The Anaa’ji begins at dawn. Pink streaks fragment the sky and the fat red sun is swallowed, then spit out by marshmallow clouds, so that every face in the ceremony is only half-illuminated. Light, shadow. Evil, purity. Evil has swarmed this small Navajo town, and the ritual is a cleansing. The rhythmic chants, rising in volume and passion, wake Mary, who has overslept and curses her inadequate alarm. She dresses fast, in darkness. She hurries to the crowd. Faces turn and mouths fight smiles and eyes twinkle. She looks down and finds she’s donned a lint-wreathed polka dot skirt, a red plaid flannel jacket, mismatched socks. The people’s voices thrum and the chief brandishes his rattle. Mary’s mother looks at her with mouth twisted in anger. Mary joins the chants, copying her neighbors’ mouth shapes, because she’s not great with the Navajo language. It’s the least she can do. After all, the whole thing is her fault. Mary runs a stall in a rickety line of tourist traps that straddle the Four Corners. She sells hand-loomed rugs in traditional patterns. She loves the rich tumble of colors, the brush of the soft pile against her skin. But lately, business has flagged. Two more stalls have appeared, selling machine-loomed rugs, much cheaper than Mary’s creations. Over the last two months, her mother’s dinner table grew sparse. Collection agencies’ threats accumulated. She was late on rent, then later the next month. She’d even pawned a silver-and-turquoise ring bequeathed by her grandmother. But then, a quiet serendipity. She looked up into a juniper one afternoon and saw an immense, silvery-white owl, studying her with eyes like bullets, layered and complicated wings, like constellations. As inspiration, it was perfect. It hummed with inscrutable meanings. She got right to work. She’d had to work at night because owls are taboo. Everyone knew this. They bring chaos; they never have good intentions. They’re creatures of the selfish, ravenous gods who care little for human pain. But Mary was sure that _her _owl was different. While her mother snored, Mary hurried to her loom. The owl took shape in tufted fibers. Pure white; it was important that it looked a little like an angel. A scarlet background with no pattern of its own, so as not to distract from the central figure. Those piercing, fathomless eyes. It was the best thing she’d ever done. She loved it more than she’d ever loved a person, even David Nichols, her first crush. She hung it on the stall’s plywood side, facing outward, to lure tourists. The other stall owners oohed and aahed. Amanda Cook asked how she’d decided on just one owl, instead of a pattern. He’s just one of a kind, Mary said. Well, it’s genius, said Amanda. He’s like the answer to any question. Like a sunset, or a religion. A masterpiece. Tourists rushed up and bargained. But Mary found she couldn’t name her price. A price was an offer, but she didn’t want to offer the owl. She wanted to bask in its odd gaze, be comforted by its presence. She turned the tourists away. She was still poor, but happier, until, tragically, the chief’s wife decided to visit the stalls. She hobbled up, leaning on a twisted cane, smiling vaguely until she saw the bird. She shrieked and hollered. She battened the rug with her cane. Burn it _immediately_, she ordered. Sage and sweet grass in the fire. Do it quickly, now; perhaps the gods will forgive. Of course, said Mary, who knew she’d do no such thing. And maybe it would have been okay, except for Lincoln Whitetree. Link was Mary’s age, born and raised on the Rez like her. His quiet face was a familiar sight throughout grade school. They’d been lab partners; he’d given her her first joint as they huddled behind a reeking dumpster in the school parking lot. His first car was a rusted Corolla with no fabric on the seat cushions, but he babied it as if it were a Mercedes. Saturdays he could be seen hosing, buffing, spreading was that smelled of orange peels. When he was done the car glittered arrogantly, as if the surrounding huts and stray dogs were holding it back from its true destiny. After his graduation party, Link, fortified with six Miller Lights and a fat joint, wrapped the Carolla around a scrub oak. The car needed extensive repairs and so did Link, who’d fractured almost everything, down to the tiny bones in his toes. What followed was the old story. Link was prescribed painkillers. Link loved the thick, gentle opiate haze, which whispered that everything was kind and beautiful. When his scrips ran out he turned to the rez’s heroin dealer. He overdosed on the dirty linoleum of a McDonald’s bathroom. He wasn’t found for several hours. Mary had heard his eyes were open—he always had the most penetrating, ocean-colored eyes—and he was already beginning to stink. The news broke and aunts, grandmothers, uncles, formed a screeching scrum around Mary. She was a witch; she cared nothing for tradition. She was the worst kind of evil. Abashed, she’d sworn she’d burn the rug. The chief shifted his long gray braids and said they’d better have a cleansing ceremony. Of course she didn’t burn the rug. She did haul it down from the stall’s outside wall. She toiled through the empty desert, dragging the rug, which got heavier as the sun burned hotter. She found a strange, diseased-looking cactus, which bent precariously over its own roots, as if driven by a strong wind. She rummaged in the sand until she had a six-foot hollow. Buried, the rug looked faceless, like the endless desert. Mary fed delightedly on her secret. She visited her rug at night, brushing sand from the bird’s luminous body, even more magical when drenched in moonlight. The ceremony concludes. The chief bestows reassuring smiles. Everyone piles into his house for a small gathering. Mary and her aunts nibble chicken wings, crustless sandwiches, chile-flavored fry bread. Men get drunk on the back porch. People eye Mary like unexplored ordnance. She excuses herself and returns to the desert. For the next month, the Rez is rocked by thunderstorms. Lightning blackens roofs. Shutters fling themselves from windows into soaked grass. Cars are keyed. Two dogs die, apparently poisoned, but no one knows anyone who would do such a thing. The chief gets the flu and coughs so deep in his chest that the eruptions are like avalanches. One night Mary’s mother lurks behind her as she washes dishes. I know you didn’t burn that rug, she hisses. It would be like murder to you. There’s always been something just not right about you. I don’t know what you’re taking about, Mary says, polishing a saucer. I’m going out for a while. She spreads the sand slowly, carefully unearthing the rug. The owl’s glare is still both bright and disturbing. She tacks the rug to the inside of the stall and stands staring at it. The bird stares back. A sullen discontentment emanates from their mutual regard. What has gone wrong? Well, she’d made the beak too sharp. It was like a tiny plastic pyramid. There’s an ugly gray patch on a wing; she must have grabbed the wrong color. The left leg bends at a freakish angle. The ears droop. Tears squirm hot and relentless into Mary’s throat. Yes, the bird seems to say, you should have done better, and when _will _you do better than this flimsy box of a life. Don’t you see there is more than the desert, the Rez, your stupid hopes that are too small not to be crushed like insects. Look at _that, _says someone behind her. Mary turns. A blonde tourist clutching an iPhone and a Target bag. Her boyfriend or husband, bearded, looking hot and uncomfortable. Wouldn’t that be such a nice accent for the spare room, the woman says. How much? No, says Mary. It isn’t an accent; it _needs_ accents. It can’t live in a spare room, on the margins of things. The woman eyes her; she thinks Mary is arguing for a higher price. Well then, she says. Let’s start the bidding. No. It’s not for sale. The woman turns away, muttering violently; the man gives Mary a despairing look. Mary shifts under the owl’s gaze. It seems to prickle her skin, like hawthorne. She stares for a while, then hauls it off its pins and back into the desert. There is no moon; she can’t see the bird, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that there is a cigarette lighter in her pocket; she can’t remember putting it there, but perhaps the gods have decided on mercy instead of revenge. At first the fire is listless and weak. Then it rises, begins to crackle, then roar. Flames lick the white body, the peculiar imperfections that ruined her fierce, unbounded love. She waits for fibers to transform to ashes. Then she begins the long, despairing walk home, knowing she might never weave again, knowing she has to somehow start anew, obliterating the cage of her life with a fire just as big, as hungry, as the one that devoured the owl. Perhaps there really are gods after all. Perhaps they watch her trudge through the shifting sands, as sad as children, as vast and empty as the endless, shifting desert. And perhaps finally, they are pleased.

In those days there was a third man who walked the roads in sunlight and storms. He wasn’t the hero or the villain. He was something else—pliable, glassy-eyed, unpredictable. He pursued the other two men. They had horses and a head start, so he jogged as fast as he could, instinctively, like a bee spiraling into a waiting flower. But no matter how he strained his protesting muscles, the others receded further and further into the hazy distance, and the man began to drown in a gritty, indelible despair that eroded his mind and infected his hot, rushing blood. It was made worse by the fact that he didn’t know what he’d do when he caught up to them. He could join the light man, or the shadowed. If the former, angels might gather around him, mock him in cruel voices. If the latter, he could disintegrate until he became nameless, jellylike, slithering through frigid waters. There was of course a third possibility he refused to think about. But it had no resonance. It was the point of no return. Still, he remembered and forgot it a hundred times a day. It was hard to move in a dead world. Around him the lands lay fallow and there were no more birds. The man had seen books as a child—pictures of stalks laden with bright fruit, sparrows reeling through clear skies, roses without thorns. He thought it must have been a magic spell. A witching the world simply, one day, forgot. This long ago haunted him as his cracked boots hurried over sandy earth, dislodging pebbles, bits of paper, dead roaches. Dry days wept themselves into long black nights and the sun and the moon were the same-sullen, stingy with their light. Even the insects seemed to keep secrets from him. He ate his meals standing up, rubbed away flakes of sunburnt skin, tried to believe he was like lightning, or a spear hurled from a strong, sure hand. One day something new happened. As he jogged around a narrow curve, a lemon-haired girl of eight or nine burst from a hut. The hut was filthy and so was the girl. She sobbed without tears or sound. She raced through the dirt and flung a one-armed doll at a dead tree, as if she’d never loved it, even though she had, the biggest love she’d ever known, since she had no family, only a sour old woman who slapped the girl if she talked too much, especially if she told the truth. A discard, an excess, the girl twined skinny arms around the tree and buried her face in its grizzled trunk. She wore a faded dress and an ankle bracelet. It wasn’t gold, perhaps only tin, worth only a few pennies. But still it glittered and glittered in the relentless light, as if it had its own lively, arrogant soul. Despite her life’s brutal lessons, the girl believed in omens. So when she saw the young man, she scrubbed her face with her fist and yelled, Hey! Hey _you_! The man didn’t turn, so the girl ran to the road. She stopped in front of him, panting. His face curdled at the stench of her hot breath—fish, tooth decay, rotting fruit. But she had canny eyes and a wide, mobile mouth. He couldn’t make a decision. She was an obstacle sent to test his resolve, or she was a fragment of some truth he’d yet to discover. He waited, wondering, for her to speak again. Hey, said the girl again. I’m _talking _to you. Why ain’t you answering back? It’s rude. Ain’t you had no teaching? Please, child, he said. I’m in a hurry. Hurry for what? Ain’t nothing the way you’re going, except that old forest, and nobody goes in there unless they’re stupid or they wanna see the end of the world. You stupid? No, but I will go there if this road does. That is pretty stupid. There’s all kinds of roads in the world. You oughta be more careful choosing. The man studied her. Surely she wasn’t meant for him—she smelled of dried blood, her bones were too big for her skin, and her toenails hadn’t been trimmed in a long time. Pity warred with disgust. He fished a coin from his pocket. Here, he said. Good day to you. The girl knocked the coin to the ground. I don’t want no stupid person’s money. What do you want then? I’m in a hurry. Stupid question. I’m like anybody, want a hundred things God don’t see fit to give. What do _you_ want? I want to catch the men I pursue. I won’t if you don’t move. The girl squinted. I don’t see no men. Is you one of those people can see things in your thoughts? Like a prophet? Mrs. Mallory, she’s who takes care of me, she tells stories about prophets. They’re from long ago but everybody has to listen and do what they say. Because they speak for God. I’m gonna be a prophet when I grow up. You cannot choose such things. Your path is crafted, as it is for us all. That just means God and I can talk to God. Make Him see reason. What’s your name? Mine’s Manny and over there’s my one-armed doll named Isabel. I was crying cause I found out she’s not real. You ever find something you love ain’t real? Of course. That is part of getting older. I ain’t old yet. I shoulda had more time to believe. You ain’t old, neither. Old enough. Get out of my way. Listen, she said, drawing closer. Let me come with you. I hate it here. Don’t nobody really want me. I can show you how to get through the forest. You go alone, the trees might decide they like you, and you’d never come out. But they know me. They’ll listen if I ask a favor. And you can even have Isabel. She’s only got one arm but her smile’s painted on so it never goes away. The young man considered this offer. He swallowed some of the dusty air. He was losing time—he could no longer see the two figures in the distance—and he’d lose more if he stood here arguing. It was true he hadn’t planned for the forest, which had a bad reputation, as perhaps forests always do, no matter time or place. Plus, it was only morning, but already his feet dragged and his mind was too slow and stubborn to help find the right way. I can’t stop you if you follow, he said, surprising himself a little. Manny grinned. She scampered back to the tree, snatched up the doll, and caught up with the man, who had started to jog again. Her legs were much shorter and she took three steps to his one. In this way they devoured the distance, as a bloody sun traveled across a colorless sky. In a strange resonance, they both found themselves thinking of birds. Neither had ever seen a live one. But in both imaginations, small fluttering things soared with impossible grace. Unbound by gravity, unfettered by hope.

In the center of the shop, surrounded by burnt out candles, lay the body of another victim. Jess tiptoed around it, careful, like a nervous mouse slinking through shadows. She waited patiently for the surge of happy adrenaline a dead face always bestowed. When it came she surfed it like a roaring wave. She grinned, even danced a little. She dipped her finger in the woman’s blood, which was cold and rapidly thickening, and etched tiny graffiti on the shop’s crumbling walls. She whispered things to the dead woman which she’d never repeat, not even if she lived to be a hundred. The woman was never real in the first place, so it was okay to trust her with secrets. Jess laughed quietly, thinking of the silent organs beneath the skin–kidneys, liver, spleen–which would never again be able to assert their unintelligible wills. Double helixes, furiously dividing cells, an erratic, pulsating, voracious heart–she’d put a stop to all that. Someone ought to have thanked her. But who? Not the woman, forever silenced. Not the people who may have hated or loved her. Not God, who, if He existed, passed his vast, glistening, indifferent eye over the toils of the people so far below they may as well not be seen at all. Behind her, a bell jangled.  Shit, she muttered, don’t you idiots see the _Closed _sign?  The bell shouted again, then a third time. Jess wiped her hands, hurried to the front of the shop, opened the glass door, which was smeared with fingerprints and dead bees. A tall figure, wreathed in shadow, lurched forward. _A monster, _she thought, _a ghost._ But no, he was an ordinary man. Wolfish grin, pale eyes, a tattered plaid sport coat. His jovial voice fractured the silence.  So sorry, sorry to disturb, he said. I saw your sign but really, what did you think would happen with something like that in the window? Who could resist?  Bemused, Jess surveyed the dusty heap of items. A doll with one eye and a ragged dress. A rocking chair sporting hundreds of scratches. An ancient cash register. A dirty quilt with a  half-completed pattern, as if its maker had gotten bored halfway through. A few marbles that caught the fading light and turned it greasy and insubstantial.  The man brushed past her, humming to himself. He smelled of hot skin and an aftershave like rotting mangoes. His soft steps drummed on the tile. What if this man were real, after all? Unlikely, but just in case, she fashioned a polite, inquisitive smile. She followed him to the table which supported her visitor’s registry (tourists loved it), ledger, and laptop.  Sorry if I seem unwelcoming, she said, but I’d be happy to help. What is it you’re interested in?  Oh, the doll, no question about it. Have to have that doll. For my daughter, you see–she’s six. Her mother and I tried to resist teaching her stereotypical gender roles, but what can you do? She just loves dolls. She lines them up on her bed and sings to them. Christmas Carols, mostly, but sometimes show tunes. She’s partial to that one about the technicolor dream coat.   Of course, but just so you know, she’s missing an eye.  Oh yes, I saw, but the thing is, my daughter loves defects. Wounds. Things that aren’t whole. A laudable sentiment, don’t you think? We think she might join the Peace Corps some day. You know, help the unfortunate. Lovely, Jess replied. Well, I’d be happy to– Just one thing, the man said, leaning forward, as if about to tell a juicy secret. What’s her name? Name, Jess repeated. I mean, she’s a doll. She can have any name you want.  Ah that’s where you’re wrong, young lady. But never mind, we have all evening to resolve this issue.  He settled his long body in the chair she kept in front of the table. His smile was tantalizing but also, somehow, an insult. Staring at the wet lips, the big shiny teeth, Jess felt like a cockroach scuttling towards a pile of crumbs. She wished his eyes had a color. She wished he would do something criminal–shoplift, punch her in the nose–so she’d be justified in having the police haul him away. But of course he did nothing. People never do satisfy, Jess thought, they’re all like candy on an empty stomach. The man kept smiling. Jess wiped her bloody finger on her jeans and smiled back.  *** Jess found the woman in the forest. It wasn’t really a forest, just a ragged slash of trees and lumpy undergrowth that bisected the local cemetery. Jess liked to trudge barefoot in the soft grass between the headstones, read the names, laugh at their irrelevance. _Rose, Beloved Sister. Jackson, Devoted Husband. Cynthia Grace,_ who loved birds but only lived three years. All those stupid, flickering ghosts, demanding and begging and yelling long-lost secrets. But Jess didn’t mind. She removed dead flowers and squirrel droppings, dusted away fallen leaves. When she felt she’d done enough, she communed with the trees. Unlike the dead they didn’t whine. They just whispered, and endured.  The woman knelt in a clearing. Her hair was very red. She wore a turquoise windbreaker, muddy jeans, earrings that were nothing but wires twisted into some arcane pattern. Like modern art in a museum, the kind nobody understood but pretended to. She was digging industriously with a spade, turning the rich earth, ignoring the worms that wiggled out and coiled wetly between her knees.  Dammit, _dammit_, fuck! Her voice was screechy, disquieting. Jess stepped back, then forward. She wasn’t sure this woman was right. She was too skinny and had an odd rippling mouth and her hands were filthy.  _Fuck_, repeated the woman.  Sorry, Jess said, but– Whoa! Said the woman, scrambling backwards. You scared me! Sorry, I was just— Listen, said the woman. You have to go now. This is something–I mean, I don’t want to be rude. I can’t explain it. I just have to find what I’m looking for.  Jess bridled. I don’t have to go anywhere, she said. This is public land. But listen, why don’t you let me help? It looks like a big job.  The woman’s eyes were spring-sky blue. Her face was freckled. There was a heavy sweetness to it, like a cherry tree laden with overripe fruit. Jess realized she might even be real. She fingered the knife nestled in her pocket. It was as sharp as ever.  I guess, said the woman, well, okay, if you want to. It’s dirty work, though. Look at me. I don’t mind dirt, said Jess. Washes off, right?  The woman laughed. Sure, almost always.  What is it, Jess asked, kneeling across from her. Buried treasure, of course, said the woman, still laughing. It was such a satisfied laugh, Jess thought. As if this woman had never been alone or afraid. Jess began to hate a little, feed on the hate. Delicious as always. She would have liked to toss away the knife and her bottle of chloroform, finish the job with her bare hands, but she knew she wasn’t strong enough. She and this woman were the same size. Same bony wrists, same swirl of freckles. It was nearly unendurable. Guess you’re a pirate, then, Jess said.  Arr, growled the woman, handing Jess the space. I’m Amanda, by the way. I know, Jess muttered, digging into the mud. You don’t have to say.  In twenty minutes, the woman lay white-faced and bleeding in the grass. Jess pondered logistics. She thought she could just about drag the body to her car without being seen. But what about the treasure? She didn’t believe in it, not really, but a word like _treasure _had echoes. It colonized the mind. We’re all such insects, she thought wearily, and picked up the spade again.  *** I just remembered, Jess told the man. Her name’s Amanda. He nodded, not agreeing, just acknowledging that she’d spoken.  I’m sure you just made that up, he said. Just now. Tricky, aren’t you?  He wagged a finger at her, like a nun or a disappointed teacher. Someone who’d never inched close to the blurred, fragile line between good and evil. Jess was suddenly very tired of him.  Not sure what to tell you, she said. You want her or not? I’ll knock off twenty percent. Okay, okay, deal. I guess I’ll call her Cherry. Because of those red cheeks. And to remind me of the pretty red hair of the young lady who sold her to me. Perfect, said Jess.  She wrapped the doll in long sheets of tissue paper. She enjoyed the thing’s slow disappearance beneath the folds. Legs, then knees, arms, the rosy-cheeked face. All swallowed in whiteness. She taped, slid the package into a plastic bag. She started to hand the bag to her customer, but something quivered. Jabbered. Closed her fingers tight around the bag’s handle. Refused to allow her to let go.   I forgot, she said, this doll is buried treasure. That’s why she doesn’t have a name.  How romantic! I’ll be sure to tell my daughter.  He grasped the bag. Each of them tugged. The man’s pale eyes widened. Jess was suddenly sure the whole place smelled of death, even though the woman was fresh. Could he have noticed? Maybe he had, maybe he was hatching plans to turn her into the police. She couldn’t just let him take what he wanted. Vanish unremembered, like a summer storm. Like her father when she was eight. One moment, she said. While I print up your receipt.  She fetched the chloroform and the knife from the back. When she came back out, the man was stabbing the glowing screen of his phone, frowning. It turned out it was easy.  *** The two bodies lay side by side. The man’s sport jacket complimented the blue windbreaker. The air smelled of blood, which as far as Jess was concerned, was the best smell in the world. Jess removed each person’s shoes–scuffed sandals for the girl, shiny black wingtips for the man. His socks had holes, which made her a little sad. She tucked his wedding ring in her pocket. Might fetch a good price, she thought.  Jess settled in an armchair and watched them. Nothing would change, but that’s what she liked about death. It answered so many questions. Tomorrow, before they began to smell, she’d dispose of the bodies. She had a hacksaw, a plastic barrel. She wouldn’t mind the work, though it would be hard and messy, and she’d always remember these moments in the churchlike peace that only a body emptied of everything could grant.  Okay, mom, she said. You left me decades ago, but I fixed things for you. Now you have someone to love again. Forever and ever, amen. She thought maybe they both smiled. Just a little. She fell asleep and dreamed of chests brimming with gold rings, pearls, riches beyond imagining. She laughed and ran her fingers through the bounty. She shoved handfuls in her pockets and teetered heavily down the splintery planks of the ship, which wobbled, buffeted by massive white-tipped waves. She watched a shark tear ravenously at a school of fish. Their strange blood rippled through the gray sea. The shark swam away, sated. She waved; she didn’t want to see it go. The pirates watched but did not interfere, although they had curved swords at their waists and a glittery viciousness in their eyes. They probably don’t know I’m real, she thought. But she was the shark and the pirates and the doll and the woman and the man. She was everything, which made her nothing, and that was good. She awoke happy, even though she didn’t remember the dream. Not even a trace. 

Betsy trails behind Austin, who follows Jen, who studies the slender rectangle of Amanda’s back as it winds through scrubby bushes. Ahead, Lake Michigan hurls itself against the beach. The four friends shuffle through prickly grass, kick aside pebbles and beer bottles, until cold sand rises between their bare toes. Betsy giggles at a spindly, self-important crab that scuttles along the edge of the tide. Behind them Chicago heaves and mutters. Horns blare on Lakeshore drive and the El rattles on its tracks. Jen makes a joke about a fisherman and a prostitute but nobody laughs. It’s March, too cold for other beach goers to appear, although there is a misty, capering figure in the bright distance, too far to label male or female. Austin unfolds four creaky chairs and everyone sits. Jen wiggles her turquoise-painted toes and Amanda lights a cigarette. Austin wishes he could read—he’s deep in a twisty sci-fi novel where aliens slip beneath human skins and devour organs—but they haven’t come to enjoy themselves. He steals a glance at Amanda’s profile. A long, moody face, a haphazard fall of curls. Not beautiful, but better. He tells himself for the hundredth time not to love her but his stupid heart flutters, dances disobediently away. Betsy and Jen don’t attract him. Betsy’s too bubbly, Jen too ascetic. In another fold of history maybe she’d be one of those desperate saints, muttering prayers, scourging her flesh, panicked when the darkness fell. All right, says Amanda. I guess you guys know why I called. I can take a guess, says Betsy, but why don’t you explain anyway. This isn’t a goddamn joke. Oh, but isn’t it? Isn’t it funny how we all shit ourselves—figuratively—when you call and scurry to do your bidding? I’m looking out for us. But play dumb if you want. This is where it happened. Surely you remember that? I do. If it is a thing that occurred, says Austin. It would have a local habitation and a name. But perhaps we imagine our nightmares instead of performing them. Perhaps it’s a matter of quantum entanglement. The uncertainty principle. Nothing is still until measured. The human eye is itself a tyrant. Oh Austin, Betsy sighs. Can’t you speak English for a few minutes? Enough, says Amanda. Bickering does nothing. Jen, what did they ask you? Well, they almost broke down our door banging on it. At ten at night. My roommate didn’t want to answer it. Don’t forget, we don’t live downtown like the rest of you. Sometimes there’s a body on the corner or some kid dealing fent. Knife fights. But eventually they yelled out who they were and we let them in and they asked for coffee. Did you make them some, Austin asks. I would say that would even the playing field, so to speak. No. We lied and told them we don’t drink it. I didn’t want them slobbering over our cups. They said they found a card. What kind of card? You know, just a birthday card. Shannon’s mom was cleaning out a closet and ran across this crumpled blue envelope. Inside, one of those cards with butterflies and a cutesy poem inside. Unsigned. They asked if one of us gave it to her. What did you say? I said not me, but didn’t know about the rest of you. An artifact, says Austin. A message in a bottle. Fascinating. Not fascinating at all, says Amanda. A damned nuisance. Well, speak up if you know anything about this card. There is a humming, oddly comfortable silence. A seagull veers through the hazy sky. Austin thinks about happy butterflies etched in iridescent lines, rhyming couplets in curly font. Someone must have loved her. Someone else, that is. Shannon’s eyes were green in a certain quality of light but charcoal-gray in others. When he kissed her he tasted menthol cigarettes, Black Jack gum, and something earthy and warm, like a small animal’s musk. In his memory she collapses, naked, laughing, onto his bed, which in those days was covered by a Noah’s Ark quilt. On the table were condoms, a smeared glass of gin and tonic, a Batman comic, and a lamp that buzzed intermittently, like an uncertain bee. That day he touched her everywhere there was to touch but it still won’t ever be enough. It’s like a trickle on a parched throat. A lone firefly flickering in immense, implacable dark. Betsy says, I think we’re worried for nothing, Amanda. Really. I tend to agree, Amanda sighs. But for God’s sake keep us all in the loop. They unfold themselves from the chairs, which have stamped angry red lines on their calves. Austin struggles to carry all four but nobody helps. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, hisses a voice in his head. What is that from? Macbeth? The voice tells the truth. Tomorrows will keep coming and he has no idea how to get through the rest of his life. Jen and Amanda drift towards the El and Betsy drives off in her rusted hatchback. If there is a God, he thinks, maybe he’s forgotten about us. Maybe we’re free and we just don’t know it. Betsy takes the Red Line back to her building. It’s an old coffee factory chopped into trendy lofts. She feeds the cat, waters her forty-three ferns. One day at Target she saw one so meager and bedraggled she couldn’t help but bring it home. Now she can’t stop buying them. They’re everywhere, unfurling from bookshelves, covering her desk, infusing the air with a tranquil, greenish light. She doesn’t speak to her family but the ferns curl so delicately that she thinks they might, in some strange, secret consciousness, know and love her. She brews a pot of tea, dumps it down the sink, makes a screwdriver instead. She downs it, then another, until warmth spreads beneath her lungs, softening memory’s vicious edges. She didn’t even scream, she thinks, and this is all she ever thinks, this thing that isn’t a fact, that reverberates its nothingness no matter how hard she tries to banish it. Amanda takes the Blue Line to work. She’s a nurse in a pediatric oncology ward. All night she’ll hold tiny, fragile hands, promise children they won’t die. And when they do die she’ll forget the promises because that’s the only way she can string the moments together in some semblance of a life. Doctors rush through hallways and family members drift in and out of rooms, looking haunted, sometimes furious. A boy with lymphoma asks her if God plays poker, because his daddy says life’s like you get two pair but the angels always have flushes. She kisses him on the forehead and tells him to get back to his Harry Potter book. Her next stop is Lisa, a five-year-old with leukemia. The mother, a fat woman with a greasy puff of bleached hair, flips through People. Did you know, says the woman, that Tom Cruise believes in aliens? I guess I did. He’s a Scientologist, right? And these are the motherfuckers who get to be millionaires. Meanwhile we’re two hundred grand in the hole from treatment with no end in sight. Amanda tells her we can’t explain, only accept, then slips down a deserted hallway into the dispensary. Seeing them all today, dredging it all up, birthed an edgy hunger in her stomach. She pilfers four eighty-milligram Oxys from a jar, chews one, waits for the release, which comes as always, like falling asleep in a hammock, knowing that someone who loved you would protect you from anything, no matter how terrifying. The rest of her shift passes in a happy blur. There is only one bad moment, when she looks out a window and sees the moon, heavy, accusatory, and the stars that glitter like eyes that see the truth. I won’t be this way, she whispers to herself, I didn’t hate her, I wasn’t afraid of her, it had to be done. The moon doesn’t answer and she turns away, her heart irrevocably fractured. Austin sits in his dingy Lakeview studio, painting. What he’s painting hasn’t revealed itself to him. All he has is a chaos of slashes, insubstantial triangles, a blurry foundation that could be sea, could be grass, or could be the first level of Hell. He mixes white and yellow, adds sunlight to the edges of things. It doesn’t help and he doesn’t have any more ideas. He cleans his hands, changes into jeans and an Arcade Fire t-shirt, tries to read but ends up staring at the dance of dust motes in the afternoon sunlight, listening to the city roar beneath his window. If she’s here she’s everywhere, and he whispers, we all loved you, we loved you enough to do it, so why won’t you let me forget? He gets no answer but the ticking of a clock and an ant that bumbles up to his shoe and struggles pointlessly against its immensity. It’s everywhere, Shannon had said. What is? What are you talking about, baby? It started out as cervical cancer but now it’s liver and stomach, even bones. Can I have another gin and tonic? But you’re driving. Jesus Austin, don’t go all holy and responsible on me now. Get me a drink. He did. She sat on the edge of his bed and explained. At first he wouldn’t believe it. But she seemed to take his acquiescence for granted. How quickly she got to the details, the logistics. It will take more than one person, she’d said, so you all have to be on board. It will take about ten minutes, I think. Bewildered, he’d tangled his fingers through hers and said, no, no, but it wasn’t any use. Later that week they sat in Jen’s parents’ garage toking on a half-inch blunt, sputtering protests. Betsy even cried. Ugly crying, red-faced, nose running. But Shannon wasn’t their friend anymore. She was something eerie and vast. A seagull, a horned owl, a quiet corona of starlight. After night fell and they were stoned enough to do it but not enough to fall or make mistakes, they piled into the Mercedes and drove out of the suburbs onto 290, so ordinary after the charged shadows of the garage. When they reached the edge of the city the bridge was up and Austin was relieved. We won’t get through, he thought, and she’ll reconsider, but then the great metal wings began to descend and the bridge reconstituted itself and Jen drove across. Shannon kissed their cheeks and said thank you. Her body in the dark, rippling waters was white, incandescent. When it was over they tied rocks to her wrists and ankles. And that should have been the end but it was only the beginning. Two weeks pass and they relax. Amanda tells a pirate joke. Betsy posts pictures of plants on instagram. Then there is a knock on Austin’s door. When he opens it he sees two men in wrinkled suits. One has pale eyes and a wispy beard. The other wears a wedding ring. They introduce himself and he clears newspapers off the couch so they’ll have a place to sit. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Shannon’s case has been reopened, says the one called Surrey. Oh. Would you like some coffee? Nah. Too late in the day. Anyhow, you dated her, correct? At the time of her disappearance? Yes. Casual thing? Just a romp in the sheets? Something like a tense, shivering wire breaks in Austin’s stomach. He starts to cry. It goes on and on. He realizes he can walk the road he’s carved out for himself but there will always be boulders to stumble over, a shimmery, relentless heat, a chaotic emptiness to the air. One of the men hands him a handkerchief. It’s very clean. He wipes his eyes and his nose. Then he begins to tell his story.

Afternoons Jenny twists herself through her physical therapy exercises while Jack gets drunk on homemade moonshine. He drifts through the dingy house, grabbing their tired furniture for balance, singing old Fleetwood Mac songs and telling Jenny how beautiful she is. She’s always touched, even though she knows it’s the liquor slithering through his bloodstream, turning him happy but also a little monstrous, like a two-headed beast or a catfish with arms. She opens the curtains because she loves to bask in sunlight, but Jack follows behind, closes them. He doesn’t want the neighbors in their tiny village to see him stagger and bellow. She tries to forget how she truly broke her ankle and remember the lies she tells people. Really, Jack stumbled tipsily into her on the landing and she clattered down the stairs, flailing like a broken marionette. But they tell the neighbors she stepped in a pothole while being chased by old Nell Simpson’s dog, Gracie, even though Gracie is fifteen and does nothing but sprawl in browning grass, pawing at nothing, dreaming her secret dreams. They should move somewhere else, she thinks, somewhere that doesn’t demand these bright, sanitized surfaces, maybe a city where they could drown anonymously in teeming crowds and soaring buildings. But of course the lies could be true. And didn’t she and Jack decide a long time ago that what is and what could be can bleed into each other, a boiling, effervescent concoction of wishes and need. There comes a day when they decide to go to the 7-11, the village’s only store. Jenny says it’s Tuesday because it has that unstable, jittery feel. Jack says Tuesdays don’t have a feel and it’s obviously Sunday, because there’s a church like hush in the streets and the hours are long and lazy. Jack wobbles out the front door and sways in the sunshine. Jenny maneuvers unsteadily on her crutches. Their eastern neighbor, Madeleine Sutter, watches them through a smeared window, a disembodied white face floating in shadow. Jenny waves and smiles because that’s what you do even though she’d like to spit or throw a hard, smooth stone, smashing the window and bruising Madeleine’s narrow-eyed, hungry face. Across the street is an abandoned house with ragged gray siding, a missing shutter, and a once-green yard now swallowed by dandelions, crabgrass, fluttery bunches of Queen Anne’s Lace. Sometimes at night when Jack bellows about CIA conspiracies and neoliberal stupidity, when he vomits on the sofa or carpet, Jenny dreams of sneaking into the house, where she’ll sit and stare into the dense, swarming dark until her thoughts subside into a barely-audible hum. No TV or Jack or phones. No Madeleine with a too-bright smile and a plate of oatmeal cookies they’ll throw out because they both hate raisins. She’ll be devoured by a haze of happy memories, like when she was eight and her grandmother brought her an orange kitten she named Baby. She won’t think about how Baby got gray-whiskered and fat. How tumors burgeoned in his lymph nodes and the vet slid a shiny needle into the orange fur and then Jenny had to grow up and make a life even though nobody ever taught her how. The 7-11 is freezing and the floors are greasy. The owner, Amir, is the only foreigner in the village. Of course, people say foreigner because that’s the kind of people who live here. Jenny feels sorry for him. He ought to be in New York or L.A. He shouldn’t have to feel like a fly in milk or a cockroach scuttling across a just-mopped floor. He leans on the counter, nods at them as they enter, but the corners of his mouth jerk like angry mosquitoes. Probably because the last time they came in, or was it the time before that, Jack fell backwards into a display of cough medicine. Bottles shattered and plummy amoebas of syrup spread across the tiles. Did Amir throw them out? Why can’t she remember? Lately it feels like her days are so fleeting they erase each other as quickly as they’re born. She studies the rotating rack of dried-out chicken wings and wrinkly hot dogs. They haven’t eaten in three days and they’re out of food stamps for the month because last week Jack went to the bakery and bought himself an elaborate birthday cake. A snow-white surface speckled with intricate roses and emerald leaves. Jack’s name in glittering, complicated script. They sat on the floor and ate it with their hands. The inside was as black as the outside was white and Jenny thought there’s probably a lesson in that but she couldn’t sense whatever truth hovered in the humid air. Then Jack said, Jesus, I’m forty-two years old, how did that happen, and started to cry. Jenny said, you’re okay, baby, let me just get that frosting out of your beard. Then Jack passed out and Jenny wiped up the crumbs and watched a solitary ant march stubbornly across the cracked tiles, as if this journey was the most important in its tiny, precarious life. Jenny picks up a Zero Bar, her favorite candy since childhood. She’d gobble two or three while her mother said, you know, white chocolate isn’t really chocolate, and what man would want a girl who eats sweets like that. Her mother is long dead, swallowed by the damp churchyard soil. She sleeps under an eroded stone that proclaims her a devoted mother and a loving wife. You can’t escape the lies even in death, Jenny thinks. And why does that self-satisfied, hissing voice still thread itself through her thoughts, and of course she should have loved her mother more but it was so hard. She peels a corner of the candy’s silvery wrapping. Waves it under her nose to catch a whiff of sweetness. A fat man enters, buys a Red Bull and a pack of Marlboro Reds. Jack extracts two frosty bottles from a humming cooler. He cracks open his Fanta Orange and hands her a Dr. Pepper. She hates Dr. Pepper, which reminds her of a thick, herby medicine she had to take as a child. Isn’t that Jack all over. Never more than half-right. Always almost, never complete. She twists off the cap and drinks, because after all she’s thirsty and if you don’t love what’s in front of you what else is there. The fat man packs the cigarettes and lights one. Smoke dances over his head. Hey, says Amir. You can’t smoke that in here. Take it outside. Let me explain something to you, says the man. I’ll be calling the shots here. His pudgy arm bends. Amir jumps, his eyes wide and terrified in his olive-skinned face. Wait now, says Amir, don’t hurt me, I don’t— I don’t want to hurt you, friend, believe me. Just give me three money orders for four grand apiece. Hurry it up now. Jenny sidles a few steps and now she can see the gun. It’s not large or menacing. It’s flat, blurred at the edges. As if it’s a picture of itself, or seen through the wrong end of a telescope. But the man’s puffy finger is on the trigger. Shit, oh shit, Jack whispers. Just be quiet, Jenny tells him. The fat man turns, noticing them for the first time. Oh, he says, casually, didn’t see you two there. What a shame. A shame, Jenny repeats. What— A drunk and a cripple. It will give me no pleasure, I assure you. Wait, says Jenny, you don’t have to— Oh, but I think differently, sweetheart. His bald head shines in the late-afternoon sunlight. His eyes are navy-blue, reminding Jenny of the time she saw the Pacific Ocean on a school trip. Heaving, ceaseless, infinite. But seeing it never changed anything. She came home and graduated and got married and now she’s in a cage she constructed but somehow lost the key to. Maybe it’s okay, she thinks, maybe this kind of ending transforms the pointless waste of months and years into a story. A tragedy. Shot through with meaning. I don’t see why, Jack says, querulously. We’re nobody. We’re not gonna tell anybody. We’ve got nobody to tell. The fat man grins. His teeth are gray but still shine in the light. Tell you what, he says, I’ll give it some thought. Meantime let’s you and me have a few beers. Get to know each other. Fucking Christ, says Jenny, furious. If you think— Sure, says Jack. I can live with that. He lurches back towards the coolers. What’s your pleasure, he says, over his shoulder. Rolling Rock, says the man. Never drink anything else. I’m a Pennsylvania boy, see. That makes two of us, says Jack. Incredibly, he’s smiling. He clutches a slim green bottle and a Sam Adams. Then things seem to speed up and fragment and resist the reaching fingers of logic. They’re clinking bottles and laughing. Jack’s explaining how birthdays shatter him. The fat man nods and pats him on the shoulder and says there’s always God’s plan, friend, even if you can’t see it. Jack belches and the fat man giggles. It occurs to Jenny that certain things that should be happening aren’t. For instance, when is her life going to flash before her eyes? And wouldn’t a normal person say a prayer? But even if she believed in God, she’s certain He’s not interested in a predicament so stupidly inevitable. The fat man is in front of her, studying her with those ocean eyes. Honey, he says. What can I get you? Mama always taught me to be polite. Jenny’s arms turn into wriggling, impotent worms. Then her crutches slide out and she’s on the floor. She swallows. Hate and fear scorch her throat. But she can’t help seeing that for once, she’s been asked a question she knows the answer to. I want a Diet Coke and a Zero Bar, she says. He smiles again, kneels down, pats her wrist. His breath smells of spit and tuna. Then he’s back with the soda and the candy and she’s using her sharpest teeth to crush the white coating into the almond nougat. She’s crunching the nuts. She’s feeling a slimy patina of sugar coat her throat. It’s a chaos of satisfaction and terror and defeat. Things clash and don’t resolve themselves but she finishes the soda and the candy anyway, as though she’s a little girl again. Just wondering, says the fat man. Why him? You must’ve had options. Oh, says Jenny, he was there. Isn’t that always the way. He keeps smiling as he brings the gun up to her eye level. Hurry up and finish, now, honey. I got places to be. Jenny eats the candy in three huge, ragged bites. The man raises the gun. When it goes off Jenny’s outside her broken body. She’s not herself but a great wave, cresting, foaming, hurling itself against a cold, empty beach. She laughs in what might be delight as her mind slips aside, her body goes still, and all the years of nothingness suddenly really are nothing, so she remembers then forgets, then simply waits for whatever will happen next.

Ginnie Simpson’s mother is throwing a cocktail party. Guests in shimmery dresses, immaculate tuxedos laugh, shout, drift in and out of patches of moonlight on the darkened lawn. Cologne overpowers the scents of grass and soil. Ginnie, twelve but more like twenty-two, makes sure no one’s watching, then scrabbles in the dirt to uncover a burrow containing a flask of whiskey, half a pack of menthol cigarettes, a magazine proclaiming the secret to mind-blowing orgasms, and seventeen dollars in ones and quarters. She tucks her Uncle Joe’s Rolex beneath the magazine, hoping she’ll be in bed by the time he notices it’s missing, and can’t be accused of stealing it. The watch is a burden but also a swirling, effervescent delight, as things are when you’re not supposed to have them. She sips whiskey, lights a cigarette, chokes then drifts in a minty, insensate haze, as if some distant universe has dipped close and swallowed her up. Maybe she’ll sell the watch at school because she wants to go to Fiji and drink kava with the nut-brown natives. But then she’ll no longer have something stolen. She’ll rob herself of this tiny transcendence. No, she’ll keep it here, in the damp, devouring soil. A monument, a promise. Maybe the best thing she’s done so far. She heads back inside and stumbles into one of her father’s prize rose bushes. Thorns etch painful hieroglyphics on her shins. The roses, lemon-yellow, intricate, symmetrical, seem to mock her pimples and stringy hair and dirty feet. She decapitates a flower, slips it into her jacket pocket. Inside she snatches a cream-cheese and olive pastry from a tray held aloft by a smiling maid. She isn’t supposed to eat the party food—it’s for guests—but her mother forgot dinner and her stomach is a sour, yawning cave. Across the room a pink velvet sofa sprouts white tubes, which end in dingy socks and ragged Converse. Severed from a body and face, they are sort of botanical, like an exotic, as-yet unnamed plant unfurling itself in a faraway rainforest. Hey, she hisses, yanking on a shoe. Hey, get up, Joey. They call her little brother Joey to distinguish him from Uncle Joe and also because their mother claims the pregnancy left her with a fleshy pouch she can’t get rid of. Joey slides out, sticks his tongue out at her. It’s fuschia from the spiked punch he’s been drinking all night. Joey is only nine but as their father says, he can drink like an old man staring death in the face. Their father thinks it’s funny and their mother mostly doesn’t notice because her attention is only captured by what’s rare, expensive. The living room rug, handwoven in Bangladesh. The antique satin dress she wears tonight, champagne with a cascade of silvery beads that catch and refract the lamplight. Ginnie and Joey aren’t like the dress. They’re more like the dandelions their father pays a man to get rid of. Thrusting themselves up in stupid, sunlit triumph, existing for no other reason than that they refuse to die. Dummy, says Joey. I was having an amazing dream. Sorry, kangaroo. What was the dream? Well I was in this house but it wasn’t a house. It was more like a fifth dimension. Angels sang to me and stars tumbled out of the sky into my hands and didn’t burn me at all and just before you woke me up I was going to find out what they were really made of, because it wasn’t atoms and molecules. It was something else. Something no one in the whole world knows about. Wow. Far out. Joey sighs. Need another drink. Quit with the drinking for tonight. You’re gonna get sick. Nah, I puked twice already and didn’t care one bit. Besides you can’t tell me what to do because you’re way worse than me. You steal and lie about it. Still, you should listen to me because I love you. Nah, says Joey, rising and stumbling through a cluster of bodies that includes her mother’s boss, a fat man in a white tux, and his wife, a diminutive redhead who gnaws furtively at her nails. Watching Ginnie feels sad, envious. She used to bite her nails too. It was so intimate, so feral, so satisfying. But her mother said it was disgusting so she had to stop and start stealing instead. She thinks maybe everyone has to do something wrong, even if it’s just a little. Otherwise wouldn’t you suffocate in the world’s bright happy surfaces. Blinded by light without darkness. Joey returns with a glass of punch. Yum, he says, want a taste? No. Enjoy. You don’t know what you’re missing. He drains the glass, spits a slippery lemon seed onto the handwoven rug. Mom’s gonna kill you for that. She won’t know it was me. There’s like a hundred fifty people here. Maybe. You want to know a secret? What? Bet I already know. You’re terrible at keeping secrets. You have the wrong kind of face. I stole Uncle Joe’s Rolex. I heard him tell mom it was worth thirteen thousand dollars. Buried it in my secret place. It’s not really a secret, Ginnie. I saw you put stuff there lots of times. Yeah but you drink too much for anybody to believe you. In vino veritas, says Joey, grinning. When he smiles he’s like a kid on a Christmas card but he still smells of sour sweat and vodka and dirty socks. Nothing ever resolves itself, Ginnie thinks. Nothing is ever pure or true or easy to understand. She twines her fingers through Joey’s. You two, says their mother, who has materialized in a cinnamon-scented cloud. She’s tall and fluid and has iridescent blue toenails and misty lipstick. She seems made of lace and moonbeams. Ginnie studies her and wonders why it is that love is just a wound that never heals, or a dog you can’t stop from running into traffic. Guess I ought to make you go to bed, says their mother. Always something isn’t it. We can go to bed, Ginnie tells her. If it’s easier. I’m going to bed anyways, says Joey. This party is dumb. Her mother spits out an irritated sigh. Really it’s all the same to me, kiddo. But don’t steal and don’t get into one of your arguments. Last party I had to personally apologize to seven different people. Okay. Promise. Good. Her mother drifts over to the fat man, who has for some reason put on sunglasses. Ginnie thinks of how the watch gleamed in the dark. How it ticked and ticked, relentless, better than music because it didn’t create holes, it filled them, and better than a heartbeat because all hearts stop eventually. She knows she should give it back but there’s something hissing, hungry, eternal inside her. It demands tribute. In school they learned that the Aztecs sacrificed people because they believed their gods lusted after bones and blood and skin. The teacher explained that the people to be sacrificed accepted their fate. As if that one bright, shivering moment, just before the knife fell, as the crowds roared and the sunlight blazed, was worth the oblivion that followed. And what is it, she wonders, that separates belief and desperation, love and need. Maybe it’s all the same. Blind and vicious. She tips her head up and sees the redhead is staring down at her. She has mean, colorless eyes and a thin, twisty mouth. How old are you, she says. Depends on who you ask, Ginnie says, flashing her best smile. I’d say you’re about ten. But you’re pretty scrawny so I could be off. Doesn’t she feed you? Sure. We order out mostly. Mom likes sushi and Joey and I like samosas with mint chutney. Disgraceful. She ought to feed you real meals. Green vegetables, protein. The mint chutney’s green. A woman like that. What do you think she’s doing with my husband over there? Three guesses but you only need one. Um, says Ginnie. I might need all three, actually. I’ll pray for you, says the woman. She closes her eyes and mutters. Her hands circulate as if she’s conducting a symphony or making a puppet dance. Ginnie starts to feel like an insect pinned to a card in a museum. An empty beer can rolling by the side of a highway. She watches the woman’s thin white fingers, which bend and wriggle like worms. She wonders how much people would hate her if she kicked the woman in her skinny stomach. There, says the woman, opening her eyes. Now, you promise me you’ll confess your sins. That’s the only way you’ll be free of them. Sure, says Ginnie. Okay. The woman nods, satisfied, moves back to her husband. Free, Ginnie thinks. But her sins are load-bearing walls. Ornate pillars. The lattice that holds up the roses, which are too flimsy, too heavy-headed, to grow on their own, no matter how much water or sunlight they’re given. She remembers the roses in her pocket and fishes it out. The petals are darkened, smashed against each other. The thorns no longer threaten because they’ve subsided into the flattened stem, which leaks tepid green juices. I can’t have this rose, Ginnie realizes, it died the minute I plucked it. And what if there are no demanding gods, nothing to promise her redemption, only this half-hearted, damaged series of days that go on and on. She gets up, goes outside, unburies Uncle Joe’s Rolex, cleans the soil from it with her sleeve. Back inside, she sneaks up behind him and replaces the watch on the end table by his chair. Laughing, guzzling spiced rum and telling stories about rock climbing, Uncle Joe hasn’t noticed it was ever gone. Ginnie takes one last look at the watch, which is now only a thing, depleted of time and history. Upstairs she checks on Joey, sleeping with his wet mouth open. Maybe he’ll find the angels again, she thinks, and she hopes so. She goes to bed and dreams that she and Joey melt into shapeless slime, then burst from cocoons completely transformed, sure, for just one perfect second, that they have become what they were always supposed to be.

In the hissing blinding whiteness two scientists, a bearded man and a woman with fierce, hungry eyes, struggle up the mountain. They are bound together by a rope tied around their waists and carry bulky packs. They speak in sign language because the blizzard drowns out voices, screams in their ears with an oddly human rage. Occasionally they pass the stiffened bodies of those who came before. Clad in bright puffy jackets and thick boots, they seem too well-prepared, too optimistic, to be so indisputably dead. Rick’s foot skitters over a patch of ice and Marie nearly capsizes into a drift. For God’s sake, she signs, be careful. Sorry, he replies. Two legs punctuate the drift. Anyone we know, Rick signs, and Marie replies, I don’t think so, but she has trouble looking away from the frozen, peaceful face, which seems to conceal some essential secret. She doesn’t mean to but she cries a little for the unknown woman. She regrets it because the tears turn instantly to painful shards of ice that abrade her skin. She gulps from her thermos of tea, burning the roof of her mouth with the boiling liquid. Maybe this is it, she thinks, maybe this is what all the years of struggle and work and sacrifice have added up to, and she should be angry but she’s too bone-tired, sick to death of the slow, endless climb, Rick’s car-salesman smile, the numbness in her toes and the emptiness in her heart. At noon they settle in a secluded hollow and build a fire, which won’t last long but is still a fragile comfort. They unwrap sandwiches and trade, because Rick doesn’t like peanut butter. Marie knows she should keep up her strength so she chews and tries to swallow but her throat has clenched shut with a surprising strength. The task before her is too immense, too threatening, to allow her body to function. I wasn’t given a choice, she tells herself, over and over, as if repeating it will make her believe it. Rick is starving and downs two egg salad sandwiches and wishes he could stop worrying about stupid things like whether crumbs get caught in his beard and rot there. Because how long has it been since he had a hot shower? Days, weeks. Time up here isn’t the same. It telescopes, stretches and thins like taffy, resists divisions and categories. Marie thinks of her childhood, how every night she’d demand her father kill the imaginary monster beneath her bed, even though she knew it wasn’t real. He’d crawl on the floor, growl deep in his throat, and she’d laugh and know she was safe. And now I’m the monster, she thinks, and the thought infects her like a virus. She balls up the sandwich and throws it away and Rick signs, don’t do that, you’ll attract predators, and she signs, I’m sorry, and it isn’t the sandwich she means. I think we’re close, Rick signs, flashing his oily smile. Aren’t you excited? Excited? Sure. Finally we’ll find out the truth. See the thing with our own eyes. It’s like we’re in those old stories about explorers discovering new lands. Maybe they’ll even name it after us. I doubt it. Excited, she thinks. Maybe she once was. When the rumors first started to circulate. A completely new technology. Maybe even miraculous. Certainly something that could change everything. Found by a climber who had the sense to leave it where it was but was stupid enough to babble to a friend, who told someone else, and of course the Supervisor, who had spies everywhere, even outside the Adler Corporation, got wind of the discovery. It was the Supervisor herself who had chosen them for this mission. Decreed the eight months of hard physical and mental training to ensure they’d survive until they completed the objective. Officially of course no one at Adler believes in UFOs. Unofficially the Supervisor had concerns. She felt a responsibility. She felt something so important shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. That’s the Supervisor for you, Marie thinks now. Always with the best, the most humanitarian, of motives. I don’t think we’ll find anything, she signs. It was probably just a rumor. Let’s think positive, he answers. Flashes his grin. At the Adler Corporation Rick is something of a hot commodity. He’s had affairs, if the rumors can be believed, with several of her colleagues. She can’t see the attraction. There’s something crafty, piggish, about the eyes and she’s always disliked beards because what are they but another deception. Well, Rick signs, let’s get back to it. He gets up and stamps out the fire. Fragile wisps of smoke rise, vanish. Instinctively, he starts to hold out his hand to Marie but thinks better of it. He senses she dislikes him but he can’t figure out why. She’s several rings above him on the corporate ladder and since he’s ambitious he’s always been extra nice and respectful. But she continues to look at him like he’s something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. A cigarette butt, a fast-food wrapper. Maybe she’s just bitter, unhappy, he thinks. Some people are like that. Curdled, like milk, from the inside out. That night they find a shallows depression to sleep in. Marie can’t sleep. She hasn’t slept in days. She stays awake staring at the immense, glittering sky, which is almost beautiful enough to make the long empty nights worth it. The moon, heavy and glistening, dips so close she thinks she can see its topography. Ridges, ravines, vast, echoing canyons. Stars explode across the blackness. She starts to count them but gives up at ninety-seven because how will she ever keep track of them all. Rick falls asleep almost instantly but wanders through a dense, terrifying nightmare where a vast stinking beast stalks him, brings him to ground, nibbles on his toes. He understands that he will be eaten alive but it will take a very long time. Obliteration In tiny scraps of flesh. When he wakes he finds he’s drenched in sweat despite the bitter cold. They don’t keep track of the days anymore so they don’t know exactly when they find it. At first it’s only a blurred gray patch in the driving snow, so close in color to the atmosphere that they think it’s nothing at all. But as they trudge closer it takes shape. It isn’t small but it isn’t large either. A polished silvery disk, thin on one end, half-buried in a snowdrift. Rick gives her a thumb’s-up and kneels beside the object. Don’t touch it, Marie signs, but he isn’t watching her. He’s tracing the edge with a bony finger, his eyes wide with triumph and wonder. Marie grabs his shoulder and shakes. Don’t you remember the instructions, she signs, and he shakes his head and signs, sorry, I got excited. He digs his laptop from his pack, powers it on, starts to type notes. He’s absorbed in his work and Marie thinks she won’t get another moment so perfect. She crouches behind him. His jacket is thick and his red knitted cap is pulled down over his hair so why does she imagine she can see the knobby bones of his spine, the sheen of his brown hair. She digs in her pack and brings out the shiny object which is surely too light for such a deadly purpose. She inches it towards the back of his head and pulls the trigger. Strangely the shot makes no sound or maybe it’s only that the storm obliterates it. But he’s clearly dead. He’s pitched forward into the snow, a red amoeba of blood spreading from his head. Ragged bits of his brain speckle the whiteness. She’s a little ashamed to find the scene aesthetically pleasing. The contrast between scarlet and white. The way his face is so peaceful, emptied of personhood. She’d thought that maybe after she carried out this final order, she’d be a completely different person. But she isn’t. The same hopes, worries, resentments, jostle through her mind, if anything louder, more demanding than before. Her hands, when she strips off her gloves and studies them, look ordinary and familiar. She kneels beside Rick, yanks the laptop from his stiffening fingers. Working quickly, she removes the hard drive and kicks it until it fractures into four jagged pieces. She buries the shards and the gun in the snow, deep enough that it’s likely they’ll never be found. Then she rises, weary enough to sleep for weeks, but she knows she can’t. She has an appointment to keep. She trudges forward, begins the long, slow journey back down the mountain.

My father and I sit on the porch drinking homemade whiskey, watching the hazy red sky swallow the sun until twilight gathers and thickens and stars scatter across the blackness like a careless child’s toys. The moon is fat, heavy and mosquitoes feast on our flesh. My mother is dying in a cold hospital ten miles east, stuffed with tubes, her face no longer hers but a jumble of mismatched fragments. But we don’t talk about that. We talk of soybeans, weather, beetles. Because he and I are like skating on a frozen pond. A slippery, unreliable surface that might crack and drown us in frigid waters. My parents’ old dog flops in the dirt and flaps his tongue as if the night air is meaty, delicious. Hell of a thing, my father once said to me in the hospital hallway after we’d been sent out of her room by a doctor. And I wished he hadn’t said it because it was crumbs and I was starving but I knew my mother would want us to love each other, so I said, yes, hell of a thing, and we came home and watched the glittering fireflies as if nothing was wrong at all. Drink up son, he says. Made three gallons. Ain’t no sense in it going to waste. Give me a minute, I say, stuff’s like maple syrup mixed with lighter fluid. Hell, he says, you always did have lots of words for things. Don’t, my mother once told me, don’t make him feel stupid because he didn’t have the chances you did. I’m trying, I tell her silently, but that’s only half true so I guzzle more whiskey and say, it’s so sweet. Didn’t put no sugar in it. Can’t stand sweet stuff. I know. You never could. Guess the corn just gets sweet when it ferments. Guess so. That old dog’ll go soon. Got his gravesite picked out already. Where? Up under the crabapple trees. Dumb bastard always did love crabapples. Maybe he’ll use them to pay the ferryman. The hell that’s supposed to mean? Sorry, I say. Some cultures believe that to get to the underworld you have to pay a ferryman to get you across a river. It’s why you’ll find gold and jewels in tombs. Shit, he says, people and gods. Ever wonder what it is about it we need so bad? Yeah, I say, surprised. It’s part of the argument in my new book. It’s about Igbo creation myths. That’s why I was in Nigeria. The book is done in my head but on paper only a mazy profusion of notes. And I wonder if I’ll ever get it right. The way the sun sizzled my skin and how women shouted on market days and men sat in circles while children danced. The rightness, the ancient clarity of it all. Well, good for you, he says. Yeah. The dog sleeps in a patch of shadow, pawing the darkness. They dream just like we do, my mother would say, watch and you can see whether it’s a good one or a nightmare. But I never could tell from the scrabbling feet, the eyeballs rolling under twitching lids. My apartment in the city doesn’t allow pets. I like it better that way. I don’t want the chance to do damage. You hear from her these days, he asks. No. Told you. Ain’t no shame in trying to fix things, son. Saying sorry. If I was you— You’re not, I snap. You don’t have any idea what it’s like to be me. That’s the human fucking condition. We’re bags of skin impenetrable to the naked eye. Shit. Forget I said anything. I gulp from my jar. I’m sick of the moment and want it to be over but the night doesn’t care. It stretches, lazy and infinite. Some of the darkness coalesces into a thin column and a face and a body slip out, as if from another universe layered inside our own. I don’t know who he is. Just some guy with square glasses coated in moonlight and one of those puffy hipster beards and Vans with the soles worn to almost nothing. Sorry to bother you, he says. But my phone’s dead and I broke down up on I-23. His voice is trembly, whistling. Maybe he’s got asthma or maybe he’s just nervous because after all to him we could be anybody. Murderers, meth lab cookers. Ain’t no problem, says my father. Phone’s inside. We trudge to the kitchen where my mother’s chicken-shaped clock ticks relentlessly in the silence. My parents still have a landline and the stranger picks up the handset then looks lost, confused. Shit, he says. Cell phones, you know. I don’t know anybody’s number by heart. Call the police non-emergency line, I say, and rattle off the number. I know it because after my mom got sick they wouldn’t pick up the phone and desperate, I called the cops to do a wellness check. My mother made a joke of it but my father wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. I did it out of love but since when do gods, whoever they are, owe you anything for loving their creations. The guy mutters into the phone. Where are we, he asks us. Mile 82, says my father. I never knew that, I say, and he says, you never did pay attention to the facts, son. I tell myself he’s old, he’ll die before me, and for a second I see him stiff, empty, in a coffin. Maybe I’ll tuck something precious beside him and maybe I won’t. The stranger finishes the call and my dad gives him a jar of whiskey and we go back to the porch. Drink up, says my father. The guy swallows half the jar in one gulp. Take it easy, I say. That stuff’s no joke. Don’t worry about me. Okay. He tells us his name’s Sam and he’s a journalist for a paper in the city and he’s out here because some woman claims she sees the Virgin Mary in a barrel of sugar. Apparently Mary predicts wars, earthquakes, spree killings. It’s all bull, of course, he says, but there’s human interest and we have to fill the blank parts of the website with something. My wife now, says my father. She might believe it. She’d go see for herself. No she wouldn’t, I say. She’s not delusional. Neither is this woman, actually, says Sam. She’s got a Ph.D. In Classics and writes books on gender politics in Ancient Rome. I’ll play up that angle. How even the most educated of us can fall into ignorant superstition. It’s the fragility of the mind, which wants something it can never have. What’s that, I ask. Believing you know the answers. Guess so, says my father. But, says the guy, but the thing is, but he doesn’t finish the sentence. He takes another long swallow of whiskey and I think we’ll have to carry him back to his car. I’m good and drunk myself now and the crickets’ song is beautiful and the stars are tiny shimmering pockets of light and I wonder why I ever wanted this night to be over. Thing is what, asks my father. Um, says Sam, I saw something. Wouldn’t say nothing if I wasn’t drunk on this gasoline you call whiskey. But there was something. Hills, valleys, a certain thickness. Not a face but you could see why she thought so. And the wind whispered in just like a woman’s voice in the distance. In a barrel of sugar, I say. Believe me, I know how it sounds. That won’t go in the article. Sugar, I say, and giggles thrum up my throat and escape my lips and I laugh so hard I nearly fall from my chair. Sugar! You kidding me? Shut the fuck up, says Sam. He’s standing over me now. Just shut up. I’m not gonna be laughed at. Come on now, says my father, we’ve all had too much and we should get some sleep. You can have the spare room. In the morning we’ll go see. Gotta admit I’m curious. Okay with you, son? Sure, I say, why not, and it’s a stupid idea but somehow it comes not from my father but out of the stars and the melodic buzz of the mosquitoes, who after all aren’t doing anything wrong, just sucking the blood that gives them life. In the morning my father drives his rusted pickup west, Sam directing him. We end up in front of a farmhouse with dirty, ragged siding surrounded by sunflowers waving in the hot breeze. Sam rings the doorbell but no one answers. She’s not here, he says. But we can look anyway. Barrel’s in the barn. We file in, smelling pigs and mold. Sam drags a barrel from a shadowed corner and stands over it looking like a child who’s not sure whether he’s been good or bad. Hopeful but ashamed. Just look, he says. Listen. My father steps forward. Sunlight slants in and illuminates his sparse gray hair, the seams in his neck, his sloping, burdened shoulders. He stares into the barrel while I stare at him. I think about the shards of time we carry in our hearts. My parents decades ago, bright-eyed and in love, teasing each other over pancakes on a Sunday morning. My father teaching me to drive stick, waiting patiently for me to stop being so afraid so I could feel it, the perfect rhythm of the clutch and the gas, going in and out and in again. I can’t abide it, all of a sudden, the humming, immense beauty of our lives, and I want it all explained, filed away, so I step forward and shove my father aside. You’ve had your chance, I say. Now it’s my turn. I stare into the barrel. Whiteness and shadow. Smoothness and lumps. Fine powder, rough wood. A chaos of irreconcilable opposites. Then my vision blurs and my throat closes and there is my mother, how she once was but also how she ended up. Nothing is going to be okay and I suppose that’s my answer and I can’t rage against it, I can only reach out and put my hand on my father’s shoulder, feeling the hot skin and fragile bones, and I start to cry and the tears drip down my chin and spot what may or may not be the Virgin’s face. Fuck, says Sam, his voice far away, and I stand and drown in the knowing that this is all I have left. You

The suitcase twists, spills onto the dirty carpet. She’s packed too much but she thought that in the blank future that stretches before her she might need even the broken, unnecessary things. Empty shampoo bottles, books read hundreds of times. Flight 345 to Denver, boarding, intones a voice. All London passengers check in at E-37. Also if she left anything behind, he’d come back, smash what he could, or toss her things into the alley, where feral cats cry, a hollow, alien sound that bored into her dreams. He’d even step on the cats if they were in his way; he’s that kind of man. He was a mountain of a man with gray teeth and grunting speech. She seldom understood him but she’d learned not to ask questions, because they caused punches, kicks. She’d prayed not for the beatings to stop—how could they—but for the blows to come faster, like water gushing from a tap. She could have borne it better then. He’d seemed a stupid man but he wasn’t. He intuited what would make her cry, vomit, scream. He’d hidden the bruises. When he broke her wrist it was winter, so her sweater sleeve covered the way it hung limp, wrong. But he was Jonathan’s brother. Jonathan’s blood sang through his veins. Jonathan’s triangular eyes, his square chin. After Jonathan died she’d been desperate; she’d combed social media, phone books, no luck. And then Thomas appeared, like a fairy, a changeling. The morning Thomas left she’d cooked him eggs with peppers. He’d read the paper, slouched to the front door, shoulders haloed by the morning sun. She’d collapsed on the couch, stared at a rerun of Apocalypse Now. Brown rivers, jungle, men with alive but dead faces.Thomas didn’t come back that night or the night after. So at night she’d lifted her shirt, cradled the bruises, because you have to love what you have left. She boards a train. I am starting a new life, she thinks. She’d believe it but for the other passengers, who clearly haven’t left themselves behind. An old woman, bent, weak. A man with gray skin, purple eye pouches. She knows nothing of L.A. but she promises herself she won’t expect glamor. She’ll accept dirt, getting lost. D Gates, the voice announces. She exits, pushes open a door. Someone falls into her from behind. She turns to see who but it’s only a boy, his muddy hair streaked with brilliant green. Are we supposed to get on that shuttle, he asks. I think so, she says. There isn’t anywhere else. They board a bus whose windows furl open like wings. The driver wears black gloves and his beard swallows the daylight. D Gates, she asks, and he says, I just drive, lady. Others file on. The old woman, the exhausted man. Soothed by the bus’s movement, she slips into a dream where she’s a child again, nesting in her father’s Ford, listening to him sing Frank Sinatra. He’d left her too, of course. At forty he’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and died of oxygen deprivation. But she never thinks of him blue, gasping. She pictures him soaring from the peak like an angel. The driver pulls into a parking lot. The light breaks, reassembles itself. He stands before them, hands in pockets, chewing his lip. This D Gates, asks the boy. No, says the driver. No son, not exactly. He clears his throat. I’m sorry about this folks. You have to understand it’s not something I want to do. It’s necessary. Something black, shiny, leaps from his hand. A gun. She knows nothing about guns so she won’t be able to say later, he pulled out a .44 or a .357 Magnum. The old woman makes a sharp, raw sound in her throat. The boy stammers. The driver hangs his head like a young boy getting punished in school. Now perhaps, he says, you folks don’t care whether I explain. But I want your opinion. I always think folks should have a say in how this goes. How what goes, asks the old woman. Lady, I’m robbing you then shooting you. Ain’t no sugarcoating it. But where will you go afterwards, says the old woman. Do you think you’re going to heaven? The driver smiles, slow, amazed. Lady I don’t believe in none of that. How could I? She thinks, this isn’t right, that old woman should shut up. She’s not who I would’ve chosen. I am supposed to be able to choose. This thought lodges itself in her chest like a knife. She stands up. The window is smeared with something nameless but she can still see everything. Tufts of soft grass, fractures in the asphalt, sunlight glancing off cars, seagulls wheeling in the wide, impossibly beautiful sky. This seeing is immense, burdensome, it takes all her effort. Sweating, breathless, she turns to the boy and smiles. What’s wrong with you, he asks her. There’s something broken about you. My husband, she says, he killed himself. In the end the truth slips out so easily. Mine died too, says the old woman. She has music in her voice. I used to have music in my voice, she thinks, who took it away, but then a cold, ugly truth drops through her veins. Nobody had taken it. She’d given it away, as easily as a child might throw breadcrumbs at ducks. The worst thing I’ve ever done, she tells them, is throw away everything I came in with. The old woman nods and the boy gives her a trembly, embarrassed smile. She turns back to the window and stares at a dandelion struggling up through the pavement. Heavy-headed, tattered, yet it won’t give up, it will never give up, it’s driven by its own secret, beating heart. When he shoots her, she’s thinking about how if she were outside, she wouldn’t pick the dandelion. No, she’d just sit beside it, and marvel at its immense, vivid, unmistakable life.

Counting stars on cold fingers, marveling at how brightness fragments dark, they don’t expect sleep to take them so quickly. But the grass is soft and unconsciousness is dense, overpowering. Perhaps it was the vodka, or the joint, passed from his fingers to hers and back again. In sleep they forget to touch each other. Amanda dreams of a woman wreathed in roses. She laughs a strange cacophony and refuses to say her name. Say it, Amanda begs, but the woman vanishes and Amanda huddles in the deserted dreamscape, afraid of past and future, wondering if she’s done everything wrong after all. Robert doesn’t dream. At least that’s what he says when they wake, heads throbbing, birdsong like shards of glass in their ears. They trudge to the car, a rusted Dodge with ragged tires, her hand in his. How far will it take us, she wonders, will it ever be far enough, and it takes too many tries to start the car. Robert curses, pumps the clutch; finally, the engine roars to life. They join a bright stream of interstate traffic. All her life Amanda has wanted escape but now it strikes her that escapes end, that someday, maybe soon, they’ll get somewhere and never leave again. It’s part of their pact that she doesn’t question him, so she says nothing when he takes an exit labeled Briar State Highway. Traffic fades and silence seeps over them like water. She sees a deer, still and watchful, and she waves to it, missing Moses, her obese, grumpy cat. Will her uncle take care of him? Robert veers into a gas station. Diesel, 3.89. Regular, 3.59 with car wash. Robert won’t want a car wash. He likes things dusty, lived-in. He eases his lean body out of the car and she doesn’t think about how easily he leaves her. Instead she closes her eyes, counts to ten. Numbers comfort her. Nights, after her uncle had started coming into her room, she’d stare into the swarming dark, adding up seconds as they passed. But that’s behind her—Robert has saved her, she’s saved him, he’s said so. He returns as always, and she drinks his sea-blue eyes, his big hands, brown and knobby like the bark of a tree. We’ll stop and see Kenny, he says. Old friend. We shared a cell my first trip up. Snuck each other Twinkies, cigarettes, shit that doesn’t sound like much but it’s important inside. I thought we were enough, just us two. Sure baby, but I can’t come out this way and not see Kenny. Is it Kenneth, she asks. She hates nicknames. Her uncle had so many for her—bunny rabbit, apple tart, sugar pie. But Robert just hums, a song she knows but can’t remember the words to. A narrow dirt lane, pebbles crackling underneath. Somewhere a dog barks in jagged bursts. A big man rises from a sagging porch. He waves, shouts, Damn! I’ll be! Bobby G! Robert and the man embrace. She waits to be introduced but their heads are down, whispering to each other; she shuffles, nameless, in the dirt. The dog appears, swirls around her ankles. She stoops to pet him. His fur reminds her of the greasy blanket they covered her mother with in the hospital. Her gray skin, those hundreds of tubes. God had taken her mother as easily as a child might snag a penny, discarded at his feet. So you’re Amanda, says Kenny. He grins, opens his arms. She remembers too late she’s supposed to hug back. She’s just shy, says Robert. Don’t worry, I only told her good things about you. That’s all there is to tell, Kenny laughs. Robert pulls their suitcases from the car and she follows them into the house. It’s cool, shadowy, full of dog and bacon grease. But you know how it is, Robert is saying. Felony conviction and that’s it. Nobody gives you a chance. Shit, man, Kenny replies. Same here. Shit’s same all the world over. Amanda’s eyes won’t adjust. Shadows layer into darker shadows. Her steps accumulate—one, six, fifteen. Kenny fetches beers from a humming fridge and they drink at a small table. So you’re here, says Kenny. Means it’s all good? What we talked about? Sure, says Robert. If you’re still offering. For you man, always. But what’s the lady have to say? She’s with me. No worries there. Ace. Easy job, one two three. Just follow the plan. Don’t worry about me. Good, says Kenny. He asks about Robert’s mother. Amanda drifts, loses herself, enters a white blindness, a clean, painless shock. The men’s voices buzz then disappear. She’s had these episodes for years. Mostly they’re a comfort, which is why she never told the doctors about them. When she opens her eyes it’s night. She’s lost two hours, maybe more. Everything is strange, glistening in the starlight. She rises and there’s a yelp, a blur; she’s stepped on the dog. Hey, she says, I’m sorry. She kneels, holding out her hand, feels the rough tongue. What’s your name I wonder. Bonzo, says Kenny from the doorway. Like bedtime for. Cute, right? My ex named him. She’s out in San Diego now. I’m sorry. Don’t be. Nothing but a cheating junkie whore. Time for bed baby, says Robert. Big day tomorrow. Yes, she says, her body always ready to fall into his. They slide under raspy sheets in Kenny’s spare room. Robert snores but her eyes won’t close. She counts the days since they left, then all the diagnoses doctors have given her. Depression, Bipolar, Borderline. Each time she’d smiled, said yes, that sounds like me. She’s never been difficult, not like her uncle, who argued with everyone. But he’s gone now, as good as dead. Except it isn’t. And that’s it, isn’t it, that knowledge, bursting up like a spring flower through soil. She wonders if Kenny keeps guns in the house. If he’d notice one was gone. She rises, wanders, counts moonbeams. Six rooms, one bathroom, smelling of shit and mold. She paws through drawers, not knowing what she seeks until she finds it. But here it is, this man’s history in paper. Speeding tickets, the house’s deed, a birth certificate. Helen Rose, born six years ago. So once there had been a baby here. Milky skin, tiny socks. Fast asleep when the starlight came. Clean, or stained with her father’s sins? She swallows tears, returns to bed. Robert wakes her at dawn. We’re off, baby, he whispers. Wish us luck. Good luck. I love you. The front door clatters behind them. She makes coffee, rummages through shelves of Nancy Drew novels and National Geographics. She cheers silently for Nancy when she uncovers a malevolent plot. Someday she’ll be like that, maybe, like an arrow shot true, cutting through light and dark as if they are one and the same. She falls asleep on the couch, waking when the door opens. Between Kenny and Robert is a tiny figure, all eyes and teeth, bleating like a lost goat. Home, the boy says. I wanna go home. Sure thing little man, says Kenny. We’re just gonna talk to your mom and dad first. Straighten some things out. Robert shoves the boy forward, jerks his head at Amanda. She sees she’s expected to play a part. She hunches close to the boy, smelling his warm skin, clean sweat. There’s your new mommy, Nathan, says Kenny. Give her a hug. The boy’s soft arms wind around her neck. It isn’t real, she thinks, it’s a fairy tale, it’s Red Riding Hood tearing through the forest, wolf at her back. I’m hungry too, says the boy. Amanda puts her face in her hands. To be so easily used—how has she never gotten used to it? Your new mommy—why not? Why not anything and everything except herself, which has always been something to be driven off, like a disease. In the kitchen Kenny fries hot dogs in margarine. As they eat the boy stares at her, eyes wide. How old are you, she asks. Six and a half. No, six and three quarters. No, she says, you’re six or you’re seven. You can’t—but Robert grabs her arm, tight. She loves you, he says. Your new mommy loves you. Right? Say it. I love you, she says. Robert’s grip tightens. Tomorrow she’ll have fingerprint-shaped bruises. Purple, like new crocuses. Time for bed, says Kenny. You tired, little man? No, says the boy, but his face grows slack, formless. Kenny carries him to the bedroom. Amanda searches for the whiteness but it won’t come and she hears everything. The thumps, the sobbing, the final quiet. Xanax, Kenny reports, coming back into the kitchen. God’s gift, that stuff. Worked on my ex, worked on the kid. Ground it up in the ketchup. Ever see a kid didn’t love ketchup? Robert laughs. Slick, man, slick. Time to make the call. Ready? It’s me? I thought— Fuck, man, I snatched him, time for you to do your part. They leave the room, mumbling to each other. Amanda’s heart hammers, too fast to count the beats. She counts steps instead. She didn’t intend to but she’s ended up here, beside the sleeping boy. Bone-white skin, eyes fluttering like moths in lamplight. When she checks his pulse the heart is clear, strong. Ten, twenty, twenty-five. How small he is, how desperately he clutches a stuffed elephant, though it’s nothing but fabric and flat plastic eyes. She goes into the kitchen, downs a beer in one long swallow, chews two of the Xanax, then returns to the boy. His heart still beats, whether she’s with him or not, whether he’s in starlight or shadow. She lifts him easily, backs out of the screen door into the night. Fireflies in crazed circles, wet grass on her bare toes, stars exploding like fireworks. She sets the boy down, shakes him. Stop, stop, he moans in his sleep. No, she says. It has to be done so she slaps him hard across the face. He sobs, opens his eyes. Darkness turns them as black as the deer’s. She smiles, thinking of it running through the woods, leaving no trace. Wake up, she says. Run. I can’t. Yes you can. Want me to show you? When he nods she takes one last look at the stars. They seem closer now, heavy, too dense for the fragile sky. Her stare makes more and more of that endless, dizzying light. She can’t break her promise so she crouches, starts to run. Cold air ratchets through her chest. When she looks back she sees the small figure winding towards her. She smiles again when he drops the elephant in the grass. No need for dead things, when they are warm, alive, running. The dark forest swallows them whole, as if, out of the starlight, they never existed at all.