Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

When the phone rang, he thought it might be Miranda the bodyworker. He was beginning to think the old girl was falling in love with him. Love was a mystery. Sometimes it began with a warm, wet hand towel. Sometimes it ended that way too.

“Dubya?”

“Who’s speaking?”

“Your favorite Zen Dyke-ist.”

“Renata?” he said, in pleasant surprise.

“Well, shit, Willow. How many other Zen Dyke-ists do you know?”

“You never called me Dubya.”

“Yeah, well, consider it ‘contrary action.’ Like the Big Book suggests.”

His body both relaxed and stiffened. They’d been through the war together and he wondered if he’d be able to lie. “You in Fort Lauderdale?” he said.

“I am. Home unsweet home.”

“God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

“It’s good to hear yours , Mayor Wylde. Sunday mornings just aren’t the same without your news, sports and weather report. You always put a smile on my face, buckaroo.”

“Feels kinda like a dream, right? The Meadows? Like it happened a hundred years ago.”

“Maybe it did—you know, in our past lives. But I can’t decide if it was a dream or a nightmare.”

They laughed over that.

“So what are you doing with yourself, kid?” he said.

“Same old same old. Up at three A.M. for meditation. Read the sutras then bike to the zendo by six. Work in the kitchen till eight, then cook something special for the Roshi. Home by four, where I make spiritual use of my valuable downtime shooting up Sex and the City , Seinfeld , and the various multiple Bourne identities that are my drugs of choice.”

“Nice.”

“And you, my friend?”

A grace note of heaviness was in her voice, like she knew.

“Getting used to the world again, I suppose. As pointless as the exercise sometimes feels.”

“Still doing the deal?” she asked.

“Well…” Renata cut him off with a giggle, having intuited the rest. He was relieved. “Actually, Renny dearest, Dubya ain’t doin’ the deal so well. Let’s just say at the moment that I’m leaning more toward progress than perfection.”

“Okay, guy,” she said, without judgment. “Wanna share?”

He sighed. “I decided to go to New York to get my old job back. I had some crazy idea they’d be dying to have me. I had no business being there at all . And I think… Jesus, Renata. I think it must have been one of the most fucked-up trips of my life.”

She guffawed. “Been there, done that.”

“I won’t even get into all the crazy bullshit that went down. I mean, shit you would not believe . Long story short: I took the drink. Took the opiates too.”

“And how are you doing now?”

“Oh, I guess I’m still into it… but not like I was. It’s quieted down.”

“You know, I had a feeling about you, Willow. And when I kept on having it I thought, ‘You know what, Renata? Pick up the goddam phone and call the man.’”

“I’m so glad you did, babe. I really am. You’re the first I’ve told.”

“Are you going to meetings?”

“Trying. There aren’t too many in Port Hope.”

“Well, see if you can find one. They have ’em online too. They’re actually supposed to be pretty decent.”

“I’ll do that,” he lied.

“You can probably Skype into one so you can at least see fresh newcomer meat.”

“That’ll work, so long as they can’t see me. ’Cause at the moment, I am not a sexy sight to behold.”

“Newcomer chicks ain’t picky. They’re crazier than shit but they ain’t picky.”

“Yeah.”

They hung there awhile just breathing, not talking.

“Just don’t die on me, Willow.”

“I don’t plan to. Not anytime soon.”

“You know what they say about a plan.”

“I know, ‘God laughs.’ Guess that’s why I’m an atheist—eliminates a major source of sadistic hilarity.”

“Hey, you want me to come out?”

The offer surprised and moved him, touching off a reflexive stir in the gonads. She was a dyke but he’d known many in his time who experienced the phenomenon of SDC—Sudden Dick Craving. She wasn’t Kate Upton, but hell, she could run circles around Miranda the masseuse. In that split second of cold male arithmetic, Willow chastised himself; she was a friend, and a helluva good one. He knew that her intentions were nothing but selfless and altruistic.

“No, I don’t think so, Renata. Not at this time. But thank you, that means a helluva lot—really. Tell you what, I’ll make you a promise. If my shit goes way south, I’ll take you up on it.”

“If your shit gets wild, Mayor Wylde?”

“If my shit gets wild and purple. And that’s a promise.”

He was getting ready to wrap it up when the words tumbled from his mouth as if spoken by someone else. “Hey, remember those dreams I was telling you about, the ones I was having before the Meadows?”

“About the train?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought they were kind of beautiful.”

“Well, I’m having them all the time now.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah—they’re… completely vivid. Hi-def. Like, four-D.”

“Sounds more like Higher Power than hi-def to me.”

“But instead of just watching the train go by—like from the outside, the way I was doing?—I’m inside now. And there’s a woman… there’s people —”

“Maybe it’s the Sober Train. It’s either that or the DTs.”

“I don’t know what it is, Renny. But I do kind of look forward to going to sleep. Just to see what’s next.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, Willow. ‘What’s next’ is a beautiful thing. Or can be. We ought to grab on to whatever seems to promise a little bit of serenity. God, I still dread going to sleep. It’s so damn hard. But I never was any good at it.” She paused. “Ready to make a second promise, Willow?”

“You got it.”

“Don’t let that peace train derail, okay? You know the Dylan song—blood on the tracks and all that.”

“I promise.”

“And try to find a meeting. Seriously.”

“I will.”

“I love you, Dubya.”

“Love you too, Miss Contrary Action.”

“‘May those who find themselves in fearful wildernesses—the children, the aged, the unprotected—be guarded by beneficent celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.’”

“Amen to that, kid.”

“And in the words of Shakyamuni, ‘Keep coming back.’”

2.

A few nights later, at 3:00 A.M., no longer able to dispel the compulsion, Willow drove two hours due south to Armada. He had no say in the matter. He felt like a somnambulist.

He took the M-19, the highway running parallel to his usual route to Pace’s home in Marlette, because he got paranoid that his insomniac daughter might glance outside her window to catch his car whisking by.

A ludicrous fantasy but again, he couldn’t help himself.

Then all of a sudden, as if teleported in the predawn darkness, he was curbside at the address the woman had given him in the dream: 22147 32 Mile Road .

He sat stupefied in his ten-year-old Pontiac, listening mindlessly to One Direction, Fifth Harmony, Twenty One Pilots, 99 Souls—all the numerical Top 20 bands of the day.

The windows of the house were dark.

He got that shiver of blueness again and looked out toward the ridge; he couldn’t have known that he was only a few miles away from the trail where Lydia Molloy had died and been (provisionally) resurrected. Though he never asked, What the fuck am I doing here?, the phantom question’s troublesome corollary still loomed—

— What now?