“Be careful walking to school,” Vimala says, a mantra that is common in their mornings. Her daughter Chinni has to walk half an hour to get to school, and while she is always accompanied by her friends, Vimala still worries. The road is more of a dirt path, and she knows how easy it is to be tempted by something off the path. People with safety and security could dream of paths less taken and find whimsy in twisted, poorly maintained routes. For people like Vimala and her family, the well-worn paths were the easiest and the shortest paths to the destination.

“Yes, Amma,” her daughter says, and Vimala wishes that she could offer her daughter more than just words of advice and warning. Her husband owns a bicycle, but he is off to work at the break of dawn. In the evenings, he leaves the fields for the local bar, spending half his salary on cheap liquor and fried snacks. Vimala does not know what he finds in the sordid, dirty place. The few times she has visited to bring back her inebriated husband, she found a place filled with grimy men, cheap string lights covering a thatched shed, some delusion of being something more than the place actually was. It was a place of vice, a place where dreams died, a place where men withered and finally let go of their hopes of leaving the village behind for something grander and greater.

Chinni is well-behaved, and she comes home with report cards with high numbers and comments from her teachers that Vimala reads with pride. But she is alone in her pride. Already, she is hearing from her in-laws about the eventual day when Chinni will be taken out of school. The only thing keeping Chinni in school is the free lunch given by the government and the free childcare provided by the teachers. But the colleges that come after school will ask for tuition, and there is no college within a traveling distance from their home. Chinni will have to be kept in a hostel, and Vimala knows that in their family, such things are unheard of.

In their village, daughters are treated like yearly crops. They are raised to harvest and then sold. Sons are trees, watered and cared of, expected to provide shade. Daughters are never treated as one’s own. Vimala sees that thought in both men and women. She remembers the sting of her own childhood, of never belonging. Her mother’s home became her brother’s, and this new home she has with her husband is her husband’s. But it seems she is alone in remembering. Everyone else around her seems to understand and accept that it is the way the world works, and it is the way the world must continue to work. They want her daughter to repeat Vimala’s life. When Chinni is a girl still too young, she will be placed like a doll in front of some strange family and their son. The family will appraise her value and demand a dowry, as if they are doing Vimala an enormous favor by taking her daughter away from her.

Vimala wants to say she will never partake in the ritual, but her life is evidence that she has done everything just as other people have. She will live the same life as the people around her, and perhaps the only inheritance she will leave her daughter is the same fate. A transactional marriage with a man that others deem appropriate, a lifetime of domestic chores and simple living, a life devoid of dreams. Vimala wishes that her daughter could live any life other than her own. Anything would be better than a life so barren of love, so bereft of hope, and so destined for an inconsequential life and death.

But she cannot offer anything more to Chinni. Instead all she can offer her are the smallest of pleasures. Vimala takes out two candies from the knot she’s made at the end of her saree. They are hard mango candies, sweet and sour, wrapped in thin paper. She presses them into Chinni’s hand.

“Come home right after school,” she says. “Don’t hang around the school field.”

Winter is coming, and the days are growing shorter. The path from the school to their home is too narrow for cars, but people travel on bicycles and motorbikes, and she knows the recklessness of men when they are given anything that can go fast. “Chinni” means small, and her daughter has always kept to her namesake. She is a bird-like thing, thin and gangly, easy to miss.

“And walk on the side of the road,” Vimala warns her.

“What if I don’t?” Chinni asks, a joking tone in her voice.

“Then the Boochodu will get you!” Vimala yells, tickling her daughter’s sides. It is a frequent joke in their house. A threat of a mystical bogeyman who will take her daughter away. Vimala had received the same threats from her mother when she was a child, although the tone had been different. Vimala had thought the Boochodu to be a real person, some shadowy figure in the night who came and abducted unruly children. For her daughter, the Boochodu was a character restricted to bedtime stories. Chinni knew he wasn’t real nor a real threat.

After Chinni leaves, Vimala sets out to complete the day’s work. She is considered a housewife, but the house is much to maintain. She hears of women in the cities who have maids or machines to do the dishes and the laundry, but in their little village, all she has is her two hands. They are rough and calloused now, and she resents the day Chinni’s will be the same. She feeds the chickens in the yard and cooks lunch for her and husband. With the steel lunch box tied up in cloth, she walks to the field to join her husband in working the land.

It is difficult labor, under a sun that does not relent, but it is the only work available in their land. She sets out to leave earlier in the evening than her husband. Someone has to be home when Chinni returns. A train passes through the edge of the farm land, and she imagines the journey of the train, all the people traveling inside of it. The train makes the same journey every few days, but it has seen more of the world than Vimala has. She has never been to a city, and the little television in their home is a relic of the past, with a screen that curves outward and where everything is too colorful, too artificial.

In the evenings, after Chinni comes home from school and before her husband comes back, she watches a soap opera for a half an hour while Chinni does her homework. It is the one little pleasure in her otherwise mundane life. The woman in the show is belittled and humiliated, overworked, and Vimala sees parts of herself in the woman. Granted, the woman lives in a palatial house, wears jewelry even to sleep, but at the core, their problems are the same. A bad husband, a sad marriage, and a life that seems devoid of hope. But in those soap operas, hope does sprout eventually. All the problems are resolved by magic. The woman’s husband changes into a romantic hero, and the heroine herself discovers she is special and talented. After thousands of episodes and countless misunderstandings, there is a happy ending.

But Chinni is not home yet, and the soap opera episode ends on another cliffhanger. Vimala goes out of their little house to see if she can see a little figure walking on the road in the dusk. There is no one, and the light is rapidly diminishing. Soon, she will be able to see nothing. She lights the kerosene lamp and heads out beyond their compound fence.

It is only a half-an-hour walk, a route Chinni has taken for over a year. Sometimes she does come home late, disregarding Vimala’s warnings to play with her friends in the dusty school field. From her home, Vimala ventures out on the path to school, but she sees no one. She goes to the homes of Chinni’s classmates, but they tell she left the school on time while they stayed behind to play. She comes home again, hoping that she might find her daughter in the house, but it is empty.

At the bar, her husband is too drunk to be of any help, and so she walks the path between their house and the school. She checks behind the school building, where there are always abandoned beedi butts and broken bottles of liquor. She checks the fields and the bus stand and finds nothing.

She continues her search, poring through the streets of the village, knocking on every door that she can think of. Chinni is light enough that most adults can carry her with one arm. There are so many places where a little girl can be hidden. So many ways to hurt a child so fragile.

Finally, she makes her way to the bar, where her husband is sitting with friends. His face is slack with drink, his words slurred. It takes him a minute to register what she is saying, and when it does, he is not as worried as her, not nearly as concerned. The men start from the bar, each armed with heavy steel flashlights and lanterns, searching through the fields and the nearby forest, calling out her name.

The other women come to Vimala and escort her back home. Her home is relegated to waiting, to wailing in silence while the sky gradually lightens into morning. The day passes and another, and a week goes by. Her house remains empty. The police are informed, but there is little they can do. The truth is that village lives do not hold much value, and Vimala herself knows that it could be a freak accident. There are old wells in the village that have never been filled up or closed. As more of the forest is being converted to farmland, kraits and cobras are beginning to crawl through the rice paddies and the village alleyways.

After a week, there is an unsaid acceptance of Chinni not returning. Her husband stops his search and buries himself in half-hearted grief and alcohol. The police ignore her gaze when she goes to the police station for updates. Vimala is not angry with them. There is nothing to search for. The old films she sees on television have crimes with clues, with pieces of fabric left for detectives to find, with motives and money to be gained, but in her case there is nothing.

Vimala continues her search, scouring the fields and shining lights into open borewells, venturing further into the surrounding forest and calling out Chinni’s name and getting no response. She stops going to the fields and stops cooking their humble meals. Their house gathers dust and she gains the feral appearance of those on the fringes of society.

She goes out earlier and earlier on endless searches in the same area, seeing if there is some new hiding spot in her old village she will discover. Hope is long gone, but she wants an end. She wants an answer. One morning she leaves for the rice paddies far beyond their village. She has scoured the land multiple times before, but soon it will be winter and the mornings will be too cold for her to walk for long periods.

She spots small footprints in soft soil, and she thinks of all the times Chinni has walked and played in the village. Her one pair of shoes were things to be saved and sparingly used, polished every morning before school and kept neatly outside the door of their home.

Vimala follows the footprints. It cannot be Chinni, but it is perhaps some other child lost in the fields. It is early enough that the snakes will still be out, and their village rests at the foothills of mountains known for leopards.

She follows the footprints and goes into the forest, to where the trees are so densely packed together she has to squeeze between them to pass. The footprints are now dirty marks of mud, and she gets the feeling the child was running. Vimala notices the increase in the length of the gait, but it takes her minutes before she sees how the footprints are different now. They are an adult’s footprints now, and the forest is no longer filled with the morning birdcalls or even the sounds of her own footsteps.

The footprints disappear, and when Vimala stops, she sees she is lost. It is a simple thing most days to get back to the village. It is only a matter of heading downhill, where the forest meets the edge of the fields. Now the land is flat where it should not be, and the trees are strange and gray.

Vimala hears footsteps, slow and deliberate. When she turns, there is no one and nothing.

“Who’s there?” she asks, hoping it is not a leopard or a bear.

Instead, it is a young woman dressed in rags. She looks like Vimala, yet is taller and wilder. Her hair has ribbons streaked through it, and her feet are not barefoot but bound with cloth. It is Chinni, but not so small anymore. Instead, she is a changed thing. She is a wild and free thing, unhindered by responsibilities and untethered from the rules of society.

“Amma,” Chinni says, and her face is filled with joy but devoid of childhood. She has seen things, this young woman, and survived things. She stands straight in a way Vimala can never stand. In her life, she was expected to bow to the world, to the people around her, to her husband. But the young woman in front of her does not slouch to hide her body or wear a veil to cover her hair.

“Chinni?” Vimala asks.

It is a mirage or a delusion. Vimala has finally succumbed to the madness, and she welcomes it. It is a pitiable thing to be half-mad. To embrace the madness fully is to no longer see the concerned and critical looks of the people around her. It is a madness in which she can be with some form of her daughter.

Vimala embraces her daughter. She ignores the changes in the temperature, the way the sky is red, and the way her daughter’s form flows and changes shape like water within her arms. The way something is not quite right, because something wrong is better than nothing at all. Because the monster who steals disobedient children away may be spiriting them to a place where they belong. And for all of her effort and all the ways she shrank and bent herself to fit into the roles she was given, she never felt she belonged.

In the village, a little girl returns to an empty home. She keeps her shoes to the side of the door, and calls for her mother.

“Must you pluck all the flowers?”

“Hey prabhu! Must you always startle me so?”

“Have you completely given up on sleep? Even the sun is yet to rise.”

“It’s the thieving neighbours. I must get them all before anyone is up.”

“The gods don’t need so many every day. I’m sure they’re tired of the same old flowers.”

“You and your tirade against my gods! For once, just stop wandering and go get some rest.”

You see, for the last twenty years or so, I have hardly slept a good wink—let alone rest—around the crack of dawn. As far back as I can stretch my unreliable memory, I cannot remember a day of our shared matrimonial life when the stubborn woman has not woken up at these ungodly hours. Even before the next-door rooster has cleared his throat, the entire house rings with a pandemonium of noises big and small—the ear-splitting creak of the rusty bathroom door, the rhythmic swoosh of the broom in the courtyard, the urgent jingle of her bangles attune with the dull thuds of her footsteps. Who can sleep around such a circus, not to mention the routine lowing of the neighbour’s cattle all night?

A lone owl’s hoot pierces through the thick, wintry silence of the dawn. The cool dew soothes my callouses as I struggle to put one foot in front of the other. They say wintertime makes old wounds come alive, reminding the body of the many shocks it has survived through the years. It has been a long walk though getting used to the distance is entirely another thing. I try blowing away some glistening cobwebs from the tagar tree—how beautifully it has grown! In full bloom, the small tree has morphed into a constellation of its own, its milky white flowers sparkling like tiny stars in the dark. I still remember the blazing summer afternoon when I had received my first salary; it was not much but so was the work of shuffling files in a government office all day. Proud as punch, lugging a gunny sack stacked with saplings of several flowering plants, I had walked home from the village bus stop. My mother and little sister, waiting by the verandah and probably expecting a freshly caught mirikali or a big ripe jackfruit, were unable to mask their disappointment.

In the soft blur of twilight, the peeled paint on the front wall resembles a furrowed bark of an old tree. I should have seen to its repair in time, when the place was yet to become a warehouse of unsightly cracks and clutter. I was fortunate to be left as the sole caretaker of this house since my younger siblings chose to prosper and grow old in the only big town in the district. They rarely visited the village. My mother, who refused to move, handed over the upkeep of the house to my wife after we got married. Reduced to a functional ruin now, the four close-packed rooms—the smallest doubles up as the kitchen and utility space—and a sizable backyard served us well over the years. With the little money I had saved up after a decade of employment, a small sitting room adjacent to the verandah and a pucca bathroom were added later.

My eyes rest on the big blob of seepage on the bedroom ceiling, giving it the appearance of a poorly drawn map by a child. Even the window curtains—the only remaining pair that match—have doubled in weight from gathering months of dust, the beige altered to a moldy brown. The steel almirah that once safekept the few valuables we owned, is now a dedicated shrine for junk of all kinds. Over the past few years, it has been piled with plastic boxes, paper cups, disposable spoons, wooden combs with missing teeth, utensils that have lost both their shape and purpose, and what have you. What started as a memorabilia collection in her younger days has ballooned into a ridiculous compulsion. I want to pull my hair and scream into the void, but I fear her sharp tongue.

“Tell me, what is so fancy about these plastic food trays? When will this habit stop?”

“Baah! Don’t you start now.” Almost hissing, she continues, “How do you keep wearing that same soiled shirt every day then?”

“How can you even bring me into this? As if I have an option.”

On the few occasions I secretly convinced Dhulia to dump it all by the banks of the Brahmani, her detective senses would sniff me out, and the entire matter ended up in a heated argument. One time she even went so far as threatening to jump into the river herself. Just like her gods, all that bric-a-brac too is sacrosanct; naturally, Dhulia is not allowed anywhere near them. His odd jobs, like weeding the vegetable patch and unclogging drains, are strictly restricted to the outer periphery of the house. My mother, who lived for less than a decade with us before she succumbed to a massive heat stroke, had taught her well. Despite their continuous bickering that would often drive me to the panchayat office for some quiet, they bonded well over pettiness and pakhala.

She sprinkles the remaining puja water on straggly clumps of yellow and pink tuberoses that have sprouted around the rim of the well. A few stubborn ones have broken through the cracks in the concrete, attracting small butterflies and dragonflies. In a fruitless attempt to draw her attention, I circle the drying well and pretend to gauge the level of the water. Following her—more out of habit than purpose—I hobble all the way to the verandah and try stretching my bad leg slowly against the broken stairs. The winter sun washes over me, rekindling the memory of a warm compress on my useless limb. As she approaches the sitting mat, her pet parrot Rupa throws a sudden tantrum, flapping its wings in a demonic frenzy. I won’t lie, it is the most nagging bird I’ve seen in my time though it is not hard to guess who it mimics. I tried to free it more than once but every time the rascal would fly its way back after teetering on the guava tree for a bit.

Every morning after she is done with her chores, a large part of which includes the daily puja, she would sit on the verandah floor with the newspaper spread under her nose. Ignoring the pressing concerns of the world, she would turn the pages in a haste and stop at the Daily Horoscope section. Quite a self-proclaimed expert of the zodiac, she has always stood firm on her hypothesis that people born under the Kanya rashi suffered the most trials and tribulations. Neither material prosperity nor good karma smiled upon her lot, as if the goddess Laxmi herself had some personal beef with them. She would often lament this astrological inheritance from her mother, grumbling over the generational wealth passed down to her.

Reaching for her customary mid-morning tea, which is saccharine to the point where ants circle the teacup in minutes, she clicks her tongue in dismay.

“Bad news?” I swat a fly circling above her head.

“If only you had been this attentive always! It’s a pity how men become so desperate in old age.”

She casts a sideways glance and continues running her index finger along the prediction. “My planets have not been in sync for some time. The full moon too is approaching in a day.”

“Hmm… Did your planets never warn you about me?”

I smirk; it always infuriates her.

A gust of cool wind carries a shower of tagar flowers across the verandah. While some land on her lap, caught in between the creases of her crumpled cotton saree, few rest on the bold newspaper headlines as if on a mission to block out the world’s ugliness. Disinterested in the floral intervention, she smooths away a few wisps of white hair from her eyes. With a singular focus, she surveys the crisp blue sky which does not carry a single trace of cloud. A pale, almost full moon waits patiently for its last sliver to complete yet another full circle. How I envy the moon, its ability to resurrect itself from the pit of darkness every month.

Years ago, her pantheon of the sun, moon and planets failed to foretell the fate of a dying man. They did little to caution her about a ravenous lump, the size of a lemon, gnashing through my left femur. I shudder recalling those days of wait and despair when, lying awake for hours, I could hear the inevitable shrinkage of my body, witness its gradual emaciation to the form of a skeletal child. During such sleepless nights, drenched in sweat and delirium, I’ve seen her throw up in the backyard. My poor brinjal plants! I know, it was a lot to stomach, the stench of my festering bedsores. The very thought still makes my insides churn, that brown, fishy discharge of pus melded with betadine.

It has been seven long winters to that fateful night. I remember there was a full moon that night as well. A thirsty blood moon, you see.

Annie nudged the lizard, her companion, to climb higher onto the rock for a better view. The lizard’s tail dragged behind as it inched its way up. It was weary from their afternoon of exploring, chasing, and eating bugs. It shook its head, and her concentration wavered.

She watched the road from the rock outcrop. The sun was getting low in the sky as the rider rounded a steep bend in the road. Shoulder-length hair flowed out from under a sweat-stained sombrero that concealed his eyes. A scruffy, gray-streaked beard shrouded his lower face. As his horse struggled up the grade, he dug rusty spurs deep into his horse’s flanks. He smirked. Annie could feel each twinge of pain and wheezy gasp from the poor beast.

That man is broken.

As he passed her, his eyes flitted from side to side as if searching for something. For the briefest of moments, his eyes locked on her. Could he see her? Her concentration faltered as the lizard companion exerted its will and forced her out.

_Blink_

The darkness of the other side enveloped her, and the lizard’s silver light moved away. She felt how relieved her scaly companion was to be rid of her. Annie’s lesson that day was to recognize each creature’s different lights by sight. Instead, she had chosen to play, stayed out too long, and was dog-tired. The shining thread that bound her to the world of flesh grew taut, demanding her return.

_Blink_

She lay still, eyes shut, her breathing shallow, and waited. Her arms and legs were cold, heavy, and tingling. Annie wanted to sleep, but she had to get up and move.

She was in trouble; she knew it, if not from Mama, then from Grandma Ochuca for skipping her chores and the lesson. Of the two, she would accept Mama’s any day. Annie had been training for years, but Grandma was never satisfied.

Annie was four when the dreams had begun. Dreams, sometimes nightmares, of being one creature and then another. It wasn’t until she was six that she had discovered the truth. They were not dreams. One night, she had a dream about their cat, Espina. She had watched through Espina’s eyes as the cat stalked a mouse in the kitchen. When Espina pounced, Annie had felt her claws and teeth tear into the mouse’s flesh. She had awoken screaming.

The following morning, Espina had sat at the bottom of the stairs, proudly displaying the mouse she had killed the night before. Slowly, the veil between the waking world and the other side had parted. Annie had learned that she could move from creature to creature and bend their wills to her own.

One day, while exploring the other side, she had strayed too far and had got lost. She had panicked and flown in one direction and then another. The silver thread that had always led her home had stretched and faded. Adrift in the cold blackness, she had felt her connection with her body slipping away. That was when she had encountered Ochuca for the first time.

Ochuca had come like four horse-drawn wagons hurling down a winding, steep switchback trail. Her light was brighter than all the creatures’ lights combined. Annie had tried to flee, but her strength had left her.

A giant, shining, slithering rattlesnake had circled her. Its scales were as white as snow. Its glittering gold eyes were the size of dinner plates. When its fanged mouth had opened, a blood-red tongue had flicked from it and cracked like a whip. Her hiss was louder than a rushing river, and her rattle was like thunder.

It had circled her closer until she could almost touch the white scales. Annie had screamed a soundless scream, choked with panic and fear. And then a sense that no harm would come to her had washed over her.

The great rattlesnake’s thoughts had formed in her head. She said to call her Ochuca, which meant “grandmother” in the language of Mama’s people. Ochuca had returned her to her body and waited until she had woken up before leaving. As she had sped away, she had hissed and told Annie she had much to learn.

She had been afraid to tell Mama right away. When she finally did, Mama had made her promise never to tell anyone. Ochuca was the people’s guardian spirit, and few could hear her, much less cross over to the other side. Ochuca had saved her, so Annie was indebted to her. The thought had terrified her so much that she had stopped traveling to the other side for a while.

Soon, Ochuca’s rattles thundered in her head and commanded Annie to come to her. Grandma taught her the other side’s ways, and said that in time, Annie would become ‘Kukini’ —a respected one. Grandma gave Annie the name Waheia, which meant troublesome because that was what she was. Five years had passed, and Grandma Ochuca taught her the old ways, but she was not always the best pupil.

She was so cold.

Squinting against the sun’s setting rays coming through the stable doors, she sat up. Straw stuck to her hair and clothes from lying in the hay. There were times she wished she never had to come back. There were no chores, no parents to badger her, and no little brother to watch. Mama kept saying she was special. But if that was so, why did she still have to wash and mend clothes, collect firewood, and clean the guests’ rooms?

It was not fair.

Annie rubbed her legs and arms to get warm. She walked stiffly into the sunlight, picking bits of straw from her hair. In the courtyard, her brother Sean chased chicks in circles until he was so dizzy he fell over laughing. He was only six and still allowed to play, but soon, he would have help with the chores.

Papa was the roof of the smokehouse, nothing more than a pile of old timbers hammering on a board. He was constantly fixing things to keep the old inn from falling apart. From inside the Inn, she could hear Mama’s singing. Annie knew, regardless of the time of day, that Mama’s smile would be waiting for her. Well, possibly not today because she had skipped her chores.

A chill wind blew off the desert, promising a morning frost. Ochuca would give her heck the next time she summoned her.

“A rider is coming,” Annie rasped hoarsely.

Papa looked up from his work toward the gate. “I don’t see anybody,” he said, shaking his head. “Annie, darling, where have you been?”

“Just playing, Papa,” she said, giving him her sweetest smile as she passed.

Papa shook his head and got back to work.

She leaned against the gatepost and gazed out at the road. Papa knew she was different but refused to acknowledge it. More than once, she had heard Papa argue with Mama about Indian superstitions. Mama said he believed in the white man’s God. And that their ways belonged to the evil spirit the whites called the Devil. Mama was happy that the inn was far from Capistrano. Any closer and Papa would have forced them to go to the church and school of the Black Robes.

The minutes passed, and she heard the faint clop of a horse’s hooves, and the stranger came into view. Papa looked up from his labor at the sound of the approaching rider and glanced at her as the man rode through the gate. The stranger pulled up the reins as he stopped in front of Papa.

“You look done in, friend,” Papa said, staring from the stranger to the horse. Fresh red spur welts crisscrossed old scars on the horse’s flanks.

The stranger took in the courtyard and the open door leading into the inn. The sun settled behind the mountains to the east, and the air began to cool. Annie could feel a cloying heat radiating off him.

The stranger spoke, but without looking at Papa, “Nice place.”

“I am Timothy O’Malley,” Papa said. “You’ll not find a better inn between Capistrano and San Diego if you don’t mind my saying.”

“A room, food for me and the nag,” said the stranger, as he eyed Papa up and down, “and mezcal if you got it… Timothy O’Malley.” He swung from the saddle with a loud grunt.

“We have all three,” Papa said, grabbing the skittish horse’s bridle and stroking its neck. “Anne darling, show our guest inside.”

The stranger untied his gear from the horse and followed her. His Spanish-style spurs jingled out a cheerless tune. He was a big man, as big as Papa, maybe bigger. As they reached the door, Sean ran up and skidded to a stop. He stared up at the man and smiled.

The stranger glowered at Sean until his eyes became slits and snorted, “Boy, you’re a breed, aren’t you?” he whispered.

He dragged the back of his dust-encrusted hand across his mouth. A toothy snarl showed through his fingers. He rested his free hand on the butt of his pistol and tapped the hammer with his thumb. Sean’s eyes followed the stranger’s hand, and his lower lip trembled.

“No English, little breed?” he growled and squatted so they were eye to eye.

Sean winced and blinked, his eyes widening in fear. A single tear wound down his dirty cheek, leaving a swath of light brown skin in its wake. A satisfied chuckle rumbled from the stranger’s throat. Annie stepped between them, shielding Sean from his taunts. She could feel Sean’s fingers grasp her leg like tiny fishhooks. She kept her eyes on the ground, not wanting to meet the man’s gaze.

“Now, what do we have here, an Indian lover? Wait, don’t tell me, is this breed your kin?”

Annie was about to reply when he took her chin in his hand and pushed her head back. She twisted loose, and their eyes met. The hard lines on his face softened, and he chuckled. Ochuca’s rattle echoed in her head. She felt his emotions from that one touch like a black fog, wanting to swallow her. He smiled, patted her head, and pushed past them into the inn.

Annie wanted to grab Sean and run and hide. Instead, she turned, placed her hands on his shoulders, and told him everything was all right. Sean grinned, wiped his cheek, and hugged her around the waist. She pried him off and shooed him away to help Papa.

As she entered the great room, the smell of roasted chicken, rice, and beans wafted in from the kitchen. The stranger stood with his back to her. He surveyed the room until his eyes fixed on the bar and liquor bottles. He tossed his gear on the nearest table, walked behind the bar, and helped himself to a bottle of mezcal. Annie heaved the heavy steel-hinged wooden door shut with a loud creak. Then she stepped into the shadows, her back pressed against the cold adobe wall.

Mama’s singing drifted in from the kitchen. He uncorked the bottle, sniffed, and crossed the hall to sit near the stone fireplace. He yawned, then lifted the bottle to his lips and drank deeply of the amber-colored spirit.

“Muy bueno!” he bellowed and smacked his lips several times. “Girl, tell the cook your guest hasn’t eaten since this morning. Be quick about it.”

He acted like the Spanish tax collector, Señor Del Anza, as if the inn were his personal property, not Papa’s. She wanted to tell him to leave, but she obeyed and headed to the kitchen. Mama met her in the doorway. A tight-lipped look of concern creased her face.

“What is all the yelling about, Annie?” she asked, having caught sight of the stranger.

“Mama, we have a guest, and he’s hungry.”

Mama studied the stranger. The crow’s feet around her eyes deepened as she squinted. She wiped her sun-darkened hands on her apron. Then touched the leather pouch hanging around her neck.

Does she sense it?

“Light the evening lamps, Annie,” she asked as her hand dropped from the pouch.

A chill ran down Annie’s spine as Grandma’s rattles echoed in her head. Mama turned her back and walked away. He spat on the clean tile floor. Annie imagined that she saw tongue-like, dark wisps follow her as she retreated to the kitchen. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, they were gone.

His eyes followed her around the room as she lit the lamps. She smelled of liquor and stale sweat as she lit the lamp on his table. He smiled oddly at her, and his face flushed with color. It reminded her of the smiles Papa and Mama traded on those nights when they went to bed early.

“That Indian, your mother?” he asked, leaning across the table as if to snatch the answer from her.

She lurched back and almost stumbled into Mama, carrying a steaming plate of food. Mama stopped short of the table, set the plate down, and slid it toward him, careful to avoid his eyes. His head rocked from side to side, taunting her to look at him. Then, he tilted his head back and laughed. Annie stepped in behind Mama.

“Do I scare you, woman?” he slurred. His gaze was as vacant as a dark corner in an abandoned house. “Are you Serrano or one of those tamed Gabrielano, maybe?”

“No, señor,” she said, but her eyes said otherwise. “My people are Juanero, from near Mission Capistrano.” Her hand searched behind her for mine.

The stranger slapped his thigh, chuckled, and mumbled something about ignorant Indians. Mama turned and gently pinched Annie’s cheek. A shiver ran through Annie as Mama gestured with her eyes toward the kitchen.

“What did I tell you about getting underfoot? Go now and tell Papa that supper is ready before it gets cold. Hurry,” she shouted, pushing her away.

Her shoes thudded dully on the tiles as she ran through the kitchen and out the back. Espina slipped inside as the door swung shut. A sparrow dangled by its wing in her mouth.

Sean’s laughter echoed in the courtyard as Papa burst from the stable. Sean rode on his shoulders, yelling, “Giddy-up!” Papa galloped across the courtyard, dipping and rearing like a wild stallion. As he barreled toward her, he let out a whinny that turned to laughter. Sean slid from his back as he stopped before her and ran ahead.

Papa took her face in his rough hands. “Darlin’, your skin is like ice. Get inside before you catch your death from the cold.”

Annie grabbed his hand and said, “Mama says your supper’s ready.” She whimpered and blurted out, “The stranger is drinking.” She wrapped her arms around him and began to tremble.

Still so cold.

Papa pulled her close and said, “Darlin, there’s nothing to fear. Our guest is just tired and needs some company.” His shoulders hunched as he walked away with her.

Don’t trust him, Papa—he’s broken.

As Annie set the table, she could see the stranger stuff food into his mouth between sips of mezcal. Mama seemed relieved when Papa placed his big, calloused hands on her tiny shoulders. They whispered to each other, and Papa glanced at the stranger.

“I’ll speak to him after supper, Sesia,” he said, scooping up Sean, and they went to wash up.

Annie placed a clay water jug and cups on the table. Grandma’s rattle rumbled louder in her head and would not stop. Grandma, please—what do you expect me to do? She stepped closer to the stove but could barely feel its warmth.

“Mama.”

“What is it, Annie?”

“Mama… can you hear Grandma?”

She closed her eyes and mumbled in Juanero. The corners of her mouth turned down. She clutched the medicine bag around her neck tightly, then, after a moment, released it. “I felt something earlier, but now…” For the briefest moment, Mama’s eyes seemed far away. She shivered as if a cold breeze swept through the kitchen. “Annie, are you sure?”

“Yes, Mama!” she said, grabbing hold of her skirt.

Before she could say more, Papa and Sean crowded into the kitchen. They sat, and Papa asked for Christ’s blessing on the food and their guest, a bit louder than usual. As Papa broke a loaf of bread in half, the stranger’s shuffling footsteps drew their attention.

He stood a few steps back from the doorway, his upper body hidden in shadow, supper plate held in one hand. Gravy dripped from the chipped earthenware like rain on the toe of his boot. He stepped into the light. A disarming smile hid who he was.

Annie’s breath caught in her throat.

“Missus, may I have seconds?” he asked, his words slurred from the drink. Mama got up from the table in a flurry of motion and served him. His smile changed briefly to a snarl, like when his spurs dug into his horse.

He shifted his gaze to Annie and stared into her eyes. Her vision blurred as if a cloud of smoke obscured him.

Papa looked up and said, “Forgive me. I have been a thoughtless host. I will join you for a drink and a smoke later.”

The stranger nodded and accepted the plate from Mama. “Thank you kindly, Missus O’Malley,” he said with exaggerated respect. “I look forward to that, Mr. O’Malley.” He winked at Annie as he turned to go.

Annie began to tremble. Her stomach knotted up something terrible. It became hard to breathe. Ochuca’s summoning rattle roared. She covered her ears, squeezed her eyes shut tight, and prayed it would stop. But it did not… So cold.

_Blink_

_Why have you summoned me?_

_Look, Waheia_

Ochuca’s rattles shook high above her scaly head—she hissed. Beyond her wall of scales, Annie saw a bloated shadow enveloping the stranger’s light. Dark red pulsing tendrils stretched toward Mama, Papa, and Sean’s lights.

_What is it?_

_See what I see, Waheia_

She peered into Ochuca’s golden eyes, and she knew. It was a Soul Eater. An evil spirit that stole the light of the living, extinguishing them forever.

_Grandma, save us_

_I cannot pass between our worlds_

_Then let me go_

_Waheia, you will all die… Stay, and I can protect you_

_No, please let me go_ Annie pulled away. Her silver tether became her lifeline back to the world of flesh.

_Blink_

“Annie, wake up,” Papa said. “She’s ice cold.”

“It’s all right, little one. Mama’s here. Annie… Annie, open your eyes.”

She could sense Papa lifting her off the tile floor and carrying her away. The pounding of Papa’s heart drowned out their voices as her head rested on his chest. Then, her bed’s familiar embrace welcomed her as Papa laid her down.

She was so, so cold.

Mama chanted in Juanero, and her voice faded into the fog. Annie shivered so hard that she thought it would never stop.

“Husband, fetch a bucket of hot coals from the kitchen. She is freezing,” she continued to chant.

Mama stopped her chant and pressed her hands to her ears. It was the thunder of Ochuca’s rattles demanding her return. It felt like it would shake the inn to pieces.

It took all her concentration to breathe. Mama stroked her cheek and whispered her name. Her breath was sweet and warm on Annie’s face.

She opened her mouth, and she tried to speak.

Mama whispered, “I hear Ochuca, Waheia. What does she want?”

The shiver worsened as she spoke, “Sss—ssss—sssss,” hissing over her tongue.

Mama jerked away and let go of her hand. The hissing grew louder in the back of Annie’s throat. From downstairs, Sean screamed. Papa and the stranger shouted at each other, and a pistol shot exploded. The last thing Annie saw was Mama’s back as she ran from the room.

_Blink_

 _No_

Ochuca’s coils squeezed her. Annie strained against them, trying to break free. The more she struggled, the tighter they became and the sadder Ochuca was. She could feel Ochuca’s love and desire to save her from oblivion.

She watched as Sean and Papa’s lights flickered. The stranger’s dark shadow hovered over Papa, smothering him. Mama’s light came into sight and merged with Sean’s, and they fled.

_Then let me go_

Once more, she tried to follow her silver thread to her body, but it flickered and went out.

Sadness radiated from Ochuca as she released her.

_Why had she wandered so far today? Why had he not done as she was told?_

_Go Waheia_ And she turned to face the Eater.

Annie searched for a light that could serve her needs. A quivering pinprick of light hid in a corner of the great room. It was Espina, their cat. With regret, she dove into Espina’s flesh like a thief. Espina shrieked in agony as Annie took her. The cat’s soul shattered into pieces like a clay pot.

_Blink_

She could feel the hair on Espina’s back rise. Her spine arched, and her claws extended. Through a forest of table and chair legs, she saw Papa on his knees. The stranger held him by his collar—a knife to his throat. Blood dripped from between Papa’s fingers where a bullet had ripped through his side. A throaty yowl came from Espina’s mouth.

_I am coming, Papa._

“Hey, stay awake, Mr. O’Malley,” the stranger yelled, slapping Papa across the face. “Or you’ll miss all the fun once I find your Juanero whore and half-breed brats.”

“No, please, I have money. Take it,” Papa begged.

“You are stupid, Indian lover,” he growled, waving the knife in his face like an accusing finger. “I don’t want your money.”

Annie took a few cautious steps. She had done this so many times with Espina when stalking prey. Her vision narrowed and sharpened. The taste of the sparrow Espina had eaten earlier was still on her tongue. She had new prey now.

The stranger whispered into Papa’s ear. Tears flowed down Papa’s sunburnt cheeks. He fumbled helplessly for the stranger’s pistol.

The brass pommel of the stranger’s knife came down on Papa’s head, and he slumped forward. The stranger slapped him again and said, “Stay awake.” But Papa lay on the floor unmoving. “Eh, oh well.” His hand rose, poised to plunge the knife into Papa’s chest.

Espina’s instinct took over. Her ears flattened. The hair along her spine bristled higher. A snarl formed in her throat. Her claws flexed in and out of their sheaths, scratching the tile floor. Annie’s rage thrust her onto a table and into the air.

“Yyyeee-Ooowwwlll.”

The stranger’s head snapped to the side as she landed. She smelled his fear. Teeth and claws labored against his soft, yielding flesh. The hot, salty taste of his blood filled her mouth.

The stranger dropped his knife and tried to pull her off.

I got you!

They spun like drunk dancers. Crashed into the bar and tumbled to the floor. He grabbed her head. She sank her fangs deep into his thumb. He grabbed a hind leg and yanked her off, tearing away flesh as he did. Her claw raked across one eye. He shrieked in agony and held her at arm’s length. She clawed at empty air. He grabbed her neck, twisted, and bones snapped, and tendons tore.

_Blink_

The pain of Espina’s death left her dazed in its grip.

She could make out Ochuca’s white scales stained black in places. The Eater lashed out with blood-red tentacles, slashing her. She struck back, burying her fangs into its shadowy body. Ochuca reared up and struck over and over. With each bite, the Eater shrank until Grandma’s jaw opened wide and swallowed it whole.

_Go._

Annie searched for the nearest knot of bright lights. She moved from one unwilling creature to the next, searching for the one that could make a difference. Fragments of sound echoed around her. She smelled dung. The shrill shriek of hens. The tortured bray of their donkey. The squeal of the pigs as they tried to escape the madness of her passing. Then, one light larger than the others was before her, and she crashed into it.

_Blink_

“Come out; you can’t hide from me,” the stranger screamed from the courtyard.

The sound of the stranger’s voice made this body tremble with terror. Four powerful legs held her up. She had taken his horse. The horse’s will melted away, and all its tormented memories at its master’s hand poured into her.

A pistol shot rang out.

Annie could see the stranger drenched in moonlight through the stable’s open doors. A red halo surrounded his ruined face. He swayed drunkenly, moaning. He fired his last shots at an imaginary attacker. He dropped the pistol, unsheathed his knife, and strode toward the stable.

“If you don’t come out, squaw, I’ll finish off that husband of yours,” he growled.

Annie reared up on her hind legs and smashed her head into the thatched roof. Then she rammed the stall’s gate. It creaked and splintered but held.

“I hear you in there,” he shouted. “You thought you’d get away?”

He searched each stall and lunged at shadows. Finally, he reached hers. Annie tried to control the horse’s trembling and her fury.

He gazed into the stall with his remaining eye and gripped the latch pin. Annie shifted from hoof to hoof and backed up, as he would expect. He grasped the latch pin, cocked his head, and listened. From outside, she heard Sean’s muffled crying. A look of glee spread across the stranger’s tortured face as he turned to leave.

Annie sprang forward and drove her muzzle into his chest. He staggered back and pulled the latch pin free. The gate swung open, and she charged. He looked confused. She guessed he could not believe his horse would ever dare to challenge him.

Annie bit his shoulder. The stranger slashed and stabbed with his knife. Annie reared up, and her hooves rose and fell again and again.

Papa shoveled dirt onto the stranger’s shallow grave beyond the outhouse and spat into it.

Favoring his wounded side, he walked to where Mama sat under a big oak, Sean beside her. She cradled a lifeless, shroud-wrapped child and sobbed. Not far from the tree was another grave.

Papa didn’t say a word. Tears filled his eyes as he stroked Mama’s hair and pried the body from her unwilling grasp. A small, pale, delicate hand slipped from under the shroud as he lowered her into the grave.

Mama got to her feet and swayed unsteadily. She drew Sean into her arms. A purple, swollen bruise marked Sean’s face from jaw to brow, and a bandage circled his head.

It was becoming harder for Annie to see. She, like Mama, swayed unsteadily on the horse’s legs. Warm blood trickled down the horse’s chest from the deepest stab wound.

She could no longer stand and rolled onto the horse’s side. Mama gazed from the grave to the coral. Her hand reached out to Annie, and she began a sorrowful chant.

_She knows_

The horse’s breathing became ragged, slowed, and stopped.

Annie could hear Ochuca’s rattle call her home. Annie shook her rattle in reply and joined Grandma in the eternal night.

_Blink_

I turn over on the couch, where I’ve curled into one corner. In the middle of the night, I didn’t have the energy to move Lena’s laptop. Instead, I just slept around it.

The couch smells like dried-up white wine in one spot, something I never realized until I started sleeping here. We must have spilled it a long time ago. We haven’t had wine in the house for two years, since before the IVF, before the cycle-coded calendar in the kitchen and the evenings we’d giggled and clinked together the matching self-insemination syringes.

Cheers! We’d said.

I squint into the living room, listening for the baby’s whimper as I look at the time. It’s 5:30, which feels like a blessing. Four hours of sleep. I’m sure Lena got less.

The baby sounds rise and fall, closer. Under them, I hear Lena’s slow footsteps padding down the hallway. There’s a sear of guilt as I consider, split-second, whether to pretend to be asleep still. But then they’re here in the room.

“Good morning, mama,” Lena murmurs, more to the baby than to me.

“Good morning, mama,” I say back, smiling.

As always, when the baby is actually here, in front of me, with her tiny wiggling shrimp fingers and her face squashed up in the huge effort of crying or gurgling or smiling, I melt.

What’s happening to me? I’d said to the delivery nurse, when I felt my eyes overflow all at once, nothing like the crying I was used to.

Welcome to parenthood, she’d said. It felt practiced, tailored to the bewildered men she was used to seeing in the delivery room. Not to me, who could have been in Lena’s place if it had gone that way.

“I’m going to make some decaf,” Lena whispers to me. The baby is settling into her chest, little face slack over the edge of the wrap Lena wears to hold her close, to be one being. “Will you do the bottles?”

I nod and roll out of the throw blanket that I’ve gotten used to sleeping under. Lena sways toward the kitchen, her soft hums keeping the baby quiet. As I turn to fold the throw—a semblance of the normal, neither of us want to talk about how I’ve been sleeping out here—I see them.

Four wet shapes on the floor in front of the coffee table.

Smudged half-circles I can only see because thin light through the living room window catches them.

I gaze around the room, trying to identify the source. My face feels slack with sleep and confusion. Maybe I spilled a glass of water as I moved the coffee table in the night, half-awake? But, no, it rests on modern, square legs. Too heavy for me to have shoved it semi-conscious, and the wrong shape to leave those marks. And there is no glass of water.

“Did you move the crib last night?” I whisper to Lena when I’m in the kitchen, rinsing bottle rings as she clicks on the coffeemaker.

She frowns at me over her shoulder.

“From our room?” she asks.

It stings to hear her say our room. It is ours, but I’m on the couch now and she’s with the baby. I wonder if that’s what she means, even by accident: her room and the baby’s room. Ours.

“Yeah,” I say. “It looks like something got moved in front of the coffee table.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marks on the floor,” I say. “Did we spill something?”

Lena shakes her head in the same gentle cadence that she approaches every movement, now. Back and forth, quiet and smooth. Serene. I feel like I can’t keep up with it.

“Maybe we have a leak,” she says, handing me a mug.

The baby makes a quiet little sound and a fist emerges from her onesie to curl toward Lena’s hair. I take a sip. Decaf coffee tastes the same as regular, to me.

It takes almost until evening for me to remember to check the living room ceiling. The baby is restless today, a continuation of last night. Lena tries to open her laptop for the third time only for the baby to wake and squeal again.

“I thought you were on maternity leave,” I say, trying to tease gently. I worry it comes out shrill.

“Just a couple of emails,” she whispers, reaching for a bottle as she pulls the baby into her arms, balancing the open computer.

“They should know better than to email you,” I say. “Let me take her.”

Lena hesitates a millisecond too long.

“Thanks.”

The baby is always warmer than I remember. Even though I touch her dozens of times a day—when Lena showers, when she wants to change her clothes or stretch her arms–it’s as though my skin forgets. And my nose forgets her smell, which up close is overpowering, the raw scent of brand-new flesh, of being completely alive. I kiss her forehead and try to ignore how immediately she returns to fussing in my arms. I whisk her away into the kitchen to defrost the 4pm bottle. I try to replicate Lena’s soft sway as I walk and it feels clumsy in my hips.

Lena takes a half hour to frown over her laptop. The baby, meanwhile, naps fitfully in my tired arms. I don’t know what to call it when, dozing, she turns her sucking mouth to my breast. I know that I scowl and then turn red, ashamed.

When Lena joins us, a thin crease has appeared between her eyebrows. It’s the face of the old Lena, the Lena who would stride through the front door promptly at six, who would lean in to kiss me at my desk, who would regale me with complaints about her coworkers over dinner, to my delight.

Her reading glasses are still on, giving her eyes a slight distortion that makes me love her with such violence I’m surprised at myself. I lean over the baby’s head.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper.

Lena rolls her eyes.

“Never prettier than when I’m wearing nipple guards,” she says.

But she kisses me anyway, lingering in a way that weakens every joint in my body. Her mouth tastes like the syrupy tea our doula gave her. I watch the crease smooth itself as she nestles the baby onto her shoulder. And then they both are gone.

The new Lena, born with the baby, floats on something I can’t see, a buoyancy in her movements that gently bobs her away from the shore, out of reach.

I pull out the stepladder and haul it to the living room.

The ceiling is dusty. Cobwebs form tracery against the stucco. I find several things I need to do—fix a piece of crown molding that’s coming loose, replace the batteries in a smoke detector, repaint—but I don’t find a leak. I even check around the casing of the ceiling fan’s motor, wiping lint from its blades which falls like snow. But the ceiling is unblemished, and there are no signs that anything has dripped through it and onto the floor.

From the stepladder, I can barely see the smeared shapes, but when I climb back down, the light hits them again. Four sloppy curves, evenly spaced. They’re not water stains, I realize, or not just water. They’re greasy, like oil wiped by a rag. One of them is crusted with a thin rind of mud, as though tracked in and left there, but there is nothing in any other direction.

I sweep up the lint and spray down the smears with cleaner. When I come back with a handful of paper towels, I can’t even see them anymore.

That night, I make soup for Lena with as many beans and vegetables as I can. My body feels hollow from lack of sleep, and I can only imagine the wear on hers. It’s hard not to compare how I think I’d do in her place.

There were pros and cons for each of us, but we’d agreed it was lucky that Lena had conceived instead of me. Her company’s maternity leave was generous, whereas my freelance work was spotty at best. And so that was the reason we clung to, along with little things: the year difference in our ages, Lena’s family a few hours closer than mine. But we both knew the real reason: that she was better at hard things.

It was my hands that had gone numb as she pushed through the tenth hour of labor, and it was me that the nurse handed a cup of juice to, saying I looked pale.

When dinnertime comes, Lena doesn’t eat the soup because the baby can only settle when she’s bounced on tiptoes. I offer, half-joking, to feed Lena spoonfuls as she bobs.

“I’ll get a bowl in a bit, when she’s down,” she whispers. “Smells amazing.”

Much later that night, I awake in a panic.

Before my eyes are open, I’m thrashing to get my legs untangled from the couch throw. The baby has screamed louder than I’ve ever heard her, and my heart pounds in my throat. But as I struggle to sit up on the couch, I realize the house is silent. I stiffen and wait for the next round of cries. I listen for Lena. But all I hear is the soft click and hum of the refrigerator’s compressor and the faraway whir of the white noise machine that Lena plays for the baby. I must have dreamed the scream.

I blink into the dark living room, waiting for my breath and pulse to calm, trying to make out the bleary shapes around me.

And then, one shifts.

Just slightly. An adjustment. The rise of a spine with a breath.

I do not move.

I know I am mistaken. I must be. My eyes dart to the curtains that I forgot to pull closed all the way, so that they billow in the air from the vent. When my eyes slide back, the shape has resolved itself—a heaped blanket with one of the baby’s slings sprawled on top of it—and I’m alone.

I squint at the heap through my lashes, trying to recreate what I thought I’d seen. But it stays gone, the objects insensate. They do not breathe again.

I fall back asleep. It takes a long time. The baby sleeps through the night.

“You can always just get her flowers,” my mother says through the phone.

I am loitering in the detergent aisle. We don’t need detergent, but I’ve already put the fruit Lena asked for and all the other things on the list into the cart, and the conversation doesn’t feel finished.

“They’re nice,” she’s saying, almost defensive. “It’s a cliché for a reason. That’s what your father did, and I always loved them. Keep it simple.”

“That’s true,” I say, trying to remember Lena’s favorites. Lilies? “I guess… I don’t know, for her first Mother’s Day I want it to be special.”

“Sweetheart, you’re going to do this every year. Next year with a toddler, and then the macaroni art starts to come home from preschool and that’ll be better than anything you could buy her.”

She’s doing something in the kitchen. I can hear cabinets opening and banging shut. I picture her pinching her cell phone between her shoulder and ear, like I’m doing.

“Bottles every four hours, still?” Mom asks.

“She slept almost seven hours last night,” I say proudly, like I’m supposed to. My mother is excited to hear this.

“Isn’t it so sad when one stage is over?” she says. “You miss it, even though you couldn’t wait to be done.”

Mom promises to text me a website that has the kind of lilies she remembers Lena ordering for our wedding.

“And get yourself something, sweetie,” she adds. “You’re a mom, now, too.”

When I get home, Lena is asleep on the armchair with her feet up on the coffee table, the baby napping on her chest. They’re beautiful together, matching in soft beige without meaning to, dappled in the afternoon light. I feel for my phone to take a picture. Something to send to my mother, though I realize it’ll mean keeping the picture myself. I don’t think about that. One of the grocery bags rustles in my hands and Lena opens an eye.

“How’s the world?” she murmurs.

“You’re not missing anything,” I whisper, snap a picture, hit send.

I stare at the ceiling fan. Dim light filters in through the curtains from the street lamp. A shred of lint that I missed hangs off of one of the blades.

I had promised myself, locking eyes with my reflection as I brushed my teeth, that I wouldn’t check the time. I remember the deep breathing exercises I’d learned from an online video years ago, and resolve to try them instead, letting breath fill my lungs and press against my taut diaphragm. Hold for a moment. Then out in a hiss. The video had dissolved into slow-motion footage of waves crashing against sand, and I close my eyes, trying to picture them as I breathe in and out.

As I slide into sleep, the sound of my breath twists and doubles into a sound like the rush of water at the edge of my consciousness, filling the room.

In the morning, my hands are still clasped to my ribcage where I’d placed them to measure my breaths in. On the floor, the prints, greasy and caked with thicker mud, are back.

“Have I ever sleepwalked?” I ask Lena.

I’m picking up each of my shoes, looking for grime. She’s feeding the baby in bed, a curved pillow wrapped around her like a cloud. She looks up at me and I see the bliss drop from her expression slightly.

“No,” she says. “Why?”

“These marks keep showing up on the floor,” I say. “It’s not a leak. I checked.”

Lena shakes her head slowly.

“Maybe you tracked something in when you shopped yesterday?” she said. “I bet we’re just too tired to notice. Things are going to fall by the wayside for a while.”

I nod, but I don’t agree. She doesn’t seem tired at all. She is doing so much. The least I can do is keep the house together.

“I’m going to mop again,” I say. “Do you need anything?”

She smiles at me, looks down at the baby who swallows softly and grips the bottle in her tiny fist.

“I’m all set.”

The marks on the floor are clearer. This time, before I spray them down and fill the mop bucket, I examine their shape. They are heavy on one side and delicate on the other, as though whatever made them was leaning off-kilter. And there are small splits down the center of each that remind me of something I can’t place right away.

When I’m filling the mop bucket, I remember the summer in my early teens that I spent at a wilderness camp, where we earned points for correctly identifying animal tracks from a chart. Graceful crescents for whitetail deer, skinny cat-paws for red fox, cloven lobes for bison.

I stare at the prints now, bottle of cleanser in hand, blinking. In the split-seconds between my eyes opening and closing, I try to conjure whatever creature I imagine leaving these tracks. Do I see afterimages shimmer behind my closed eyes? Gnarled legs, jet-black and dripping, thick-knuckled and long. I know I am imagining them, but they are clearer than anything I’ve imagined before. Images shift and warp in my mind, usually. These stay. I close my eyes as long as I dare. A few seconds, and then my pounding heart forces them open. I spray the floor down again and leave the mop there.

At five, I take out the package of frozen ravioli, but I forget it on the counter. When the washing machine chimes, I gasp and realize I’ve been sitting on the couch for almost an hour. I rush to switch the laundry and start a pot of water boiling before Lena and the baby wake up from their nap.

When Lena comes in, her hair is tied back in a bun, her glasses pushed to her forehead, and her phone in her hand. The baby is wriggling in her sling.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she says. She doesn’t whisper. She’s right there.

“What?”

“I swear,” she says, “They can’t do anything.”

Pacing with the baby as I chop an onion for sauce, Lena details the disaster unfolding at her workplace. The someone or someones assigned to cover Lena’s HR management role in her absence have fumbled their jobs so badly that a former employee has filed a lawsuit, throwing the company into crisis.

“Unbelievable,” I sneer, gleeful. The gossip feels precious, the laughter between us at others’ expense a balm. I’ve missed this more than I can bear.

“But,” she grins, “You’ll never guess what else.”

I widen my eyes. I am her audience and my attention on her is rapt.

“They offered me half-time to help organize everything for the lawyers. They’ll pay me for full-time, plus overtime, plus they’ll grant me additional leave.”

Lena caresses the baby and talks on about the timeline of the suit, the benefit to her resume, the validation that she is indispensable to the company. I smile approvingly. I ignore the heat in my face and the spikes in my throat.

“It does mean,” she says, “That I’ll need to leave the baby with you while I’m at work for a few weeks. Just a couple hours a day. I hope that’s okay. They’re offering so much money. It has to be worth it.”

I nod vigorously, blinking water from my eyes. I wince at the tang of onion and the taste of salt.

“Of course,” I say, and then the lie tumbles from my lips. “What could be better than more time with my favorite person?”

That Wednesday, the house sounds different.

Lena is up early, and all the lights in the kitchen are on. The radio reports the news, and she pulls out the stepladder to get the regular coffee pods out of a cabinet.

“I pumped already,” she says, winking. “There’s more than enough milk in the fridge for today.”

She pours coffee into a tumbler, grabs her keys, and is gone.

The baby frowns up at me from her bouncer, squinting in the bright light.

From the kitchen, I can see the tracks on the floor in the living room, in front of the coffee table.

The baby cries almost all day. I do not go into the living room. The prints are still there that night.

I sleep with my arms folded around my head, covering my ears. All night, I keep waking to the sound of something very loud, but very far away, a crushing roar like a waterfall.

At dawn, I peer under my forearm and think that I see an eye, huge and black, glistening and soaked.

I do not breathe until Lena bustles in to hand me the baby and kiss me as she breezes out the door.

Nothing is there when I look back.

“Have a good day,” I whisper, but the door is already closed.

Today the baby screams at me nonstop as I try to give her a bath. I give up, shaking and sobbing, and pat her down with baby wipes while she howls. Her little face contorts and turns red, then nearly purple. I back away.

“I’m sorry,” I plead. “Please, I’m so sorry.”

She purses her lips when I try to give her a bottle, later. She kicks me when I change her. I’m sweating through my clothes by the time Lena comes home.

She takes the baby from me without a word.

I scrub the living room floor until my cuticles bleed. The tracks do not disappear.

The baby cries throughout the night, and I lose count of how many times I hear Lena get up to soothe her after the first dozen.

It is darker than usual, and I realize that the streetlight has gone out. I stare across the living room and do not flinch when it appears.

All of it.

Skinny, contorted legs lead up to a body twisted with jutting bones, at once heavy and emaciated. An angular head with one bleary eye that sees nothing and another that gazes at me, shining, wet, and huge. Whether the thing drips with water or some greasy tar I can’t tell, but the whole of it is a smear, dribbling down limbs to the floor below, as if oozing from the pores beneath the thick, dark fur.

The baby’s cries echo down the hall and the creature opens its blurry mouth. Water gushes out, more and faster than can be possible, as though draining an entire sea. I am drenched, and it is not cold but boiling and salty, and it blisters my skin and the raw flesh of my throat as it pours over me in waves. I feel pieces of myself dissolve and then I wake up for real, gasping as I wipe thick sweat from my eyes.

I rush to check on the baby, but Lena already has her.

It is the weekend, and Lena shakes her head at me as I stumble into the kitchen well after ten.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I overslept.”

“You look terrible,” she says. She feels my forehead with the back of her palm. “You’re warm.”

Panicked, I fumble for a face mask from the junk drawer, but Lena waves it off.

“You’re probably just run down,” she says. “I can’t imagine how hard it is to take care of her all on your own.”

She points me into the bedroom with strict instructions to take acetaminophen and rest. When I lie down, the bed smells like Lena, but it is not familiar at all.

I am small in my fever dreams, shrunk down to half size or less. I wander around our house for what feels like hours, dream-time stretched out and disjointed. I’m looking for someone, but not for Lena, and I can’t figure out who it is. When I call out, I find my mouth doesn’t form words, and my voice sounds absurd. Our house bobs up and down as though it is floating on a river. I hear the roar of water everywhere.

On Sunday afternoon, my fever breaks. Lena brings me a plate of leftovers from the takeout she has ordered.

“We miss you,” she says. She’s not carrying the baby. Sensible, in case I’m contagious. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight.

On Monday, Lena lingers in the kitchen, her keys in hand.

“You’re sure you’re okay with her?” she says. “You’re feeling up to it?”

“Of course,” I say, smiling. I’m bouncing the baby, who wiggles in her sling in my arms.

“Call me if you need anything.”

I walk around the house all day with the baby wrapped tight against me. I get the laundry done, then re-organize the kitchen and clean the bathroom. Whenever I walk through the living room, the creature stares at me and drips.

My mother calls, and I pinch the phone between my ear and shoulder as I throw silverware into the dishwasher.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong with the baby?” she asks, alarmed.

I hadn’t realized she was crying. I drop a handful of spoons and get a bottle out of the fridge.

“Gosh,” my mother says, more to herself than to me. “She sounds like how you did when you were that age. Blood-curdling, that’s what your father used to call it, when you cried.”

I don’t know what to say. The baby whimpers a little as she sucks down the bottle of milk, as if she’s angry with me.

“It’s so hard at this age,” my mother continues. “But it’s really not forever, sweetheart. You’ve just got to get through the first year, really.”

I don’t know what time it is. I can’t even think past the next hour.

“You know,” my mother says, “I sometimes used to run the faucet in the sink and turn the shower on at the same time when I couldn’t get you to settle down.”

My breath catches.

“Something about the noise of running water seemed to help,” she says, and then laughs. “Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t hear you and Lord knows I needed that little break sometimes.”

I don’t register what else she says. I’m running water over the dishes in the sink, and it’s deafening. The sound is all around me, and then it concentrates in the living room, drawing me to it. I drop my phone and it splashes on the floor.

The creature turns toward me. Its mouth is open down to its knees.

Lena is shaking me. With a sting, I feel her slap across my face.

“What?” I shriek, “What?”

“Where is the baby?” she screams, her face flushed with rage. “What’s wrong with you?”

“She’s—” I flounder, looking around frantically. “She’s here—”

I’m soaking from head to toe, my hair dripping into my face and onto the living room floor.

Lena has left the front door open and I hear her crashing through rooms down the hall.

“Why?” she screams, “Why is she in the bathroom by herself?”

I don’t hear what she says next, so I don’t know where it is that she says she is going with the baby, who she has wrapped in a towel and is hugging close while she throws things into the diaper bag and clutches her keys. I can only hear the roar of water. I feel the look she gives me though—heartbreak, sorrow—like a knife to my stomach.

I turn to the creature as the door slams behind them.

It looks back at me, eyes streaming. I hear something, now. Beneath the water’s roar, I hear the whimper at last, a little cry of terror and anguish. It’s been there the whole time, an urgent pull. Please.

I open my arms.

“Come here,” I whisper.

It climbs into my embrace, its sickly legs trailing down into the pool of water beneath us. It is light and fragile, and I feel the tiny warmth within it, the fluttering of its heartbeat. I smell the wet scent of its skin. It trembles against my collarbone.

“It’s all right,” I whisper. I rock gently back and forth. I move to the couch, and we nestle as one into the soft cushions. I find a blanket and dry us both.

“I’ve got you,” I say, over and over. “I’ve got you.”

Kasy prayed the List of Gratitude as she and her mother left the high gate circling the compound and walked the sidewalk to the clinic. Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful day. Thank you, Lord, for my life on Earth. Thank you for my sight, my smell, my ears, my skin, to witness your Creation. It hadn’t been but a few years since He had seen fit to reset the world. The compound sat on Turkey Mountain, where the inhabitants could see the overgrown mess where Tulsa used to be, know that other American cities had had a similar fate, thank God for sparing their flock, and thank Him for punishing them.

They turned at the broken stoplight that swung and spun on its wire. On the left side of the road where the park used to be was an encampment—all snapping blue tarps, smoke. Blanket-wrapped huddled masses queued for soup at a stand near the road. The wind shifted. A moment later, the odor smothered them: unwashed armpit, crotch, ass, and burning garbage and leaking propane. Kasy and her mom stepped into the road to go round the tents rippling in the breeze. Further on, someone lay in the road with a filthy pink blanket over them. Their feet were bare. Further on, a man chopped at the air with a metal spatula and yelled at the empty sky. Each shout gouted cloud-breath into the frigid air.

Thank you, Lord, for leading us out of there. Thank you for leading us to our Shepherd, Robert. Thank you for a roof, for beans, squash, and bread, for hot water at the lift of a handle.

Kasy stopped her silent prayer to look over the line, in case her aunt was there. Her mother put her hand on her cheek and gently nudged her face forward again. Her mother’s expression was sorrow overlaid with determination. It felt like a betrayal of her mom to search for her aunt. Besides, her aunt had chosen to no longer be her aunt when they parted ways. Kasy looked away. They had to focus on those who wanted to be saved.

The clinic was in the strip mall tucked between the pizza parlor and the DMV. A message had been slashed with deep red paint over its mirrored doors: The Shepherds are Wolves that Learned How to Use a Crook. Like you would know, Kasy thought. He welcomed me and Mom into the fold after the Summer of Storms and gave us food, shelter, community, and purpose, when so many people had lost theirs, and never regained it. She prayed God would open their mind, by a transformative event or by crushing open their skull.

The clinic looked like a DMV, a place to process people, rather than a sacred place. The “take a number” ticket machine by the door was empty. So were the eyes of the receptionist. A massive picture of downtown Tulsa pre-Summer of Storms with domino-like buildings colonized a wall. There were women older than her mother, with snowy hair. There were women her mother’s age, with gray-streaked hair. The group Kasy herself belonged to—with people who      could be called women, but her Shepherd called them “on the cusp”—was the largest. One of them had brought a girl, a child, who sang softly to herself and drew stars on her arm with a blue marker. The scent of synthetic blueberry fought the stale, bad-breath smell of the clinic air.

Now, that girl is clearly not a woman, nor almost one, Kasy thought. Perhaps she’s special.

The receptionist slid a clipboard under her window, and Kasy’s mom wrote Kasy’s full name, flock number, and more. The little girl sat on the floor and doodled and sang, and the mother sat in a chair and ran her daughter’s hair through her fingers. The mother was Kasy’s age and her throat was unblemished: a small woman with a flat mouth and luscious seal-brown hair. She wore jeans and a nice pine-colored polyester blouse too thin for the weather, and a ratty parka too heavy for the weather. The little girl wore pink pajamas with purple cuffs.

No Ascension robe, Kasy thought. And she brought her daughter to the procedure. Her flock had pecked at her mother for doing the same, but that’s how it was when circumstances demanded it. Since joining the flock, Kasy had mucked stables, baked bread, scrubbed floors, beat rugs, wrung laundry, and raised chickens from egg to oven. She had calluses so thick she could grip a smoking skillet without potholders. When her mom had the procedure and then a fever from it, Kasy swabbed the surgical wound, lifted soup to her lips, wiped the shit, piss, pus, blood and did her mom’s work too. She watched the little ones and taught the older ones. Soon she and her mother were indispensable to the flock. She let herself feel a little pride in her hard work, her ambition, as a treat. That’s how it should be. Kasy joined the rest of the women in giving the new woman an approving, encouraging smile. God loves initiative.

The digital sign over the door blinked. Selena Cruz.

The girl and her mother rose. The leftover women watched her ponytail switch her shoulders with a kind of hungry softness as she went through the door. Kasy’s mother watched the door and her thumb and finger pinched the beads of her rosary. The beads passed through her fingertips and there was no noise behind the door. Kasy’s muscles clenched.

Then, the little girl screamed.

The women shifted, crossed themselves, and signed, “What a pity.” Kasy’s mother touched the scar on her throat. Kasy’s mind frothed. Her body felt galvanized with the screams. Move! Don’t move! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Selena’s cries weakened, as if she had heard. They suddenly cut.

Kasy felt something like a pillar fracture within her. Inside her head was a tinny ringing as if her eardrums had burst and a static feeling. Her heartbeat prayed OGodOGodOGodOGodOGod. Maybe she had misheard. The doctor, surely, wouldn’t have taken her. If he Lifted them high, then what would Kasy’s Ascension mean?

It wasn’t that bad of a trade. You’d swear your faith and loyalty and do the procedure. You and Mom would be taken care of, Kasy thought. But you’re an adult, even if you won’t admit it, even if the Shepherd won’t acknowledge it.

Shut up!

Thirty minutes later, the girl, Selena, and her mother emerged wet-eyed. Selena swallowed, winced. Tears slid down her cheeks. The bandage around her throat had a dot of red where, if she were a boy, her Adam’s apple would be. She held a small blue satin box like a ring box, which her mom took from her and put in her purse.

They really did that to her, Kasy thought with an eerie serenity. Her spirit detached and bobbed to a level above her head. It took in the scene of the women and the girl who they had made one of them. The mother hoisted her daughter to her hip and slung her purse over her shoulder. She made no eye contact with anyone, not even the receptionist, as she signed out.

As she passed, making for the door, Kasy leaned over and pinched the woman’s sleeve. The woman started. Kasy whispered, “Soft serve.”

The other women rustled. Kasy didn’t have to see their hands flurrying to know what they were saying. Kasy kept her eyes locked on the mother’s startled eyes, as if willing the memory to transfer telepathically. Icy-sweet numbing swirl from the gas station. The hand signs for soft serve had not been invented yet, and Kasy could not wait for them to be, nor did she expect the woman would know them. She was just guessing, but she didn’t think the woman would know why soft serve mattered. The woman at the gas station would tell them. Kasy would not let the woman and Selena go, unless they understood everything she couldn’t say.

The woman pulled out of Kasy’s pinch and exited the clinic doors. Moments passed where Kasy wondered if she had said enough. Then, her mother slapped her. Its sound seemed to jolt Kasy awake. She had broken the six months of silence before Ascension. Her mom breathed in rapid puffs, and her eyes were ringed with white. She raised her hand again.

The receptionist hit the silver bell and rose behind the glass partition.

“Who spoke?” she signed. “Raise your hand.”

Kasy would have to start the six months of silence over—if the Shepherd would forgive her and allow her another chance. “The devil is unusually loud within you,” he had said after the previous failure. She had screamed for help when a young boy had fallen from a tree and seized on the roots, bleeding from the ears. She had suggested that maybe this time it was a guardian angel. But her Shepherd’s eyes were cold and remote, and his sermon the following day was about gratitude and duty and the sinners begging outside the walls, and he referenced Corinthians 14:34.

Yet God abhorred a liar. She slowly lifted her hand.

As she did, so did everyone else in the waiting room. Her spirit made a great shout.

The receptionist looked round, astonished. Then, with jerky angry hand motions, “I’ll end the appointments for today and send you home to your Shepherds.”

Hands stayed in the air. Eyebrows slanted and furrowed. Who needed hand signs when veins throbbing in their temples could speak more eloquently?

The receptionist threw up her hands and sat back in a huff. Hands lowered back into laps. Kasy’s heart felt too swollen with neighborly love and relief. But she still thought about Selena. She shouldn’t have Ascended at all. Why hadn’t the doctor stopped them?

She soothed herself. It’s done now. They might be able to join a flock based on the strength of their offering. It is what it is.

Immediately Kasy hated herself for that thought, because she always hated it when her mother said it to her. She had hated it after they had to leave their tornado-smashed home in Verdigris for Tulsa. She had hated it after the city cut disaster funding after they got there. She had hated it when her mom got the procedure to get them accepted into the flock. She had forgotten that she had hated it. If Kasy had been a boulder, it is what it is was the river that would wear her down to a pebble before carrying her with it.

The sign over the door blinked: Casy Hernandez.

Kasy was used to her name being misspelled. Today it felt like evidence for the devil. Her mother crossed herself as Kasy stood and went through the door.

The room was small, low-ceilinged, cave-like. There was a chair like the one at the dentist’s, and a young nurse on her knees, wiping the floor. The nurse held up one finger—the first and oldest and most recognizable hand sign—and continued wiping up the fine spray of blood. Her eyes, too, were wet.

Kasy plucked a sanitizer wipe from the tube by the door and knelt. The nurse waved, shaking her head, but Kasy shook her head back. She threw the pinked sanitizer wipe into the trash and beat the dust off her robe. I’m already here. It’s too late.

She eased onto the chair. There was a ghost of warmth on the vinyl. On the counter, the scalpels, slicked with girl-blood. Suddenly she hated that nurse.

She asked aloud, “You’re going to get some fresh scalpels for me, right?”

The nurse blanched. Kasy insisted, “You do use clean ones, right? God may have invented germs, but he also invented soap.” Her voice had gone hoarse after not being used for six months. It was a voice she wouldn’t want to hear in the dark. But how that nurse nodded! Her hand spidered towards the doorknob.

Childishly, Kasy thought, You’d tell on me? But the Shepherd would make her do more than stand with her nose in the corner. She should have been dismissed when she first spoke. Instead the nurse gathered the dirty scalpels and set a tray of fresh ones on the doctor’s cart. She was red.

Kasy lifted her arm to sign, sorry. But when she peeled her arm off the armrest, there was a scent of blueberry. Her forearm was smudged with blue ink.

“For God’s sake.” Her disgust was made dreadful by her voice. The nurse snatched another sanitizer wipe and offered it to Kasy. Her eyes pleaded. Kasy snatched the wipe and rubbed down her forearm and the chair arms. A lemon smell replaced the blueberry. The nurse slipped out of the room.

Kasy imagined the mother adjusting her daughter on her hip outside and walking towards the gas station. It didn’t sell gas anymore—no point—but sold caloric encouragement. Greasy pizza slices, hot dogs, plump, sweaty, brown, rolling alongside dry yellow taquitos. Donuts with translucent glaze. Coffee—not the real stuff, not anymore—but the soft serve was real, cool and soothing and soft. A sweetness sliding down tongue to belly. For whatever change could fit in a child-sized pocket, you could get a spoonful of strawberry or cherry preserves from the lady who ran the register. If you hung around tonguing the swirl’s point sideways, she’d tell you about how ice cream used to come in a thousand flavors, but the most common flavor came from a rare orchid far away. How ice cream now comes plain, and they had to make their own flavors. It was most unbelievable that ice cream could be better, Kasy had thought then. Her mom had last taken her when she was ten, before she had gotten her own procedure.

But that’s enough fairytales, said the gas station woman. I’ll introduce you to a good Shepherd. Just come back here when you Ascend. It’s tradition. Ice cream makes everything better.

The nurse returned with a doctor in his dirty white coat.

He said warmly, “Kasy Hernandez, sorry for taking so long. Lean back, lamb. I can’t get at your throat if you’re sitting up.”

Her mind howled the same words her aunt had howled about joining a flock, This isn’t right, nobody sane would make you to do this—

What else can I do? Kasy prayed. She imagined prayer rays beaming out of her body even as she leaned back in the chair. What can I do now? She wanted her mom to hold her hand—no, she wanted her aunt to take her hand and pull her out of the chair and run. She wanted to run back in time and pull the little girl out of the chair, and her mother, and every woman who had lurched away with their voices in satin boxes, and all the women waiting with their ears turned towards the door.

The scalpel had just penetrated her throat when she let out a monstrous scream.

Let us call this piece an interruption.

My plan was to write a series of posts detailing our criteria for selecting stories for State of Matter. I would start, as I did in the last post, with the movie Ratatouille and the problematics of time when we encounter something ‘novel’. To understand something as new, I would argue, is to understand it as a rupture in time. The next entry would be inspired by Auster’s New York Trilogy, and the motif of the detective that he builds, and how a character becomes the sinkhole for everybody else. However, between these pieces, a rift has opened up. A new temporality, it would seem, has revealed itself.

Last month, Tahatto put up its play, Love in the Cholera of Time. A review, it would seem, has demanded itself.

The play has aged past its initial runs. Last year, when Jagriti Theatre put it up, a friend brought it to my attention. He told me that it combined many of my interests: time, Marquez, meta-textuality, the experience of non-linearity, the theatre, the incorporation of an audience in what is supposed to be a contained act, the body and its orientations and its movement — themes that escape conventional discussion. Since that day, and until this kind-of-review is published, I am already a few beats of the cosmos too late. Tahatto has organised this play multiple times in different cities, most recently in Delhi.

Perhaps the review would be better suited if I could point to an upcoming show and link to it. That does not seem possible right now. Then again, I may defer to the celebration of non-linearity within the play, hoping that not all of the past is lost, and not all of a future is exhausted in anticipation.

This delay gives my kind-of-review some breathing space. Other places (see reviews in The Hindu and Indulge Express, for instance) have already spoken about the motivation, preparation and organisation of the play. But because I am late, I can skimp on the summaries, the temptations, the causal linkages from page to stage. This review might be stationed outside of chronological time. Let us call this a transverse time, and remember Bachelard again,¹ who tells us that the present instant, the now, sits resolutely outside of the continuous flow of time. He says that in this now, we may experience a multiplicity of experience, without necessarily arguing what comes before and what comes after. We may ask then what it would be to review a work of art, a play, a composition, a story, standing not before nor after the piece, but by its side, or vertically above it. What must we speak about to speak about the play?

Time? Cholera? Or just plain old love? Perhaps, like Bachelard proposes, I need to be inspired by a poetic image, allow its reverberations to unsettle me.

Let me start with time. Let me also be pedantic for a moment, revisiting that century-old scientific breakthrough that is Einsteinian relativity. Einstein, invoked in the descriptions of the play, proposes that space-time does not offer us a certain Archimedean position. In his careful descriptions, clocks and rulers lose their solidity: they stretch and skew, they enmesh what they measure (time, space, time-space!) and they demand always a trace of where they measure it from.² In doing so, Einstein upsets our tripartite categories of time. No longer is time merely a matter of the past behind the present behind the future! A new category appears: the “absolute elsewhere”, that livezone of other happenings from which light cannot make it to the ‘here-now’, or to where light from here-now may not reach. This may just be the transverse zone (of escape? of desire? of political possibility?) in which the past reaches out to a different life, from which the future will have eventually become possible.³

It seems that in these places, we come unstuck in time. Like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse V, who found himself loosened in the temporal flow, the characters of the play find themselves pushed outside the here-now, outside enclosures (of marriage, of prison), to meet in an other-zone. Where? When? In a time neither His nor Hers, not in-between either. The play opens with a juxtaposition outside prosaic time: a playful sort of beginning that has no ‘bearing’ upon a strict sequence of events the way conventional narratives do. What if the moon was made of cheese? Not a what-if that burgeons into a science fiction narrative, but a what-if unburdened from its own future. The question leads nowhere important, but is revived again and again, gaining currency in its recurrence. The first rule of the other-zone is that there is no rigorous plot: there is just idyllic romance around the moon, which splits, like Debussy’s reprises, throughout the play.

If I were to point to the strength of the play, I would point to this… this playfulness of its scenes. A play as play, whoever could think of that! Notice at the same time the sheer fluidity with which it indulges its audience in the time-settings of its characters. Almost to the extent where you feel that it is your anticipation that makes characters meet and speak on stage. To an extent where the audience intimately perceives multiple modalities at work: a visuality among the cast interacting with the stage, the rising music, that artistic sensibility of time that we insipidly call pacing…

But the critic is condemned to seriously engage even with playfulness! To speak a little about the stylistics and the themes of the production.

We folks begin as beings with brute speech; art, perhaps, is our development into nuanced language. When we first come across Einsteinian time, we say, “Time is non-linear,” to sketch its broad contours. Linearity is a Cartesian gridline; it is to act per rules, to realise freedom with reference to an overarching rulebook. Chronology is linearity in time. The play’s the thing that substantiates non-linearity: in marking time this way or that, it points us toward the dramatic curve that our own lives occupy. Is time all-knowing? Is all already known? Can there be no surprise from this moment to the next?

The distance between a broad non-chronology — the time guardians would explain to you as the play begins — and how the act will be chronologically structured for ‘you’, the viewer, is what sets up its tension. There are, on one hand, the themes of destiny and certainty. The Nation is under construction; we know that it will become independent; that is history. Our own world will see the proliferation of dehumanisation, such as the business of deleting old social media accounts; we may predict this much future; that is sociopolitics.⁴ The power of a thousand Black Holes will be unleashed; the device that the actor hands the audience member must be of some import; that is good storytelling! On the other hand, there is desire, there is the possibility of chance. Will He and She meet again? Might the Moon be really made of cheese?⁵ The play shores up and lets go of this tension with metric certainty, playing upon an irony with the audience. And this too is its way of drawing the audience into its own telling. Here, when He reveals a fact that is Her proper future, the audience is in on the joke — we laugh at the characters. There, when the audience is treated as mere ‘humans’, limited in the way they understand time, the audience is the butt of the joke — we laugh at ourselves. And then, when someone asks out loud, “What sort of a question is And then?” we are not sure what to laugh at, because so central is this question to the telling of a story that the joke seems targeted to every one of us, the actors, the audience, the fictional characters, the multiple allusions, perhaps even the city itself.

Enough about time; there is also cholera and love, the signals for passion and romance, evoking that strange combination that is Marquez’ story.⁶

Marquez gives us Him and Her, Florentino and Fermina, whose soft names constantly interrupt the world of the novel. Cholera, water-borne, a disease from the very thing that must sustain you, is perhaps in this regard much like love. And I have “confused cholera with love, of course” like Marquez’ character. The afflicted man in either case displays all the signs of a lack of health, a paleness that persists somewhere deeper than his bones. His passions run wild; he retches his insides out. Bleeding from every orifice, he realises that he is a dead man walking, talking, acting out a part not his own. Love, the choleric kind, erupts. Perhaps, love in the cholera of time should erupt too. That evocation is missed in the play; that kind of love impinges itself as an absence in the play. That feels like a loss.

What is this temporal syndrome, this ‘cholera-of-time’? In his landmark work on perception, Merleau-Ponty says that time-instants are telegraphed, embodied totalities⁷ — you find yourself a Russian doll, stacked as moment within moment within moment, each moment a full life — and that moments do not die, but remain open like a wound. Love, the choleric kind, then, persists multiply and totally because you encounter it along many worldlines, chaotically and surprisingly arranged. A full life here, and here again, and then, and then again. What better way to tell a love story then than to tell it as a series of images that stand relatively alone, among which you see not at first a narrative but a reverberation, where scenes do not follow or precede other scenes but contract them, like one contracts an illness. What is written now exists autonomously in the past: a letter, a rose find themselves travelling in time, characters have memories of the future and anticipate the past. And just like that, life is brought up short by time.

Surely the operational concept is that of movement. Surely, disturbing the nature of time must cause paradoxes of motion. If love may be encountered along all possible worldlines, if I may enter it faltering and stumbling, open doors to it and briskly walk in, be whisked away into the past or slip, violating some physical laws, into the absolute elsewhere of my own existence, how may I go about making such a huge range of motion possible? The characters must mount a difficulty with an obvious answer, that which in Boulder,⁸ Baltasar explains with surprising clarity, “But all this tunneling has opened rifts through which the captive parts of me have started to emerge.” Against the inner borders of the tripartite stage-set, the characters must thrust and recede and tunnel: at the right time, after all, these borders have to be transgressed for Him and Her to appear elsewhere. It feels in such moments of transgression that the extended gag to open a door for a performance appraisal, or the conversation with a parent across prison walls — that these are conditioning possibilities; that these mundane motions make the extraordinary flights of the characters possible. The play hints at these minor confinements, these minor escapes, until it is time for a major escape, a major stumbling into a transverse world with another. If there is a concern, it is only that these possibilities skew more toward Him than Her, that He has been apportioned more of the conditions of motion than She.

But let me not nitpick here. Let me insist that in the play, love possesses some allure. Love’s preferred symbol, like in poetry, is the moon. Here, the play becomes indulgent, especially with Debussy’s Clair de Lune. The moon, like in Calvino’s cosmology, becomes desire and its fulfilment, fantasy and its reason, the promise of and pining for love. The moon, we are told, holds hands with the earth the way lovers must hold hands. Scientifically, it is of interest that the moon is a poor companion: it is drifting away from us a little each day. Scientifically, it is also of interest that the earth and the moon do not hold hands; their motion is, perhaps, best described as falling past each other at immense speeds, a constant choreography of sidestepping the other. There is thus in this romance, some wish-fulfilment, some pure fiction. Surely, something in this romance might interrupt the celestial motion of the planets. Surely, something in this romance might even stop time.

Of course, that happens… In perhaps one of the more explosive displays of telling a story, time slows. The actors slowly lunge at one another, falling past one another with insufficient speed. It is the acting out of slow motion, an effect which might be borrowed partly from slapstick, partly from old Bollywood, partly from the history of movement on stage. It is cathartic (look, the device that had been foreshadowed has been used!), comical (look they are jumping and tumbling!), intense (where is this sequence going?). Almost everybody who walked out of the theatre with me marvelled at this sequence. Weeks later, they could remember the visuals from the scene. “Like a movie,” said someone, offering that paradigmatic comparison that we often make for excellence in visuality. “Like time actually slowed,” said someone else, as if time actually hadn’t! My favourite comparison comes from a friend who has the disappointing habit of stating the answer obviously embedded in the question. “Like in love,” they said.

Yes, like that.

Notes

1. Bachelard, G. (2013). Intuition of the instant (E. Rizo-Patron, Trans.). Northwestern University Press. (Original work published 1932).
2. Ismael, J. (2021). Time: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. See sections on Einstein for a quick summary. Most of the reproduction here is succinctly presented in Ismael’s work.
3. It is tempting here to cite so much of Bergson, whose historic debate with Einstein spells out much of twentieth-century tussles between the great disciplines. See for instance:
   Bergson, H, (1930). The possible and the real (DVL, Trans.). Bergsonian.org. https://bergsonian.org/the-possible-and-the-real/
4. Here, of course, a host of texts come to mind. For a relatively accessible and recent TV series, see Upload.
   Daniels, G. (2020). Upload. Amazon Prime Video.
5. Of course, one does not talk about the Moon this way and forget Calvino’s Cosmicomics, and the many degrees of desire and liminality that it suggests.
   Calvino, I. (2010). The complete cosmicomics. Penguin. (Originally published 1965).
6. Márquez, G. G. (2003). Love in the time of cholera (E. Grossman, Trans.). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. (Originally published 1985).
7. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phenomenology of perception. Routledge.
8. Baltasar, E. (2022). Boulder (J. Sanches, Trans.). And Other Stories.

The place is hideous, though. Deep and unlit and choking.

How have I seen it, you ask? I woke up there once. Take a look at me, is it that hard to accept?

It was Angela who taught me about sleeping in the ocean, and that is how it all got started.

We were on a friends’ trip to Cancún. My lover was there, but we’re not together anymore. We split up before the year was over, you’ll see. Angela was married to Kyle at the time. We referred to them, jointly, as AK, like the gun. But they’ve split, too. We’ll get to all that.

Vicki flew in a day after we did and threw a beer bottle at Jackson her first night. The rest of the trip she guessed her punishment was coming, she feared a storm would level the place, blow us all out to sea. A typhoon for a Blue Moon, that was our limerick about it.

Rick and William were there, drunk and sunburned as ever.

As for the saltwater trick, Angela brought it up late on Friday. Two a.m., maybe two-thirty.

We were talking about insomnia, about what we had tried, how long we had suffered. Did we secretly enjoy the sleepless nights, that sort of chat. When Vicki walked up Angela said, ‘What have you two heard about being a wave?’

Vicki and I hurried to say it first: ‘Being a wave?’

‘I haven’t tried it and I don’t believe any of it. But what they say is if you float in warm ocean water, if you really sleep—’

Vicki was nervous already, ‘So you’re not talking about bringing it back to our tub? Like, with buckets?’

‘No, you walk out to the beach. You take off your clothes and then keep walking.’

‘No way. And how can you say some trick for sleeping is to just fall asleep? What am I missing?’

‘I said I don’t think it will do anything. But what I hear is you float on your back, it just sort of—’

I cut in: ‘One of you should try floating on your face.’

Vicki glared hard: ‘Don’t, Wayne.’ She was one of those, just talking about something made her panic.

Angela returned my smile, and I responded, ‘What? She said she doesn’t think it’ll work. Maybe it will if you try it face-down.’

‘I’m serious. Don’t.’

We each checked our phones and read from various accounts: blogs, Medium, Tumblr. Most of the pages were a kind of religious counterculture. One of them read: Your left hand and foot will drift out toward the east, while your right hand and foot will stay in the west. Make sure it’s cloudy or the starlight will drill straight through you. You are immaterial. If a boat shines its light on you, you’re finished.

In the end—if we pulled it off, if we turned to brine—we would be pale smears across dark water. We would have the best night’s sleep in our lives. When our eyes filled with sunrise we would collect ourselves, become whole again. Flesh first, then bone, the opposite of what you would think.

You can still find your things. Despite that it seems you floated off, you will not have gone far.

‘What about the part about burning to death from starlight?’ It was Vicki who mentioned it, though I was going to. What I asked was, ‘And what about the part about drowning?’

‘I’ve said over and over I don’t believe it.’

Vicki was out. And by now it was almost four: too late for Angela and me to try, either. We agreed to wander off some time the next night, the last night of our trip, so long as it was cloudy. After the bar closed, maybe.

No one suggested we bring Kyle or my lover, Gwendolyn.

Did I tell you? Angela let me kiss her the next afternoon. Our mouths tasted of rum and when we were finished she grinned around her straw. Her dimples cut deep and gorgeous. Cut to the bone, for all I knew.

She had huge eyes, and I let myself believe she chose that top with me in mind.

At midnight, when Vicki repeated that she was too frightened to try, I followed Angela past the breakers. We did not sleep much; we mostly kissed and touched in the shallows. At times her laughter was cut short with a wave. You wondered if your unseen, liquid fingers had skimmed into her mouth. I can’t tell you how erotic that was.

We must have nodded off, though, because at once it was daybreak and my torso felt unspooled. Our limbs were dissolved together the same as two flavors of milk, which were adrift on a third, vast, salty flavor.

Warmth from the gathering dawn woke us in time to put our bodies together.

Angela and I were friends already but we kept in better contact now. We sent each other texts which we erased at every step. There was something ghostly about that, as if Kyle had discovered us and the AK went off twice and we kept on talking.

You’ll remember the Iron Wolf spill near Houston; that was the second Tuesday in August. By Sunday the protests had reached the hundreds of thousands, at Exxon’s offices in Irving and Spring, and all along the Texas coast.

Angela texted me the following Wednesday:

you watching this iron wolf thing?

I wrote back:

Ofc

the protestors are talking about hiring boats

give you any ideas?

Not really

it gives me an idea

I did my best to dissuade her. Yet at the same time I wanted her to do it, I wanted to go. We could spend the days on board, making love in time with the ocean, at whatever pace it set. At night we could sleep within the spill, spreading out with the petroleum until we were acres. Square kilometers. They would measure our bodies in nation-sizes.

You know what they do to oil spills right? 

ik they burn them, that’s got nothing to do with us

You told me starlight alone would put holes thru us

yes, and those stars will see us from space, wyatt

from actual space

*wayne sorry baby

She sent an email to the group, then privately asked Vicki to agree, or appear to. She asked that of a few others, too, promising they could back out at any time. It had to look as though we would all make the drive to Galveston, and commission several boats.

Why Vicki? Because she had worked it out already. ‘She was there the first night, in Cancún. A woman knows.’ This by itself was reason for concern. If Vicki knew, everyone knew. But Angela wanted to keep her close.

That night Gwendolyn turned her mouth downward and asked, ‘Did you see this crazy thing from Angela? She has lost her mind.’

‘About a protest? Why’s it crazy?’

‘She’s getting a bunch of us in a boat and we’re heading out there with the marines and the USDA and the spill? Christ, no. I’m not going and you’re not either.’

It wasn’t the marines, it was the Coast Guard. And it wasn’t the USDA, it was the Environmental Protection Agency. But I had other things to correct her on:

‘Actually I am going.’

‘The hell you are.’

‘We’ll be cleaning this up for ten years. It might never get clean.’

‘You sound a lot like her right now.’

‘I mean, you and I got the same email.’

‘What she’s not getting is that Exxon will be sued dead, and they’ll lose every lease in the U.S. There’s a way to handle this without sailing to the middle of some—, some—.’ She stammered a bit, then finished with: ‘Some grease fire.’

We argued until something happened to her eyes. I knew the conversation was going to shift. No: I knew we would shift.

‘I get it, Wayne. She looks great in a wrap. But honey, she’s not going to fuck you no matter how late y’all stay out.’

Like I said, if Vicki knew, word was all around. Gwendolyn was crying in the end. I felt awful and twice asked her to come along.

With such short notice we couldn’t find an excursion boat, though a fishing guide agreed to take us if we paid for a full group. It was twelve hundred for the night and he did not once blink at the terms: leaving at dusk, dropping anchor at the Iron Wolf site. No need for bait. No need for tackle.

He was in his mid-thirties with lean, sun-wrecked legs and a large silver crucifix. He had named his boat Seven Eves; he made constant jokes about soyboys and bailouts and seaside elites. I liked him despite it all, and did not mention that the Texas coast was still a coast. I did not ask who subsidized his rent when his best source of income was parked in a marina.

It did not occur to me that we would drip crude on his deck until we arrived. He was nonchalant: ‘Don’t worry, money washes everything out.’ He told us to go swim, that he’d be fishing with Bill Clinton’s old partners while we did. It was one of those punchlines, you laugh because you don’t get it at first.

Overnight we swam and took the horizons for ourselves. There was a black chasm above us and one just underneath, and there were no ships, no sounds of ships. The water was almost body temperature and I mentioned sensory deprivation a few times, though Angela kept shushing me. The idea of a tank the size and shape of creation made her anxious.

But she did not comment that Seven Eves was drifting further and further off. A hundred yards or more. A speck we’d mostly forgotten.

There was no coast guard, no EPA or activists. No seagulls. No fish, that we could tell. And so much for my idea of photographing other protestors, of sending the image home to Gwendolyn as proof of something.

We had a deep, perfect rest, and when we woke our hands were miles from us. You had to plan ahead if you wanted to put fingers through her hair.

On the drive back I told Angela her mascara was running. Her only response was that she wasn’t wearing any.

If she was concerned, she did not let on. I think she worried less about her body composition and more about my car interior, at least for a while.

We bought towels at a hardware store in Conroe and began wiping dark, thick fluid from our eyes. I thought she looked sexy with black lips but she was intent on keeping them clean. She stayed at it with the rags, but the fluid kept coming forth. It was starting to drench our clothes. She unclasped her necklace, which her grandmother had left her.

‘Don’t let me forget this.’

She put it in the glove compartment with my unpaid utility bills. I tried making a blackmail joke but she didn’t get it. And I thought it was best not to explain.

She asked, ‘How would we even google this?’

‘You mean, this?’ I held up a palm, which was the same shade as coal.

‘Jesus, look at you.’

‘I keep trying not to.’

‘And it’s not like I could just: hey Siri, what’s this black Crisco coming out of my pores?’

Her phone answered: ‘I found this on the web—’ and we cracked up. It was probably the last time laughing for both of us. For good.

‘You don’t suppose?’

‘Suppose what?’

Angela smelled one of the rags and made a face. I knew exactly what she was going to say: ‘It smells like motor oil.’

‘Mine does? Or yours does?’

‘We both do.’

She tried a few searches but was quick to give up.

‘Your phone isn’t working?’

‘I’m not working.’

I nodded: my hands were slick on the steering wheel, and when we stopped at the Valero in Madisonville I could barely open the car door or get my wallet out. I could barely put the transmission in park. We tried playing it down. We said we’d pour ourselves into the tank to get better fuel economy.

But dark humor didn’t work. Everything was already dark, including the taste in our mouths and the heavy sensation of bile in our guts. It was dark crude oil that came forth when we sweat. Came from our tear ducts when we cried.

If Gwendolyn and Kyle had not figured it out yet they would now: the outpouring of 10W-30 was some new sexually-transmitted disease we had concocted and passed to each other, without once making love.

Amen, if we were going to be blamed for it we might as well do it: we stopped in Corsicana for the night (it was a few minutes past three). We had no luggage and no way to answer our calls, which kept coming. Our thumbs slid ineffectively across our phone screens, we could neither answer them nor dial out.

For all we knew we would die in that room, unable to open the door or knock on it, or use the hotel phone.

Our clothes came off in slick, easy gestures. We put towels on the sheets but there was no use. The bed was void-stained in no time.

Angela’s breath tasted of catalytic converter but I did not give a damn. I breathed her in and drank her. I gently bit her. She was three states of matter, then: gas, hydrocarbon, petra.

She spoke more than I would have thought. She was profane. She was propane, too. You found yourself thinking of hell almost constantly.

Vicki and Gwendolyn and Angela stayed in touch with William. With Rick. Whether they were deliberately shutting me out or it only happened like that, who could say?

Jackson was the last to stop taking my calls, which strangers had to place, after I handed them my phone and told them my passcode. And I’d be damned if Kyle and I would start over together. (I was damned as it was.)

I lost my job. No matter. Living alone wouldn’t work out, besides. What was I going to do with the front lock, the fridge? The coin-operated laundry?

What was I going to do with the coins?

I mostly wandered and dug through garbage for food. Don’t act disgusted, none of the trash I ate was as foul as my sulfuric breath.

I hitchhiked to Nebraska, only walking at night, fully covered up. I took rides from men in pickups, anyone who had room for me in his truck bed. My jacket was sodden with sweat-oil, and when I dozed, light petroleum came from the sides of my mouth. It looked like the strangest of mustaches.

I waited during the day, usually sleeping under a bridge or in a highway barn. On a map, my route was almost straight up. North star north. It felt like a pilgrimage.

I haven’t told you what my plan was yet. Only that it was magnificent.

When the miles and poor sleep overcame me, I checked into an emergency room in Wichita. I was certain my organs had turned to crude, yet every scan was inconclusive, starting with the ultrasound of my bladder.

Never mind the results, I was pissing motor oil and had done it in front of the nurses.

‘There is this life hack for insomniacs. You sleep in the ocean and it turns you into ocean. In the morning, if the water is clean, you turn all the way back. But what if the water wasn’t clean?’

The checkout paperwork read likely organ abscess, but I drenched it black by touching it. I was the perfect censor, I could redact any document.

The desk attendant said, ‘Did you talk to them about that?’

‘I tried. They won’t hear it.’

‘That’s not normal, sir.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Let me get someone.’ It was the second time she had offered to.

If I was bent on extermination, I could have just stripped from my clothes and stood oil-side out in the sun. But it was more than that: I wanted a ride. I wanted to be stretched into a thousand-mile shape, to sleep and dream. To stay fully enclosed in metal for a hundred hours.

Suicidal? No. Though whether I woke up again was secondary.

I meant to water-slide the oil pipeline from Steele City to Port Arthur, which was fewer than a hundred miles from Galveston, where this began.

In Corsicana she asked me, ‘How much of your life do you think you’ll just let go?’

I stirred. She was stirring, too. Her question roused both of us. I had fallen asleep to her soft hands, her strong forearms on my chest and arms. My abdomen.

It was a deep-tissue oil massage, in a way. But the deep tissue and the oil were one and the same.

‘What’s that?’

She said, ‘The things you want to do. I don’t know, volunteer at the SPCA. See your kids get married. How much of that do you think you’ll have to let go now?’

‘This isn’t going to kill us. Angela.’

She grinned. I could hear her oils respond to the movement in her face. ‘You forgot my name for a second.’

I had, though I’d never admit it. She reached over and touched my diesel throat.

‘It’s alright. It happens with affairs. Happens all the time.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘It’s the whole point, actually. Affairs are soul-to-soul. They go right past our names and go straight to the essence.’

I did not consider the distribution hub in Oklahoma, or the refinery in Kansas. So I must have been collected, left in a barrel, hauled, unloaded and poured out, all while dreaming of Angela’s coconut rum and warm lips. Her turbulent mind.

I woke up in that underground Louisiana cave with no chance of sleep anymore. My insomnia was crueler than ever, likely because there was no way to drown or swim or set fire to the place, and no clear way out.

The mind has to wander before it can sleep, and there was no room for wandering here.

Had I not remembered AP Organic Chemistry, what I might have done was name the place Chevronia and install myself as its eternal president. Serve as its listless tyrant. I never let myself mention hell. I did my best not to think of this in religious terms.

Instead I tried reciting the principles of surface tension. Tried listing the conditions which allowed liquids to oppose great forces, including the force of gravity. I tried repeating the adhesion coefficients between petroleum and various surfaces, namely mineral surfaces. I tried some examples of Young’s equation, and used trigonometry to determine contact angles.

The theory escaped me, yet in applied terms I found my fluid hands reaching up, my limbs pushing into tiny apertures in the cave walls. I found myself spreading, breaking apart, splitting into a network of arteries and veins. Of capillaries, really, because that was my only way out, was it not? Capillary action?

Had we conversed at the time, you would have heard one hundred near-silent voices. Had I any willpower at all, it would have been the sum of one hundred separate wills.

I cannot describe what my form was when I reached grade level. Better said: what my forms were. And thank god it was pre-dawn or I would have combusted into a wildfire. One that lived up to its name: vast and truly wild.

Angela, it seemed, did not mind holding out until dawn.

She was sublime. Tall and bulky. She had no face, at least not one the news helicopters could capture on film. Those choppers were a safe distance off, forty feet at least.

While my escape had carved me into scores of nightmarish cubist works, some other force had accumulated her into a single crude oil beast, eight feet in height, with the strength of a rhino.

She was in flames. Yet the way she strode through downtown Fort Worth, you could tell she had no pain at all.

“Circus Sized Man” Sets Himself Ablaze in Texas, Reason for Protest Unclear, read the chyron.

Angela promised me we would turn to waves. Ocean waves, radio waves, I guess it didn’t matter. She had lived up to the oath, good for her.

I had to turn away from the screen, one of a few dozen in that electronics store downtown (I was in New Orleans by then). If I saw her fall to one hand, or saw any anguish in her gait, I would have splashed right there where I stood. I would have been a rorschach pattern on the sidewalk. Not that I wasn’t a rorschach already.What was the last thing she said to me, after we checked out of the Corsicana hotel? It was worth it, baby. Not one of them can touch us now.

She’s clear, crisp in my mind’s eye. Her eyes shine. Her hair falls loose. She’s achingly beautiful.

“It’s your turn, Daddy. Stop texting.” Sara is glaring at me from across the table, cross.

“Just a sec, sweetie. It’s Josh about a job for me.”

It was more than a second. I had priorities. I was stupid.

“Daddy?” She’s exasperated. She’s adorable. She’s…

For the first time in a long time, I can see Sara’s face, too. Clear, bright. Her eyes too big to be real, her hair like her mom’s, a tiny sharp chin. Little teeth in her smile.

“Alright, alright!” I free up a hand and reach for the dice…

The dice hit the board. My phone dings. It’s Yours! “Fuck YES!”

Sara stares at me. “Why are you cursing?”

Amina stares too, but she’s amused. “Good news?”

“You rolled a seven.” Sara is back at the board, counting spaces with her fingers. She squeals when her finger touches the seventh space. “Park Place, Daddy! You owe me eleven hundred dollars.”

It was adorable the way she said it.

“Eleven hundred dollars.” It doesn’t sound the same when I say it. I can’t match her pitch, her inflection, her enthusiasm, her glee. I can’t be her.

I don’t have much. I’ve been playing with half my brain, too focused on… “I’m gonna be in a big movie, Little Winner. A big scary movie…” I fork over the remainder of my money. “I’m gonna play the killer!”

“You’re not a killer, dad. You’re too nice.”

“Am I?” I reach into the take-out box next to Amina and pull out the last shrimp bao.

“That’s mine.” Amina reaches for it.

“Too bad.” I put it in my mouth. “I’m a killer, babe.”

Pulled over in front of Hotel Figueroa, lost in time.

Sara is on the couch, looking down at me. She’s wearing a nightgown? Did she own a nightgown? I can’t remember. We’re running lines for a stupid commercial.

“What’s in your wallet?”

“Sillier, Daddy.” She’s laughing.

I can’t make out her face, a mess of smiles, eyes, and skin descends into a panic-inducing swirl. She’s gone. It’s gone.

Sillier, Daddy.

The memory slips entirely. I’m alone in the car. Smashmouth on the radio, Rockstar. I turn it off, hit my vape, but it doesn’t settle me.

The App dings. Its pink splash brightens the inside of my Kia. “Jayson” needs a ride. Black. Smiling guy. Photo on a beach. “Ugh.” Beach photo people never tip. Lower my window to vent the vape-smoke but take one more hit to get me through the ride. The city mellows. The brake-light sea up Figueroa from the arena is fine now. It’ll take me eight minutes to go three thousand feet to The Bloc where Jayson is waiting. I give it a moment, maybe get reassigned something in the other direction. Nope. Okay.

Ugh. No. I know him. He’s an asshole. Arrogant prick.

“Danny?” Jayson recognizes me, changes course and gets in the front seat. “I thought it might be you from your pic, but damn, man!” He jams his hand across the center console. His smile threatens to envelop me. I take his hand, dreading the bro-hug that’s going to follow. “How you been?”

“Alright, I guess.” ‘Jayson is Jayson Means. Years since I’ve seen him in person. Twenty maybe? But recently he’s everywhere on TV. Movies. “Not like you, man.” Fuck him. He’s king right now. Everywhere.

“Oooh…” he leans back in the seat, throws his hands behind the headrest and clasps them. He takes up all the space in the car. “I had myself a rough patch, though, believe me.” He turns to me. I pull into traffic. He’s going to Silver Lake. A house up above The Red Lion. The App wants me to take Hill to 2^nd. Makes sense. Twenty-two minutes. Too long. I won’t survive that long in a car with him. “After Master Class, I couldn’t buy a fucking role.” He chuckles. “Not like you, man. You just…” he makes a sound like a rocket, lifts his hand in a slow arc.

“Worked out great.” I haven’t done shit in the last eight years. “I got some stuff on the horizon, though.”

I see him look me up and down. “Good to hear. You deserve it.  I loved Venice Station. Lasted what? Like five years?” He barks a laugh and claps — “Network, too — some fucking residuals, man.”

He’s waiting for a response. I shrug. My last check was for $396.42. I smile for him. “Yeah.”

He sighs. “Tough when that shit ends, though. I had a rough patch myself. Got far down. Burned through all my Master Class money thinking thing’s’d pick up again, you know?”

“Yeah?” I know all too well. After Venice Station, a couple B movies, a few starrings, and then a collection of day-play five-and-unders until… nothing. Stupid fucking business.

Hill Street’s wide open. Time to destination drops by six minutes.

“Danny man,” I can feel him looking at me. “I worked at Gold’s Gym, got my personal trainer license. People used to recognize me, ask me to say my line when they did good.” He chuckles. “Reeee-dicyoulusssss.” Like he said on the show. “Three years ago I was on Cameo for twenty dollars a pop. It was saaaad…”

“Not anymore, though.” He’s everywhere.

“Nah,” he chuckles again. “Not anymore. Things are good.”

The tunnel under Bunker Hill makes things loud. He doesn’t try to talk over it. He was bad. Before. He was a bad actor — no depth, just looks and a schtick. Nothing going on underneath. Embarrassed me to be on the show with him. I was a lot better than him. Fuck this business.

But he’s good now. Impossibly good. “Been watching Manchester Square.”

He looks at me. “Yeah?”

“It’s good.”

“You think?”

“You’re good. Really good.” Brake lights at Glendale and Beverly.

“Thanks, man.” He’s looking me over again, weird expression. Thinking about something. Then: “You want to join me for a beer or two at the Lion? I haven’t talked with someone from the before-times in years, right.” He waits a moment. “I’m buying.” That smile again.

It’s 9:30. I need money but I’m suddenly tired. I shouldn’t. Shouldn’t drink. It’s a chance to talk myself onto Manchester. He’s a lead. He’s got pull. “Yeah.” I smile. “That’d be good.” I tap, “Last Ride.”

The Red Lion is a cop bar. Two of them recognize Jayson when we come in.

“Reeeeee-dickyoulussss!” One of them shouts. The other one laughs.

Another recognizes me. “You used to be Danny Ruiz!”

I hate it here. “Still am.”

They want a photo. “Manchester Square, man.” The older cop confides when the picture is done. “You ain’t fair to the LAPD on that show, you know. Makes it hard to respect you when you don’t respect us, my man.”

Jayson nods gravely. “I’ll bring it up with the writers.”

I’m drinking again. Oh well. It was a short sobriety. The beer loosens me, clears me like weed just doesn’t do. “Can I ask you something?”

Jayson’s looking over my shoulder at the cops. They’re loud, boisterous and menacing. “Yeah, what do you want to know?”

“Back in Master Class,” I hold my beer up to the light, then finish it off. “You were…”

“I was an asshole, man.” He shakes his head. Rueful. “Especially to you. Part of why I wanted to do this.” He leans in. “I owe you an apology.”

“For what?” Could be a hundred things. He treated me like shit.

“I knew how you felt about Katy, man. I knew but I…” he laughs, embarrassed. “You were better than me, man. I was scared of you so I always tried to put you down, keep you there, you know. I was a scared kid and you were better than me.” He shrugs elaborately. “I never felt good about any of it and I’ve wanted to say this to you for years.”

I don’t remember Katy. Who the hell was Katy? “It’s cool man.” The apology is nice. Unexpected. Maybe now he’ll get me on Manchester. “You were good, though.” It’s a lie.

“Bullshit, man. I sucked and you know it.”

“Yeah, no. We all sucked.”  He sucked more than the rest of us. “We were kids.” I tip my empty bottle at him. “But you are now. Good.”

“I am?” He’s being modest.

“Fuck you, Jayson, you know you are.”

He shrugs. Big smile. “Yeah. I got a lot better.”

“How? I mean, it’s like you got depth or something. I freaking believe you on screen and talking with you I just…”

He chuckles, disarming. Charming. “I learned some stuff, some good stuff. Things that changed me. Changed my life.” His smile changes. He leans in. Conspiratorial. “Gave me a leg up.”

Scientologist. It’s clear now. His big secret. His new success. “Wow!”

“What happened to you, then?” He leans back again, eyes the cops for a moment then back at me. “You were good and then you just…”

“This stupid town, man. After Venice Station, I was primed, you know? Ready. Then Josh talks me into doing some stupid trashy slasher shit that’s supposed to be the next Scream and it bombs, then he talks me into Stellar Ship and that bombs and I start to get the reputation, you know?” I’ve told this so many times. It’s sing-songy now, rote. “Josh tells me I’m poison because he made bad calls, then he drops me.” I sigh, wry smile. “Things are looking up, though. I got some things that might pop. Been writing. Some AD gigs, building my portfolio so I can direct TV, you know.” Don’t push too hard. “Love a chance to get back in front, though.”

“I do know.” He laughs, looks up and raises two fingers. I don’t turn around. “That’s awful, man. You deserved better. You were great on Venice Station.”

“I was a surfer-cop who solved beach crime.”

He smiles. “A good surfer-cop, though.”

More beer arrives.

“Let me see about getting you some time on Manchester, Danny — get you straight to producers for something recurring — we got a Latino neighbor coming up. They all love me there. I’ve got real pull.”

“You don’t have to,” but he has to. “That’d be amazing.” Hope. Fuck. Scientology. Oh well. Might be worth it. “Do you need me to go with you to get…” I’m so stupid. “Never mind.”

Jayson’s amused. He’s leering at me. “You think I’m a Scientologist.” He laughs. “I ain’t a fucking Scientologist, Danny.”

“You’re not?” I blurt it. I shouldn’t drink.

“You’re safe.” He lifts his beer. He’s still amused. Thank god.

“Then how’d you get so good? Whose class?”

He chuckles like he’s got a secret. “No class, man.”

“Then how?”

He shakes his head. “Can’t tell you.” He leans in, intimate. Whispers: “Not supposed to tell no-one.”

We drink. Talk about other things. What happened to so-and-so, do you remember how hot so-and-so was, did you actually fuck so-and-so in the costume trailer. Can’t stop thinking about how he got good.

It gets late. The cops filter out. “Don’t think about driving home, buddy,” one of them says to Jayson. “That’d be reeeee-dickyoulusss!” It gets laughs.

Jayson looks at me, then him. “Don’t worry, man, I got a Lyft.”

In the car, Jayson blocks the ignition with his hand. “Maybe we should sit a while.”

“Yeah.” We listen to music, talk more. I’m feeling alright. I’m actually liking Jayson. Still arrogant, but not a dick anymore. “So really, how’d you get so good? What’s the secret?”

He squints at me like he’s remembering something. “You’re married, right?”

“Was.” I don’t feel the whole weight like I normally do. I smile. Feels good to talk about it. “She left me.” He tenses. “Relax, it was years ago. I wasn’t my best self, you know? Things had gone bad. I don’t blame her.”

“That sucks, man.” He looks concerned, sympathetic. “Did you two have any kids?”

Fuck me. “Yeah.” Then: “No.” Then before I can stop it: “Not anymore.” It’s out. This wasn’t the plan. My eyes burn. My throat closes.

He bites his lip, his face creases like he’s screwed something up. “Dammit. I’m sorry, man. Sara, right? I totally forgot — she died? I wasn’t…”

I wave him off. Shake my head. The sadness won’t stop. Beer-loosened emotional sphincters give way. Grief. Ugh. Fuck. Sara. Sara. Jayson’s hand is on me. The warmth. I choke a little.

He pulls me close. “It’s cool, man. I got you.”

He’s strong, comforting. I give in to his hug. I’m crying a little. “Sorry.” I sit up, reach behind me for the tissues in the back seat and set about cleaning myself up.

I forgot about Sara.

“You knew about Amina? About Sara?”

He nods. “Yeah. I knew.” He sounds so sad. “Didn’t know what happened, though.”

“Who told you?”

He shrugs. “I don’t even know, man. Word got out. Danny’s got family, right?” He shakes his head. His sympathy is going to drown me. “I can’t even imagine how awful that must’ve been.”

“You don’t even know…” It’s a whisper. The blue glow from the dash blurs and Jayson’s hand is on my shoulder again. “No.” I clear my throat but it ends in a cough. “FUCK!” Hand to face, hard. Control. I breathe in. Got it. Good. “I’m fine, man. Most of the time.” He’s looking at me, eyeballs round with concern. “Some of the time.” I pull my vape up from the map-holder. “You mind?”

He doesn’t. Deep in. My psyche uncreases just a little bit. “It ruined me, man. I’m just done, you know? My career was already tanked by then anyways, so…” I shrug, because I don’t have the words. “People are supposed to get on with things, but I… I’m not. I can’t. I got nothing now. No family, no daughter, no career. I drive and smoke. I just want to go back, you know? Go back. Go back to when she was here, when I had Amina, back to when I had work. All of it. Go back.” I’m whining, nearly crying. “Jesus.” Another hit. It doesn’t help. “All night every night, all day every day, I stare at the goddamned ceiling and try to remember things. Things we did. Times we had.” I don’t know what I’m doing. I shouldn’t be saying all this.

Beer, weed, and kindness fuck me up every time.

Jayson isn’t saying anything. He’s looking at me. His expression is weird, conflicted. “What?”

He nods, just a little movement, like he’s made a decision.

“What?”

“You really want that, don’t you? To go back? One more game of Monopoly, eating bao with your wife and kid?”

Monopoly. Bao. Happiness. The wish is strong, rises like hope in my gut. Head shake, slow, with the wonder of imagined happiness. “Groundhog Day my ass right fucking then because I’m done here.” I turn to face Jayson square. “I wake up every day and wonder why I haven’t killed myself. I should. I should just do it.” I hold his eyes. “Stupid question.” I’m tired now. I want to go home. I reach for the ignition, then freeze. “How the fuck did you know about that?”

He shrugs, looks guilty.

“What?”

He sighs, deep. He’s still looking me in the eye. It’s uncomfortable. “You wanted to know what happened, how I got good. Can I tell you something? Like in confidence?”

“I couldn’t give less of a shit about your Artists Way journey right now, Jayson.”

“It’s related, man. I could help you. Just listen. It’s not anything you’ve heard before, I guarantee that. I can change your life. I know things. I’m not supposed to tell you, but I’m big now. There’s nothing they can do to me and after how I treated you on set, I feel like I owe you this.” He leans forward, close to me, intimate. His voice is a whisper. “You said you wanted to be in 2014? I can help make that happen.”

His insanity, his narcissism — they’re slaps. I face forward, hands on the wheel. “Fuck you. Get out of my car.”

“Listen.” I lean away, my head pressed against the window, yearning. “Three years ago, man, I was low. Low low. I had nobody. I was months behind in rent and the pandemic was just starting. It was bad.” He sighs. “I was sitting on my bed, holding my Glock and thinking hard about what came next when there was a knock on my door and this girl…” He shakes his head like what he’s about to say is crazy. “She came in and told me I had a choice. She offered me a different way and I took it and… it’s everything, man. It’s my secret — it’s my superpower, and it can help you, too.”

“You said you weren’t a Scientologist, man, get out of my car.”

“This ain’t about fucking Scientology.” He seems genuinely offended. “This isn’t anything like that. This is magic. You know how I knew about Sara? Amina? Monopoly and Bao? I was there, man. I saw it through my own goddamn eyes. That girl? She made me a patch-worker. I protect the integrity of the time-stream, man. I fix the past and it’s got real side-benefits that can help you.”

“Seriously, get the fuck out of my car before I hurt you.”

He doesn’t hear me. He’s ranting, relentless. “I’m not supposed to tell anybody, man, but I think I’ve got to tell you because I owe you that much for how much a dick I was.” I’ve got my head pressed so hard against the window it hurts. I close my eyes. I see spots. The door. I reach across myself. Open it. Stumble out. “Danny, man!” He’s coming after me. “Wait!”

My right foot catches on the lip. I stumble, catch myself, then sit on the pavement. “Leave me alone, man, just leave me alone.”

“I’m telling you real shit. She hooked me up. I work for Time now.” He’s kneeling next to me, leaning close above my ear. His voice burns. “I fix holes in the past — lost memories. I go back in time and fill in the goddamned blanks — it’s how I got so good man. I don’t have to wonder what it’s like being other people. I don’t have to play the truth of imaginary situations. I’ve been other people. I’ve been you, man.” His hand on my shoulder. “Several times.”

“Stop.” It’s a whisper. “Please just stop.”

He won’t. He’s smiling, maniacal. “I rolled the seven that landed you on Park Place where Sara had three houses. I ate the last shrimp dumpling that Amina wanted. I felt that, man. I have been a thousand people in a thousand different lives now and so can you. I can talk to that girl again, man. I can hook you up and maybe you can go back, live that moment, too.” He’s leaning over me again. Tender eyes. Intensity. “Very least you’ll get to be other people, too, help your career, maybe help you in general.”

“You’re fucking insane.” But he’s not. He’s sane. I had rolled a seven. I had eaten the last shrimp dumpling. Amina had wanted it.

He shakes his head slowly. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, man, so you can’t tell anyone, either, okay? Next time I see the girl, I’ll talk to her for you, though. I promise.”

I look up at him. His face is open. He’s earnest, honest. “You go back in time…”

“Yeah. Not like some movie sci-fi shit, though. One moment I’m me now and the next moment I’m Sally Archer in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2017 trying to decide which canned soup to buy at Dollar General and wondering if I should leave my husband, and then I’m back to being me.”

“Man…” It’s insane. What if it’s real?

“I swear it’s true.” He looks so earnest. “We’re the people who keep time from getting fucked up. Sometimes things don’t get stored right — things happen but then they get erased so they both happen and didn’t happen at the same time and that can really fuck things up. We go back and re-live the lost moments.  That’s why I’ve been you, man. You keep erasing things.”

It’s not real. I stand up. “You’re such an asshole, Jayson.”

He stays where he was. I watch him watch me drive away. He looks scared. I can’t shake the feeling.

Morning. I think. Light anyways. The vertical blinds in my bedroom are useless. My head hurts. My back, too. Last night’s memories filter in. Slowly. I rolled a seven.

“Fuck.” It’s a whisper, raspy, forced through phlegm. I screwed up my chance for a recurring on Manchester. I feel sick.

Toast, peanut butter, coffee. Consider my day. Drive, I guess. Amina wanted the bao. I should have let her have it. Maybe if I’d let her have it, I’d…

Fuck I’m hungry.

My apartment is gone. I’m…

The Gas’n’Save looks bright and cheery inside. 

I’m being painted over, hidden.

I’m Jimmy Dammaker. 

It’s winter-bright, sun-shiny. I’m in Akron, Ohio. It’s four days before my ex-wife’s birthday. She’s a bitch who took my kids. I need twenty-five dollars in the next few hours or it’s going to be a rough fucking night. 

It’s not me. It’s Jimmy. I’m Jimmy.

The shelves inside are colorful, filled with friendly food. I’ve got four dollars and seventeen cents, but I need that. More. It’s cold. I’m sweating. Not good. The Indian who owns the station kicked me off the property this morning, but he’s not here now. Just the girl.

I walk up slow-like. Casual. I’m beside the door. The wind picks up, blows my coat open. It’s cold as a motherfucker, but my hands, my back, my face feel shiny. 

There’s an older guy getting out of his car, fat and weak. Polo shirt under his coat, khaki pants. The kind who carries cash. “Hey man! Hey, you got a sec, man?”

He won’t look at me.

“I’m a fucking vet, man. You’re gonna walk right past me like you don’t see me? I served for you, asshole.” I didn’t, but I’m mad now anyways. Fuck this guy. I’m jonesing. Hard. “Give me some money, you pussy.”

The girl inside is wide-eyed scared, hand on her phone. The guy in the polo shirt slows. “You need to leave.” He won’t even look at me.

“Give me twenty bucks, then.”

His step stutters. “Here.” He pulls his hand from his pocket, holds out a five. “Go.”

My hand is halfway to my mouth. Jimmy Dammaker is still in me, memories that feel like mine but aren’t. A house with a big lawn, fist-holes in a wall, a twelve-foot python named Sofie. Sadness that feels like anger. He’s slipping away, but he leaves a sheen of himself behind in me.

My toast reaches my lips. I bite instinctively, but I have no saliva. The bread sits in my mouth unlubricated and unpleasant. I spit it into the trash.

I pulled Jayson’s number from the app. His phone rings a bunch before it’s answered. “Who’s calling, please?”

It’s not Jayson. Maybe an assistant. “This is Danny. Ruiz. Can I talk to Jayson?”

“What’s your relationship with Jayson?” The guy on the phone sounds too old to be an assistant. Professional. Suspicious.

“We’re friends, man. We were drinking last night. Can I talk with him?”

The voice changes. Harder. “You were with Mr. Means last night? At his house?”

“No man, at the Red Lion. What the hell?” My head is pounding. I’m starting to feel sick.

“Mr. Ruiz, my name is Detective Rafael Luna, LAPD. Would it be alright if I sent someone over to talk with you?”

Jayson is dead. Beaten to death in his home. They ask me about baseball bats, whether we fought. I tell them the truth. When they leave: “We might have more questions, so please keep yourself available.”

After the door closes, I vomit into the sink, spare sausage from last night, bile, water. It burns.

I collapse on a chair, put my head in my hands.

A knock. Solid, confident, a set of three raps. Moments later, three more. I should get it, but I can’t move my hands, my head. “Just a minute.” I pinch my cheek hard. The pain brings me out.

“Sorry, I was in the bathroom.” It’s a woman I don’t know. “Who are you?”

She’s in her thirties, maybe my age exactly. A little heavy but wearing it well. Her hair is thick, teased and messy, reminds me of Jennifer Finch from L7 back in the day. Clean jeans, a black tee, black Chuck Taylor’s. Pretty but scary. “Hi Danny,” she says. She smiles, but it doesn’t touch the rest of her face. “Can I come in?” She pushes past me. “Thank you.”

I stay at the door, watch her scan my living room. It’s been a long time since anyone who wasn’t me has seen it. I imagine what she sees and blanch. “Sorry. Who are you?”

“My name’s Darby.” She turns to face me. She smiles again, then motions me to the couch. “Have a seat, Danny.” She sits on the far side, angles herself to look at me. “I was a friend of Jayson’s. We need to talk.”

I can’t sit down. I stay standing, arms crossed, between her and the door. “You know about… It was you, wasn’t it? The girl who talked to him, told him about Time and whatever. What did you do to him? He didn’t do anything, man. He was trying to help me.”

She laughs, for real. It’s at me. “Danny. there wasn’t anything me or anyone else could do to keep Jayson from dying once he broke the rules.” She widens her eyes at me, like I should understand. “He told you. He shouldn’t have done that.”

“But none of this is real.” I don’t even believe myself anymore. “Was it? Is it? It wasn’t. That’s stupid.”

“Okay.” She stares up at me, dead-faced.

It deflates me. “Fuck.”

She glances at her watch. “Jayson broke the rules and was sent to patch a death. You are now a patch-worker because it was either that or kill you because Jayson was an idiot and told you.” She widens her eyes, leans forward. “Rules.”

She lays it out. Just like Jayson.  “You’re gonna fix Time, Danny.”

It’s heady. Patching is re-creating a forgotten moment, a piece of time. It takes a while for the past to solidify. Most moments are strong, sticky, built to last, but others don’t set right. Others get erased.  She gives me an example: “Imagine you buy blueberries at the store and pay six bucks — if that moment disappears from Time, then you ate blueberries that you didn’t buy, someone else might buy blueberries that don’t exist and the shopkeeper is six bucks short while you have six extra you already spent. We go back and relive that moment, make sure it sticks.” 

“I don’t…” It’s a lot.  My head hurts.

“Don’t get lost in the whys and wherefores, Danny.” She wrinkles her nose, shakes her head. “More things on heaven and earth and all that. Just know you’re saving the world.” She shrugs. “If those paradoxes make it to the present, Time’s fucked. We’re all fucked. We keep that from happening.”

As she leaves, I ask my only question. “What rules? What are the rules?” I don’t want to die like Jayson.

“Fight Club, Danny.” Darby smiles as she stands up to go. “The rules are Fight Club rules.”

Donnie Gleason. It’s 2016. Richmond, Indiana. I’m wide. Tall, too. My skin beads with sweat. My hair is hot on my head. It’s hot. Can’t believe I still live here. You ain’t leaving, Donnie. Too fucking scared. I tighten inside, shameful. Speedway has twenty-five pumps, but the one I chose is out of regular. I scan the lot, consider getting back in the car to move to a different island, but it seems like too much. It’s too hot. The Purina factory is making the whole town smell like dog food again. Seattle doesn’t smell like this. How the fuck would I know. 

I slap the button for premium. It’s twenty cents more.

“Fuck.” Nobody’s listening. Nobody cares.

Patches come randomly, no warning. I’m here, signaling left, third in line for the turn and then suddenly I’m Jaden Preble helping my sister buy a dress for her eighth-grade prom and I’m mad she hasn’t even said thank-you even though I could have spent the day playing Call of Duty. Then I’m back but I don’t remember where I am or what I was doing and everybody gets pissed at me while I puzzle it out.

She should have thanked him, though.

Patching. Inconvenient, but not awful. Sometimes good. I feel what they feel. I’ve been thrilled about finding twenty bucks when I was Emmett Combs, a bricklayer in Evanston, Illinois in 2015. I’ve felt schadenfreude as Connor Fields in Klamath Falls when Caden Brooks got busted for vaping in the bathroom. I’ve felt the sadness of Alberto Mendez of Massapequa when his favorite pair of socks were too worn to keep.

There are downsides, too. Something happens to me there, it happens to me.

Eric Bledsoe. Truckee. 2018. Driving, barely thinking, thinking. Not thinking.

“Not…” words are weird. Sounds. Mindblowing. Moving air makes music. Moving air.      “Blah blah blah blah” means something but it’s just air.

Laughing now. Can’t help it. It’s snowing a little, still September. Weird. Brake lights in front of me. I feel lazy. Moving slow, foot from gas to brake.

Not going to make it. No panic. No worry. Just is. I turn the wheel, slide onto the shoulder, then over the shoulder… over the shoulder sounds… more sounds.

The car bumps, then we’re riding a bucking bronco, up down up up up up down down. Stop.

“We’re okay!” I tell myself. I’m the only one listening. My nose hurts.

I had a bloody nose after that one. Back and neck sore for a week. Jayson died like that, being someone else when they got killed. He was trying to help. Wanted to give me my career back, give me a chance to see Sara again. I think about Jayson a lot. Beaten to death. A bat, maybe something else. Found in his living room, wearing boxer-briefs and a robe. The robe didn’t have any blood on the outside, no blood anywhere but on his body. Reddit’s got a sub now, r/meansmurder. People think he was killed elsewhere.

Not elsewhere. Elsewhen. Sent to patch a death.

Most patches are small. Moments in time easily forgotten — choices made doing laundry, whether to buy tomatoes.  People worry. People care. People are scared. People have joy. Patching is making it harder to judge people.

Then there are erasures, moments people remember into oblivion. People like me. We are memory destroyers.

Paula Robinson. The Anasazi Steakhouse is fancy. Caleb’s choice. He’s across from me, eyes down, intent on his rib-eye. He cuts it carefully, fork in his left hand, backside up, tines in the meat. His manners are so good. He’s refined. People would never know if they saw him at work or driving on the freeway in his beat up ancient green Tundra.

“This is nice.” I feel myself flush. I sound simple. “I’ve never been here before.”

Caleb looks up. He’s chewing, but it’s subtle, quiet. His eyes are bright. His face, he has a look. Everything about him is slightly wrong — his nose is too large, crooked, too. His eyes too deep. His goatee isn’t full, his cheeks are hollow but the whole thing together looks… good. He’s like a younger Sam Elliot. He smiles. “Couldn’t think of another place where I could take you and people wouldn’t think I was too cheap for my date.”

I’ve been here as Paula three times already. Something must’ve happened to Caleb. She must really miss him. Erasures like hers and mine are always tragic nostalgia.

Every time I fade, splash down inside a mind somewhere else in time, I hope it’s mine — that moment where I rolled a seven. Some other moment of joy with Amina, with Sara. I drill down on memories daily, forcing moment-by-moment replays until the faces dissolve and the moments drown in murkiness and I’m not even sure it happened at all.

If they’re sending patchworkers, they’re not sending me.

But Jayson was right. While I’m patching I am them. I feel them, think them, know them. It’s real. I don’t have to play at imaginary truths anymore.

“You want back in.” Josh sounds skeptical.

We haven’t talked in four years.  Last time we did he told me my only options were reality. Screw that. If my career was going to end, it wasn’t going to be sitting across the desk from whoever-the-fuck replaced Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice or whatever.

“I’m ready. I’ve spent real time focusing on craft. I’ll impress you, man. I’ll impress everybody.”

He tells me I don’t need to impress him. He wants a new headshot. “You haven’t updated your webpage.”

“I’ll have it all by Tuesday.” Hang up. Lean back, close my eyes. Another moment with Sara. I focus, remember it hard.

The concrete path to our front door in South Pasadena. Amina is on the porch. She’s radiant, watching us. I’m holding Sara’s hand. The sun is hot. She’s looking up at me. She’s smiling. “The baby muskrat!” She says. She’s telling me about Wonder Pets.

I can hear her voice. It’s everything. Her face blurs, the house, the path, the heat, the voice, they fray, degrade into swirled flashes of colors.

Somebody will get to patch that. Probably not me.

Headshots and web-service are expensive, but Venice Station residuals check came in yesterday. $433.89. Bigger than expected. If I don’t pay rent I can swing it.

“You booked it, man!” Josh.

The call woke me from a sound sleep. “I did? That’s great!” I don’t know which part he’s talking about. I’ve sent in tapes for more than a dozen in the last few weeks. “Which one?”

“The recurring, man! Sunset Emergency!”

“Really?” I smile. Channeled Dr. Ahmet Pour for that one. I was Ahmet for three minutes while he sat on the toilet and thought about calling his wife. We didn’t. There was too much to talk about and not enough time. We both knew he wasn’t calling because he was afraid. “That’s awesome.” My superpower. Jayson. “Thanks, man.” I didn’t used to thank Josh. Didn’t used to thank anybody, I guess, but people need to hear it.

Off the phone. Jayson was right. Don’t even have to rehearse. Shit’s just there.

Jayson.  “Thanks, man.” I touch my heart, bring my fingers to my lips, and then raise them to the sky.

“You’re doing it on purpose.” Darby showed up at my door unannounced. We’re sitting on the couch. “You’ve got to stop.”

She’s intense. I want to meet her eyes, but I look at my coffee instead. “I’m not…”

“You want to see them again, I get it, but it’s not going to happen.” She sets her water bottle on the table. It lands firmly, with a clack against the glass that startles me. “We don’t patch ourselves.”

“Why not?” My voice betrays my panic.

“It just doesn’t happen, Danny.” She sounds sympathetic, sad, like I’m a child. “You have to stop.”

I shake my head. I’m not going to answer. She waits. I wait longer.

She gets up, lifts her bottle from the table. “I’m serious, Danny. You need to stop. You’re creating work for other people and it’s never going to get you what you want.”

I don’t look up.

“Daddy?” Sara just got her uniforms, ugly gray polos, blue polyester pants. She’s standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the setting sun behind her from the open patio doors. There’s jasmine in the air…

She stands to leave but pauses at the open door. “I’m serious, man. This is serious.”

Sara does a spin. “I’m modelling!” She spins again.

“Gorgeous, Little Winner!” It’s ugly, but she’s amazing. I’m smiling. Happy.

When I look up, Darby’s gone.

In line at Lassen’s, basket full of fruit and meat. People look at me as I shop. They recognize me. The girl staring from the cross-aisle by the coffee, the guy by the meat counter.

I hear my name. I smile, pretend not to have overheard. It’s been years. Decades. They know me. Sunset Emergency is big. My character’s arc is airing currently. There’ve been interviews — “Phoenix from the ashes” sort of things.

“Hey man.” Guy behind me. I turn around, smile.

“What’s up?”

He points to the front of the store. “Register’s open.”

Still awake. Still in bed. Sheets are too warm. Blanket’s too much. I feel damp.

Amina is standing beside the bed, pulling off her shirt to put on her nightgown. She’s telling me about something that happened at Sara’s daycare, something about what another parent said or did. I’m not really listening, watching her breasts, waiting for her to take off her pants.

“Mom?” The door bursts open. Sara’s there, all smiles until she sees Amina clutching her shirt to her chest. Her eyes go wide. “Were you having sex?”

Again.

Amina is standing beside the bed, pulling off her shirt…

The image is blurring. Amina’s skin, face, hair, muddling into blotches. Her voice slips, becoming simple unspoken words in my brain. She’s being erased. She’ll need a patch.

Jayson lied. It won’t ever be me.

Bestia. Josh’s choice. “We gotta celebrate!” He just bought a new condo in the old Parker Paints building. He’s high on the Arts District and wants to share it.

Bestia’s fine. Good food. The agency’s picking up the tab with the Marvel money I’m about to bring in. We’re sitting by the big windows in front, visible from the street for obvious reasons. People aren’t staring, but I still feel eyes while I eat flatbread and tapenade.

“Danny?”

She’s standing beside me, snuck up without me noticing. She was always quiet. She’s dressed well, but I recognize the loose long dress that cinches at the waist. She bought it when we were still together. It’s frayed at the hem, a little faded. The tailored black cardigan hides it. She’s lost weight. Her hair is swept back into a loose knot. There’s gray in it.

I don’t know what to say. I stare until the discomfort of silence overrides surprise, overrides the ache she brings. “Amina… hi.” I gesture across the table. “You remember Josh.”

“Hi Josh.” She smiles. It’s hollow. Her cheeks are hollow. She’s hollow. She’s a gutted version of herself, a taxidermy like me. To me: “How’ve you been?”

I shrug. I ache. I’m hollow, too. I’m sorry. You left me. She’s dead. I’m dead. “Okay, I guess. Career’s picking up again which is cool, but…” another shrug. “How are you?”

“I’m…” She shrugs. Her eyes turn hard, the look she had after Sara whenever she looked at me. I wilt. “I’m surviving.” She turns, looks back at someone or something. “I just saw you over here and didn’t want to leave without at least saying hi.”

I stand. “Hey, maybe we…”

She shakes her head, smiles again. Sad. Still hollow. “No, Danny. I don’t think I hate you anymore but this is all I can handle, okay?”

Maybe before I might’ve forced the issue. Not anymore. Too much of other people’s pain in me to prioritize my own anymore. Sitting down again, watching her walk up Traction with another woman. They look back, but I can’t tell if it’s at me or the restaurant. Josh is speaking, saying something. Enthusiastic.

She still thinks I let Sara die. I want to die.

Sara. She’s standing in vomit outside my bedroom door. I’m etching it into my mind. Every moment, every color, sound. Erasing.

“I threw up.” Her voice is soft. She’s holding her head. She’s so small. She’s sad. “My head really hurts.” Then: “I’m sorry I made a mess.” She’s clear, then she’s not. For moments I see her face as it was, but then it degrades, disappears. Needing a patch.

“No worries, Little Winner.” I step over the puddle. The smell is acrid, awful. Bile. Vomit usually makes me want to vomit, but hers doesn’t. It’s just a mess to clean. Weirdly undisgusting. “You want some Tylenol?” It’s the moment before the worst moment of my life. If they won’t give me this, they won’t give me anything.

“Yes, please.”

That vomit stayed for days.

“Just over there,” Cassidy gestures at the hill across Sunset. She’s twenty-four, been in LA for two years and now she’s Daimeon to my Ghost Rider. She’s pointing at her apartment. “I might move, though.” She shrugs, twirls her drink. “I want to stay in the neighborhood but my apartment is…” She makes a face. Some fans are pissed she’s a girl. Incels and losers.

We’re good together, on screen. She’s okay but together, chemistry. “It’s a good area.” I don’t know what else to say. It’s true. Echo Park is nice.

Daddy? I threw up. I take a breath.

“Are you liking Beachwood?” The show is coming together nicely.

“Only been there four months, but so far it’s fine…” On set, I get to be Johnny Blaze more than I have to be Danny Ruiz. It’s a relief, being someone else consistently. Not one-offs. Even Ronnie Suarez on Sunset Emergency wasn’t as all-encompassing.

But at the end of the day, I still go home.

Cassidy’s eyes move off me, up. Something behind me. “Hey Danny.”

Darby. She’s not alone, standing with a tall lanky Black guy who reads gay. I shift on my stool. “Hi.”

“I’m Darby,” Darby puts her hand out to Cassidy. “I’m a friend of Danny’s.” She points to her companion. “This is Alex. Alex, Danny and…” She cocks her head in Cassidy’s direction.

“Cassidy.” Cassidy tells her. “It’s nice to meet you!” She looks around as if trying to find a pair of stools to pull up to our counter at the window. “There’re no…”

Darby shakes her head. “No worries, we can’t stay. Can I steal Danny for a sec?”

Outside. Alex has stayed with Cassidy. I can see them talking. Laughing. “You brought muscle this time.”

“Alex is not muscle, Danny. Alex is just a friend like us.” She shifts herself, putting her body between me and the window where Alex and Cassidy sit. “You’ve got to stop, Danny. I told you it was serious. Don’t fuck with things you don’t understand.”

“You’re telling me to stop remembering my daughter. You shouldn’t fuck with things you cannot understand.”

“I’m just the messenger. I’m trying to save your life. Erasures like yours, they endanger Time and they won’t have any compunctions about stopping you permanently if need be.” She leans in. “If you keep at it, you’ll end up on a death patch, just like Jayson.” She looks honestly concerned. “Please.” Then: “You’ve built a good life, Danny. Love what you have, look forward not back okay?”

I look past her at Cassidy. A good life. Daddy? Maybe. In some ways. It’s not enough. It will never be enough. I nod, let go the breath I didn’t know I’d held. “Yeah. Alright.”

It’s later. We’re still at the bar across from Cassidy’s. Lights are bright. Noises loud. My cheeks are warm. Cassidy is laughing.

“Can I ask you something?” She leans forward. “Something serious?”

“Sure.”

“It might be rude.” She shakes a finger at me. “I don’t like being rude, but I really want to know.”

“Ask. I won’t be offended, I promise.”

“Okaaayyy.” She sits up straight. “I was watching Master Class and a little of Venice Station…”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“We’re working together. I wanted to see.” She sighs. “Anyways, I was watching and… I work with you and you’re like… you’re amazing now but then you…”

“I wasn’t very good.” I chuckle. I wasn’t very good. Jayson’s words. “I know.”

“What happened? How did you get so good?”

“I just…” I shrug. “I learned some stuff, you know.”

“You took classes?” She squints at me. “Playhouse West or something? Studio 5? It’s just… I’m not very good.”

“Cassidy, you’re good.” It’s a little bit of a lie. She’s cute and she’s got charisma but she’s not good. I lift my beer to my lips to hide my shame. She could be good.

“Bullshit. I’m cute. I won’t be cute forever and I want to be good. I want to have staying power. How’d you do it?”

Staying power. I’ve got staying power now. I’m big again. I’ve got the nice place, the career. Daddy? I couldn’t care less. It’s your turn! Cassidy is watching me, waiting. I can give her what she wants. Patching made me a better actor. A better person, maybe. It didn’t give me what I wanted. Maybe it will for her. Maybe she’ll be happy. “You really want to know?” Daddy?

“Seriously, Danny!” She pushes my leg.

“It’s a big dark secret, Cass.” I raise my eyebrows, take a sip. “Life and death.” Park Place, Daddy!

“Tell me!” Eleven hundred dollars!

I sip my beer. It tastes good. The evening light is perfect. I’ll miss this. “I really shouldn’t, but okay…”

I have two of Sara’s uniform shirts left in my closet. I take one. It’s very small. I raise it to my face, but it only smells like soap. I bring it with me to the couch.

A hit from my vape. I wait in silence.

Fight Club Rules. “Anytime now.” I wait. Nothing.

Until.

He’s not coming. “Daddy!”

I’m not me. I’m her.

My head. The noise.

Oh god.

The door opens and he’s there. I can’t look up at him. At me. “I threw up.”  He doesn’t look mad. “My head really hurts.” I look around. The vomit. The mess. I feel bad. “I’m sorry I made a mess.”

“No worries, Little Winner.” He’s smiling. He looks tired. He’s got no shirt. His hair is messy. “You want some Tylenol?” He looks around. “I’ll get this cleaned up later.”

 He takes my hand. I can barely see it. Things are dark now, blurry. “Daddy?”

“What’s up, Winner?”

“My eyes are weird.” My head hurts. A lot lot lot.

He chuckles. It relaxes me. He’s not worried. “Let’s see. Headache? Barfing? Weird eyes?” He lifts me onto the couch and sits down next to me. He’s warm. He’s comfortable. Daddy. “Sounds like you’ve got a migraine, Winner.” He leans forward, looks me in the face. “I used to get them, too. They suck.”

I laugh. It hurts. It’s hard to see. I… more vomit. Dad sees it coming. Catches it with a popcorn bowl.

I’m soooo tired. My eyes.

My head…

It hurts… “Daddy?” It hurts so much. “Where’s mommy?”

“She’s in Houston, remember? Work. She’ll be back tomorrow.”

I want her to be here. I want to see her. My head hurts so much. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t be, Winner. It’s just a migraine.”

I can barely hear him. Through a tube, a long long way away. It’s so dark.

Am I dying?

It’s not a migraine, Little Winner. It’s an aneurysm. I’m so sorry.

It’s dark.

I love you so much.

A long time. Our hearts beat.

I’m so sorry.

Then slow. Beat again. Once.

We’re together. In silence.