I went to sleep that night pondering the choker necklace at Darby’s throat, how it amplified the tendons and veins in her neck whenever she turned her head. Also how the ends of her chin-length hair curled slightly outward, like a row of commas. Would I see her tomorrow? I hoped I would see her tomorrow.
On the day of her burial, she had no regrets. She did not regret buying lottery tickets so that she could have lived in a fancy house or traveled to Bora Bora each winter. She did not regret having no children. She’d never been able to imagine tiny beings made of herself.
They were a bit tipsy as they slid into the backseat of my cab in front of the St. Regis Hotel. Two women in their forties—a blonde with a blue scarf, who wanted to go to Russian Hill, a brunette in a short gray jacket, who was going someplace further. It was a Friday night, 10 pm. Their topic was how everything was wrong with a woman named Ava.
Paul and I were out looking for conkers when we found the angel. We didn’t know it was an angel at first; we just saw a load of feathers on the ground and assumed that a bird had been eaten, but we followed them to the big crater which was full of the angel.
Clarence’s mouth watered as he pulled his great-big white Dodge truck into the gravel driveway. He could hardly wait to taste the pint of chocolate custard that he had in his passenger seat. It was his daily treat. He stopped and pulled the parking brake. He grabbed the pint and nearly choked himself on the seatbelt, which jerked tightly against his gut. He unbuckled it, and slid out of the cab. He walked over the path of flat rocks that lead to his trailer.
Missing girls are not hard to find. They are mothers and daughters who go on long walks in winters, usually along lakes. They have eyelashes like spider legs and paint their fingernails bright shades of reds and pinks to hide the built up dirt caked underneath.
We walked away from the car, I assumed in the direction of Tyler’s guy. We moved toward the beach, past landmarks that proved how wealthy Colburn used to be. A spiral staircase that stopped abruptly, leading nowhere. A fifteen foot tall gargoyle made of black marble. All surrounded by abandoned buildings, the sidewalks sparkling with the violence of shattered glass.
I think about zombies. With a clean white sheet of paper before me, waiting to be filled, I imagine zombies crawling, slime-covered, out of a pit, driving cars to work, lining up for their morning coffee, streaming into offices across the country, parking themselves at computers, trying to focus on work that uses only a small part of their brains, which is good, because most of their brains have been left behind in the muck. They screw their drooping eyeballs back in after staring at computer screens for hours. My eyes ooze as I write this, and my paper is no longer clean. Instead, it is filled with messy, decaying, once-human parts.
It was the sort of conversation that can only happen in a bar on Sunday night, surrounded by truly dedicated drinkers. These are the professional alcoholics who latch onto a place and dig deep, like ticks. They stay until they’re kicked out, steadily downing their drinks. Always straight liquor, too—if you’ve come to the point where drinking all day seems like the most productive use of your time, you’re not likely to be seen with a parade of empty cocktail glasses in front of you, twirling tiny umbrellas in your fingers.
Dear Lucy and Nick,
The last time I saw either of you was in Olympia, when I was living in a weird apartment downtown with no real windows, just a few skylights that didn’t open. That was seriously the quintessential Olympia bachelor pad: right downtown, neighbors that didn’t want to know you that well, and affordable rent. As depressing as the lack of windows was, I really miss that place, even now. It was the first time I could honestly say I lived alone. Entirely alone. Christ, that little bit of solitude was pretty fantastic for me, albeit a bit dangerous. It seems, left to my own devices, I tend to make poor decisions about many things. Ahhh, the folly of youth. Well, probably just folly. I wasn’t exactly a youth. Anyhow, I was living downtown, about a block from the Brotherhood Tavern.