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Where Devine found their striving pitiful, Evan found it valiant, worth protecting.
As there was something worth sheltering inside him, that firstpure impression of self, alone in a room serenaded by a nursery rhyme and distant sobs, a baby mobile throwing patterns on the ceiling and then red flashing lights.
That was it, life in a microcosm.
Grip the guardrails.
And then let go.
The spice rack on the counter wasn’t arranged properly, the bottles shoved into their wooden slots haphazardly. Cinnamon below cumin, thyme next to dill. It was a fucking mess.
Evan stared at it for a time, suppressing his abecedarian instincts. Keeping his hands still, he reorganized them mentally by size and then cap color and then degrees of sweetness and spice. The Hungarian paprika was on the worst tilt, and he allowed himself to nudge it so the lettering was horizontal.
On the large-format calendar stuck to the refrigerator, the blue-highlighted“Vacay!”note showed the family to be gone for the following week, useful to know in the likely event of his return. He let his eyes scan across the other entries. Birthdays and social engagements, logistics and coordinated family time, celebrations and responsibilities.
He wondered what it would be like to keep a schedule like this, weaving his hours into the flow of various lives. Then he considered the brief list of human duties he had to consider.
Feed Vera III.
Check living-wall irrigation.
Joey.
Aragón Urrea’s pilot was at home base in Eden, Texas, but he and Evan had arranged to meet at Teterboro Airport in the morning. Tommy had texted Evan that his new truck was ready and he’d better hurry the fuck up and get it and bring ducats, too. Evan had also coordinated with Candy and the Seabrooks, planning next steps. It felt good to have people to check in with, boxes to tick.
Rucksack over one shoulder, he hesitated on his way to the garage,glancing back at the neat stack of cash on the counter. It might freak them out, this nice family, to come home to it.
He found a manila envelope in a drawer, shoved the bundled hundreds in, and then let it fall just inside the front door’s mail slot on the tile of the foyer.
He hoped that would make his thank-you less creepy.
Echo felt guilty.
That was her default setting. She knew and hated that she was one of those women who said “sorry” too much. When she asked a person to turn down the air-conditioning. When she asserted her rightful place in line at a shop. When someone else bumped intoher.
She felt guilty about how long she ran the shower given how far some African women had to walk with a forty-pound jug for water collection. Guilty when takeout arrived in Styrofoam boxes that she knew took five hundred years to decompose. Guilty about buying a seven-dollar cappuccino when that was half the average hourly wage for workers in America. Guilty that she’d bought too much Halloween candy that would go to waste since there weren’t many kids in the building. Guilty about owning a nine-thousand-dollar cello that languished on its stand, a varnished rebuke. Guilty for letting Luke Devine into her heart and her head. And guilty for feeling guilty about that, which a liberated woman should not.
She was sorry.
Sorry for everything.
A big bleeding heart that ached all the day long except when she was working with kids, helping them access feelings through music, to express themselves with melodies. Kids like her, who felt everything too much. That was the solution, she’d found. Doing something about it where she could and trying to forgive herself as much as possible for everything else. That was her insurance policy to keep herself from ossifying into someone like her mother, someone who aimed all that guilt outward at everyone else and deemed them lacking.
It was terrifying.
Waiting for Mr. No Name, she needed a break from it all now. Noise and movement and color. The TV was on, and her finger had been clicking for longer than she realized, spinning through the endless wheel of channels. Home-remodeling show. Eighties sitcom. Somber newscaster.Friendsspinning umbrellas in the water fountain. Oprah Oprah-ing. Buffed-bald Keanu stuck with a thousand futuristic acupuncture needles asking, “Why do my eyes hurt?”
Her doorbell rang. When she checked the peephole, he was standing back in full view, a nice consideration for a woman living alone.
She let him in and made herself a cup of tea. He declined as before.
They took up their seats, she wrapped in her plush velvet blanket on the couch, he sitting on the chair from her kitchen set. As he recounted details of his interactions with Luke, she felt surreal, as if she were listening to a fantastical story, a myth, a parable:The Tale of the Unhinged Ex.
She wondered how much of the story Mr. No Name left out.
When he finished, she shook her head and said, “That sounds like Luke left to his own brain chemistry.” She held the warm mug, and it held her right back. “Thank you for telling me. That’s why you came by?”
Mr. No Name shook his head. “I need your help.”
