The Guardians

[12]

The dawn is pink and smels of clean sheets and Play-Doh. The latter scent emanating from the human figures that Kieran had apparently made some time ago, and that his mother had refused to smush back into formless blobs. Smiling sculptures where the clock radio usualy sits.

'He cals it his family,' Sarah says, stroking the hair off my forehead. 'But there's six of them. Aside from his dad, and my mother before she died, he's never met a blood relative, so I'm not sure who he's thinking they are.' 'He wants to be part of a clan.' 'Too late to give him that.' 'He's got you. It's al he needs.' 'Realy?'

'One good person to look out for you? I'd take it.' 'But it doesn't stop him from wishing.' 'You can't stop anybody from that.'

She kisses me. When my hand has trouble finding her cheek she places it against the soft skin it was aiming for.

'You can stay here,' she says. 'For as long as you're in town. If you want.'

'What about Kieran?'

'It's not his room.'

'Would it be, I don't know, confusing for him or something?'

'You can't protect kids from reality. My one piece of wisdom from my time down here in Single Mom Land.'

'I might be leaving tonight. I'm not sure.'

'It's an invitation, that's al.'

I consider this, my hand steadied by the firm line of her jaw. I thought this was the one advantage of Parkinson's, seling Retox, withdrawing from the world's excitements: no more desire, no more crests and troughs to unsettle the ride. And now this sensible, good-looking woman—Sarah, object of my high- school lust and daydreams of death-do-us-part—is inquiring after my wants as though I had a right to them.

'Thank you,' I say.

'Don't panic. I'm not asking you to be my date to the prom or anything.' She taps a finger against my temple. 'We're just faling forwards for a day or two, that's al.'

'Faling backwards, in our case.'

'Backwards, forwards,' she says, rising out of the sheets. 'You're saying you can tel the difference?'

I want to outline her lips with a finger but I don't trust any of them, so I remain stil. As stil as I can manage.

'Sarah?'

'Yeah?'

'Why are you doing this?'

'Doing what?'

'Being nice to me.'

'Nice? This isn't about nice.'

'I just don't want you to be here because you think you're doing me some good.'

'Like a charity case?'

'Something like that.'

'Okay, let's get this straight. I'm here because I want to be here. Because what we did last night felt good. And because I've thought about you a lot for a long time, since you were a boy. I'm curious about the man that boy has grown into. That's al there is to it. I'm in this for me, understand?'

My request of the night before had been honoured. I had enjoyed ten solid hours of thoughts uninterrupted by Tracey Flanagan, or the shapes that the terrible hunger that has been awakened within the Thurman house has taken. But as I watch Sarah get dressed for work, the early sun through the window tels me that al bets are now off It's how Sarah's nakedness interchanges with Tracey's, the two bodies losing their particularity, veering close to becoming a lifeless composite. This, along with the mental stop-starts that throw me from desire to fear and back again in the time it takes a bare arm to slip through the sleeve of an undershirt.

'Are you al right?' she asks when her head pops up through the colar. 'You've gone al white.'

'I'm nothing without my morning coffee.'

'You look like you've had a bad dream or something.'

'Except I'm awake.'

'Yeah. Except you're awake.'

I rol out of bed and do my best to pul my pants on and button my shirt without asking for help, and Sarah knows enough about male pride not to offer it.

'I need to talk to Randy,' I say.

'What about?'

'We were at Jake's the night Tracey Flanagan went missing.

She was our waitress. I spoke to the police about it yesterday.' 'You know something?'