The man's hair, the way it recedes above each temple, the way the skin on his exposed scalp is bright red from the cold wind, it looks like he has devil's horns. He has devil's horns, and his whole face is red and squinting into wrinkles. Dynamic wrinkling. Lateral canthal rhytides.
The dog twists his head back over one shoulder, trying to get away from her. The man's aftershave has the smell of cloves. Hooked on his belt, under the edge of his jacket, you can see a pair of chromed handcuffs.
Just for the record, the weather today is increasing turmoil with a possible physical and emotional breakdown.
Holding his dog's leash, the man says, “Are you sure you're okay?”
And Misty tells him, “Trust me, I'm not dead.”
“Maybe just my skin's dead,” she says.
Stendhal syndrome. Epinephrine. Graphology. The coma of details. Of education.
The man nods at her beer in the brown paper bag, and he says, “You know you're not supposed to drink in public?”
And Misty says, What? Is he a cop?
And he says, “You know? As a matter of fact, yeah, I am.”
The guy flips open his wallet to flash her a badge. Engraved on the silver badge, it says: Clark Stilton. Detective. Seaview County Hate Crimes Task Force.
July 13—
The Full Moon
TABBI AND MISTY, they're walking through the woods. This is the tangle of land out on Waytansea Point. It's alders here, generations of trees grown and fallen and sprouting again out of their own dead. Animals, maybe deer, have cut a path that winds around the heaps of complicated trees and edges between rocks big as architecture and padded with thick moss. Above all this, the alder leaves come together in a shifting bright green sky.
Here and there, sunlight breaks through in shafts as big around as crystal chandeliers. Here's just a messier version of the lobby of the Waytansea Hotel.
Tabbi wears a single old earring, gold filigree and a haze of sparkling red rhinestones around a red enameled heart. It's pinned through her pink sweatshirt, like a brooch, but it's the earring that Peter's blond friend tore out of his ear. Will Tupper from the ferry.
Your friend.
She keeps the junk jewelry in a shoe box under her bed and wears it on special days. The chipped glass rubies pinned to her shoulder glitter with the bright green above them. The rhinestones, spotted with dirt, they reflect pink from Tabbi's sweatshirt.
Your wife and kid, they step over a rotting log that's crawling with ants, stepping around ferns that brush Misty's waist and flop on Tabbi's face. They're quiet, looking and listening for birds, but there's nothing. No birds. No little frogs. No sounds except the ocean, the hiss and burst of waves somewhere else.
They push through a thicket of green stalks, something with soft yellow leaves rotting around its base. You have to look down with every step because the ground's slippery and puddled with water. How long Misty's been walking, keeping her eyes on the ground, holding branches so they don't whip Tabbi, Misty doesn't know how long, but when she looks up, a man's standing there.
Just for the record, her levator labii muscles, the snarl muscles, the fight-or-flight muscles, all spasm, all those smooth muscles freeze into the landscape of growling, Misty's mouth squared so all her teeth show.
Her hand grabs the back of Tabbi's shirt. Tabbi, she's still looking down at the ground, walking forward, and Misty yanks her back.
And Tabbi slips and pulls her mother to the ground, saying, “Mom.”
Tabbi pressed to the wet ground, the leaves and moss and beetles, Misty crouched over her, the ferns arch above them.
The man is maybe another ten steps ahead, and facing away from them. He doesn't turn. Through the curtain of ferns, he must be seven feet tall, dark and heavy with brown leaves in his hair and mud splashed up his legs.
He doesn't turn, but he doesn't move. He must've heard them, and he stands, listening.
Just for the record, he's naked. His naked butt is right there.
Tabbi says, “Let go, Mom. There's bugs.”
And Misty shushes her.
The man waits, frozen, one hand held out at waist height as if he's feeling the air for movement. No birds sing.
Misty's crouched, squatting with her hands open against the muddy ground, ready to grab Tabbi and run.
Then Tabbi slips past her, and Misty says, “No.” Reaching fast, Misty clutches the air behind her kid.
It's one, maybe two seconds before Tabbi gets to the man, puts her hand in his open hand.
In that two seconds, Misty knows she's a shitty mother.
Peter, you married a coward. Misty's still here, crouched. If anything, Misty's leaning back, ready to run the other way. What they don't teach you in art school is hand-to-hand combat.
And Tabbi turns back, smiling, and says, “Mom, don't be such a spaz.” She wraps both her hands around the man's one outstretched hand and pulls herself up so she can swing her legs in the air. She says, “It's just Apollo, is all.”
Near the man, almost hidden in fallen leaves, is a dead body. A pale white breast with fine blue veins. A severed white arm.
And Misty's still crouched here.
Tabbi drops from the man's hand and goes to where Misty's looking. She brushes leaves off a dead white face and says, “This is Diana.”
She looks at Misty crouching and rolls her eyes. “They're statues, Mom.”
Statues.
Tabbi comes back to take Misty's hand. She lifts her mom's arm and pulls her to her feet, saying, “You know? Statues. You're the artist.”
Tabbi pulls her forward. The standing man is dark bronze, streaked with lichen and tarnish, a naked man with his feet bolted to a pedestal buried in the bushes beside the trail. His eyes have recessed irises and pupils, Roman irises, cast into them. His bare arms and legs are perfect in proportion to his torso. The golden mean of composition. Every
