“He said his name was Sal? You think he was lying?”
How does she do that? Pick out the one nugget most people would overlook? “Why would he lie?”
“Maybe he’s a spy, and it’s his alias.”
“Or he’s wanted by the Feds.”
“Or he’s an illegal alien.”
“Or a real alien!”
By now we were giggling, tired and slaphappy. It was good to have her with me again. She finished the banana, and we rode for a few minutes in cheerful silence when she suddenly spoke again.
“But you don’t like blond men.”
I was at a loss for how to respond. Her father had been blond, so I didn’t want to agree too quickly, but mostly I was just wondering how in the world she’d picked up on that. It’d been years since I’d even gone on a date.
“You don’t.” She reached out and patted my arm. “It’s okay. Y’all can be friends.”
“Thanks for your permission.”
“Is he tall?” She waited for my hesitant nod. “Well, so . . . if he’s got muscles—the hard work kind, not the gross steroid ones—then he might have a chance. If he dyes his hair.”
Inwardly, I agreed that Sal’s unnatural beauty wasn’t my taste, though how my kid knew that was beyond me. As if Mr. Olympian in a fig leaf wouldn’t be all that and then some for any other woman on the planet.
“You’re turning red! You do like him!”
“Geez, honey! I’m going to remember this when you have your first crush. Fair’s fair!”
“So you have a crush on him?”
Oh. My. God. I hadn’t had enough sleep for this.
✽✽✽
He had avoided sleep and instead chosen to wander the dark streets. At first the gray cat had escorted him, its tail upright and jaunty; but when he had reached the end of its territory, it had remained behind, yowling as he had walked on alone.
Other life had rustled and crept around him—night was ideal for scavenging insects and small mammals—but most of the humans slept, sequestered in blackened rooms with locked doors. Several blocks away, thumping bass had swelled and receded as a car sped along in the night’s stillness. Technology had made some humans nocturnal.
Not the woman, though. Her sleep had been deep and motionless. Even her breaths had been shallow. To eyes less attuned than his, her chest would have appeared unmoving, and no other ears would have heard her faint respirations and the slow beats of her heart. A small death, it was once called—and for good reason. Even her body temperature had lowered. In a different age, her eventual reawakening would have been unpleasantly notable—for her. In all likelihood it would have decided her fate. Humans used to do much of his work for him—albeit with a high margin of error. Long experience had taught him that culling the person, while expedient, was not always the most beneficial solution.
Tinted by the squalid hues of the streetlight, her skin had looked yellowed as if by sickness. Her fractal’s trauma could not have physically affected her, but her body must have needed a respite to offset the psychological stress of the evening’s events. And even in flattering lighting, it had been obvious that she was not well-rested.
Her child always slept well, of course.
His pace had quickened then, although he had no destination in mind. His body had simply wanted to step away from his own thoughts, like a fractal of himself. And so he had continued to walk, past the sleeping humans and their myriad creations, along cracked sidewalks and brick-paved streets, until the night sky began to lighten.
As the pearlescent clouds had taken shape against the darkness, he had found himself at the river’s edge again. At the same bench beneath the blooming dogwood tree. A homeless person was asleep on the bench, and so he had walked further and lowered himself onto the next. From there, he had watched the displaced person sleep, feeling a strange sense of solidarity with the nameless woman.
Now, with sounds of the wakening city rumbling in the air, the woman opened her eyes, stretched, shivered, and shambled off to hide among those who did not want to see her.
It was cold, he supposed, looking down at his own arms. There were minuscule beads of moisture on the backs of his hands, and the fabric of his shirt and pants felt damp. The modulators regulated his body well, and small fluctuations in temperature rarely registered in his conscious thoughts. The changes he noticed were the ones that came from within.
He stood up to begin his trek towards dry clothes. Ones that were not faintly scented with chamomile and patchouli. Eventually he would have to sleep, and he needed to keep his unconscious thoughts free of references to her.
Reasons to Believe
I was scrubbing cheese off the skillet when a shrill jangle startled me. Eileen was asleep on the couch, so I grabbed a dish towel and ran, finding the cordless handset in my bedroom just as she started to mumble.
“Hello?”
“Lila?”
I kept my voice low so I wouldn’t wake her. “Who’s calling?”
“It’s Adam. Can you hear me? I think we have a bad connection . . . ”
Adam? “Hang on a second.” I hurried to the back door and eased out onto the porch. “Sorry ‘bout that. My daughter’s taking a nap.” Why was he calling me? “Is Cara alright?”
“Yeah, she’s still asleep.”
“Good.” I held the phone in the crook of my neck and dried my hands while I waited for him to tell me why he’d called.
“Were you at Sugar Shack last night? There’s a story in the news, and it looked like your Bronco in the footage . . . ?”
“Oh? Yeah, but—”
“God, are you okay?”
“Fine, yeah. We—”
“Sal was with you?”
“Yeah. We were in the truck.”
“Jesus.”
“It really wasn’t a big deal. Not for us, anyway. Scary for the people inside, but . . . ” Wasn’t it more of a girl thing to check up on someone? “ . . . so Cara’s okay?”
He sighed. “As okay as she can be.”
“What can I do?”
He didn’t answer
