Margaret's Ark

night. The fire chief had merely been an extra in an overly-vivid dream.

Spit into the sink. Rinse. Grab the floss. Don't think.

Focusing on routine came easier at the sound of Robin's and Katie's footsteps shuffling down the hall towards the bathroom.

*     *     *

Marty Santos stood on the grass, across the street from the station. The air was warm though it was still early in the day. It would be a hot one. He wished he hadn't put on a sweatshirt. He looked around at scattered pieces of paper, caught against the legs of benches or an occasional shrub. No sign that anyone had been here recently. No flattened section of grass where the two people had been standing earlier this morning, let alone the massive dark shape that seemed to grow out of the man.

Marty hadn’t recognized him, but the woman... she was familiar. Even in the pale light cast from the street, Marty recognized Margaret Carboneau. She’d been wearing a nightgown. When she moved, it flowed in the breeze around her, catching the vagaries of the street lights, shining through the gossamer material....

No .

Lavish’s fire chief walked some more, staring at the ground, then up at the blue morning sky. What did he see, really? It had been four-thirty in the morning. At that time everything had a grainy texture. The eyes could be fooled. He hadn’t been sleeping. Though the nightmares ended over a year ago, they sometimes came back. Flames melting windows in the third-floor apartments, Vincent Carboneau's muffled voice, choking, no air.

In reality, when his respirator failed in the middle of a four-alarm apartment building fire in Greenfield, Vince wasn’t equipped with a microphone. Marty never heard his best friend’s voice the night he died. But he dreamed about it. Now he was dreaming about Vince’s widow.

But he hadn’t been asleep. Sleep didn’t come easily to him, not when he was at the station. Four days on, three days off. Four nights of restless turning in his bunk, until he got up and paced the common room away from the others. Waiting for an alarm to justify his nocturnal vigil over the Lavish town square. Praying for it, dreading it. He smelled smoke wherever he went. This morning, he'd eventually gone back to bed, after the two figures and the boat -- it was a boat -- simply disappeared in the headlights of a passing car.

There was no one there. He'd even opened the side window and shouted Margaret's name, hoping to see her face more completely. When he called out, the headlights passed over them, and they faded away.

Shadows, burned away in the light.

Marty stood on the spot under the warming April sun, much like he'd done hours ago in the dim starlight of early morning, when he'd gone out to confront the man standing outside his window with the half-naked widow of his best friend. No one had been there. No one was here now. He stood on the grass, alone, eventually walking back to the firehouse and wondering if he was finally losing his mind.

57

The dream didn’t return. One night of solid, undisturbed sleep.

Margaret awoke with renewed energy. Ready for the world, to forget dreams about angels wanting her to build an ark. Just some unconscious memory of a reading from Exodus on some previous, forgotten Sunday. Her mind simply processed the story of Noah and played it out.

Classes had gone well. The Seniors were riveted by the haphazard experiments she offered, charging up batteries, trying to reverse the polarity, building up static electricity between swatches of felt. Margaret knew theirs was an exaggerated interest in these simple time-killers, making what would normally be ten minute exercises into forty-five minute Grand Experiments. Even Carl Jorgenson had put off his usual strutting among the girls to hunker down over the center table.

She turned the car onto the 101, merging her Taurus wagon between cars driven by more over-stressed commuters. Someone beeped his horn but she continued into the fray, letting the droll of the angst-ridden callers on a talk-radio show drown out the horn-song.

Katie's lacrosse practice was ending in twenty minutes, had just enough time to have stopped at the store for milk and a jar of overpriced spaghetti sauce before heading back to the fields then get Robin out of preschool. She stayed in the right lane, heading for the next exit.

“... build an ark...”

The three words on the radio sent a shock through her. She swerved the car, uncertain, feeling like she was supposed to do something but couldn’t decide what. The exit. She took it.

More words from the radio, this time from the show's host, his voice dripping with disdain. “...said God himself told you this?”

End of the ramp. Her directional was still on, but there was only one way to go.

“I know this sounds nuts,” the caller said, “but it was such a vivid dream. I mean, {beep}.. I...”

“Sorry, Joey. Not allowed to use those words.”

“Ok, sorry. What I'm saying is I don't even believe in God.” He laughed. “Well, maybe a little, but not like in church.”

“You don't believe in God when you're in church?”

“No, Dude, I don’t go to church. That's not why I'm calling. Listen, I think this -”

“All right! Enough of this. Ah, Spring is here, and brains are getting fried already.”

A horn blared behind her.

The green light turned yellow. Margaret stared at it. The car behind her cut to the right to pass, but was hindered by the off-ramp's concrete barrier. The driver settled into a steady tirade of honking. The light turned red. Others joined in.

They sounded like angry demons. Her ears were plugged up. What had the caller said? The host had a new caller now, asking whether she should tell her parents she was gay. When the light changed again, Margaret moved forward. She got half-way through the intersection when the car behind her, a dented white Camaro veered around her. Margaret almost rear-ended it. Another car worked its way around. This time Margaret followed.

She needed to get back to the sanity of the school.

By the time she pulled into the teacher's lot, someone else had called to talk about their “flood dream.” She left the engine running and stared at the radio. They were calling from Carmel-by-the-Sea, seventy miles southwest of her. With some exceptions, the dream was the same. Delivered by an angel named “Shirley”. After substantially more abuse from the host for not coming up with a more divine name, the call was disconnected.

Commercials. Margaret turned off the engine. Her hands were shaking. In the silence that followed, she sobbed once but pushed it down. This wasn’t true. She was hearing it wrong. She sat in silence, not caring if Katie’s practice might be over. She stared at the dark radio, the shaking of her entire body which she’d only begun to notice finally slowing, calming.

It was only a dream. It was only a dream.

“Mrs. Carboneau?”

She shouted in surprise, twisted in her seat.

A tall, handsome boy stood outside the open driver's window. Jeans and a denim shirt with cut-off sleeves. Carl Jorgenson already sported the beginnings of his usual California surfer's tan and sun-bleached hair.

Margaret looked away and wiped her face.

“Oh, Carl. Sorry. You surprised me.”

“You looked kind of upset.” He turned away himself and shoved his hands into his back pockets. “You've been crying.” He was a smart kid, but his mannerisms always struck her as too simplistic, constantly teetering at the edge of adulthood.

She tried to smile. It didn’t work. “No, no. Allergies are starting up, that's all. What are you still doing here?”

Carl hesitated, looking around as if trying to remember something. “Oh, baseball practice. Mr. Z's been pushing the seniors pretty hard, thinks we’re slacking off, taking away....”

Margaret got out of the car before he could finish. Carl got the message and shut up. “You coming to get the girls?”

She began to walk. Carl followed a pace behind. “You want me to go with you? Are you sure you're