. She thought she was a gin girl, but turns out, she loves how gross scotch is. She loves how three glasses of scotch make her feel. And she’s fine with Tomas’s hand, squeezing her upper thigh.

Maude tells Dana if she just goes on the blank page already, Maude will only write good things about her. She’ll describe Dana’s luscious long locks. She’ll write about all the community service Dana meant to do, about the demand for Dana on the four dating apps she rotated through, about Dana’s commitment to her skincare routine. Maude won’t write down any of Dana’s jokes that didn’t land or about the burnt rice probably still stuck to the bottom of the pot in Dana’s sink. But the cursor blinks and the page stays empty.

         Maude rearranges the trinkets on her desk—the champagne flute, the origami, the ratty Clive Cussler book, the iceberg-scented candle, the silver cufflinks—and then rearranges them all again. Dana’s being too quiet. She knows what Dana would say. Something about having a body. Something about needing to stop overthinking.

Tomas is leaning against the frame when Maude opens the door. He’s wearing a pair of stained jeans that look one size too tight and a loose t-shirt whose hem dips below his collarbone. He hands Maude a crinkled water bottle, half full of what looks like fifty dollars worth of scotch.

            “You weren’t in the lounge,” he says. Maude can’t tell him how seeing that shelf of ice grow smaller through the windows in the library made her feel compacted and impossible, how it made her realize that her time on the ship was coming to an end and all she’d managed to accomplish was blaming her best friend for an absence that couldn’t be helped. But Maude doesn’t want to say any of this, so she accepts the water bottle, and then somehow it’s not scotch in her mouth, but Tomas’s tongue. He presses her back against her open door. It’s not awful—it’s something—so Maude doesn’t push him away. She opens her mouth beneath his.

While his tongue presses against her gums, Maude imagines syringes and aspirators, incisors and root canals, enamel and milk teeth. She pictures how his skull must look beneath the skin, his tongue like it’s part of a plastic model kit on display in a dentist’s office.

            The door slams shut behind them. Tomas backs Maude up against her desk, one finger playing at the waistline of her jeans, when he stops and takes a step back. Maude’s body floods with relief, until she sees that he’s looking at the objects lined up along the back edge of the desk. The way he says, “cufflinks?” she knows that he knows they didn’t come wrapped up in tissue paper in a ship-branded gift bag. His gaze flicks over the champagne flute, the candle, the cutlery.

            “It’s an accident,” Maude says, not knowing exactly what she means.

            Tomas shakes his head, even as his thumbs rub circles over her hipbones. “The captain should know.”

How can Maude explain to Tomas that she was trying to fill the absence, plug it with anything she could find. Doing what Dana would’ve done was the only way Maude could remember that she was here, in a body, and Dana wasn’t, and eventually that was going to have to be okay.

Instead, Maude says, “I’ll return them,” and pushes Tomas out the door.

With the candle, the cufflinks, and the origami placed to the left of the keyboard and the journal, the two forks and one knife, and the champagne flute placed to the right, Maude opens the empty Dana document and begins to type.

For the first time in Maude doesn’t know how long, the words flow. Everything Maude puts to the page feels both urgent and true. First, Maude writes about the summer she and Dana became friends—realizing they shared a boyfriend, angrily sipping lemonade from glasses as sweaty as their furrowed brows, comparing notes on his sex techniques, agreeing to break up with him and move in together. They’d lived in that mouse-infested Bushwick apartment for five years, before Dana moved to Tennessee because her nonprofit work needed her more than Maude did.

After she’d gone, Maude kept finding gaps in her belongings, dustless rings on her shelves where an award or a jar or a vase had been. Like Dana had insisted on continuing to remind Maude of her absence, even as Maude got more and more used to the silence every day. Now, Maude places that vase and jar and award back onto the shelf in her memory, alongside the afternoons she and Dana spent eating General Tso’s chicken and hate-watching Gilmore Girls; mornings when Dana made Maude the worst french toast she’d ever had, but she’d never had anyone make her food before, so she couldn’t complain; and late nights when neither of them could sleep, so instead Dana told Maude stories about her childhood, which Maude chose to believe, no matter how many absurd turns they took.

The necklace. The candle. The champagne flute. They’d worked. It was like they’d brought slices of Dana into the room, the slices that Dana had once taken away, all those years ago. Maybe they hadn’t been working because no one knew what she’d done. But now Tomas knew. And now Dana was on the page.

When they pass back through the Lemaire Channel, headed north again, finally, no passengers gather on the bridge, no bells are rung, no bottles of champagne popped. It’s two days until they’re in the Drake Passage. Four days until Maude can get off the ship, get away from everything, fly home.

            The boat sets down anchor at Port Lockroy. Groups take turns visiting the outpost, a black house that stands stark against the thin scrim of snow around it. Maude runs her fingers over the Port Lockroy–branded items for sale inside—paperweights, coin purses, trinket dishes, and hip flasks. She steps around the other passengers, crowded into the small room, and sends a small “thank you” smile toward the two cashiers before stepping outside.

The glass whale paperweight is cool and slick against Maude’s palm, where she’s tucked it into the front pocket of her hoodie. She walks to the far edge of the rocky beach, on the other side of a dingy that looks rotted through, its hull ragged and darkly bare-boned, and lowers herself onto a medium-sized, flat stone with a view of the cove and the anchored ship straight ahead.

Maude sees Matthew leave the small hut. She sees him see her, and then decide to walk in her direction. He pauses a few feet away, his jacket folded over his arm and his hands pushed into his pant pockets. “You didn’t have to leave the other night.” Before, Matthew had always seemed overly confident to Maude. Now he just looks small and silly, shifting his weight from one leg to the other like a wobbling dashboard hula dancer.

“You didn’t want me there.” Maude can hear how taut the words are.

“I didn’t say that, did I?” The sound of the rocks scrabbling against each other as Matthew lowers himself to the ground next to Maude makes Maude wince. She knows it can’t be comfortable. He clears his throat again and says, “It’s just been hard to think about anything else, with my dad still so present for me.”

He shakes off a handful of pebbles that have pressed themselves into the heel of his hand, then pulls his knees into his chest. He reminds Maude of an oversized tween. She’s surprised he hasn’t grown a constellation of acne across his cheeks overnight. It makes her want to pat him on the head and tell him everything will be okay.

She thinks about Dana’s first kiss—a pimply twelve-year-old named Dylan who had a collection of My Little Ponys, one of which Dana stole after the kiss. “You don’t have to feel like that, you know,” she says. “You can choose not to.”

“Excuse me?” The words come out as prickled as the pebbles he just swept from his palm.

“I felt that way after Dana died. Like the ground had become quicksand and everything I tried to grab at help burnt my skin. Nothing was safe.”

“Dana, your best friend.” He says this, dropping his chin into his chest, as if carefully rearranging some pieces in his mind.

“That idiot died and now I’m here without her, and the only way I’ve ever felt okay is—” Maude pulls the glass whale out of her hoodie pocket and places it in Matthew’s upturned palms. She looks down at Matthew, expecting something like gratitude but only finding a veiled sadness as he rolls the whale over and picks at the price sticker, still pressed into the left fin. Maude pushes forward. “I never understood why she did it, but then I took your origami and it was like the world solidified, just a bit, around me. It stopped being this treacherous jello. Not because I was molding myself back into the world, but because the world was molding itself to be more like me. The world was learning loss alongside my loss, was holding some of my loss for me, and that pressure on my heart became just a little more bearable. You get it, right?”

“I don’t know what to do with that,” Matthew says, his words a blurry mutter. He pushes himself up to standing, careful to keep the whale from touching the rocks, and Maude scrambles after him, grabbing for his wrist, convinced that if she can just get him to understand, it will make both of them better. Matthew flinches backward at her touch.

“You should try it. It’s like finding a back door through the grief.” Maude’s not completely sure she knows what she’s trying to do, but part of her thinks that if he could only understand what she means, things would be okay. They’d fuck and she’d sit next to him in his oversized cabin, writing about Dana while he wrote about his dad. They’d grieve together in a linear way that made sense.

But when he says, “Try stealing?” and she can hear the drip of malice in his words, she knows it’s all gone sideways.

“No, I—” Maude’s thoughts are all knotted up. She knows she’s losing him. “Whatever your dad would have done. Try that. It’ll be like he’s here with you again. Like before.”

Matthew tugs his arm from Maude’s grip and rubs his opposite hand over where the skin has gone white. “I don’t need your advice.”

“It’s not advice. It’s just something that’s working. And I think—”

“Working is probably a strong word.”

“I know you miss your dad.”

“Fuck you.” Matthew’s already walking away when he spits this over his shoulder at Maude. The words are filled with a vitriol she’s never seen in him. She wants to take it all back, but part of her knows that she can’t. She did the right thing, explaining herself to him. No matter what he chooses to do with it.

Maude watches as Matthew walks back into the gift shop and, a few moments later, emerges empty handed.

Dana is a geomagnetic pole. Dana is a gale. Dana is hoarfrost, sleet, and sea ice. Dana is white-out. Dana is wind chill. Dana is disappearing.

It’s the last formal dinner on the ship. By the time Maude makes it into the dining room, there’s only one chair left, opposite Matthew and flanked by passengers Maude vaguely recognizes. Waiters come around with wine. Tables are released one by one to go to the buffet, where steam rolls from silver food warmers filled with potatoes and steak and chicken. Maude had been hungry, but now that she’s here, she only has an appetite big enough for one cut of meat and a heap of salad. She notices Matthew notice her plate, but he doesn’t say anything. The salad crunches loudly as she eats, letting the conversation continue around her, without her, until she hears her name, a cough, her name again.

            “Maude, right?” The woman to Maude’s left asks. “Matthew says you’re a writer.”

            “Oh.” She’s surprised Matthew mentioned her. She wants to know what else he said. “Yeah, I mean. Yeah.”

            “What brought you on the trip?”

            Maude tries to remember how she answered this question before, at the beginning, when Matthew asked. She can’t remember, and she finds her body settling into an exhaustion too big to come up with another lie. She makes eye contact with Matthew across the table and says, “I’m afraid sometimes that if a tooth loosens, Antarctica will float away.” Everyone at the table frowns, so she keeps going. She tells them about the slab of continent that’s been eroding and the fissure that runs through it like a promise. And then she tells them about the molar, how loose it is in the gums, and how easy it would be to ruin everything: the mouth, the continent, the ocean.

            The faces around the table all twist in different permutations of confusion, including Matthew’s. Maude doesn’t mind. She’s lost her molar, her continent, her ocean.

            “Just one jiggle,” she says. “That’s all it takes.”

The last time Maude saw Dana, it was through a computer screen. Dana’s face pixelated and lagged as they talked about family and meal prep and reality TV. It was a slow, quiet conversation. Neither had many updates. Work was fine. Home was fine. What else was there to say? They carried their computers from room to room as they folded clothes, put the dishes away, read through the mail. And then Dana’s face froze and the call cut out. Neither bothered to call back. They had so much time. They’d try again later.

The boat is empty again. They’re back in the Drake Passage—only one more day until they reach land; reality; browns and reds and greens. Tomorrow, Maude will step on solid ground and the return to stillness will feel like a different form of destabilization. She’s so close to home, she can almost smell the stale air in her apartment, feel the scratch of her in-need-of-washing cotton sheets. How far she’s gone only to have nothing change.

Today, the stern bucks against the waves. Maude follows a rope down the hall, up two flights of stairs, through a heavy door, out onto the empty deck. She’s not supposed to be out here, but what she’s here to do won’t take long. It’s late and she’s chosen a spot on the deck that the bridge can’t see. She’s sure she won’t be caught. The sky has darkened to a cobalt blue—the darkest it’s been all week—and water lashes up from below, spraying over Maude and making her thin pajamas heavy.

            Maude doesn’t have enough space in her suitcase for everything she’s taken over the last week, but she refuses to return them. Matthew, the ship’s owner, that woman with the box-red hair—they don’t need to keep their origami, their necklace, their snowglobe. She hopes they’ll be able to feel the moment the items they go underwater. She hopes she’s not the only one who has to learn the art of loss. Who has to figure out what to do in the after.

            The origami catches in the wind, fluttering and flailing before disappearing. The necklace, the candle, the racecar, the journal—all drop quickly and cleanly into the water. Maude watches for the moment they hit the wake, but it’s impossible to tell the small splash they make from the boat’s much larger scrape through the forty-foot waves.

            Maude doesn’t know if letting these items loose will also loosen Dana from her page. The thought of that opens a fresh ache inside her chest, the width and texture of a pinecone. The water bottle, the sunglasses. They’re all molars that have come unrooted, entire continents that Maude is saying goodbye to, until all that’s left in their place is freshly calved flesh.

            Maude lets the snowglobe roll off her palm. She watches it drop. She thinks she sees a splash when it disappears.

​            Alice felt brackish being back in the city. She was seasick from the stinking, lumbering bus from Boston and standing in the throat of Port Authority. That and everything: the three hundred level philosophy and psychology classes; 2 a.m. wake-ups in the library; summiting 25-page papers; the long dirty winter of ramen noodles, and rounds of sweltering and freezing, inside, outside, all the time, took her down to the studs. Spring didn’t feel like release or renewal. It felt like a dated rerun. All she could think about was lying on the twin bed her mother surely put in her new bedroom in the latest apartment—Better views! Higher ceilings! More light!—two blocks from the last one. She drifted toward the usual meeting point, the ghostly sculpture installation of “The Commuters,” forever frozen while somberly waiting to board a bus. Supposedly a tribute to the commuting masses, Alice saw herself in the dull monotony of their slumped bodies and blank faces. People swerved around her, clicking their tongues. A man smacked into her. “Idiot,” he hissed, “this whole thing is about keeping moving.” Alice glared at the back of his head. “Idiot yourself,” she muttered, looking for a clock. This could not be the first time in eight years the meet up failed. She came through the heavy doors, flipping her dark, glossy hair back and mirrored Ray Bans up. Alice exhaled. No one felt more like home to her. Elena, solid ground and bright sky.
            Their hug was long and hard. “To make up for the fact that you’re leaving for the summer again,” Elena pulled back and stared into Alice’s eyes, “we will jump into having fun.” She sighed. “Once we get you fixed up, of course.” She took a bulging bag from Alice’s shoulders. As they walked out onto the sidewalk, Elena chirped about people and things. It was a frizzy day, warm for early May. The city, too, was winter-worn, gray. As they walked, Elena’s warm, familiar warbling picked Alice up and carried her the rest of the way off the front lines and onto the life raft that was her best friend since kindergarten, driving her crazy, and loving her madly, since circa 1973.

            “Obviously we’ll go to Joan’s new place first…” Since middle school, they’d been referring to Alice’s mother by her first name. “…then we’ll grab a bite, a nap and a shower, in that order,” Elena said. “Good plan?”

            Alice nodded. “Thanks for coming to get me,” she said. “I’m fried.”

            “No shit! You’re like one of those hot dogs we used to eat on Coney Island!” Elena laughed. “What are they called again?”

            “Coneys, I think,” Alice said, prickling, while Elena shouted, “rippers!”

            Had it been so long that Elena didn’t catch herself anymore, didn’t give Alice an apologetic glance, bringing up Coney Island?

            After a class she took on spirituality in the modern world, Alice had been secretly working on “saying yes” to life. In her wallet, she kept a Rumi poem, “The Guest House,” about welcoming thoughts and feelings like visitors entering a guest house. She was a work in progress.

            That night, after each of the promised steps and Q & A with Joan, her real estate broker mother, Elena insisted on going out for just a drink. “We are twenty-one,” she said.

            Waving and smiling at strangers as they walked through the dark bar, Elena pulled Alice up a set of sticky stairs to a balcony with stools lined up at a counter on the banister, facing the stage. Through shafts of spotlight, they had a clear view of the blue-lit stage below.

            “I see you’ve been here before,” Alice shouted to Elena over the house music, watching a group of fake ID holders with glowing white teeth spool out of one of the back corners, fiddling with each other’s miniskirts and poufy bangs.  

            Elena waved a peace-sign at a guy behind the long bar on the main floor. “The band is really hot. I mean the music. I wanted it to be a surprise!”

            “Wanted what to be a surprise?” Alice said, but Elena’s attention pinballed. Her usual buoyant energy had been consistently escalating. By the time they walked into the Greenwich Village bar wedged between a window featuring a giant plastic pepperoni slice and another crammed with grimy bongs, she was babbling about the drummer and the bassist like they were her brothers.

            Two glasses of electric blue liquid appeared on the table in front of them. Elena bent back, twirling the mini paper umbrella at the scruffy man whose bandana showcased a broad, shiny forehead.

            “You’re always the best, Marty!” Elena cooed.

            Marty winked. Alice sipped the fruity florescent drink. Elena leaned over the table, scooting Alice’s elbows into her palms. Her dark eyes sparkled with mischief.

            “You love it, right? Marty calls it Sex on the Driveway, an urban twist on the usual Sex on the Beach,” she laughed, raising her cup. “Let’s toast! May we jam the whole summer into the next three weeks!”

            Alice tilted her cup to Elena’s. “No one has a driveway in the city,” she said. Elena rolled her eyes and sipped through the tiny plastic straw.

            Two hours, two drinks, and multiple assurances from Elena later, the house lights went down and a band appeared. Elena shot up, whistling through her fingers. During the first songs, top 40 covers, Alice watched her friend unfurl like a flag in the wind, arms waving, hips swaying. She herself still felt underwater, or maybe just dispassionate and detached, like an anthropologist or a surgeon. But no, something watery rinsed through her.

            The fake IDs tossed their hips and projected their chests at the bassist, guitarist and singer, who played into their groping by toeing and backing away from the edge of the stage. The music was crisp and accurate, but the scene, including Elena, was teeny bopper.

            “You Shook Me All Night Long” was a favorite. Alice closed her eyes and was suddenly watching herself run Smoots along the Charles River, Walkman cranked. When a crooning ballad rolled in, she opened her eyes to see if it was the same singer. It was. The guys romped around the stage like idiots, but their rawness morphed from dirty to glamorous, loose and easy to strutting and defiant. She felt the live music wanting to hook her, to pull her in, and was not about to be tied up and thrown over a shoulder. Not her, not here, not tonight.

            She studied the guys with steely distrust. The drummer’s mouth contorted to the beat, his gaze a lightning bolt of concentration. The bassist’s long, sickle-shaped trunk curled over his instrument. The guitarist’s high cheekbones and spiky bleached hair. Were they ridiculous? Or so in thrall to the music that restraint and self-consciousness disappeared?

            The front man’s chameleonic voice was Clapton, Jagger, Springsteen, Bono—a mixed tape in a boom box. What was that bit in the spirituality class? Something about “no equilibrium without facing the music.” She parsed his details: thin, blond hair; compact legs in tattered, acid-wash jeans; a long, hairless torso beneath a rumpled, mis-buttoned black shirt. Piece by piece, nothing remarkable. And yet, as he twirled toward the guitarist and lurched back to the microphone to belt out lyrics, her breath caught. When his fist shot up, she almost followed. He marched and leapt and skipped and dipped and shimmied and bent over the microphone like it was a child, or a lover. Loping across the stage, left to right, from the front edge to the back shadows, winking at the bassist, throwing a peace sign to the drummer, squatting and jumping up to taunt the fake IDs. She watched Elena responding effortlessly, gracefully to the band’s amplified, hyperbolic performance. But Alice only felt overheated and exposed, with something like Pop Rocks exploding in her chest.

            Finally, the stage went dark and the band disappeared into the back. “That was fun!” Alice shouted in Elena’s ear, more volume than enthusiasm.

            “Come meet them!” Elena squealed.

            Alice stood up, light-headed, her legs as unsteady as a knock-kneed fawn. “What the hell is in that drink?”

             “Alcohol!” Elena hooted.

            According to Joan, this was the last real summer, meaning the only kind of summer Alice knew. After she graduates, there would be no more three month summer vacations or days off for “everything under the sun.” Her mother called herself a realist. Elena’s phrase was mano dura—a firm hand, which she said was in line with, but more respectful than, Type A or battle axe. Alice believed Joan’s screws tightened when she became the only parent. If her mother managed the family’s basic needs, her father was free to show Alice the firehouse where he was captain, the Tenement Museum, the Transit Museum, Ellis Island, Governors Island. He wanted to show her how culture, history, thought all pendulumed through time. Once Alice overheard her mother crap on the head of her father’s mission. “If you really want to support our daughter’s education, you would teach her a musical instrument, a second language or a practical skill.” Mano dura, indeed.

            Maybe this dissatisfaction was why Joan decided they’d go Coney Island that Memorial Day weekend. Alice was eleven and unenthused. Her dad’s understanding smile persuaded her not to complain. That morning, a real estate deal blew up and her mother stayed home. Once out of the apartment, her father promised fried Oreos for lunch after riding the Cyclone as many times as they wanted. Five, it turned out. Alice would have gone again, but her father had a headache so they ate funnel cakes while he drew a roller coaster in the dust at their feet, explaining the effects of gravity, momentum, centripetal force, and friction. She asked her dad if he was sad that her mother didn’t come, but he laughed and said, “Your mother is a marvel.” Alice remembered little else until she found herself at the Rangeley Lake Camp for Girls the day after fifth grade ended, except that her father’s headache was caused by a fractured vertebrae in his neck, and two days later, he was “gone.”

            Alice became a ward of her mother’s efficient, methodical planning. Watching the blurry river whirr by from the backseat of a rental car, she feebly tried to imagine herself as a camper. Her mother promised she’d start to feel better after a few days of fresh air. Being outside all day and evenings around the bonfire did help her sleep. But the counselors—younger, cooler, more attentive parents, especially the Director, Ben Waterman—made the real difference.

            Alice had a twice weekly appointment in Mr. Waterman’s office. “It is very difficult for a girl to lose her father at a young age,” he told her. “It will take time to feel normal again.” Those first weeks, Alice clung to the soft, muffling shroud that had wrapped itself around her weeks before. When she complained that her mother was too busy to visit, Mr. Waterman said she was also grieving.

            Thankfully, the band was in the mysterious off-limits “back” by the time Elena and Alice got down the stairs and up to the stage. The fake IDs, who had turned into a pack of jackals during the set, had returned to more docile pack activities.

            Alice faked cramps to go home. But Elena heard none of it. The crowd started chanting for the band to return. “Free Bird!” they shouted. “Stairway to Heaven!” The band returned to the stage playing the first notes of “Livin’ on a Prayer.” The crowd roared. If it was pleasure that Alice felt, it had a thread of restless agony. She opened and closed her eyes, stood up and sat down, put her attention on the things nailed to the wall—a blue bucket, two fishing poles, a net of dozens of yellow rubber ducks. The house lights came on. Elena was drenched, pink cheeked, and grinning unbearably. Alice could not stand another second of near-rapture. It was time to go.

            As they picked their way out, Elena gushed at Marty, back-slapped roadies, and nodded to the fake IDs. Finally, Alice pulled her the rest of the way out to the sidewalk.

            “I told you, didn’t I?” Elena’s wide eyes were an inch away.

            “Yeah,” Alice swallowed, unable to pour out her confusing feelings. “I’m starving.”

            “Pizza!” Elena shouted.

            They plopped down at a greasy table in the buzzing blue fluorescence of the giant pepperoni slice place. A waitress dropped the slices down between them. With pink grease dripping down her forearms, Elena cooed at her slice, praising the gods of cheese and bread and sauce. Alice, too, felt somewhat better. Her twin bed was howling for her. Holding open the door for Elena, Alice clucked, and the band walked in.

            At Foxleigh, the boarding high school that was the next great idea after summer camp, Alice attended Hot Pot mac & cheese parties with so-called friends, but only on the hall phone with Elena did she share her actual life. She felt bad complaining about boarding school, and later about Northeastern, but Elena always swore she was thrilled to be getting an inexpensive associates degree before matriculating—with a full scholarship, mind you—to Barnard. Even if that was just a dream. “I’m a first generation college student,” she loved to say. “I’m already a colossal success!”

            Joan shook her head about Elena—such a bright girl, if only her parents prioritized her education—which Alice learned from her college social worker was a subtle way to pat herself on the back. Psychology courses gave her terms to privately name the world she lived in since then: dyadic, merged identity, conflicted, enmeshed, disruptive attachment, trauma-bonded.

            The singer was twinkly, shinier, up close. Elena joked and giggled with them, then with a yelp, remembered to introduce Alice to Joey, the drummer; Colton, the guitarist; Rex, the bassist; Billy, the singer. Billy with brilliant blues; Billy with blond hair under a backwards Mets hat; Billy with the soaked half-unbuttoned black shirt. He was shorter on the ground than on stage.

            He said, “bring your friends to Kenny’s on Thursday. You might get to be there the night history is made!” The guys grabbed their slices, nodded and walked out. Elena and Alice followed less than a minute later, but the sidewalk had already swallowed them.

            On Thursday afternoon, Alice picked out the slate blue sundress with spaghetti straps that left her shoulders and back exposed, put on mascara, tiny gold hoop earrings, and drew dark brown eyeliner into the lash line of her top lids. Her mother raised an eyebrow when she came out of her room, but only mentioned that Ben had called from Maine. Alice said she’d call him back tomorrow. She played it cool.

            At the West 4^th Street Station, Elena smiled in approval. In her jean miniskirt, pink ribbed tank top and shimmery pink lips, she got away with sweetness because she was witty and smart. She didn’t need Alice’s approval. Like gum-snapping agents, they walked south on Sixth Ave., cut in on West 3^rd, right on Sullivan and left on Bleecker, passing tables of used books, leather wallets and silver rings. The bouncer nodded them in. In the dim, malodorous bar, a half block from the first, Alice let out a two-day-old breath. They were early, properly timed to get a table and start on their two-drink minimum. Elena gestured to the bartender, and two milky drinks arrived at the tiny wooden table. She had already laid tracks here, too.

            Tomorrow, Alice promised herself, she’d focus on Maine. Ben Waterman called to confirm she was coming because at the end of last summer, she told him she wasn’t.

            As the band warmed up, Billy pointed at people and palmed his heart, occasionally blowing kisses. The songs unspooled. Though this new universe was light, spongy, more effervescent than Alice enjoyed, she didn’t want to be anywhere else.

            They started “Every Breath You Take.” An electrical storm flew into her chest, crackling and sparking. Billy locked eyes with a woman in front of the stage who held her tattooed forearms out, swaying and smiling like an idiot, belting out lyrics. “Oh, can’t you seeeee… you belong to meeeee?” It was like she was feasting on Billy from an arm’s length and five feet below him. Alice laughed. As if he belongs to you! As if!

            Something clicked. She laughed again, at herself this time, realizing she was acting jealous! She glanced at Elena, who beamed back, oblivious to the exposing neon light of what Alice felt. On stage, the woman was gone, and Billy, singing, locked onto her for a little eternity. The electric light orchestra inside her body swelled to a juddering, breathless, suspended crescendo.

            The house lights came on. Alice ran to the bathroom. Her pulse was racing. Her heart exploding, her head pounding. She splashed water on her face just like in the movies. This was all absurd. She went to find Elena. It took a second to register that Elena and Billy were talking, leaning close to each other’s ears. Elena arched an eyebrow at her. “After party?”

            In what seemed like a few minutes, they were in a paneled basement studio three avenues east. Some of the fake IDs, Marty the bartender, and two bouncer-types came in. Billy handed out beers, Rex ordered pizza, and Joey went for beer. More people came, but not the tattooed arms woman. Alice settled herself on a sinking couch, next to a giggling Elena, as the parade of pheromones flowed inside her. She did not want to appear to be looking for Billy.

            “Hey,” a gravelly voice whispered behind her ear. “Wanna see something? You’re gonna love this.”

            He was so close. Close enough that if she turned her head, her lips would graze his cheek. He aimed a remote at the TV set on the wall. “Pizza!” yelled Joey from the hallway, and people got up. Elena pinched Alice’s thigh, hard, before leaving the room. Bouncy orchestral music and concentric red circles appeared on the screen, centered around a bullseye tunnel.

            “Bugs Bunny is a genius,” Billy said.

            They watched Elmer Fudd tiptoe through the woods with his shotgun, and Daffy Duck warn Bugs, only to get out-pranked. “Isn’t he great?”

            Alice tried to watch with fresh, new, guest house eyes. After the first episode, when no one changed, no one succeeded, and no one died from the many bullets fired at close range, she turned to Billy.

             “I loved cartoons when I was a kid.”

            He laughed. “Bugs is just a regular dude trying to stay out of the way. He just does his own thing, then all of a sudden, someone throws an anvil at him.”

            “Then he’s probably not innocent,” Alice said.

            “Maybe.” Billy chuckled. “But he always comes out on top.”

            He slid over the back of the couch, sinking down beside her where Elena had been. They were alone.

            “I’ve been watching you,” Billy whispered. With the tip of his index finger, he slowly traced her lips, eyebrows, cheekbones. Her skin sparked where he touched. “This okay?”

            Ribbons of color pulsed behind her eyelids. Vague, passing considerations sank into the quicksand of her eagerness. It was more than okay. It was astonishing. Why didn’t Rumi just come out with it straight? Say yes when opening the door because who would ever want to miss this? Her whole being subtly shifted, right there under his gentle touch, from aquatic to terrestrial. Her lungs filled with phosphorescence. She was becoming something new. In the complete dark of the basement, she was like a bird or a flower; weightless, oxygenated, bursting with life. 

            Alice woke in the gray dark and shot her legs over the side of the lumpy pull-out couch. She felt around for her clothes, a thread of panic coiling in her throat. What time was it? She gazed at him, soft, gentle boy. Their legs were entangled when she woke. His cheek on her chest.

            Billy’s arm snaked out from under the afghan. “Don’tch,” he mumbled.

            She kissed the side of his face. “See you tonight,” she whispered, the wheel of fortune and misfortune spinning in her chest: the hour, her mother, Elena, her vibrating body, his hands, her legs, his salty tongue, the lyrics of “Heaven,” he crooned after they finished making love.

            Later that day, having successfully avoided her mother, taken a morning-long nap and a long shower, Alice played with the bowl of fake seashells on the eat-in-kitchen table. Her mother’s summery heels clicked up to the door, opened the locks, and clacked inside. Alice braced herself for her professional mother’s taut, poised, pre-closing energy. She wasn’t wrong. In a trim, taupe linen skirt and fitted white blouse, her mother stood on the other side of the table.

            “Ah ha,” she said, “here’s the mystery party girl. Ben left another message. Haven’t you sent in your forms?”

            “I meant to,” Alice said. 

            Her mother sighed. “It’s probably your last summer there,” she said, draining the last of the coffee pot into a lidded mug. “It was right for you back then, and I’m forever grateful to Ben Waterman for taking such good care of you, but you do have an adult life to get on with.” 

            “I’ll sort it out,” Alice said.

            Her mother’s head tipped a little to the side. “You’re okay?”

            “Just tired,” Alice said. And baby…so gently he sang last night, this morning… you’re all that I want / When you’re lying here in my arms / I’m finding it hard to believe / We’re in heaven. Elena would think it too high school prom, so that bit of ecstasy she would keep to herself.

            “The re-do is nice,” Alice added, a little ego petting to steer away from questions about last night.

            “I rushed to get it done for you,” her mother said. “You like the palette, then?”

            “Sure.” Moving and redecorating, when she was making good money, was a way her mother showed love. Elena thought it sweet. Alice thought it a slightly softer more mano dura.

            “But?”

            “A little bland.”

            Her mother smiled. “Pale Earth. That’s the scheme. Homier than all white, still good for resale.”

            “Can we mix it up for my room? Something like aquamarine?”

            Joan screwed up her mouth. “Predictable.”

            Her mother’s gaze stretched out. “Let me see you,”she used to say, taking her in before they parted.

            “Well, I’m off to meet with the Maiden Lane buyers,” she said, grabbing a striped purse on the way to the door.

            “Dumb street name for one of the world’s major metropolises,” Alice called after her.

            “But not a dumb paycheck!”

            Night after night after night, the music sizzled. Alice, weightless and sure, slid in before dawn and out again after dark, crammed with adrenaline. Every night there was more energy, bigger audiences, more anticipation. Elena remarked on Alice’s enthusiasm, her stamina for the night life, and something about her new attachment. Alice smiled and laughed and clinked her beer against Elena’s. Maybe a touch of jealousy, maybe nothing at all.

            The string of late nights loosened Alice’s grip on time and day. Life felt like a revelation—no structure, no responsibility, only anticipation and the dawning present. She and Elena had dinner with the band before gigs, hours in full and empty bars, and afterhours in the basement studio, his grandparents’ rent-controlled apartment he had for a year while trying to “make it.” Something was up with Elena, but Alice figure she would find out when it was time.

            Maine was hanging over her. It would be bizarre to be a no-show after so long, even when, last August, she’d said she would not be returning. Ben had accepted her statement without question, and in the spring, longing for tiny wild blueberries and the private, salty refuge she found nowhere else, Alice called to change her mind. “Wonderful,” Ben said, and laughed his big hearted, welcoming laugh.

            Next to the To Do list on the dresser, a note from her mother: IF YOU DO NOT CALL BEN WATERMAN TODAY, I WILL. Alice dialed.

            “I did tell you I was coming up,” she said a tiny bit curtly.

            “Yes,” he said.

            “I had finals,” she said, remembering the messages he left on her machine at school. “And I’ve been busy since I got home.”

            “Here too,” he said. “We just finished rebuilding the big dock.”

            He had a way of changing her mood. “With a diving board, finally?”

            “You’ll have to see for yourself. We look forward to seeing you, Alice.”

            “Okay,” she sighed, and hung up.

            Sprawled on her bed with the top half of the pineapple phone to her ear, Elena twirled a lock of light brown hair around a pencil. Alice gazed at the photo triptych museum of their growing up: in oversized mortar boards for kindergarten graduation, as a pair of dice for 5^th grade Halloween, knobby kneed in white lace for 8^th grade dance, as dates in matching chartreuse georgette for junior prom. With a gift certificate that Elena won at the science fair in 7^th grade, they re-decorated her room in island paradise. Curling around a coconut pillow on the palm tree comforter, Alice whispered, “I’m considering not going to Maine this year.”

            Elena’s eyes widened. She whispered into the pineapple and clapped down the phone. “Seriously?” 

            “Debating,” Alice spluttered.

            Elena stared at her longer than necessary. “Tell!” she finally squealed.

            “I just realized I’ve been stuffing myself into the kiddie swing for way too long.”

            “Would it have anything to do with a guy who’s addicted to Bugs Bunny cartoons?”

            “That, too.” Alice blushed.

            “You know,” Elena said, “There’s something I wish I told you already.”

            “Okay…” Alice tensed, hoping to hear why she left that first night at Billy’s with a big pinch and without a good bye, or what has been bothering her in general.

            “The scene, the guys, the band, the music, the whole thing—it’s not exactly a gentle environment.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Maybe it’s too late, because you’re already in with Billy. I should have warned you. The scene can be kind of brutal.”

            “Oh,” Alice said. “Well, I’m not that sad little girl anymore. I can take care of myself.”

            “Okay then,” Elena said, smiling falsely. “I just worry. But if you’re good, then I’m good. So, what are we wearing?”

            The cocktails tasted metallic. The music blasted through Alice, not filling her with bright color, but clawing and scratching. She sat in the back where Billy couldn’t see her and was not looking. In fact, he seemed drunk before the first song. They hadn’t done dinner before the gig, something about Billy seeing his grandmother.

            An hour later, tiny knives pricked her throat. Alice told Elena she didn’t feel well and had to go home. Elena didn’t try to get her to stay, or insist she go too.

            Twisted in the sheets, she dreamed: lying on the bottom bunk in the cool, humid cabin, Mr. Waterman’s face bent under the top bunk, turning a damp washcloth over on her forehead. He lifted her head to give her sips of water from a metal cup. He touched his cheek to her forehead. He smelled briny, like seaweed. Mr. Waterman stayed a long while. She might have been twelve.

            Alice slept and woke, slept and woke. She was in swimming Maine and eating pizza in New York and having sex on a beach and on a driveway and in Billy’s basement, through tides of heaviness and lightness, until Elena jumped onto her bed, startling her awake.  

            “Joey said an agent is coming tonight! Can you imagine? They could get signed!”

            Alice tried to swallow around the pebbly jumble in her throat, to make sense of the details. “Cover bands get signed?”

            “I’m sure there’s a progression, but ultimately, they’d get paid, quit their day jobs and work on their own stuff.”

            “They have day jobs?”

            “You know what I mean,” Elena said. She held up a bottle of Tylenol Flu. “Take this and get better immediately!”

            Alice sighed, dropping back on the pillows. “I’m stuck at the bottom of the deep end. Pressure,” she waved her arms, “everywhere.”

            “Promise me you’ll try,” Elena sighed. “Joey said we need you there. Billy said you’re the Courtney to his Kurt.” Her face darkened. “But in a good way.”

            “I’ll try. If not, tell him break a leg.” She tried to imagine the scene, but he was only a faraway spec in her mind. “In a good way.”

            When she woke again, she’d dreamed of sitting on a barstool on stage in front of thousands, smiling at Billy as he crooned a soft, sweet ballad. Johnny and June. John and Yoko. She got up. Her body was weak, but her head was clear and vigorous, like the shaft of sun bolting through the window and splashing on the floor.

            The kitchen phone rang. In between blasts of the blow dryer, Elena shouted about how the agent loved the band, promised them an opening gig for a big act at a big venue, and told Joey he saw a real future for them if their originals were half as authentic. “He’s coming again tonight,” she said excitedly. “But listen—Billy was MIA after last night. Joey just found him and said he’d be okay as long as you come and bring his stuff tonight.”

            “MIA? What day is it?”

            “Well, not missing, but you know, out of the loop. And, it’s tomorrow. I saw you yesterday and now it’s the next day. Joey said they’ll be at the bar in a couple of hours. And the agent is coming. And you’ll get his stuff, right?”

            “I’m getting in the shower,” Alice said. She felt fresh and new and triumphant. Billy needed her. The refrigerator hummed. On it there was a magnet she gave her mother years ago, a watercolor Maine shoreline of pines and craggy rocks with tiny rope words: I ❤ MY MOM

            She picked the beige phone receiver off the wall, steeled herself, and dialed.

            “Mr. Waterman,” she said. “I am not coming. I know it’s late notice, and I’m sorry.”

            “Alice? Are you okay?” his voice flowed softly over her.

            She took a deep breath, then pushed words out around the spiky remnants in her throat. “Yes. I can’t … I’m not… I just …” Her throat closed around the rest.

            “Okay,” he crooned. His inexhaustible calm irritated her.

            “It’s not okay, Ben. I don’t know exactly why, but I do know it’s not.” Words sloshed around her head.

            He was silent.

            “Goodbye,” she said, conflicted, upset, and relieved.

            At the bar, Elena jumped up to bear hug her, then pulled her down to sit at the table, where she and Joey filled her in on the agent.

            “As long as Billy’s in decent shape,” Joey said. “We’re golden.”

            In two bounding strides, Billy dropped into a chair next to Alice and planted a lippy kiss on her open mouth. He was showered. Shaved. Smiling.

            “Cretin,” Elena whispered.

             Joey looked at Alice: “He’ll be ready in fifteen?”

            Alice nodded, confused by the tone, and by Elena and Joey slipping off.

            Billy’s wide black pupils bored into her. “What happened?”

            “I was sick. What about you? They said you were MIA?”

            “Everything got screwed up,” he said. “I missed you like crazy.” He nuzzled in her neck. “You’re all better now?”

            “All better,” Alice said, pulling back to look at him. He looked bright and clean, but there was something else. Leaning in to smell him, she imagined the worst—girly shampoo, flowered soap, fake ID stuff—but just smelled cigarettes. “You don’t look like you’ve been face-down in a ditch.”

            “I’m good now,” Billy said. She hadn’t told him about Maine. “Did you stop by my place?”

            She held out a cotton bag. “I brought you clothes, and,” she held up a paper sack, “coffee and a sandwich.”

            “Alice my Palace,” Billy said. “Look at me.” She looked at him, his shining eyes. He smiled, held her gaze, stayed with her. “Thank you.”

            As the night went on, the crowd grew and pressed in on the stage. Heat hung in the air. Elena kept a fretful eye on the young, smack-cheeked agent in tight black jeans and a rumpled black t-shirt. The songs were tight, the set list was tight, and for the first forty minutes, everything was seamless.

            Between sets, the agent fed Billy shots. In the second set, he moonwalked across the stage. In trying to swivel the mic stand while jumping over it, he caught a foot, lurched, tucked, and rolled off the stage. The fake IDs pawed at him, stupidly excited by his sprawl, trying to help him gain control of his limbs and whereabouts. He was graceful in his fumbling, got back on stage, and carried on.

            Elena looked at Alice, slightly accusatory. The band kept the music circling while Billy dropped back to all fours, crawled to the edge of the stage, stuck out his hand, and grabbed one of the fake IDs. While shouting garbled lyrics without a mic, Billy bent the girl backward, slipped, and dropped her on her mini-skirted ass.

            Alice dropped her head into her hands. Elena shouted in her ear: “Billy’s fucking everybody over.”

            A thin silence accompanied the two of them back to his basement. Billy was smashed. Alice pulled his arm to keep him from knocking people, but he kept tugging away. She was pissed.

            He was snoring before Elmer Fudd tip toed across screen with a rifle. Alice wiggled out of the couch bed and went home. The note on the counter, held down by the Maine magnet, in caps: MUST SPEAK TO YOU BEFORE MY 9 A.M.

            It felt like two minutes later that her mother knocked, entered and stood by her bed.

            “I spoke to Ben Waterman.”

            “I said I would handle it.”

            Her mother scoffed. “Oh, sure. You waited until the last minute and then you flaked.”
            “I did not flake,” Alice huffed. “And anyway, you yourself said it was time for me to get on with my life.”

            “That’s misrepresentation. You were unprofessional, ill-mannered, inappropriate, and self-centered.”

            A red rage tore into Alice’s tender throat. “Are you serious? It’s a summer camp, not a real-estate-agent-of-the-year contest.

            “Incorrect. It’s Ben Waterman, who has been nothing but good to you. You ditched your commitment at the last minute for an…infatuation?”

            “First, I’m not a child anymore. Furthermore, you are the ill-mannered, inappropriate and self-centered one who has no idea about enjoying life!” Alice had never talked to her mother like that.

            “Oh, is that right? Since you’re such an adult, you should get your own place,” her mother snarled, stopping the door just short of a slam.

            “If only I knew a good realtor!” Alice shouted. Fuming and throwing clothes in a bag, she waited until she heard her the front door close, and left.

            Elena was in an electric mood. She had managed to talk the guys into an Italian dinner near Irving Plaza. Billy, holding the set list on his lap in the window seat while they waited for a table, looked like a little boy. Alice sat down, intending to be soft. Infatuation my ass.

            “When are you going back to school?” Billy mumbled, looking at his hands. 

            “That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”

            His stunning blue eyes flicked to her. “Something’s not right,” he said.

            It could be drugs, Alice thought, or alcohol. She looked for something less serious to say.

            “You’re under a lot of pressure,” she whispered. “But you have a gift, and it might just be that more people are going to have a chance to appreciate it.”

            “You should be a therapist.”

            “It’s just common sense.” Ben Waterman was why she had anything to say. Alice took the set list, and pulled his face toward her. “You got this,” she whispered in his ear after. “Trust me.”

            Billy smiled and sighed. She knew so little about his life, family, and childhood. Bugs Bunny, he’d said, was the best thing about it. Their party was called. His face was lighter. “I’m starving,” he said.

            At twelve-thirty, after six other acts—two great, two horrible, two meh—the spotlights went up again in the massive empty ballroom. Alice and Elena stood on the dance floor, their anticipation long drained. The band came out. Billy shaded his eyes and scanned the scene, found Alice, and pressed his palm to his lips blew her an exaggerated kiss. His vulnerability worried her.

            In tightly wound unison, they rolled into the first songs of the set. Onlookers migrated to the stage. A groove began to take shape. Whether the audience was 200 or 500, by the third song, they were smashed up close to the stage as Billy paced back and forth, jabbing his fist into the smoky air. He moved seamlessly, jumping the mic-stand, crouching on the floor and bursting up to belt out the falsetto of “Sympathy for the Devil.” During a solo, the bassist played the strings with his teeth. The crowd went crazy. Alice followed Elena, letting her hips and torsos loose. The electric current left no one still, no one untouched.

            When the set was over, they collapsed into each other, sweaty and elated. The band was going somewhere! With crisp clarity, the nights in skuzzy bars became the preamble for a bunch of early twenty-somethings who believed in a dream that was actually coming true.

            House music came on as the ballroom went dark. Elena grabbed Alice’s hand. “I have to tell you something!” she shouted.

            “I have to tell you something too!” Alice returned.

            “Me first!” Elena insisted. Alice leaned into her friend, her solid, physical, present friend whose usual vanilla rose smell was cut with musky sweat and cigarette smoke. She draped her arms around Elena’s neck, feeling woozy.

            “You know I love you, right?” Elena chuckled nervously. She spun Alice around and backed her to the side of the stage. “Can you just promise that you’ll forgive me eventually? Please?”

            The spotlights popped up. The band was back on stage.

            “Just tell me!” Alice shouted, her head full of scenarios and apprehensions.

            “We were asked to run a few originals,” Billy rasped into the mic.

            “Oh my God!” Elena screamed.

            The crowd erupted. Billy was gleaming, smiling, no sign of the sad little boy she helped to his seat in the restaurant hours ago. Alice needed him to find her, to connect with her in that sweet space that filled and emptied and stabilized her all at once. But he did not.

            Elena led her back to the dance floor. “After this,” she said. “I promise.”

            The first was a jaunty, almost poppy song, less flush with texture and complexity, but a catchy chorus the crowd seized. By the second song, a rock/punk mix with a raw edge, Alice and Elena were dancing at the front of the stage, arms overhead. Alice didn’t care what she looked like. This is me letting go!  

            The next thing she saw was Ben Waterman’s face, lowered close to hers. What was this? She turned away but could not shake him, his rough thumb tracing her nose… no! she thought, no, no, no! Was this Rumi’s crowd of mutilated dark thoughts? She was dizzy, suddenly, the room spinning, like when her father took her upper arms and spun her in circles. Then she was at the campfire eating, shoving funnel cake and cotton candy in her mouth, then fried pickles, blueberries, and Cracker Jacks, everything falling back out of her mouth. She ate a carrot, shrieked on a roller coaster, jumped off a cliff into a freezing river. She gulped, coughed, choked, spat, vomited, shat her pants, squeezed the hand in hers, screamed and fell.

            Though she seemed like a cartoon version, it was her mother at the eat-in-kitchen table, drinking a very full glass of red wine. “The Maiden Lane buyers pulled out,” she said. Elena mumbled condolences. Joan looked long at Alice, who had no fight, no words, and no way to hide the cracks in her universe. “We’re turning in,” she heard Elena say turning to steer her down the pale earth hall.

            On her back in the dim yellow spray of nightlight, Alice searched for meaning, motive, understanding; something to make sense of why she had a big black smear where the last hours had been. Elena’s cheek pressed into the watermelon slice pillow as she slept. She’d said Alice had fainted. Alice had no memory of fainting, but also no memory of leaving the ballroom, taking a cab, sitting a long time in the lobby, or riding the elevator up to the 11^th floor. She did remember Elena twisting the skin on her forearm in two directions as they stood in front of the apartment door and Alice jerking her arm away. “Be normal,” she whispered. “Joan.”

            “Elena,” she said, nudging her. “Wake up.”

            Elena sat up.

            “You were going to tell me something,” Alice said.

            “Oh,” Elena said softly. “Okay. Yeah. Are you ok though?”

            “Ok enough,” Alice said.

            “In the winter, when I first met the guys and saw the band play… there was one night, just one… when I made a mistake. I knew it immediately, or as soon as the alcohol wore off…”

            “You slept with Billy,” Alice said.

            Elena’s face fell. “You knew?”

            “No, but you’re making such a big deal. What else could it be?”

            “It is a big deal! And you’re really mad, aren’t you, I mean, I would probably be, I think, at least for a while—” Elena sucked in a breath.

            “Is that why you pinched my leg instead of saying good bye and didn’t make sure I had a way home that first night at Billy’s? Is that what’s been bothering you all this time?”

            “No,” Elena said, sighing.

            “Well?”

            “Alice, you’re my best friend forever. I love you just the way you are, but then you passed out tonight, and I got really scared…”

            “Get to it,” Alice said.

            “It’s about us.”

            “Please be concise. I could have a concussion…”

            “Stop it!”

            Alice threw her arm around Elena. “Joking. Go on.”

            “In a way, you have always been the center of our friendship. Like, my job is to make sure you are alright. Not only after your dad, but before.” She paused. “Do you know what I mean?”

            “Maybe,” Alice said.

            “After I saw the band, all I could think about was bringing you to see them. I was determined to have fun before you left. I didn’t anticipate that you would get so wrapped up in it all.”

            Alice sighed. “I know what you’re saying. And I agree. So let me tell you this while we’re putting it all on the table. I think Ben Waterman might have been inappropriate with me.”

            “What? Why do you think that?”

            “This whole thing with Billy has given me a new idea of myself as someone who is free to enjoy and feel and be irresponsible and have desires and do things that aren’t about getting somewhere else. I can’t explain it exactly. I don’t know if I’m a breaching whale or a diving dolphin or a soaring bird, but I feel a ton, way more than before, all kinds of things like sadness and anger and even, I know how this sounds, ecstasy.”

            “Either Billy slipped you some of his performance-enhancing drugs or you’re finally ready for that cracker jack therapist Joan has been threatening all these years!” Elena shouted.

            “What drugs?”

            “Yeah, that was the other thing I needed to tell you. Billy disappeared when you were sick because he was on a bender. Uppers and downers both, Joey thinks. He’s gets manic, and then he sleeps for 12 hours.”

            “I see,” Alice said. “Thank you, now I’m clear. And now, it’s set.”

            “What’s set?”

            “Coney Island.”

            Elena raised her eyebrows. “Huh?”

            “It’s time for me to start facing the music. I’ve skipped over a lot. I think I’m ready to start, though. And if you are not tired of me, and I would absolutely respect your decision either way, I’d love for you to make sure I’m alright one more time, starting where my dad ended, and I began again.”

            “Of course,” Elena said. “On one condition.”

            Alice looked at her bestie in the dim yellow light.

            “For our first, last summer, we find new fun.”

            “On one condition,” Alice said. “You also come with me to the doctor. You know I hate doctors.”

            “You don’t want Joan to go with you?” Elena offered.

            “She can come too,” Alice said. “For Memorial Day.”