The Tangle of It - Mixmaster Massey · McFarland / The Tangle of It 6 She hums Chopin’s Minute Waltz. She serenades me by picking up Chupa Chups lollipops for a microphone. “FRANNY’S

Reid MacDonald553 Valim WaySacramento, CA 95831(626) [email protected]

109,300 wordsAuthor’s personal draft

Printed on 11/5/14

THE TANGLE OF IT

by Reid McFarland

mailto:[email protected]

THE TANGLE of ITby

Reid McFarland⁂

For Vickie

We’ve been apart for some time now

I don’t know how to navigate these waters

I love you and hope we can find some calm harbor

⁂

Herein tells a story where not all times and places match

Forgive me those who are in the know

So goes the way of memory and invention

⁂

McFarland / The Tangle of It

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Chapter 1.

FRANNY'S CANDIES

“I roll the Kettledrum candy in my mouth.”

Franny pictures herself chewing on Boston Fruit Slices and her jaw flexes

automatically.

“Chewy wedges taste lemon and lime and go BOOM-bah-BOOM when I bite into

one.” She adds, “When I unwrap a second Kettledrum out of its tight parchment, I

examine the sour and sugar-copper rind. They are better enjoyed in pairs. Tomás, why

aren’t Kettledrum candies hard? Like Lifesavers or Butterscotches? When they clink

against your teeth, they could sound like a snare or a top hat. I can hear a soft bass rumble

a tympani symphony deep within me. I swear, the Kettledrums make my voice go

baritone when I sing BOOM-bah-BOOM after eating one. It’s true: I’ve tried it!”

Franny confesses this to me under her gummy-bear breath and I agree

unconditionally the way a best friend must. We come here because most of her

schoolmates do not make their way down the block to Doña Dolce. She explains that they

prefer the American treats sold at the Commissary. Imported, still fresh from the factories

in Hershey, PA and Mars, Incorporated. Franny cannot afford them. Instead, she uses the


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last of the tarnished pesetas she grabbed from an oversized glass Planters peanut-jar used

to collect loose change.

She once admitted to me, “I enjoy the seclusion of Doña Dolce.”

I’m her captive listener.

The Kettledrums are her favorites but she surveys the rest of the sweets. Her gaze

rises and falls across the selection of cakes and tejeringos resting under the scratched

plexiglass; she keeps an eye on the rectangle of reflected light cast from the store’s front

door. She likes to look at the packaging of the foreign candies even though she cannot

understand the names written across the thin cellophane. Her eyes widen at the squiggles

of rays from sunrises and sonrisas of the paper children drawn on the wrappers.

She is as bright as primary colors.

She breathes in the sugar air and exhales.

Her hands slow-tango the itsy-bitsy spider.

“I’d avoid the Tom-Tom toffees, Tomás,” she advises with an assertive nod, “they’ll

stick awful to your teeth, I tell you. I enjoy the frills, rolls and flourishes Tom-Toms add

to any performance. See there, the Cello Chiclets are better for chewing: every smack a

fugue. If I could sing while blowing a bubble, POP! Nobody could resist my crescendo.”

She tells me of her triumph and taps her index finger contemplatively on her front

tooth. Then her eyes dim. She sighs when reality catches up to her imagination.

Avoid reality, Franny.


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“See, the other girls at school, they like the double-bubble Voce Sopranos. They

sing real sweet but lack any depth for the piece. Maybe tomorrow I’ll audition for The

Music Man and I’ll show ’em. I sing better than they ever can.’

Franny hopes to audition for the choir. She hums to me when she thinks nobody else

is around. She hums when we walk to the back of Doña Dolce. The shopkeep watches us

slink down the aisle before turning the page on his ¡Hola! magazine.

Franny would like to learn an instrument and try out for the orchestra, she whispers

and I shake my head vigorously in agreement. Percussion, woodwind, string and horn.

We discuss but can’t decide which instrument she would be best. In her secrets of secrets

she’d like to take up her mother’s viola. It sits dusty and exhausted in her attic — the

instrument exiled there by her father, the Diplomat — and she’s forbidden from playing

it. Franny conjures the memory of her mother by humming, an act the Diplomat also

forbids, so she hums solely outside the apartment. Some days she hums Beethoven’s

Fifth, or Vivaldi’s Seasons, and others days Brahm’s Fantasies.

Her repertoire is extensive for a young girl.

No memory of rehearsals and concertos can replace the sounds of Mother winding

up the strings in the parlor.

A morning ritual performed so many years before today. Franny awoke to the

yawning the strings made while being tightened. She would leap out of bed, lightheaded

from sleep, giddy from the electricity she felt coming off the friction in the wires. A


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racket poured out of the instrument as her mother twisted each peg and arched the

horsehair bow across the strings evoking a groaning and popping not unlike that Grandpa

Tom made when he pulled himself out of his brandy-leather Manhattan armchair.

Tuning the viola sounds like a non-sensical question: Drone, crack and snap, fawn-

huh-moan?

As the strings raised their pitch, Franny twirled and when her pirouettes buckled,

she’d break her fall with a deliberate tap-dance. A, D, C, and G. Twirl, tap, pirouette, and

step. Franny greeted the final creaks the strings made against scroll with a slow soft-shoe

(even though her tiny feet were bare). In that last moment she squealed, bounced in the

air, and launched an attack on a stranger’s footsteps she imagined ascending up the old

flight of mahogany stairs. As Franny went into an fit of squeal-like giggles, peeking

around the banister, her mother let the fleetest wink flutter out the corner of her left eye,

and broke out the scales — A, D, C, and G — while she tested and touched the final

adjusters. Before Franny knew what her next dance-steps were, her mother would launch

into free-form jazz, plucking the strings, impromptu, voila-style.

In the back of the Doña Dolce, Franny hums a tune I cannot place: a melodious

piece broken by spats of syncopation.

I listen to the wind rattle the leaves of the wild olive trees outside. How they sound

like the hush of rain. The Spanish sun beats through the storefront windows and betrays

any idea of wet weather. The sun’s rays catch Franny’s hazel face and I focus on her. She


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finds me coming out of my reverie. She sweeps away her hair, Shirley Temple curls, full

of ringlets and waves of brown and darker brown and auburn so dark it’s nearly black.

She lends me a true smile before she takes it back. Her lips are pursed, corners clutching

towards the bottom of her chin. She holds a sob inside and gulps.

Hold it in, Francesca, hum on, I think. Don’t let them see you’re hurting.

She arranges her dimples the way other girls apply make-up.

“Consider the Dolce Dulcimer Divinity,” she says, a scratch in her voice, “I like

how the fudge is light and fluffy. With these, I’ll make an appropriate first impression on

the school band. The bassist and drummer and that guy on electric guitar. They’ll take a

bite and sign me up as their lead singer. We can call ourselves ‘Francesca and the

Foreigners.’”

“I know a batch of Bassoon Butterscotches could get me in after the show. Maybe I

should buy some cream-filled Concertina cakes, sell them at the bake-sale to raise money

for the orchestra recital?” Her brittle excitement crumbles upon itself. Her expression

seizes up, “No, they’d think I’m a clown, something else to laugh at.”

“I’d pass up those other sweets, Tomás, the licorice Lyres, the mandarin Mandolin

macaroons half dipped in milk-chocolate. Also those Jingle jellies filled with strawberry,

raspberry, and blueberry jams. Mmm, how the flavor is so complex… would they be too

weird for anybody at school to like? I say the Kettledrums are the clear winners: it’s all in

the choosing.”


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She hums Chopin’s Minute Waltz. She serenades me by picking up Chupa Chups

lollipops for a microphone.

“FRANNY’S PANTIES SCRUNCHED IN A BUNCH!”

The shout is loud but Franny doesn’t hear it. She hums along to her inner

soundtrack and into the lolly. She doesn’t notice Samantha and Lourdes as they make

their way down the aisle of the candy store. Franny bursts into a drumfire of Tomás-this

and Tomás-that and drowns out any indication I can give. Her schoolmates are watching

her talk to herself. They smirk with self-righteousness.

“FRANNY EATS EVERYONE’S LUNCH!”

Samantha and Lourdes stand directly behind Franny. They are the rich brats of

Benalmádena High. The ruling class high above the kids of expats, children of diplomats.

Skinnier than any fourteen year-old, they’re dressed up with button-down blouses and

silk-slacks. Each of their mouths are slathered with four shades of lipgloss. Samantha has

pink Bonne Bell lip-smackers, Lourdes’ is purple. They each wear sixty-dollar mannies

and tap their Mary Janes without acquiring a scuff.

“FRANNY’S FACE LOOKS LIKE CRUNCH ‘N’ MUNCH”

Las Plásticas. The “A” Girls. The Stuck-ups. Samantha and Lourdes laughs are

overstated. If they were fully animated in afternoon cartoons, they’d be jackals with their

scruffs up in hackles. It doesn’t matter which girl is chanting, they both point and chortle.

They make a show covering their gum-smacking guffaws with delicate child hands —


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fingers that sparkle with diamond rings that look alien on them — diamond rings that cut

right through Franny’s heart.

“FRANNY NEEDS A BIG FAT PUNCH”

Franny turns around. Her humming stops, her neck turns to crimson. When her

bottom lip quivers she puts her hands behind her back like she’s hiding something. I can

see her fingers have split off their tango long ago. They’ve begun wringing themselves

like lovers choking each other.

“Shuttup!” Franny says with a pop in her voice.

“Who were you talking to, huh? Franny?”

“She was talking to her imaginary friend”

“No, no, no I wasn’t,” Franny says.

“Her Eee-maj-gin-nair-eey friend. What’s eeys name?”

“Thomas, right?” Samantha asks.

“No Samantha,” Lourdes corrects her. “Its Tomás. Haha! Franny, how can you be

desde España and not say eeys name right. Why can’t you speak eh-Spanish berry-well?”

“Is he your BOY-friend, Franny?”

“No he isn’t,” Franny says. She crosses her arms over her chest. A hip pushes out.

She thinks she’s clipped them.

“Oh! Lookie here now. She DOES have an imaginary friend, Lourdes.”

“Franny and Tomás sittin’ in a tree, B-E-S-O-S para tí.”


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“Does your fat nose get in the way when you kiss?”

“Nah it doesn’t,’ Lourdes answers. “‘Cos eeys made of theen air.”

“Who’d wanna kiss that anyway?”

“I don’t have an imaginary friend,” Franny says. “Leave me alone.”

“Awe, poor iddle bay-bee. Run along home now! Run home to your BOY-friend…”

“I — I ain’t got no imaginary friend,” Franny says.

My chest caves in, my heart skips a beat.

“Oh, Franny! You ain’t got no friends at all.”

Samantha and Lourdes double-over in fresh fits of laughter.

Franny once admitted to me that she admires the straight-long, shiny-frosted hair

popular amongst Lourdes and Las Plásticas at Benalmádena High. She envies their Guess

jeans, Benetton polos, Swatch watches and all the fashion sported by Samantha and the

Americana stuck-ups.

Franny wraps her arms tight around the frayed dress and sneers at the yellow daisies

that mock her burning face. She holds her breath, choking on air in tight gasps. She

ignores my tugs. I swear she sneers at me, too, without setting eyes on me. She’s forsaken

me, I know it now. I shake my head and hold my palms upturned. If I could speak it out

loud, I would plead, “Don’t. Don’t do this…”

Franny tucks past the girls before they can continue their mock-chatter. She runs

down the aisle away from their chiding and their rumors and rumors and rumors are the


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worst if the other kids hear what they found out and put her down. She grabs her khaki

schoolbag she left by the storefront door and topples out into the Andalusian light. Las

Plásticas run out after her to watch her run down the sidewalk, snorting, howling, and

slapping their legs.

“OH, FRANNY,” they yell while pitching gestures as if they were hurling

radioactive water-balloons. They lick their lipgloss in wet smacks and leave tut-tutting

around the corner. The storekeep flips his ¡Hola! and disregards the atomic fallout inside.

Franny leaves me in Doña Dolce.

She leaves me forever with the last of the Kettledrum candy. I’m all alone with the

final Concertina cakes and Tom-Tom toffees. There is a closeout on the Cello Chiclets

and the last batch of Bassoon Butterscotches. No more the Kettledrums and no more

songs to hum.

I wait and listen for Franny’s song.

Sing on, Francesca! Sing BOOM-bah-BOOM.

FINE FRIEND

It’s a matter of perspective, ladies and gents.

I’m a Fine Friend. Some call me an imaginary friend but there are laws of nature, a

physics that exists to govern me. I have a purpose. Perhaps I’m bound to remove the


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gravity of the situation. Does imaginary make me any less real? I move through this

world and I ponder and I see and I survive just as you do. I hurt as you do and I laugh just

as you do. You come from a glint in your mother’s eye. Well, so do I. That is why I prefer

to be called a Fine Friend the same way you prefer to be called Human.

I fear just as you do, I suffer just as you do. Right now my heart is broken because

Franny left me behind. Chips have splintered and flow into my bloodstream and lodge

into my nervous system. My skin becomes numb and I shiver.

I clutch a statue of a green-patinated Poseidon, holding on for my life. Outside the

Diplomat’s apartment I evaluate the roofline’s height. It’s three stories up. Seagulls sit

underneath the semi-circled eaves and pull loose feathers from under their wings. Las

gaviotas fence a little with their sharp beaks when the male plants his neon-orange foot

on his mate’s face. His mate fluffs up and knocks him away. She nestles her head under

her wing. His eyes close and maybe he takes a peek or two until they are still. The birds

blend into the cream and clay-pastel stucco of the Moorish curves.

My arms begin to ache. I secure my grip around Poseidon’s triceps. His elbow

pushes coldly into my neck. If you could see me, you’d think I was being pulled upside-

down from a cord hidden in the dark sky well above the apartment building. You may

think I’m caught in the wires like a downed gaviota.

“Stormkeeper,” I say to the gods in the sky. “Deliver us from this.”

On each column of apartments, there’s an outcropping of turrets. They rise high


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above the terracotta-tiled sidewalks on Calle de la Frigata. They are held up with

hexagonal concrete slates the color of sandcastles. The turrets are in fact porches. They

are open to the evening breezes that carry in from the Mediterranean. They meander

through ornate, white beams painted so perfectly that no shadow of brushstroke can be

seen. A lamplight glows in a turret near the back of the apartment building. Franny’s

light. I see it turn off over the tops of my Chucks All-Stars (I’m hanging upside-down).

I’m left alone staring up at the dark palms, smelling aluminum and salt in the air from

Puerto Marina, listening to the forlorn clang of rigging and the buoys weeping outside the

breakwaters.

I wince from a pressure gripping my heart. I’ve never been alone in the common

garden below my Franny’s window and I shiver again. I’ve never been away from Franny

this long.

My insides begin to seize up in sharp jolts. I hold my breath or maybe my breath is

holding me? The cheap statue of Poseidon is menacing and the moss growing on the

statue’s beard blows in the wind. It makes him look alive. My eyes are puffy and I have a

hard time focusing on the half-clothed figure. I suspect that he’s waiting to thrust his

trident deep into my chest. I beg him not to, Stormkeeper. I tighten my grip around his

arm but like the moss, I flap in the wind.

I’m being pulled against my will up to Franny’s balcony.

I slam my eyelids shut until they begin to tear up. Hot streams of sobs leak down the


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sides of my cheeks and down my forehead into the scalp under my brown hair. My last

moments upon me and the pain inside me shoots through my body like lightning crackles.

I’m about to go to my end.

I let go.

⁂

There are three rules for a Fine Friend.

Rule one: I belong to Franny.

I belong only to Franny. Franny believes in me. I’m the fruit of her conviction. She

created me from the soft-memory of her Grandpa Tom. She filled me up with fluff and

loam. She brought me to life with her flash-thoughts, her grey-wishes, and her desires to

return back to Clearwater, Florida. To The Oaks, a senior-living facility in which Grandpa

Tom resided. He lived in a single bedroom villa, furnished with a sitting and dining area

and his own small kitchen. The two best features of The Oaks villa was Grandpa Tom’s

brandy-leather Manhattan armchair in which he lounged by the B&W Magnavox and a

Brinkerhoff stand-up piano which greeted her at the front door.

The Brinkerhoff drew Franny’s attention. The cracked wood, the buckled panelling,

and the splintered leg-spindles didn’t keep her away. Nor did the four-and-a-half keys at

the end of the eighty-eights which were missing their ivory faces, in parts or altogether.

She figured the Brinkerhoff must have been over a hundred years old — as old as her

Grandpa, maybe even older — but the hammers and the strings were in good shape and


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the notes rung clear and true.

Grandpa Tom taught her how to play her first major chord on that stand-up piano.

“C-Major. One Three Five, C-E-G. See, it's easy,” he prompted Franny.

Her hands were small yet the notes were in her reach and she reveled the simple

success when she played the chord. The keyboard was magical, and through Grandpa

Tom’s teaching of the chord, she was part-magician.

She gasped in awe of the moment.

Years later she avoided thoughts of her mother’s death, she held onto that speck of a

moment. From that tiny instant, from that mere speck I grew — more like a snowflake

than an embryo — my limbs branching out and collecting condensation from Franny’s

tears. My heart grew from tears of mourning, tears of frustration and anger, and from her

fearful fits. My blood flowed with the tears of confusion she cried when the Diplomat’s

rejected her affection. His refusal to hug or kiss her.

“Francesca, no,” the Diplomat said curtly and barred her entry with his arm

outstretched between himself and Franny.

I began just as you do, I age just as you do.

It’s a matter of perspective, ladies and gents.

I am carried up through the eddies and whirls. Poseidon falls away like a forgotten

deity. I’m carried up like humid vapor on the warmer currents and through the slats on

her patio. The entrance to Franny’s room is blocked by the barrueco ironwork gate. With


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a dull clang in the night, I am pushed upon the fretwork. I claw at the metal rushes and

hold myself steady. Curves of the filigree push harshly into my cheekbones and my chin.

I lift my head up with a grunt and strain and look into Franny’s window and I see a knot

of blankets. Her breathing is a rhythm of shadow expanding over the wool, out then in.

In: a rasp. Out: a whimper. The sadness carries to my ears. I’m familiar with these tiny

sounds, it’s a product of Franny falling asleep in a tantrum.

My nascent matter. So, she’s also been crying. I let go.

Rule two: I must return to Franny.

I must always return to Franny. I cannot be separated from her, we have a thread

between us, our hearts wrapped up in the tangle of it. I love just as you do, I live just as

you do. The thread is my lifeline, my umbilical cord, one that cannot be severed or

removed. The elastic fiber can be spooled out but it is not limitless. The line must be

drawn in. I cannot go too far before it pulls back on me, first as a soft regret, then a

shudder, followed by lament. The final tugs pull on my cord so sharp it cuts through the

muscle with its diamond-thread.

This is my final spooling: the thread is tight and I’m choking from the inside. My

aortas have collapsed, my arteries are crushed, and my veins are curling in.

It is the kind of heartache that turns men into black sheets of ice.

Like a Dear Jane letter, I flatten myself and slip under the door. Good lord,

Stormkeeper, deliver us! Since Franny has rejected me — like all living things must — I


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will die and be transformed into memory.

Her room is dim and covered in a lattice of shallow moonlight and nightlight. I trip

over Franny’s book bag. Down the hall outside her room, I hear an expresso cup clink

into its saucer, it’s the Diplomat. The light in the hall turns on. Did the Diplomat hear me

trip? I lean in to listen. For the first time this evening I hear the forsaken fiddle of the

cicadas. The insects dominate over the motors of passing cars on Calle de la Frigata.

They are so loud I strain to hear the Diplomat’s footsteps walk down the hall.

On the night of Franny’s mother funeral, nighttime cicadas also performed mixed

with the wails of the hired mourner.

“You should let her live with me,” Grandpa Tom said.

“In a retirement home? A church of death and disease,” the Diplomat said.

“Ridiculous.”

“Don’t be dramatic, John.”

“Hmph.”

Franny stood behind the crack in her bedroom door, a slice of light dissecting her

curls. Her twelve year-old face still pale from the burial.

Full-suited government officials stopped picking the fried tomatoes out of the

Marmitaco Vasco and watched the exchange with their mouths hanging open. They

tarried, lost without their protection of bulletproof plexiglass.

The constant and deep whine of the hired mourner was cutoff by a hiccup. She


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swallowed the mousy sound with a large swig from her wineglass. The nameless woman

hired through Francisco Camero’s Servicios Funerarios. She dressed smartly in full-

length smock and a frilly white apron that saddled across her bosom. She wore square

black sunglasses and cried on the shoulder of a young, bewildered American bureaucrat.

“Rita, Rita. ¿Por qué Rita? ¿Por qué Dios permite que triunfen los malos? Pobrecita

Rita,” she cried. Her whine continued to long before it deepened into a whinny and ended

in another defiant hiccup.

“Franny doesn’t belong here. She never did. I don't know why you two came back

to Spain. Now her mother is dead. Rita is gone and buried,” Grandpa Tom said. Either he

didn’t notice the gape-mouthed government officials or didn’t care.

“You don’t think I fucking know that, Tom,” The Diplomat said.

“Rita. Rita. Aye, Pobrecita Rita,” the mourner wailed.

“Then let her come back to the States with me. She can live with Rita’s sister and

husband. She will have stability. She will attend a good private school in St. Pete. She

will have her cousins to grow up with who speak her language. Why could you possibly

want to keep her here? There’s nothing left in Spain. You barely have a low-level desk

job in some third-rate, beach-vacation embassy,” Grandpa Tom pursed his lips and filled

his palms with his temples. He held his pose for a minute and then shook off his words

with a sigh, “look John, I don’t mean to upset you. I’m thinking about the girl.”

“No, you’re thinking how I took Rita away from you.”


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“You and I both know she came here to follow her dream. She came to play for

Concerto Málaga.”

“Against your wishes,” the Diplomat said.

“Her work led her back to Spain. That was her wish.”

“You’re only thinking how to get back at me.”

“Don’t bullshit me, John.”

The mourner hiccups.

“She stays here. She’s my daughter. End of discussion.”

⁂

Rule three: I consume loneliness.

Before you imagine sunny daytimes spent playing board-games of Parcheesi and

sharing gossip in the back of study hall, consider what this means.

I’ll give you a moment.

I see the shadow arrive underneath the door. The Diplomat’s loafers block the light

from the hall. Will he see me in my last moments? He’s twisting the doorknob. Is there

anyway I could separate myself from Franny? I could jump ship and live on this man’s

gulf of grief. But I know he cannot see me or even sense me. No, I cannot latch on to

him. The door is opening and my heart nearly is cleft four-ways, my pulse is shutting

down. Is this pain worthy of my death? I could just melt away instead of returning to

Franny. But no, no, no!


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Your moment’s up, our time is short.

Before I tell you, remember ladies and gents, see from my perspective.

Here is my secret: I keep Franny alone.

You see, for me to subsist — to live — there can be no other ties of friendship. I eat

loneliness. A day Franny spends in ridicule at Benalmádena High is a happy feast for me.

I drink isolation. All our private talks become like wine to me — our afternoons in Doña

Dolce is a fine bottle of Costa del Sol. I am what I eat, I am solitude. Franny’s all-

consuming focus, her complete inward attention, all her Tomás-this and Tomás-that is a

first bite into the flesh of a five-star roasted-bifstek. I consume, I must. This is the way I

feed and bleed and stay in this world.

I create those lonesome moments and string them together like a noose around her

sorrow and gloom.

I am the puss-filled pimple on her face, the mocking daisies on her dress.

I am the stench of misplaced poverty that shouldn’t hang around a Diplomat’s

daughter.

I am the flash of light that catches Lourdes and Samantha’s eye and beckon them to

follow the lowest outcast from Benalmádena High’s 9th-grade.

Consider my perspective, ladies and gents.

Franny’s bedroom door opens and The Diplomat’s face peeks in. He crooks his head

when he spots his daughter. The light in the Diplomat’s face bears down on me like a


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migraine. You see, there can be no other bonds of family, either. The Diplomat’s pain

cannot be healed, I cannot allow it!

I can imagine it. I can see the future as the thaw spreads over me. Even as I fade like

an icicle discovering the summer solstice, my tears dripping from the tip of my soul. How

do I keep him from reconnecting with his daughter?

The summer is the season for a carnival.

I beg he never takes Franny up the coast to Málaga to her first Real de la Feria. The

Diplomat walks with her into the Cortijo de Torres fairgrounds, he can see the delight in

her eyes as she spots the fire dancers. She follows the path of their glowing Möbius-

streaks against the night. He points out the gypsy costumes overflowing from the food

stands, from the fortune tents, they are overgrown carnations. The Diplomat offers

Franny a paper cone full of saffron peanuts. He buys them from a olive-skinned man in a

black-and-white suit. He wins a pair of castanets from another man at a baseball throw,

knocking the last two milk bottles down on the last pitch and she claps. He hands her the

castanets as if they were a treaty between their two lands. With each slap of the

instrument’s chestnut shells, Franny's giggles ring out across the field. They reach the

Ferris wheel. Up, up, up in the air above the carnival lights. The fair outstretched in rows

below. He points out the fireworks, they shoot against the twinkle of stars and she laughs.

On, on, on. He holds both her hands in one of his own.

She nestles into his body.


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They will begin a family without the curse of pobrecita Rita. This is a future age of

famine for me, you see? I must resist the melt but what can I do? I’m caught between

fading away today or starving in such a horrific future.

This is my last stand. I look down over Franny’s bed. Her ringlets are a dense coral

against the baby blue cotton of her top sheet and pillow. Most of her face tucked under

her arm, her eyelashes are fragile as rusted sea anemones and she squints out from under

the wool blankets. My tears drop and spatter over the bedding. I become an exhausted

breath.

I cannot choose a direction and I wait for my fate to choose me.

Through the storm of my tears, I stand aside when the Diplomat steps into the room,

he walks right past me. I should not be surprised but what startles — no! — angers me is

what he’s doing. The Diplomat is smiling at his daughter. He puts his hand on her

forehead and gently moves her hair into place. She sighs from his touch and her toes

wiggle out from under the blanket.

I know what I must do. I throw myself into action, there’s no time for questions. I

follow my instincts and move towards her. I begin humming short bursts in C-Major. As

she looks towards me, searches for me, I stay in the corner of her eye. When I’ve caught

her curiosity, she’s mine. The bond between us is too strong to dissolve, to be replaced

like this. I keep humming chords. Franny’s gaze pans across the room but I stay in the

corner of her eye. As I hum C-Major, the idea of me enters her thoughts. The moment


21

opens up and her eyes widen.

In my final spooling, I’m nearly heartless.

I die just as you do. I let go just as you do.

I move from the corner of her eye into to the corner of her mind.


22

Chapter 2.

RECKLESS RECORDS

This is us in Reckless Records.

“Find the Slothmouth,” the hippy tells me. “Yeh dig?”

He waits behind the counter, nods, and transmits this intel as if I could pick up his

groove. His inner-meaning, man. I have no idea what he was telling me. Slothmouth? Is

it something psychedelic? His waist-length ponytail looks out of place amongst the

patchwork of Manic Panic blue and spiky-black hair. Too rusty, too granola. The paisley

print he wears is predictable and coffee-stained. It clashes with the dark fatigues, the ratty

leather, and damp Snorkel parkas worn by the throng. I’d bet he lost his way into

Reckless if it weren’t for the reverence displayed by the dodger standing behind me. How

he asks the hippy “Hallo, hallo? Is this the Odeon first-pressing of the Les Beatles?”

“Stop fart-arsing about, yeh anorak, and naff off,” the hippy says.

The dejected boy — he’s about my age. Fifteen, maybe sixteen — holds a record in

a crumpled, worn sleeve. He drops his arms to his side, slumps his shoulders, and moves

towards the record crates in the back of the room like a wounded mutt. Tail tucked under.

He slips the LP somewhere in the “zeds” before he heads down to basement level. The


23

hippy growls in a way that make the hairs on my scalp rise.

The thunk-thunk of machine-gun synths winds up as Blue Monday plays over the

speakers. Its racket combined with the paper-din of the punters sorting through the

second-hand records, I swear it transports me into a quiet shuffling through Vietnamese

rice paddies.

Like I’m ready for an ambush.

“For fuck sake, Rory,” the hippy says. “Are yeh playing that song again?”

Rory appears from behind the hippy. His checks blotch with pink embarrassment.

Rory’s uniform is the model for the Reckless staff. If my dad set eyes on him he’d

announce, loud like an American, “He looks like a bag of smashed asshole.” His Atomic

Turquoise™-colored hair crashes like a tubular wave over his left temple. He wears tight,

black nylon pants complete with seven sets of exposed zippers. His smudged teeshirt

insists ‘Frankie Says Relax.’ But Frankie’s advice is lost on Rory: he stands as if he were

waist-deep in icy water. Armed only with rubber O-rings on his right wrist. His left bound

by a bright-red bandana. Sweet little graphic skulls dotting the edge. The uniform is too

Nancy-boy, much too faerie. The uniform is glorious.

Rory stands by the turntable, a Technics SL-1200MK2, and — in a reaction all too

late and in a motion much too slow — he hides the record sleeve behind his back.

“Yeh know, I can hear the cunting song playing on the PA,” the hippy says. “Hiding

the bleeding jacket won’t do you any good.” He finishes him with a grunt.


24

Rory reveals the record sleeve, shy like a child caught in a cookie jar. The album

artwork is deceptive. A giant computer floppy disc is silkscreened on the sleeve. The

band’s name is not printed on it but I recognize it easily as New Order. Since the floppy is

printed as large as the cover of a 12-inch record, for Rory it’s as oversized as an oatmeal

cookie caught in his scampish hands.

I stifle my giggle with a fake cough.

“What are yeh looking at,” the hippy sighs. His frown disarms me.

“Nothing,” I say. I know when to speak up and when to shut-up.

I avoid returning his stare and scan across the record bins when I spot my little

brother, Drew, standing outside. His dark shape wears the Reckless uniform. He’s one

black cape away from becoming a Japanese vampire. He looks into the store, hands

cupped to the glass to keep the sunlight out. Either to see inside better or to keep the light

from agitating his porcelain complexion. Drew’s breath fogs up the window before it

turns to frost. His breath tumbles down into the sidewalk rather than drifting up to join

the Islington firmament.

“So this girl on this cassette,” I ask the hippy. I keep focus outside on my brother.

My fingers tap the cheap TDK cassette I laid on the countertop before the hippy. The

plastic squeaks against the formica. “The one who’s singing. Who is she?”

“Oi! Look at me,” the hippy says. The hairs on my neck tingle from sweat droplets

making their way through the reeds sprouting from my scalp. “Find the Slothmouth then


25

yeh’ll find yir girl. Yeh get what I’m telling yeh, boy?”

I turn the question over in my mind. The simple answer is an emphatic Nope but I

won’t risk it. I calculate the precise response and formulate a deeper strategy. The hippy

is a hateful creature. He grinds his teeth under his full, brown beard. His name tag says

Piss Off which matches his steel-grey eyes that say Piss Off. I’m ready to heed their

commands and make a break for it.

“What’s a Slothmouth?” I ask instead.

“Who wants to know?”

“I — well I do,” my eyelids blink disobediently.

“Then yeh can tell me why yeh want to know,” the hippy says. “Yeh dig?”

“How does it feel, to treat me like you do,” sings Bernard Sumner, the lead singer of

the New Order, the song playing overhead.

This is us standing at the maw of retribution.

My brother asked me to come to Reckless Records and find about the cassette. The

questions are many. Where did it come from? What are the words the girl sings on it?

How can we find her? On and on. To answer his question is to tell him how we came

across the tape. If I were to do that the hippy could find out more than I’m willing to

reveal. That…that I’m queer. There it is, I’ve said it. But here, in this Reckless Records

battleground, to confess it out loud to this shaggy troll, why would I do that?

That’s not even the worst part.


26

I cannot ask the question I really want to ask.

The band I need more recon is a band you don’t bring up to the Reckless staff. You

just don’t. I’ll become a target of their derision. I’m shitting bricks I’ll be told to leave if I

even say the name out loud. Embarrassed enough to admit I’ve sung along with the

lyrics. A mark of shame-sweat pools up on my forehead just thinking about it. I wipe the

sweat from my forehead. The fluorescents blink without concern.

Man oh man, if I just ask the hippy, maybe he could find sympathy for my plight

and help drive the song out of my head. What keeps me from asking the hippy about this

constant earworm? Or how it got there. Blue Monday’s techno salvo lays waste to my

hearing, but its sheer loudness cannot stomp the song out.

Something about “Shadows falling.”

Something about “The one who never cries.”

“I — uh,” I say.

The hippy squints at me. He pulls on the chin hairs beneath his beard. He stays

silent and picks out a fifty-pence piece from the register. The coin somersaults over each

of his knuckles like a magic trick. Is he lulling me through hypnosis?

“Go awn,” he says.

I try to put forth an answer a different way but the words clutch to my Adam’s

apple. It pulls deeper into my core. The storm underneath face burns with tropical heat. I

cannot say anything: my military-brat training keeps the question down. Keeps it cooking


27

in my intestines, liver and kidneys. I’m left at the counter like a “right twat,” my mouth

agape and tongue a-wagging.

“I still find it so hard to say what I need to say,” Sumner sings. The song on the

overhead becomes a little too relevant and it annoys me now. I switch strategies and

return to my original question.

“Can you just tell me what a Slothmouth is?”

All I hear is my own drawn American accent and I wince. No amount of adopting

an English turn of phrase can hide it. I twist my wince inward to keep the hippy from

seeing any signs of weakness.

I hold firm. I keep my eyes from squinting from the fluorescents. I look at him

dead-on and wait for the impending outburst. Like a grenade about to go shrapnel. The

hippy puts the coin back into the register.

“She’s a mute,” he says.

The answer comes easy-peasy.

“Mum’s the word,” Rory adds.

“For fook’s sake, Rory,” the hippy says.

“But she sings,” I say. “Do you mean she’s deaf?”

“I dunnae ken, kid,” the hippy shrugs and seems softer when he does. “Why would

they call her a Slothmouth? Maybe mute’s her profession, like in traditional times. They

used to hire a lass to stand at church doors and look sad and pathetic. There to remind yeh


28

of the solemness of funeral parties.”

“But on the tape she sings,” I say. “Doesn’t she?”

“Can I hear the tape,” Rory asks.

Rory looks squarely in my eyes, he doesn’t look away. He’s hugging himself tightly

and he smiles wide. I hold his gaze in mine and become hyper-aware of the noises around

me. Of the everlasting din of customers moving inside. Of the store’s front door when it

opens. As the synth-claps of Blue Monday escalate right before the song blows up, I hear

the door’s bell tin-jingling before it slams shut. My pulse begins to thump against my

eardrums. I can no longer hold my gaze within Rory’s and return to the hippy.

“If you wanna cry like a botty boy.” His softness extends to Rory. “Not today, yeh

don’t want to hear it in front of the riff-raff. Yea, I’ve listened to this tape before, kiddo. It

comes from the north. Scotland. My brother’s up there on the lookout for bands and mails

me demos sometimes.” The hippy examines the TDK cassette. “He sent me a copy —

Shite, this may be the very one. How on Earth? — and I heard a single song. My eyes

were bloodshot fer a week from weeping. Listen kid, it’s a novelty, it has no use. Burn

this tape.”

“How’d ya mean,” Rory asks. “You cried just by listening to that? Let me hear it.”

“Who’s your brother,” I ask. I keep my eyes trained on the hippy. “What’s his

name? Can I talk to him? Where did he get the tape?”

His softness seizes up. The hippy purses his lips.


29

“Now I stand here waiting,” Bernard sings. I keep myself from rolling my eyes.

I should be asking daft questions like other kids, like the Les Beatles dodger. Maybe

ask him where to find the first pressing of the White Riot single? I could strike up the

latest release from the Mancunian underground scene. It’d be easier to request if they

have any copies left of Tears for Fears’ debut. Instead I do this favor my goth-lovin’

brother gave me. Man, he’s too chicken-shit to ask about himself and I don’t even care

about his bogus tape. Yet here I am.

I notice Drew’s decided to come inside.

“What’ll yeh give me?”

“I’ve got ten pounds,” I say. I offer up the note.

“I don’t want your fold,” the hippy says. “This is a parley. Yeh ken? Yeh got

something yir keeping from me, kiddo, I can tell. Give to us.”

It’s family coordinates he’s disclosing, directions to his brother. He’s not going to

part anything without getting something in return. What have I to give? A military family

packs light. We’ve got nothing worth anything. When dad’s given USAFE assignment,

our family picks up on a moment’s notice. We sell everything that doesn’t fit in a

suitcase. He won’t want the clothes of my back.

The hippy surveys me. He stares directly into me, directly inside my head and

searches for a weakness in my armor. He’s trying to figure me out. What does he see?

Does he imagine me wearing eyeliner or eyeshadow? He wants to know my secrets. I


30

wring the flak-sweat from from my hands.

This is us at a crossroads.

“Tell us what it is,” the hippy finishes.

“Tell him, Mikey,” a voice reassures me. It’s my brother who’s found me at the

counter. Drew has queued up with two other customers.

The first is a punk with Bad Boy™-blue spikes rising to form a crown around his

scalp. Silver-tarnished spikes poking 2-inches out from the leather collar. He’s more

dainty than scary, chewing gum and looking at the rafters, eyes blank as a fresh TDK

cassette. The second is Drew, hill-faerie wrapped in shadow. I realize now how bloodshot

his eyes are. Finishing the queue is a suit and tie. He shifts from one foot to another,

tapping his Rolex’s crystal face to make a show the slow progress of its second-hand.

“Tell him what,” I ask my brother.

“Next,” the hippy says. He shrugs me off. Urging on the next customer, he raps the

fifty-pence piece against the formica.

“What can I say if you won’t take my money,” I ask the hippy.

“C’mon yeh, yeh daft cunt,” the hippy leans back into his anger tactics. “Up to the

counter.” He motions for the punk.

“Please,” I say. With one arm, I hold the punk back. He reeks of the modeling glue,

keeping his mohawk spikes stiff. “What do you want from me?” But I already know. The

hippy didn’t do much to mastermind the situation. He has the upper hand. I need his help


31

more than he needs mine.

“Okay, what do you want?”

“Give me the tape,” Rory says.

“Fook off, Rory,” the hippy says. “Alright kiddo, what’re yeh really looking for?”

The hippy dismisses the punk with an indifferent hand. “No not yeh, naff off.” His eyes

level me: “Yir not just looking for the girl on the tape. Tell me why.”

“I — I don’t want to say it.”

“Tell me now how do I feel,” Bernard sings.

“Tell him, Mikey,” Drew says.

“I can’t. I just can’t,” I say. “Not here, where everyone can hear.”

I sneak a look at Rory. His look pins me down. My face burns.

The hippy relaxes, reveling in my embarrassment. He snorts and his scowl

transforms into a champion-sized smirk.

“Let’s go downstairs. Yeh can give it to us then,” he says. The hippy points me to

the stairs. “Rory, quit standing there and help the cuntin’ customers. Yeh dig?”

⁂

This is us rifling through my parent’s wardrobe.

Pray nobody noticed dad’s Air Force dress jacket has been missing these past few

weeks. I return it back to its rightful place with the rest of his Uxbridge blues. Holding a

cedar block up to my nose to inhale its spicy incense, I slip it into an inside pocket of the


32

garment bag. A wave of relief drains into me when I hang the uniform on the rail. I can

breathe again.

The day has proved fruitful. An address from the hippy, a number for Rory. A detour

to The Blitz and it just cost me a peck on the cheek to get dad’s jacket back. I should give

myself away more freely.

Can’t help but to hum along with the song in my head.

I elbow back Mother’s sunday dresses so I can zip up the bag and a pair of Capezio

ballet slippers fall to the ground. I’d almost forgotten them. All in a single day’s luck! I

don’t hesitate to sneak the slippers away. After I stand back up, I jump back startled.

When you’re in the closet you never expect your mother to be standing directly behind

you.

“You scared me,” I say. “I thought you were at the Wive’s Club.”

She hovers over me like a ghost. Summoned by my secrecy.

“You know,” she eyes the Capezios in my hand. “I was once a dancer.”

Her words slur through an air of remembrance. It’s a wonder that she snuck up on

me at all. When she stinks of this much sour vinegar — sprung from bottles of cheap red

wine — she’s often crashed out on the couch. She pays me no mind. Not today, not with

the way she toys with her lapel.

Man, I’m in right shit.

This is us rummaging my memory to figure out what Mother already knows.


33

“When I was your age, my mother worked two jobs but she made sure I could take

ballet lessons,” she says, dripping into one of her stories. She takes the Capezios out of

my hands — they slip through my fingers like pink water — and regards them with

glassy eyes. They’re brand new, never worn. She tosses them to the back of the closet.

“Never paid off did it?”

“Why — why not?”

“Father didn’t think much of me,” she says. She releases one of the buttons on the

top of her dress. “He thought it was nonsense. It added to the bills and boy he made sure

to let us know…” she laughs acerbically “…how it took away from his bar tab. But my

mother tucked money away. Five dollars here, two dollars there. When she had enough,

she entered me into the American Dance Competition. I made it to the finals, you know. I

was convinced I was going to be discovered. But it’s how these things go. I didn’t win.

After all, there isn’t any prize money for second place.”

“I didn’t know that. Like I knew you were a dancer,” I say. I’m not accustomed to

speaking with Mother without crossfire and smoke between us. It’s an awkward obstacle

course. I venture: “Just not that you competed.”

“I remember my father refused to address me until the day I came home trophy-less.

He stood at the door waiting — like he’d been depending on it — he said, ‘Now you have

had your fun. But don’t you think you’ve done enough to hurt this family? You’re a damn

stupid girl if you expect your mother to keep paying for this idiotic hobby.’ After that, he


34

cut me off.” She undoes the rest of her buttons and slips out of her dress. She moves past

me to hang it in the wardrobe. Wrapping a seafoam housecoat over her simple bra and

panties, she shuts the door with a hip and leans against it. She’s ready to pose for a

picture. “I didn’t care — maybe I was like you are with me — I did what I wanted,

whenever I wanted. We’re not so different you and me, are we? So I disobeyed them. I

auditioned for a Stravinsky ballet downtown, and wouldn’t you know it, I got the part.”

My trepidation is alarming. I’m not sure where she’s leading me. Her stories are

never random. She’ll twist it so that what’s been done to her — whatever hurt her before

— is somehow the pain I’m inflicting upon her today.

“When was this,” I ask. My voice rustling into a whisper.

“Christ, this was years ago. I was out of high-school by then,” she says. “The day I

was of age I married your father. We were in love then. We had a plan and the ballet was

our way out. We were getting the hell out of Jacksonville, away from that shithole by the

beach.” She walks across the bedroom to a second-hand dresser and kicks off her flats.

She opens the top drawer and retrieves yellowed clippings. She barely scans the article. “I

made it in the newspaper. The goddamned Times-Union, wouldn’t you know it? They

wrote how my Sacre du Printemps was, now get this: ‘full of graces rarely benefiting a

nineteen year-old.’” She holds the article up with one hand. With the other she points an

index finger at me, pretending to shoot. “We were going to New York, you know.”

“So, what happened?”


35

I barely hear the words escape my throat.

“I became pregnant with you. It didn’t take long before you ruined my body,” she

says. “I never danced again.”

Mother readied her weapon and took her time. She relaxed her breathing so it would

recede back into muscle memory. Then the hammer hit — BOOM — the shot is fired. I

watched her do it and yet I couldn’t get out of the way.

How luck turns on you like a razor when you abuse its riches.

My stomach gurgles as the ghost inside me tries to find escape. My hands clam up,

slippery with sweat. I put them into the pockets of my khakis. My legs bend, they are

wobbly as molten lead, soft to the touch and stuck to the floor. Man, I’ve been at fault

with her since the day I was conceived.

The earwig plays on.

Something about “Mama had tears in her eyes.”

Something about “The only one who never cries.”

That’s us, a lyric for each of us.

“Mom, please don’t —,” I say.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says. Red rings around her lids, saltwater about to

spill over. She nearly spins off the dresser but catches herself and holds herself up with

one arm. “Treat me with respect, dammit, I’m your Mother.”

“Yes, ma’am.”


36

“You don’t even care about me do you? Standing there like some special kind of

idiot,” she says. There’s nothing I can say or do anymore. I must let her run the course.

Maybe she’ll tire and pass out. “You’re just like your father, he’s not even here because

of you — on another fucking assignment — and when he is home he speaks with that

same soft whisper. Is that why you do it?”

I don’t respond, I know when to shut-up.

My worry reaches out to my brother, wondering if he’s in his room. I pray he’s gone

outside to play or has music blasting over his headphones. If he were to walk into my

parents’ bedroom, he’d crawl into Mother’s lap and his eyes would leak out all the

teardrops with hers. He’d beg her to stop. Wouldn’t he say, “Mikey’s not like that. He’s

not like that, please Mother. You know we both love you.” Imagine how he’d appeal to

her with fanciful words like prithee, beseech and implore.

Mother digs through the top drawer.

“You’re father had to enlist into the Air Force because, you know, because you were

on the way and we had no money,” she says. “I lost my job when I couldn’t keep off the

weight. Here’s the cancelled contract, here’s the enlistment papers. Christ, lord in heaven,

what could I do? I couldn’t go home but the truth is I never left it. My servitude was

transferred from my father to yours. What a laugh.”

She gulps down a sigh wiping away the tears expanding around the bags of her

eyes. Mother rummages through the drawer, removes a bundle of documents and several


37

slips of paper. She arranges the papers purposefully on the glass top of the dresser. I

cannot recognize them from where I’m standing.

“I’ve had my eye on you. I know what kind of thing you are now. You are a string of

disappointments since the day you were born. Every year I see your poor report cards I’m

reminded how stupid you are.”

“I bet you want to know why I’m telling you this,” she says. It’s not a question.

“Today, I followed you into London. I was there in Islington and I was there in

Camden Place,” she searches my face for signs of recognition. She holds up a flyer to The

Blitz club. “I saw you hanging around these freaks. Didn’t you think I’d find you out?”

She holds out her hands to make an example of me, to make her point. “Why am I

drowning in all this bad luck? You’re an unfortunate child, don’t you deny it. No more, I

can’t take it anymore.”

I ransack my brain to figure out what other proof of my crimes she’s collected, what

other papers lay in wait. What tipped her off as she spied on me earlier. I run my

fingertips over the piece of paper enshrining Rory’s phone number. Does she imagine me

with long braids and cheap lipstick?

That’s not even the worst part.

“And this,” she holds up a receipt. “Why did you buy those ballet slippers? What a

sicko. It’s not me who made you this way. Don’t you dare blame me.” Those damn ballet

slippers, satin in all their glory, will be my downfall. No way to retrieved them now,


38

they’re lost to me. It’s best Mother doesn’t know they’re meant for Drew. My debt to him

will remain unsettled.

“Is that why you were going through my wardrobe? You should answer me now.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Lies, lies, all lies because I know what you did. I saw you.” From the bundle she

releases a small booklet. “So I’ve made up my mind. Listen up child, I’m about to offer

you a proposal. Something my parents never did for me,” she inhales and covers her pain

with a trembling wrist. “This is what I’ll do.”

She stands up straight and resolute, presses down the terrycloth on her housecoat,

and marches over to me. She’s a silhouette against the afternoon light blasting from the

windows. Mother reaches to where I’m standing, takes my hands in hers, and places the

navy-blue booklet into my palm.

“I’ll offer you an invitation to leave. To slip away. Slip away and don’t tell your

father. Don’t even tell him goodbye. Don’t speak to the MPs. Leave before you spoil your

sweet-little brother, my little soldier, before he becomes like you. You must do it soon

because…haven’t we suffered enough? Do us an honor and run-away. Just leave us alone,

leave us forever.”

I tug my hands out of hers. A snort escapes my flared nostrils.

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you’ll be free from me,” Mother says.


39

The second shot is fired — BOOM — and I cannot even stand-up for myself. I want

to yell at her, to call her every name in the phonebook, to mouth off to her until her skin

crackles and bursts into flame. But I’m all but snuffed out. Should have known I’ve

brought this shame on myself. On my brother, Drew. On all of us. She’s right, isn’t she? I

mess it up, every time. My knees tremble and become unlocked. Before I leave and shut

the door behind me, her voice is the final bullet tearing through my back-flesh.

“Remember how I gave you this gift,” she says.

In my hands I hold my American passport.

ACT OF THE APOSTLE

This is us three weeks later.

Drew and I wait at the Peterborough station. We’re meeting Rory on the King’s

Cross train. After paying for the train tickets, I stuff my nylon wallet (with velcro flap) in

my back pocket. There’s £17 left over, an Alconbury library card, and photos of dad and

Drew locked in laminate sleeves. I cannot stomach the picture of young-me in mother’s

clasp as we stand on concrete steps somewhere in the 70s.

A new Smash Hits at the newsagents, the cover band featured is OMD, I decide not

to buy it. Don’t draw attention to our truancy and I make up a story if anyone asks.

Pacing around avoiding suits is easy to do. We’re the lone kids in the concourse, it’s a late


40

Friday morning. I turn around and finish my sixteenth lap down the platform.

I search for my brother but the cold fog clamors between us. As I walk towards him,

Drew appears still wrapped in shadow. He blurs around the edges. I talk to his shape, a

dark-clad figure sitting on a slatted bench. He’s found himself a shaggy cape that looks

like a bag of leaves. He’s buried himself up to his neck with it.

“A cloak,” he corrects me. “I made it. See?” The monstrosity billows with a giant

wave of his arm, somehow to say Yeah, it’s mine.

I flop down next to him. We ramble on deep topics brothers divine in private. Drew

asks if he’ll make any friends in Alconbury High, I tell him not to get attached. He frets

over when the 527th Squadron will get back with dad, I tell him not to worry about it. He

wonders where we’ll be stationed next. I don’t know and I don’t care.

“Do you think we’re gonna get in trouble,” he asks.

“Do you think Mother’ll be mad we’re gone,” he asks.

“Do you think…” Man, he throws out question after irritating question. They echo

off the empty walls as if they were spent shells — piling up in the gravel where the train

tracks scratch and hum — until I say, “Shut-up, Drew.”

If he were first-born, he’d be the better bigger brother.

He pivots away from me. Our silence is broken by the ominous horn of the express

train. The commotion the wheels make as it passes through the station screech out, a

steel-blade battle clashing between two ancient-Roman legionaries.


41

I lean in very close to Drew’s cloaked shape, rubbing my arm against his back. I

hang over his shoulder. He’s reading about the Beholder, a creature in the Monster

Manual. He’s such a dork with that Dungeons & Dragons crap.

“What’s a Beholder?” My version of an apology.

Drew whistles, trying to match the frequency of the train’s doppler effect.

“How’s the earwig,” he asks…when he’s ready. That’s his answer. He doesn’t look

up from his Monster Manual.

“Earworm,” I correct him. The song playing in my head. “It’s still going.”

I imagine a shiny black beetle vibrating my eardrum, the tight Tympanic membrane,

with bug-like pincers. A stealth bug playing congas would be funny. But it crawled in my

ear, burrowed deep inside my grey-matter to set up its haunt and won’t go away.

“Any new lyrics? Any new clues?”

“Nope, same ones.”

Drew flips a page on the manual after licking the whole of his thumb.

I grab The Rolling Stone Record Guide out of our duffle bag. Over three years since

last published, the dog-eared book is held together with layers of duct-tape. I flip near the

end where my passport is the bookmark.

I follow my brother’s lead, lick my thumb, and read through a chapter.

⁂

Where do songs go when they die?


42

I put on my orange-foam headphones to scan through this tape. I still can’t find the

damn song.

Something about “Shadows falling.”

Something about “On my own this morning.”

I press on diagonally inset buttons on my cherry-red Walkman II. I remember the

tune sat in the middle of the cassette, more towards the end of side A. Man, I love this

album but now it’s warped in parts and crumpled in others. I’ve looked for that song but

I’ve lost that song.

I remember listening to the tape before Christmas when Mother and dad fought. Her

voice thrown like a punch, his as soft as a pillow. I turned the volume up as high as it’d

go and stared at the patterns my eyes made with the emptiness above my bunk. I swore

the song came on just as the darkness carried me to the edge of sleep.

It was the earwig — man, Drew’s got me saying it — the earworm I heard overtake

the tunes playing on my Walkman. The same one I have hooked on my belt. Press

FF►► through side A and listen to all the sped-up voices. Press STOP� and find the

next button. Hit PLAY► the tape hiss stretches beneath the music.

Where did that song go?

Something about “Mama had tears in her eyes.”

Something about “The only one who never cries.”

I remember the piano sounded like my soul: bright in the fog. The earwig’s full-


43

volume, all melody, and a few words. When I’m years older, will I recall how those

madlib lyrics resonate this moment? I’ll remember how I held my breath as I watched the

way the fog stumbled through the empty platform. How the cold Cambridgeshire air left

a numb and tingle on my cheeks and lips. The way my stomach wrenched with

anticipation, around a spark ready for any illumination to ignite.

Today, it feels as familiar as déjà vu.

We left base early as the sun rose and curfew lifted. Drew knew we embarked to

find the Slothmouth but I skirted his questions as to why I overpacked the duffle-bag.

Plain clothes, some books, some magazines, our cassette collection. Necessities. “Like it

might come in handy. Mind your own beeswax, buzz off.” For Drew, I threw in his

sketchpad and colored pencils.

I left an IOU in the petty-cash box knowing it was a broken promise. We pooled the

money with our allowance, calculated the price of a ticket away from home. Away from

the sonic booms of RAF Alconbury to which we’ve become so very accustomed. We’re

surprised when we still notice them BOOM.

Drew hung a note on the fridge with small magnets. “Sleepover at Tommy’s. See

you Sunday. DSN # 867-5309” For sure, a fake number but not to worry. Mother won’t

call. Dad’s out on assignment and won’t give us a miss. Drew’s not stupid for a twelve

year-old. He knows how to cover his tracks.

I neglect to tell him that he’s the biggest stowaway. Since I’m kicked out of the


44

house, it’s hard to admit to him I’m homeless. He’ll be alone to fend for himself. He can

do it for sure. He’s got Mother’s love on his side. But without me, he’ll be the next target,

won’t he? What’s he going to do then? I can’t just leave him behind.

It’s why I had to take Drew along with me.

We walked atop the brick wall enclosing the back garden and dropped into the alley

behind our duplex. We made our way by the bus then the train. From the nearby town of

Huntingdon, we rode the 9:22a and switched to the East Coast Line. Today’s the first time

Rory had off from Reckless, kicking our plan in motion.

The horn signals the arrival of the local train into Peterborough station.

“Do you think Rory caught the train,” my brother asks.

“Won’t know until we get onboard,” I say. My lungs expel a little disappointed

whimper when I consider the truth of it. The excitement burns in my stomach, blood

rushes into my cheeks.

“What color do you think his hair is now?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I can’t help myself. “Shut-up, Drew.”

⁂

This is us on the train to Edinburgh.

To my relief we find Rory easily. His Reckless uniform has been replaced with a

black polo and matching jeans. He’s still armed with O-rings but the red skull-bandana on

his other hand has turned to black. If anyone asks it fits into the story I’ve made up.


45

We’re going north to grandmother’s funeral, Rory’s our cousin and chaperone.

I say my hellos and I collapse in the window seat across from him. The earwig

trumpets inside me, begging for all my attention, so I cover up my ear with a spare hand.

My head launches a migraine in response, my eye begins to throb. I take of my glasses.

“I’m such an idiot. I didn’t think I’d find you.” I don’t say much else. What do I even say,

really? Does Rory imagine me in a skirt and scarf bound around my head? I grab The

Scotsman left behind from seat next to mine. I wrap up my taciturnity in the crumple of

newspaper and lay it over my chest like a blanket.

Drew messes with the doors connecting the two railcars. He runs between them and

back again, exploring the outside space. After the novelty wears off, he heads over to us

swinging each of his arms in grand propeller swoops. His emerald-spotted cape flutters

like the wings of a dark Forester moth. One or two other passengers retreat from the whip

of the beaded edges.

“Drew, stop spazzing out. Sit the fuck down” I say. He’s such a pest. “Man!”

“Hey,” Rory says in protest.

Drew’s face drops as he flops next to Rory. The displeasure on his face is hard-set in

his jaw — sometimes he looks just like dad — but when he looks over at Rory, the

shadows retreat. A grin blooms upon his face.

“Radical,” Drew squeals. He points at Rory’s head. “How’d you do that,” he asks.

Rory’s hair is the color of a blackbird. A feather of After Midnight™-blue dye streaks


46

through the black. “Aces. I’ve never seen anything so brilliant.”

“Far out, innit,” Rory says.

They exchange hair tips.

“Drew,” I warn him with a disapproving squint. He always makes friends before I

ever can. “I’ve got my eye on you.”

“What did I do?”

“Darling, he’s not doing anything,” Rory says.

Their conversation cuts down to a whisper. Questions concerning the New

Romantic scene in Camden and their latest fashion shockers. Questions about the newest

music arriving at Reckless. Questions leading to more questions. I want to say “Shut-up,

Drew” over and over and over.

I cover my eye with the the ball of my fist to ward off the escalating migraine. Rory

points out Drew's book and my brother explains Advanced D&D™. I stare out one eye at

the Monster Manual and read the caption. An illustrated compendium of monsters: Ariel

Servant to Zombie by Gary Gygax.

There’s nothing to say and I pout instead.

The erupting pain, the early morning travel, they combine with the rocking train and

my eyelids weigh down. I curl up in the chair and feel the cold glass on my forehead

which brings some relief. My eyes close. I watch the light play against the back of my

eyelids. A noise or snippet of conversation draws my attention and I peek through my


47

eyelashes to see Scottish heather pass outside in clumped patches.

“I’ll have a cheese and tomato toastie, please,” Drew asks the trolly.

Rory gets a bacon one. Neither ask me what I want. I keep my eyes closed and my

upper lip tucked under my lower. I smell the sweet floral tomatoes, the malt of the

bloomer bread, and the salty English bacon. They quiet when they eat and I drift back off.

Sometimes the train slows into a station but I’m asleep when it starts up again. A vision

of wild heather dotting the landscape outside, immigrating from the north, increasing in

their masses. I imagine the shrubs carpet-bombing the countryside, invading the British

prairies with wreaths of lilac flowers.

Scotland is coming!

The green hills rise into serpentine coils. They become the Alconbury Dragon. Our

high-school mascot of green and gold, our high-school colors. Not the cuddly creature

that rallies at American football matches but the one that constricts its tail around the

Alconbury yearbook cover. The dragon is ornate, damask-green scales lined with gold

gilding. The dragon is irate with me. She breathes a plume of scarlet fire, melting the

spring-flurries of innocent snowflakes. A forked-tongue tests the Lowland air from her

toothy jaw. I watch the monster lumber towards the train, growing in size and dwarfing

the locomotive. Smoke steams from her nostrils like long-Chinese whiskers.

I don’t notice I’m in a dream.

“Give us a listen then,” Rory asks my brother.


48

“I’m borrowing your Walkman,” Drew speaks from a misplaced memory.

I feel him remove the device from my hands. Walkman are the noisiest contraptions,

built as much for the plastic ruckus when switching cassettes as they are for playing

music.

The racket announces a Russian bear shambling out of the woods surrounding the

train. Fur glows an amber halo of honey. I recognize the ruddy beast from emblazoned

one on a patch stitched to my dad’s flak-suit. The bear becomes giant as the hills.

Lumbering forward, he confronts the shimmering dragon. He roars, “Stop abomination!

Stand down. I’m the First Sergeant of the Aggressors.”

That’s my dad’s rank and the name of his squadron.

He’s come to protect us from the dragon! The reptile ignores the warning and

strikes. She wraps its reptilian tail around the bear’s neck. They both wrestle and tumble

too close to the train — they grow to the size of a metropolis — and surely will crush us.

“Don’t you dare blame me,” the dragon says.

“But he’s just like you,” the bear says.

The dragon strikes, her tail flourishes crepe-paper streamers that lick the bears face.

Tendrils of fire. The bear’s wet nose becomes ash-caked and he howls, barking unlike a

dog. HIs barks are words. He is speaking to me. He grumble-barks out in a chorus, not

one but many voices.

“Mikey, why,” he asks. “Why do you persecute us so much?”


49

“Who’s speaking,” I ask. “Who is that?”

“We are Drew/Dad. The ones you torment,” he says. The voices overlap. “Don’t

find your own way. Do not leave us behind.”

I’m confronted with my overgrown-thoughts. How I am a disappointment to my

brother. Drew can look inside me, the buried parts of me, and see my true weaknesses.

And now I’ve stolen him away. How my dad’s dismay will be assured stepping into an

empty house. The dread is a weight hanging off my sternum. How Mother will spin any

lie that suits her. Or worse: the truth of my departure. Must I be on my own, then?

There’s no way to go back. What will I do? As if an answer to my questions — the bear’s

barks becomes soft howls — he delivers this message.

“Rise and enter the city,” he says. “A sage will tell you what you must do.”

“What city? Edinburgh,” I ask. “And what sage?” I look down at myself. I am now

the dragon, I’ve always been the dragon. For I am my Mother’s son.

Dream-logic works that way.

⁂

I awake but my legs are asleep, needles in my calves. I hold on to the last seconds of

the dream before it slips away. I feel an insistence I’ve lost something important before

I’m distracted. I listen to Rory sob. He’s switched seats with my brother and he sits

beside me. I twist my head to look back, his forehead is wedge between my shoulder

blades, orange-foam headphones lay in his lap still in his hands. He cannot cover the tears


50

that stream down his cheek and drip off his chin.

He’s listened to the Slothmouth on the tape. He cries like a botty boy. He cannot

stop the deluge springing from his eyes.

“I wish I could cry,” I say to him. “I wish I could get it out like that.”

“Why,” he sobs. “Why can’t you?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t,” I say. “I’m the one that never cries.” I quote the lyrics

running inside my head. “Like it’s been driven out of me, you know. I’m raised military.”

“That’s not true,” Drew says. “I cry all the time.”

“Because you listen to that tape all the time,” I whisper. “Because you like it.”

“No duh.”

Rory calms down listening to the patter between me and my brother. His exhales

seesaw into a predictable rhythm. I smell the cigarettes on his breath. Rory wipes his nose

on the back of my shirt, then spoons me, laying his hands on my side. The rustle of

newspaper does not stop his advance. His arms burrow underneath it and wrap around my

ribs. His hands clasps tight around my belly, knocking the headphones through the gap

between us. His raspy exhales tickle my ear.

I still don’t know what to say so I say nothing at all.

“That’s why we can no longer prolong…to find the girl behind the song,” Drew

says in one of his made-up couplets. He’s talking about the Slothmouth. The dream has

worn off but there’s a shift within me tilting as strong as the Earth’s axis. I’m relieved


51

Drew is nearby and not lost at all. If I’ve got to grow up sometime, do I have to do it

alone? Perhaps our journey to Scotland is a way to avoid it altogether.

“He’s a little queer,” Rory whispers into my ear. “Isn’t he?”

“He’s not the queer one in the family,” I say.

“C’mon,” Drew says. “Kiss him.”

“I know how that goes,” I shut him down. I’ve tangoed before. No matter how much

I want to I can’t just land a kiss without consequences. “Read your book.”

“Bogus.”


52

Chapter 3.

WIND KNOCKED OUT

I’m revising myself into a coma.

“Time for coffee, Francesca,” I tell myself.

I break from my studies and leave the Edinburgh University library, walk through

the alleys between the mix of sandy-colored and modern-glass buildings, and pop out

onto Nicolson Street. I hop over the slosh of cold rivulets snaking down the cobblestone,

looking for the café with the ruby-red façade. It reminds me of Andalusian saffron threads

sold back en el mercado. Piled up in the Spanish sun, a twinkle of gold reflecting the

light. The café stands out against the aged stones of the surrounding buildings and is a

signal I’m nearly home. I run in and order a coffee. Not tea but my usual since the cold

Scottish rain has taken a stab at my Mediterranean bones.

I’ll never get used to the weather but I don’t care: I love it so.

When I arrive at the flat none of the other exchange students are back so I spread

my books out across the chunky, wooden dining table. My hands warm on the styrofoam

take-away. I breathe in the bitter roast mixed in with the aroma of lead and pencil

shavings lingering on my fingers.


53

“I’m finishing Maths, by far my favorite course,” I say. All afternoon I’ve been

solving problems for Practical Calculus. Ms. Stewart arrives downstairs and perches next

to me, checking the progress on my homework. “I still have Linguistics to do tonight,” I

answer her when she asks. I giggle inside how my host’s family-name combines the Old

English words house and guard. And so she is.

“What about yir third course, Francesca,” Ms. Stewart asks, eyebrows raised. I love

how she pronounces my name with the short little trills over impossibly hard Rs. She

cranes her head around to look at my diagrams of slopes and triangles, beaming with

pride at the cryptic equations. Her cheeks become rosy with warmth, her hands a little

bow-tie above her munificent bosom.

But the question is shrewd, nothing gets past Ms. Stewart. She walks across the

room and sits in her wingback chair. She picks up her cross-stitch hoop on the nearby

side-table and starts pulling a threads from a deflating bundle of embroidery yarn.

“I’m avoiding Psychology,” I admit. “Soft-sciences are worthless but I have them

all year.” Reading the textbook makes my stomach crumple yet my curiosity jumps to the

pages on delusions and hallucinations. “They make us — those who major in Science &

Engineering — take these stupid humanities. This year I’m taking them all at once to get

them over before they give me any heartache,” I say. “I wish I could just take Gaelic.”

“Hum,” she says. She thinks about this for a flutter and smirks when she spots my

flattery. She shakes off her national pride and presses the question. “So, you shouldae


54

done your homework for Psychology then. Aye?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, nodding. “I’ll do it next.” We sit quietly, I’m at my texts and

Ms. Stewart’s hands in-motion over her needlepoint. The sparse crackle of the wood-

stove in the adjoining kitchen highlights the space between us.

“Have yeh always been attracted to the sciences,” she asks.

I stop working to think about the source of her question — I’m the only girl in the

flat majoring in them — and find myself mesmerized by the looping-motions her thread

makes when she plays over the Aida cloth.

“No I —” I decide if I want to proceed. “I used to be interested in music.”

“Is that so? Were you brought up in a musical family,” she asks. It’s not the usual

follow-up and I’m thrown. I’m used to answering, What instrument do you play?

“My dad and I decided a pragmatic career would be best,” I say. My scripted

answer. “No musical instrument can do that for me.” If I’m uncomfortable speaking on

the topic (even if I brought it up) I proffer this half-truth. It’ll end a conversation because

no-one, not any of my teachers up to this point, can argue a pragmatic career. Nor a

father’s counsel. “My dad would have preferred any profession akin to his own — he’s a

Diplomat — still he would’ve supported my life in the arts.” Unsure why, I’m compelled

to drop in: “Like he did with my mother. She played the viola.”

“Oh, thas too bad,” she says. “Ah wouldae loved to learn to play the piano. I do this

instead,” she raises her needlepoint hoop. “Why did yeh two decide on a pragmatic


55

career — if yeh don’t mind an ole lass for asking — and what did your mother think?”

I’m as transparent as tracing paper.

Proves nothing gets past Ms. Stewart.

“She was a virtuoso, and then, she died suddenly,” I rush to the finish. I double

back, not wanting to talk about it further. Talk of dying becomes stuff of silence. To

certify the conversation’s over, I tender another half-truth. “It became too difficult after

her death so I had to put the instrument down.”

“The viola?”

“No,” I say confused. “Me performing.”

Let me clear the air. I never learned to play — not the viola nor the Brinkerhoff —

but the year mother passed I became my most creative. Classical pieces inspired me so I

listened to all of her records, memorizing the songs. In remembrance, in reverence. My

imagination filled with a torrent of ideas, compositions for soloists, symphonies for the

stage. I mean to say: I made-up melodies to hum. But I scribbled them down, inventing

my own notation.

I should’ve kept the scores.

I’d almost forgotten who I was…and who I was with Tomás. How could I not

remember him? He coaxed me to hum a tune despite my father’s grief. Over three years

ago, not only did I lose my mother but I lost Tomás, too.

An era of contradictions. To be so alone with a Fine Friend, yet so satisfied to


56

compose oeuvres based on my wretchedness.

“God’s will is made manifest,” Ms. Stewart says. The silence expands while she

tucks a needle in the crook of her lips and peers over her eyeglasses at her work. How do

I talk religion when my empirical nature resists it? After all, we’re no longer reciting lines

according to the book. Ms. Stewart speaks from the side of her mouth. “Such an

opportunity, so great a gift we dare not deny it.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Yeh ken?”

Ms. Stewart waits in her chair with one stern eye on me. She requires response. Her

other focuses on tying off her cross-stitch. She snips the yarn with tiny scissors shaped

like an egret.

“Let’s see,” I say.

I dissect her proverb, scanning the words into my mind. On the surface, it’s about

fate. The nature of circumstance. Not luck, but possibility. When chance comes your way,

you should seize it. Carpe Fortuna. Sound advice if it weren’t for the familiar scratch

clawing at me when I’ve missed something. I flip back to our conversation about my

mother. Would she be disappointed how I abandoned the arts? My musical talent never

took flight since she left me, her music gifts forsaken.

I land on the answer with the rush of an epiphany

“So great a gift,” I repeat. Ms. Stewart’s pointing out I have spurned the legacy my


57

mother gave me. A talent passed down through my genes, unappreciated. In her eyes I’m

the thankless child.

“I’ve rejected that life for myself,” I say. “I cannot go back.” My voice quivers

between roaring indignation and surrender of the truth. No other choice but to lock up

those halcyon days and leave them behind.

A cyclone storms up within me. I snap my pencil down with a crack. How dare she?

Ms. Stewart doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t know how hard I worked to get into

University. How many books I’ve studied and lost myself in, how I’ve toiled and tumbled

on my own, all alone.

I choose my next words to be mighty so there’s no doubt in my message.

“My mother’s death was a devastation I could not bear. The injury of that

separation…,” I can’t remember if it’s the separation from my mother or Tomás, “…

prevents music from coming forth. I’ll never play another instrument, not ever.” I end

with a mocking strike, plagiarizing her phrase, “Yeh ken?”

Ms. Stewart raises her chin — the gesture reminds me of a knight’s defiance at the

portcullis — but she doesn’t reply. Her eyebrows lift as if to say, Listen here lass,

University or no, yeh know very little after all. She removes her glasses and puts down

her sewing. She folds her hands into a steeple. Nothing more’s said. Her silence knocks

the wind out of my storm.

I collect my notebooks to hide behind. Paper makes the worst armor.


58

“I apologize,” I say finally. “But it still hurts.”

Just like that she nods.

The woodstove tink-tink-tinks while she composes a response.

“When my husband passed from this world I was so hurt,” Ms. Stewart says. “Yeh

have to name a thing to understand it. I decided grief was a red fox with spectral eyes. I

addressed him in the old tongue, as Sionnach.” She caresses a locket hanging deep below

her neck. “Those nights and days I lay down, Sionnach slept beside me. Content to never

leave my bed, wrapping myself up in his dense, fluffy fur. Sionnach chewed my heart and

slurped it up like gutter-slush. I let him because I was numb but mostly because when I

awoke in the night, which I often did, Sionnach was gone. Just Mr. Stewart’s dent in the

mattress remained.”

A sorrowful realization.

“Is Sionnach still here?”

“Rarely no,” Ms. Stewart says. “It took patience to keep that fox away. Sometimes

I’m reminded what Mr. Stewart said or sang out, or the mussels he liked to eat, a twinkle

he had in his eyes when he repeated one of his dirty jokes that made me laugh. When

something reminds me of him and I’m off guard, Sionnach catches me and cuts me up

terrible.”

How familiar. I wonder if Tomás was my Sionnach.

“What do you do,” I ask.


59

“What could I do? I applied to house exchange students for the University,” she

says. “So here you are to keep me company.” For good measure, she shows the fruits of

her needlepoint. Germane advice for both of us. The script stitched into the cloth is the

Stewart clan motto. It says, “Courage grows strong at a wound.”

⁂

I’m revising my decision to study abroad.

“I want to come home, Dad,” I say to cracked static on the telephone. I twist its

curly-cord around my wrist. Outside the window midnight clouds float as lightless and

miserable as carrion crows. “I’m freezing here and it’s always dark out. I’m telling you

I’m so alone. I cannot find a single friend, besides my flatmates and Ms. Stewart, and

well, they don’t count. I —,” I decide not to tell him about the afternoon tangle. “I hardly

talk to anyone. It’s no different than high school. I feel so lonely and I’ve lost my spirit.

At least in Benalmádena I have you. Please, please dad, please let me come home.”

I cannot catch my breath. I stifle hyperventilation by gulping down the panic but

tonight’s nightmares still gnaw at me. Worried Sionnach will eat me up. Why did Ms.

Stewart tell me that horrible story? I sit back in the plastic chair next to the communal

phone mounted on the hallway wall. The rough edges dig into my back and kidneys and I

yelp. Down the hall, none of the other exchange students awake.

“Francesca, sweet girl, sweetest sweet, you’re the smartest person I know. You don’t

always have to hold it in,” the Diplomat says. His calming reassurances are gentle


60

caresses. I find myself tucking my curls behind my ear. I let out tattered breaths. “I would

love you here with me but you’re exactly where you belong. Don’t you know that?

You’ve been talking about Edinburgh for three years straight, nonstop.” He says gently,

“You are the sweetest, smartest, most beautiful young lady.”

His words embrace me.

“Mom was the sweetest, smartest —,” the sobs arrive. I’m torn to pieces. I’ve never

been able to fully put myself back together since mother died. The night brings out the

loneliness. My wounds open wide. During the day I’m alright but in the darkness I see

everything wrong with me. Especially after Ms. Stewart’s tale, I could forgo University

just to walk under the Spanish sun again.

“Now, now,” he says. “You run circles around me in statistics. You are light-years

ahead in smarts. When you put your mind to it you can see all that you’ve worked for

come to fruition: very few high school seniors have the opportunity to study at

University, no less abroad. I’m so proud and your mother’d would be too.”

He employs the eager silence.

“You know when we were in Florida, Rita desperately wanted to move to Spain.

She wanted to perform in a string orchestra, to master the Spanish viola of the 17th

century. She wanted to learn everything. Well, doesn’t her best parts remind me of you?”

I hear him sigh. “Rita needed to learn the classics, the modern works, variations,

interpretations, everything. She could do that in Andalusia, nowhere else.”


61

“Your Grandpa Tom warned against it, not wanting us to return after he struggled to

leave during the civil war. She worried to upset him but he was convinced those dark

times were long past. Eventually, he gave his blessing.”

“What you may not know is how Rita fretted making the leap. She was more

concerned to uproot our family. We had very little money back then and she wanted you

to grow up having the best advantages. You were so young we didn’t know how the move

would impact you. Or what it would do to the three of us without support of our relatives

back in St. Pete.”

When I thought I heard all of the Diplomat’s tales, he has this one tucked away for

just this moment. My wounds open wider and breathe with life. The comfort of hearing

about mother does not suture them up.

I fume at not having the chance to be around Grandpa Tom. To learn music from

him like mother learned from him. To play an instrument. To read sheet music. I

would’ve been normal. Outgoing, like mother was outgoing. To have her confidence.

Does me no good now.

“Why did you leave then?”

The tears dry on my face. I let breaths out slowly until my breathing become more

regular. I notice the scents of Ms. Stewart’s stale perfume and the antiseptic, pine odor of

cleaning solution and hold my nose.

I search for a reason in the Diplomat’s story to blame him for mother’s death. If we


62

never moved to Spain would she have been electrocuted by a stupid A/C unit? I grasp for

some clue, some logic to the randomness of it, but the accident isn’t his fault. And I know

it. I cannot regain those lost moments of waking up to mother’s viola and I cannot get

those answers — not from the Diplomat — so why bother even asking the questions. All

I want is to get a rise out of him.

“Jesus Dad,” I say. “Why did you leave Grandpa Tom behind in a rest home?”

He’s as collected as a clipboard. He’s as dry as reciting facts and figures.

“If we didn’t move to Spain, Rita would’ve regretted every moment of her life back

in Florida,” the Diplomat says. “It may have been hard to leave but it was the right

decision.” He’s stern but soft. “If you came back home — and I wouldn’t stop you if

that’s what you truly wanted — but if you came back you’d come back with a suitcase

full of regrets. You’d carry them around for the rest of your life. This is what it means to

grow up.” His voice brightens and he’s my dad again. He’s all I have. “And Francesca,

you’ve already made the jump! Don’t you see? You just haven’t found your footing yet. I

know you will.”

“I still want to come home,” I say.

I imagine myself standing at a threshold. Behind me is Spain, the Diplomat, home

and mom’s memory. Maybe I cannot change what has already occurred but I can return to

the warmth of familiarity. In front is Scotland and my future. I’m standing at a precipice

ready to throw myself off the cliff into the vacuum below. Just a choice to turn back. I’d


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go either way and not feel regret if I could just live with dad’s disappointment.

“What do I do?”

I listen for my father’s advice.

“Well, after you finish homework and your books are closed — if I know you

correctly, you’ll have the rest of the weekend to fill,” he says. The magic of anticipation

comes off the telephone receiver. “It’d be a shame if you didn’t explore that old town.

Ask Ms. Stewart to help you map a tour, you’re surrounded in history —”

“How is this going to help me,” I interrupt.

“Do it for your mom.” For an administrator the Diplomat can be such a romantic.

Perhaps I’ve known it all along, it’s what attracted my mother to him. I examine what

drew me to Edinburgh. Was it the romanticism of castle on the hill or the opportunity to

learn at University? To leave high-school behind and find a new place in the world. “You

know, she would’ve loved to hear one of your grand adventures.”

“Dad, I can’t make those stories up, anymore.” How I wish I could.

“Now now. I challenge you to find something in the city. What could that be?” I

sense his playfulness, “It must be something magnificent, someplace where lots of

intrigue and drama occurred. The heart of the city where the upper-classes command. A

place where a misunderstanding led to a great war…or maybe a misguided love story?”

“You want me to go up to the Edinburgh Castle,” I say. “Don’t you?”

I cannot help myself, I grin into the phone, maybe it’s a grimace. I smile until my


64

dimples hurt. His façade is transparent. He may say he’d like me to find my own

misguided romance, but he’s really asking me to be a tourist. Could I release myself from

endless studies? Let myself out to see the city?

“You just want me to take Polaroids of castles,” I say. To add to his photo album.

He barely thinks on this request.

“That’ll be fine. Thank you.”

I go back to bed and fall asleep after hanging up.

Romance or not, I’d settle to find a real friend.

(HIDDEN, FRAGILE & BROKEN)

I call to you, Sister, come to me. Come now my love.

Listen! My song heralds the lightning. How bright it flashes upon the walls. It offers

too quick a glimpse of my body, my knuckles and knees poking through papery skin.

When you hear this song can you decipher it? Hark! I cannot help but bring the rain upon

your windowpanes.

Some call me the Slothmouth.

Can you hear me? My voice is the thunder. It rolls across the hillside with a weight

of seventy-seven-hundred sighs. I search for you along the horizons like a heaven-torn

angel. I’m as desperate as wind seeking your attention.


65

My name is Shelby.

Can you hear me call for you? I cry out in devastating, frightening booms across the

airwaves that separate us. Come out from under the sheets and find me. Take me from my

cage, dear Sister, and save me.

Save me from my Fine Friend.

THREAD IN A GOLDEN BRAID

I have no lessons on Friday and the day opens up.

I eat my late-morning breakfast, scooping up fried eggs and canned beans using my

bangers like a spoon. I’m onto the black pudding and haggis so I sequester them to lonely

lives on side of the plate. Instead, I eat a warm bowl of Weetabix. It tastes better, like

oatmeal, which settles the midnight cracks that reach into my stomach.

I finish washing up and go upstairs to pack my backpack.

I bring a change of clothes in case of a downpour: a plaid shirt, a comfy jumper, and

a pair of Levi’s. I add Fodor’s Scotland travel guide after I look up directions to the

castle. The glossy pages are still bookstore fresh. Unmarred from disuse.

I hide my nylon billfold within the inside pocket. One of my father’s tips. I bring

enough money for lunch and a souvenir, my student ID, and family photos. Pictures of

the Diplomat and Grandpa Tom, I cannot stomach the one of young-me in mother’s clasp


66

as we stand on concrete steps somewhere in the 70s.

After some contemplation, I throw in the Polaroid Supercolor 1000 Deluxe. Dad

insisted I have a camera when I came to Scotland. I picked the one with little rainbow

stripe running down the middle to match the squalls in my soul.

The squalls in my soul.

The thought leaves me — as they say — gobsmacked.

I consider the poetry of it. I wait silently on the edge of my twin bed. The wood-

beams murmur and groan inside the walls and the vellum-chatter of the leaves dervish

outside. I used to spend more time outdoors in Benalmádena, along the boardwalk and in

the fairgrounds. Not always cooped-up inside. I have an urge to feel the wind on my face

and the bony digits of cold rattle against my cheeks. I lift the windowpanes of old,

warped glass, the sash weights clunk and settle in their hidden cases, and sit before the

Scottish weather.

I survey a flock of clouds as they step-off western currents and navigate their way

onshore. They lumber towards the city, arctic gusts accompany them. The chill that enters

my room is not death but a revelation. I inhale, sinuses unblocked, lungs full, and I can

breathe again. It brings me a rare calm delivered like a mislaid message. Thunder hiding

in the clouds. A report of rain.

The stillness inside me awakens to the electricity in the air. I can feel it climb in

through the window and touch each of the four corners of my room. N, W, E, and S. The


67

electricity reminds me of the sawing my mom’s viola made. When I try to recollect her

face, I see only clouds. But somehow, I sense her presence.

The breeze kicks up caked dust from the corners of my mind. I imagine dust specks

float down, glittering in the sunbeams. Brown leaves pop up onto my windowsill like

finches and they flitter and peck inside the grooves. A chord is struck within me and lo, I

find myself humming, the notes of C-Major of course.

The zephyr’s gentleness fills my room and I’m part of the her conversation. Wind

whistles if you listen. And me humming, after so many years. I’m akin to wind, the stuff

that songs float on, and I realize it’s my power-source, my totem. A lost spark of

creativity, the electricity humming, and the wind currents mesh together like a golden

braid — if I had the words, I’d sing their meaning — it conjures an excitement jolting

from within me.

I’m going on an adventure! I’m the antsy child waiting at the airport gate. I am the

wind that lifts her paper airplane up, up, up into the sky. Higher, I hum notes in a higher

key. High above the clouds, above the azure, above the heavens still.

Today will be a good day. Now I know it.

I cannot wait any longer. Before I zip up my backpack, I toss in an extra 2 cartridges

of film. I grab my raingear, I’m ready for anything. I close my window and slide down

the banister and say bye before I go. Ms. Stewart gives me a peck on the forehead, a

ginger nut and a shortbread biscuit for the road. I’m not surprised but am glad for her. I


68

fly out the door and onto Pottersrow.

⁂

I’m storming the castle on my father’s behest.

A heavy mist trickles out of the granite sky and I open my brelly (as they call it). I

cut over onto Bristol but I get a little lost at the Forrest Rd. intersection and take a wrong

left down Candlemakers Row. Tourists blanket the sidewalks and wander around like

surprised children. “Harold, look! Look at the steeples over there.” They aren’t deterred

by the Scottish drizzle, some strut proudly without raincoat or mac. “So what, Augusta! I

ain’t gonna melt.” They all weave in throngs down the hill, along both sidewalks and I

decide to follow them. I’m drawn in, I become part of the crowd and trust its course.

After all, crowds don’t lie.

When we meet Grassmarket, the large bend in the road changes grade. We begin

climb along Victoria St. between storefronts. The cobblestone becomes like a rocky

creek-bed at the bottom of a ravine. The pastel fronts of the stores jut up like cliff-shelves

and tower above us.

“Augusta, come’n see these towels,” Harold calls to his wife. He breaks the illusion,

he doesn’t even notice the architecture. Harold stands at hilltop and fidgets with the

knobs of his Nikon. Augusta, the heavyset and gingham-clad tourist, weighs down like a

sad picnic table and reaches out to take my arm, “Sweet lass.” I help her negotiate the

steep sidewalk, “There we are.”


69

The lanky husband could've easily helped his wife. I lend him the benefit of my

frown but Harold misses my look of disapproval. He struggles with his camera. He gives

up on knob adjustments, blocks the flash with his palm and clicks off some pictures of

the store display. Augusta plods past me and — because of oncoming traffic — blocks

any detour around her. I’m forced to walk behind. I want to hang a “Caution / Wide

Load” sign on her tailgate.

If these are my father’s tourists, I don’t want to be like them.

The rain comes down in white sheets and the crowds duck under awnings.

I'm able walk past when they idle in front of the store and I trod with loud, fitful

footsteps which bubble and splash. They take no notice. Nobody does. They read window

signs that beg passing-travelers to buy towels with tartan patterns printed on them so that

— when worn about the waist — look like red- or green-checked kilts.

“Harold, you should get one,” Augusta says and points to a flag of Scotland, Saint

Andrew’s diagonal cross emblazoned white against a navy field. She begs Harold to buy

the cute, plastic one.

As I leave them behind to their enticements, I worry over a thought: how thin is the

seam that separates Harold and Augusta with how my parents would've been if my

mother had lived. The Diplomat stuck inside his camera while mom regards every trinket

that catches her eye. The luster I hold for them worn with age.

The sound of rain kicks up like static. Pellets of ice begin to pelt me. I look above


70

the two-story storefronts. I’m slack-jawed and awed over the damp bluffs of Cathedral

stonework and grimy smokestacks that roost like boulders. Bah-BOOM. A crack of light

bursts upon a stray television antennae and I see gold streaks follow my eye in stutters

when I look away. Lightning. Bah-BOOM.

“Oh my,” I say. The words escape my lips. I jump and cower: electricity frightens

me. Thunder rolls down the alleyways and across the rooftops and back again.

The city’s enormity is a medieval beast, a creature to be feared and suffered. I run

away like an escaped orphan, afraid I will be caught by my tormentor. I scamper along

the gulch edge, shoving up against the buildings that curve around the bend. I breathe in

burnt aluminum, the sizzle of lightning ions are dying air-conditioners, like the one that

killed my mom. I hold my breath and panic swells up, unable to find release. I close my

eyes, I grace my fingertips against rock bricks as if I’m a blind girl counting on braille to

find my way. The gold thread, the lightning’s visual echo, shimmers against my retina.

No hiding from it. There’s no more hiding from facing my mother’s electrocution.

Yet, is there nothing to stop me to imagine her still alive back home, half a world away?

The bellows of laughter ring out over the rain-thrum. I imagine Samantha and

Lourdes pointing at me across the street, still popping pink-gum bubbles, pushing out

guffaws. Faces scrunched with the agony and born with cruelty.

When I reopen my eyes, I see my lone image cast in a storefront reflection. Oh, the

way I carry myself. A shell of a person, a sorry thing with nothing left upstairs. A daisy


71

smashed up against the sandstone wall, trembling from the sky’s weeping. Up the street, a

group of Americans pounce through puddles, giggle amongst themselves, delighting over

the shower. They don’t even see me.

I hate it, this casualty I’ve become.

Just because my mother died by 220v of direct current does not mean I’ll be struck

by the same malady. After all, lightning doesn’t strike twice upon the same family tree. I

straighten up, stretching my back into a proud arch and reach for the rooftops. I set my

shoulders back and reclaim myself. What’s this within me? Just by the act of standing up,

I’m transformed. As if I’m standing up to my fears, standing against my incapacity to

accept my mother is dead.

The buildings rear up with the immensity of Gibraltar and I welcome them.

I’m instantly nostalgic — an aching swell under my ribcage is a respect for my new,

surrogate country — and I feel the opposite of homesick. Notice how I’ve been standing

at this threshold for years. The bolt has tumbled and my yearning for this city unlocks. I

may have felt Edinburgh pull me — drawn like from Ms. Stewart’s twists of yarn — but

now its clear why I’m here. To learn how to live again. Scotland’s taught me this:

Courage grows strong at a wound. My heart might be a loosely-sewn patchwork of meaty

cuts and raw bruises. The injuries may not heal, but I will be braver because of them.

Bah-BOOM. Lightning strikes somewhere behind me. The storm is leaving and my

panic’s gone with it.


72

I remember I am valiant, I bluster myself up like the thunderclouds. I close my

brelly and use it like a joust and charge headlong up the rest of the hill as if I’m ready to

break upon the citadel. I hum a new theme song.

I reach a secluded stairway. It’s dry, I’m damp. The group of Americans marvel over

the shortcut. “Lookee-here, how clever they are. It goes right through to Castlehill.” The

steps rise below the overhead bridges and tunnel between two tall buildings. The tourists

are willingly swallowed into its maw. I step bravely inside the mouth of the walkway,

kneel down and rummage through my bag. I put the guidebook on my knee, consult

Fodor, and find the tiny road, barely designated. The map shows a filament connecting

Victoria St. and the Royal Mile, a capillary meeting up with larger vessels before

returning to the castle, the heart of old town.

“Flow,” I tell myself. “Go with the flow.” The tattoo thumps blood inside my own

temples and rushes me on, on, on and up the concrete steps. I follow the line of tourists

and reach a wynd path which runs along St. Columbia’s church. The sun breaks through

and makes passage from cloud to cloud. I step out of the shadows of the abandoned

Tolbooth St. John’s, yet another church, and oh, how the gothic spires are the black

pincers of blister beetles.

I fill my lungs with icy sunlight and exhale in wonder.

Other churches mull around like giants, hand-in-hand, in a ring around the

roundabout. They share the same small hill and I ponder on how small I am. How truly


73

young I am, when I’m presented to these ancient and holy denizens. They say: “Listen

here lass, yeh know very little after all.” They speak the same language as Ms. Stewart.

I’m surrounded by so much soul put into these majestic creatures.

In an instant, I’m disappointed in myself. Disappointed that I fill my head with

solely Maths and Sciences. It leaves me robotic, for I am soulless. My denial for art to

come out of me denies any music to fill my life. Nothing gets past Ms. Stewart: it is an

arrogance to waste my mother’s gifts. To replace them with just numbers and equations is

the life of an government administrator. My father the Diplomat.

I resist being swept up in the folds of the crowd.

This is the end of the Royal Mile outside the castle gates. Where am I going? I spy

ahead where the road will take me but don’t make the final steps up the Esplanade. To

where the last trappings laid down for out-of-town sightseers and amateur historians. I

don’t move towards Edinburgh Castle. I’m not a tourist, this is my life.

I reject my father’s wishes.

I’m confronted by the spirit at the bottom of my heart. I ask it for direction and I

find — to my surprise — I’m lifted up. As if I’m looking the face of a lost child who

demands to be carried, so she will not be left behind. I realize that child is me. How have

I had forgotten myself?

I step out on my own and I walk myself down the autumnal hill.

And on these my tenderhooks, I’m drawn away.


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⁂

I spit on the Heart of Midlothian.

“Thas’right! For good luck,” the stranger advises. “All Edinburgers do it.”

The bricks in this stretch of sidewalk are arranged in a cardioid shape. The marker is

unexpected. A brick mosaic I’ve not crossed elsewhere in the city. Within the heart a

compass rose grows. N, W, E, and S. Where do I find the pieces of my heart, I wish to

cobble it back together. I stand outside St. Giles cathedral when I ask the stranger,

“Should I make a wish?”

“Aye, nae, ’tis not a wishing stone, ’tis a spittin’ one,” the stranger says plainly. “Ole

Tolbooth stood here. Prisoners and bajins were killed on tha spot.” He points to the heart,

it marks the entrance to an old jail, now demolished.

“What’s the purpose of spitting on it? Are you condemning those old criminals?” He

goes onto explain when people where taken out of Old Tolbooth jail to be hung or

beheaded, people spat in the center of the heart to show their contempt.

“Little to fear when traitors are true,” he says. “Bess spit up ah mean clocher,

because deid men dae nae harm.” Do as the Romans. I shrug and hock another wet loogie

and rummage all the disdain I can muster to expel a tight bundle of spit. The craggy

stranger nods in approval and walks off.

A wish comes soon after on its own accord. There’s a little luck in the air. I notice

the flock of flyers blowing across the sidewalk. Like the leaves on my windowsill,


75

finches hunting for seed, gaining my attention. Are they my mother-sign? I squint and

look for her face but see only the glow from the lightning’s gold-thread, still drifting

within my vitreous humor. I pick up a flyer.

It announces: Grand Opening — The Scottish Poetry Library.

Today, I shall follow all the signs. I pick up the rest of the papers.

“Bring me all the poetry from all your land,” I say under my breath. I say it again,

more loudly, so the throng can hear the roar of my conviction. Strangers in the crowd

brighten when they hear me announce it. I hand them a flyer when they pass me by.

The soot is pronounced more on the apartment faces when High Street becomes

Canongate. Restoration crews scrub the walls high on scaffolds on the south-side and I

cross the street to where the sun doesn’t reach. The brown leaves on the sidewalk drift

around my sneakers and urge me on. I step through their paper-sounds, following the

light trails of snow and hailstones. Is it spring or fall?

As I approach Crichton’s Close — no need to check the address on the last

remaining flyer — I’ve arrived. The music floats over the tall houses and drumbeats

thunder off the buildings like the one o’clock cannon, the gunfire shot daily atop

Castlehill. Across the street and in the direction of the music, I see a phrase in the freshly

wrought steelwork. The words that adorn the mantle of the building.

It says: “A Nation is Forged in the Hearth of Poetry.”

The last two words wrap around the building and point down the alleyway, down to


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the Scottish library of Poetry. My strange faith has proven its wish.

I head into Crichton’s Close, the alleyway that leads to the new library and to the

origin of unseen musicians. A crowd forms around the band and spreads out into the maze

of pathways. I hear a girl’s voice under the sweet-racket of drum and bells, there’s an old

regret in her words. She could be singing my song. Her melodies drop like dotted sugar

pearls. The contrast delights me. I push my way through the trench-coats to the front edge

of the crowd. The quartet plays at the entrance.

I look around me and find faces as enamored as mine. Two boys stand in the

audience next to me. A preppy kid about my age who looks like a vampire ready to go

golfing. His younger side-kick, a curious happy kid wrapped in a cloak. I’ve never seen

anyone dress like them. They catch me staring and wave. The younger boy claps his

hands on 1 and 3. I hum along and tune into the girl’s lyrics:

As I change into who I am, as if nothing else could hurt meI’m not sad but it’s not okayOn a hill of a thousand cliff tops, I never really learned to soar at allAnd I really wanted to

As I change into who I am, as if no one else can find meIn a city with a thousand walkways, if only i knew what pulled me hereI am sad and I’m not okay

Streams of tears rush down my cheeks. The words catch me off guard, struck like

Sionnach. The music too relevant and what’s inside me too close to the surface. I’ve been


77

hostage to my thoughts all day and the journey has been turbulent. The younger kid takes

my hand without asking, interleaving his fingers between my own. I clasp mine into his. I

am surprised and I’m glad for it.

“Hello, what’s your name,” he asks.

“Francesca,” I say.

“Are you Spanish,” he asks. My hazel skin.

“No, I’m from Florida,” I say. “Originally.”

“Aces! That’s so weird! What a coincidence,” he yells. “So are we.”

“Not me,” the older boy says. He has a London accent to prove it. “I’m Rory. This is

Drew.”

After the band finishes their set, they move on and so do we. Drew has not let go of

my hand, or maybe I’ve not let go of him. Our fingers are tied together, the connection is

a comfort, even if he’s a stranger.

“Come meet my brother, Mikey,” Drew says. “He’s just around the corner.”

I agree and we leave Crichton’s Close, arriving outside of the record store in under a

minute. I see records taped on the glass like stolen polaroids. Jazz standards and Motown

ballads, sepia-toned covers and others with bright, psychedelic text. There are a bevy of

records of which I’m not familiar and some have sleeves that look like ransom notes.

There are classics and classical records, too.

“Oh my,” I say and swoon. I review all that has led me here today. How do I make


78

sense of it? In a single day, in less than 24 hours, my world has gone from the

predictable, mathematical pattern of school life, to the examination my frayed-edges with

Ms. Stewart and my father. I’ve lost myself, I’ve found myself. Now I’m back to the very

start. I’m staring at the face to all my troubles. At a place from which I’ve taken flight

years ago.

In the bottom corner of the window, suspended in amber tones, I’m defeated by a

record sleeve. The Spanish string orchestra, Concerto Málaga. The cracks in my stomach

reach up and break upon my heart. She won’t let me avoid her any more. Saying your

ready for it is not the proof of it.

Seeing her face makes her death all the more real.

My mother — her eyes closed, brows raised, leaning on her viola, expression

intense with a radiant bliss — she’s framed on the record cover.


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Chapter 4.

UNKNOWN PLEASURES

This is us at Unknown Pleasures.

The green lettering on the black banner above the small shop tells me so, adding:

Rare Records & Tapes. Drew and I enter the shop while Rory waits outside.

My esophagus locks itself into bowline knots when I see the Scottish hipster. His

curly, red hair combed back in long, wet streaks and his facial hair tightly trimmed. He

wears an immaculate, straw pork-pie hat, a white tie and linen jacket, and Buddy Holly

specs. He’s a white eyepatch away from an Italian villain from old James Bond movies.

Behind the affectations and ornamentations, stands the Reckless hippy’s Doppelgänger.

This is his brother, this is his twin.

We have come to the right place.

Remember that song about Major Tom? Not the original by Bowie. No, not the

sequel, Ashes to Ashes. I never heard Bowie growing-up. I was too young to know about

the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and had to experience it through the grain of Super-8,

from secondhand interviews on Top of the Pops.

There’s this whole other song about Major Tom. An alternate song where he led a


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different life, lived with a different family, followed a different career, but alas one where

he’s still lost to the dead of space.

“Give my wife my love…,” he sings his last words.

Maybe he was replaced one day with a whole other person who shared the same

name and rose to the same rank. When I look upon the hipster, man oh man, it’s like

thinking about Major Tom’s twin and it makes me feel so lost. Lost like so many

moments from my childhood. The ones I’ve intentionally blocked out.

The hipster watches us enter the record shop.

“Whit cannae dae yeh ferd,” he asks. “Ah’m Mr. Owain.”

I look at Drew for translation, he mouths a word.

“We’re here to find the Slothmouth,” I say. “Your brother sent us.”

“Shut dem cunts up,” the hipster shouts at the door. He misses my proclamation. My

brother winces. “They cannae play ootdere widoot payin ferrit,” he says to no-one. The

shop is empty except us until we look outside.

A dowdy girl sings a dirge a cappella in the doorframe. “Ohffer fooksake,” the

hipster throws down his ledger and darts outside. We follow. The girl’s band begins to

play on the sidewalk, backing her up on acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, and a snare drum.

I’m not sure what to make of their unaffected attire — the boys wear argyle over-shirts

with snowflake epaulettes and the girls wear striped, Easter-knit sweaters and crochet

caps — but I do notice they play barefoot. Pink feet. The pink meat of their feet tap the


81

old, slate sidewalk in dull taps. I crouch down and touch the ground with my palm, it is

freezing, and I shake my head in disapproval, perhaps disbelief.

“Stop blocking the door open, cannae yeh see whit yir dooin,” the hipster shouts.

“It’s cold ootside as a coo’s teat!” He rips down a handmade sign the girl taped over the

shop’s business hours. Before he tears up the construction paper, I read the band’s name,

The Vigil, carefully scribbled in her darling, handwritten script. The hipster kicks away

the guitar case that blocks the door open. It’s lined with felt and waiting for coin like an

open casket.

“We’re outside, couldn’t we stay? We’ve come all this way,” she sings, interleaving

the questions into her lyrics.

“Bugger aff, Ah’ve goat work tae dae,” the hipster says almost singing along.

“Either yeh geis ah tariff or yeh bess naff aff.” Drew updates me: he wants money for the

privilege. In a unified and self-righteous movement, each member zips up each of their

coats to the beat of the song. An anorak, a Peter Storm cagoule, a scuffed-up parka, and

an American Snorkel. They are charming, they are clever. I become sharply aware of the

delight quake over my brother when he looks upon them. Faerie meet faerie-clan. The

songstress shrugs and locks the guitar case. They turn away and head up the hill, never a

break in song, and march in their own DIY parade.

My brother follows like a stalker.

“Drew, c’mon back,” I say. He follows them around the corner ignoring me,


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ignoring my elaborate sighs. Anxiety boils up inside of me and I suddenly worry how I

almost lost my brother years ago when we lived in Germany. Will I lose him, again?

“He’s done this before,” I say. I have an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

“No worries, mate,” Rory says. “I’ll get him.”

⁂

“Ohrwurm,” Finah said.

The last word she ever spoke to me and these days I’ve come to know it as a curse.

I remember an image of both her hands balled into fists, shaking above her head.

Seething anger of a spent spinster, her movements so much like an adult. Not the rolling

tantrum bursting out of this young 8 year-old girl. Her voice not raised above a clamped

whisper. Ohrwurm. That image has stuck with me all these years because what I did to

her. And to her pink feet.

“Where’s Finah,” Drew asked me after I had chained and dead-bolted the front-door

behind me. I stood in the dying embers of my anger, my shame radiating with its own

heat. I had just banished her from our apartment.

“She melted,” I said without thinking. “She’s not coming back.”

I don’t think Drew ever got past this confusion.

When I said this it was years ago, we lived in Kaiserslautern, or K-town, Germany.

Before we moved to England. Before the 306th Strategic Wing moved their headquarters

to RAF Mildenhall, we were stationed at Ramstein Air Base. For months, we lived alone


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with Mother in K-town.

I don’t know why we weren’t on base but wondered if my ongoing turf war with

Drew forced dad to put us up in the city. My first of many misunderstandings. One day I

asked Mother why he wasn’t with us.

“Because of his goddamned promotion. He cares more about moving through the

ranks,” she said. “Than he does being with us.”

In tribute to him, to his loss, we created reenactments of war-games. We were our

own toy soldiers. Sometimes the line between fantasy and reality blurred. They led to my

uncontrollable crying jags. The last times I recall crying, over three years ago. Why was

Drew always so calm?

“Mikey, why don’t you shut you’re fucking trap,” Mother said pinching the bridge

of her nose. “Can’t you see I’ve got a headache.”

“Yeah, why don’t you shut up,” Drew said.

Little brothers can be that way.

We listened to the constant rain rat-a-tat on the brown rooftops, day after day. We

avoided Mother and all of her gloom. She sat for hours on a bench under the window-

ledge, watching winter hail and storm over the Pfälzer forest which surrounded the town

edges. These were the days before she discovered Wive’s Club.

She drank Deutscher red wine and filled the apartment with blues.

“Mikey don’t be an idiot, get ready for school and don’t forget to dress your


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brother,” she said while waking me up. “Jesus Mikey, how can you be so stupid? Don’t

you know your brother needs to eat. Don’t give me that sourpuss. Go on, make him some

dinner. And don’t sass me,” she said after Drew asked for Uh-Oh! Speghetti-Os. “You

really are a shit-for-brains, can’t you see your brother could get hurt,” she said after she

took sewing shears from Drew’s hands.

When she whispered the invocation ‘your brother’ she spoke it with such lofty

conviction. She treated him as the Devine Infant Jesus Christ. If overheard, she was

convinced he may break as easily as the soft-ceramic Idol laying in our military chapel.

Drew was special and I hated him for it.

The day he met Finah, we rode the school-bus home together.

Mother instructed Drew to wait for me. He ensconced himself in the designated

extraction point. I headed to the K-town elementary from the junior high buildings, from

my final period classroom — both structures connected to the main building housing the

high school — and lay siege on him.

I found him waiting alone on the parking lot’s half-wall, skipping rock-chips across

the asphalt. He spotted me before I could flank him. He frowned and hunkered down. His

face fell into his lap with disappointment. “What did I do now,” I asked him. He shook

his head in rejection. I remember thinking he must believe me to be a moron. His big-

idiot brother, bested even when trying to advance.

That lit me. I walked up to him and kicked him hard in the anklebone.


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“What’s your problem?” I wasn’t asking.

“Ow, that hurt,” Drew said rubbing the side of his leg.

“C’mon, we’ll miss the bus.”

I fired off through the beech bark and dirt that edged the playground and charged

down the hill. I swung left and right searching for enemy combatants. Drew’s footsteps

were uneven and slow and when looking back he limped along covering a grimace. He

used a freshly felled branch as a walking stick and wrestled with his oversized, hand-me-

down backpack I named Balrog. The yellow monstrosity kept slipping down his shoulder.

Man, from a distance, the way he struggled with his bag, he seriously looked like

Gandalf the Grey. Using his staff to fend off the attacks of a dirty fire-monster. I tracked

on through the greasy snow dotting the school lawn. I reached the bus first, it sat idling

near the high school entrance.

“Drew’s taking his own sweet time,” I told the bus-driver. Mother’s phrase.

I headed to the back of the bus where the diesel reeked the strongest. Drew hated

the last seat because the way the rear lurched over the easiest bumps. How the fumes

would sicken his stomach. When Drew climbed onto the bus, he negotiated each step

individually and fretfully.

“You okay, buddy,” the driver asked. I didn’t hear Drew’s answer, I didn’t care. I

slouched back onto the cracked-vinyl and looked out at overcast skies. When the bus

drove off the school lot, Drew still was inching down the aisle. He toppled over, butt-


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over-brain, spilling his books down the back-half of the aisle.

The other kids burst into a triumphant uproar of laughter.

I flipped the bird at the kids who usually ignored us.

“Jesus Drew, sit the fuck down,” I said. Still retaliating from the day before, from

when he took Mother’s side. But I yearned for my heart to go out to him. Like a good

brother, I helped him into the seat and grabbed his papers and textbooks off the ground. I

lifted my head up and saw Drew’s cheeks puckered, the orbs of his eyes had become

slick. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep his tears away. He wiped his face with the sleeve-

back of his wool coat. I examined his leg. His tender knees scraped from grooves in the

floor and a line of blood ran down his shin.

“Keep it down back there,” the bus-driver said.

“What’s going on with you today,” I whispered. “You’re a wreck.”

“Nothing,” he said.

I handed him his textbooks and he put them in his bag, zipping it closed. A

composition notebook slid out a gash on the side. Balrog the Bag split its seam, he

adjusted the tarnished monster in his lap, holding it sideways to keep the rip upright.

“Alright, nothing it is,” I said with a shrug.

I shoved myself back into the seat.

I cracked open my copy of Two Towers to find where I left off. Took me forever to

read past the boring chapters where they walked forever through Fangorn Forest and


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rushed to get to the more adventurous parts. I scanned for my place in the battle at Helm’s

Deep and from nowhere, Drew punches me in my shoulder with both his tiny fists. I

dropped the book on the seat between us.

“You care more about that than me,” he said. He snatched the paperback away. With

his jaw hard-set (even back then he reminded me of dad), he held the book up to my face.

He ripped it down the spine slowly, savoring my shock, and threw it down on the bus

floor. “‘Alright, nothing it is?’ You’re such a creep,” he began to yell. “Like that’s all you

can say? You suck, Mikey. You know, you can just sit on it!”

The bus stopped at a light. The two halves of the Two Towers slid up the aisle.

“That’s it: when we get home I’m telling,” I said. He blinked. “I’m telling Mother

on you.” I crawled down on my knees to retrieve the paperback pieces. The other kids

began to clap and roar. I ignored their excitement, they’re always a willing mob to the

tribulations played out on the bus. Their shrills and shrieks culminated into a repeated

“Oh my God, Oh my God.” Voices filled the small bus like an onslaught of seawater.

More and more of them picked up the chant. “Oh my God! Oh My God.” My neck hairs

stood at alert until my scalp itched.

“What the hell is going on back there,” the driver barked.

I picked up the book pieces and looked up. I couldn’t disregard the fray anymore.

The driver’s face stared back framed by the enormous rear-view mirror hanging

above the steering wheel. His head melted into bewilderment. Behind him the riot surged


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into frothy abandon. Between each row kids swung their heads up and down the aisle,

some unable to contain themselves jumped over seat-backs.

I focused deeper into the rear-view reflection. Further inside the mayhem, the bus

shook and swayed. I traced past my own figure crawling stupidly around the floor. The

kids stormed towards the back row, clicking the windows and sliding them open. They

pushed their arms and heads out to gain a better look outside. I noticed an eerie, washed-

out light seeping between their legs and feet, pouring in from an abnormal source: the

back of the bus.

They opened emergency door.

There was no alarm at all, no alarm will sound. Just the whoops and clatter (“Oh my

God, Oh my God”) continued trance-like from disbelieving mouths of our schoolmates.

I leapt up and swung around. Through the criss-crossing of the crowd’s arms and

torsos, I saw him. Drew’s tiny hand grasped the doorframe, using it for leverage to lower

himself down. He smacked down into the street and his fingers blinked out of sight.

The secret passage leading out the back of the bus shut, clunking with the burden of

iron.

I jumped over to the windows, failing to slide one down. The last wisp of my

brother’s figure hopped around the corner, his shadow following close behind him. All

that remained were his beech staff and Balrog the Bag, both discarded like a hit-and-run.

⁂


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The night became as dark as the Palatine forest surrounding K-town.

I walked the city-streets using my best recon maneuvers, looking for any sign of

Drew. I didn’t know what I was doing but I was as good as dead if I came home without

him. I kept my mind from wondering, diverting all thoughts away from imagining

Mother’s reaction and horror. She would cry: “I knew I could not trust you to take care of

your brother.” What would happen when she told Dad? The calm in his voice delivering

his usual disappointment in me. “No, no, no, no,” I shouted to ward away their visage. I

punched concrete walls until my hands’ backsides turned into bruised flesh.

“Geht es Ihnen gut, kind?”

“Rufen Sie die Polizei,” a stranger replied to the first.

I recognized the last word to be police and fled down the street. When I ran out of

breath I bent over, my body cramping up. I held myself up by my knees and worked the

stitch clawing into my side.

There had to be a better plan to find my brother instead of circling around spot I saw

him last hop off. I walked past the rotaries and headed into the city center. I marked off

each block by triangulated block and hunted for him. Down major streets named

Königstraße and Fischerstraße. I passed restaurants, markets, and sandstone apartment

buildings. I travelled alongside city ponds and Platz gardens, by Volks-sculptures near the

Naturpark. I found wall murals and graffiti declaring “No Nazis.” He was nowhere and

no search pattern would yield him.


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I scolded myself for progressing too randomly.

At a bus-stop (a sign called it a busbanhoft), I examined a map of the city grid.

Speed was the key to finding Drew and since the sun had gone underground, I was

losing hope. The sickness inside me was acidic, burning. I held back my tears. A son of

an officer does not cry and I wept so much already the puffiness around my eyes felt like

they’d crack open and spill out blood. Even the younger kids at school knew me as the

sissy, the soft child who grows up only to get beaten up. I needed to exorcise the wimp

within me, push him out. If I didn’t, who else would find my brother?

My heart dislodged within my chest and knocked around my gut.

I checked for Deutsche Marks but all I had was American bills. No way to use

public transit. I kicked the mesh-laden glass with my combat boots and shattered the bus-

stop wall. I didn’t expect it and ran away down the street. I ached to see something else

break. I kicked trash receptacles knocking refuse into the streets. I punched at shop doors,

the ones with darkened windows, markets closed for the night. I met a nearby fountain, a

multi-leveled spire, and tried to topple it over. Inadequate splashes ran down the back of

my school shirt. But they were icy cold, enough to put out my fire. I shivered, trying to

catch my breath. I searched my mind, I searched for Drew. That's when I thought of his

favorite place to visit. I’m such an idiot, it should’ve been my first target.

I arrived at Martinsplatz and stood by chunks of plaster crumbling in the temple

square. Signs of winter construction to repair — I concluded — the remnants of war. We


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learned at school over sixty percent of Kaiserslautern was bombed by Allied aircraft. An

awkwardly proud statistic about our host city. I dreamed there were craters locked

beneath the snow drifts but could not see any sign of them. The plaza sparkled in the

snow, every tree branch covered meticulously in icy flocking.

I made my way past a different water fountain which stood near the old brick

church. Turned off for the night, in line with noise ordinances (I don't know how they

kept it from freezing over). It was past 20:00, please God, let him be here.

Martinskirche, the church of St. Martin, was topped with a patinated steeple. Drew

called it the Dairy Queen church. The steeple resembled the signature shape of soft-serve

ice-cream, maybe chocolate-mint. We saw the turret from Mother’s window-ledge and

when she wasn't home, Drew gazed lovingly at the spectacle. He day-dreamed about

eating its dessert topping en masse, digging tunnels through it with his mouth. The plaza

was his favorite place in K-Town, if he could just climb the church wall right, his ice-

cream dream would be fulfilled.

I’m sorry I let him out of my sight. I’m a moron and I deserve this.

I went to the side of the church looking for cover and a way in. An old vault

entrance was bricked over, at three different times in its history, the bricks left

successively smaller entries until there were none. The vault, an arch, and finally a

doorway. Sometime recently they decided they no longer needed a side entrance

anymore. If you looked at the vault just right, your eyes fell for an illusion caused by the


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concentric rings of brick. As if you were looking down a hallway. I ran my finger down

the rock grooves of the innermost entry, wishing for it to open up like a secret. The vault

remained locked up stuck with mortar and brick. I'm total ass for trying.

I remembered when Drew first saw the vault door, he stared at it and said to me,

“We were once giants, but we lost our big-ness. They had to make the doors smaller.”

I had to find an alternate way in, walking around the corner to the front of the

church. The proper entryway a nest of iron-patchwork, interlocked with blackened vines.

I pushed at it until it unlatched — to my surprised “Goddamnit yes!” — and the wooden

door opened without a creak.

Inside the church, rows of benches laid before an organ three-stories high. I crept

down the nave, looking for anybody and finding no-one. I knelt down in front of the

crucifix like Mother taught me, stomach gurgling. The hall was cold enough to see my

breath in the dark and the air was heavy with the library-like aroma of hymnals.

I did not pray, I did not sing.

I tossed down Drew’s backpack, Balrog spilled its guts across the ground. I stood up

and I kicked the bag, and I kicked its contents until pieces of it ran out across the old

stone floor. I stomped up and down on it and kicked it over the alter.

I was alone and I couldn't help it, I felt the urge to see something else break.

Something to match my foulness. I started stomping again, my thumping echoed off the

Walcker organ pipes. I slammed my scuffed-up boots into the pews. It was a dance of


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renouncement, a dance of destruction. I imagined the clomping came from my heart

clanging against the jail-bars — the cage of my ribs — begging for escape.

When I tumbled down onto the flagstone, I was ready to beat my head into the

stone. That’s when I heard children’s whispers tunnel in from my left, from the outside

garden. It spooked me like they were mutters from The Omen. I crawled to the garden

door, opening onto the cloister and cocked my head to hear more clearly.

The children’s speech was nearly unintelligible, distinctly German, and spoken with

the freedom of a hidden language. I pushed the door open fully and I heard Drew’s voice

ring out. “Drew? Is that you,” I asked with victory-punches. I launched myself outside.

“Where are you?”

“— because today is my birthday,” I heard him finish. To whom I do not know. By

the time the words reached my ears, my spleen and lungs, the nettings of nerves and veins

all collapsed upon the cavity where the muscle used to beat. Into the emptiness below my

aorta and pulmonary arteries. My insides were quicksand, they sunk upon that space

where it was hitched. You see, this is how I lost my heart.

A poison thought entered my head, contaminating my mind.

I understood his outburst. Today was Drew’s birthday, the kick I gave his ankle was

the one gift he got. The retribution I acted upon him. I screamed at him and ignored him

when he needed me to be a righteous brother. To help him through the sorrow of family

who forgot to celebrate his existence, to help overcome the bleak realization that his


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hopes for a surprise party were dashed.

Dizziness spun inside me when I recounted the circles I ran around in the city,

looking for him. The terror I felt when I lost Drew, the unfulfilled wrath I beat against the

world. They flowed together like lava ash. The burn expanded inside me, erupting into

my esophagus. The fire forced the vents and down my trachea, I was suffocating. I tried

to expel a raw cough and I bent over clasping my neck and ribs. In the bushes outside the

door of the church, I heard myself wretch. With a demonic shriek, I threw up through my

mouth and nose. Yellow bile and angry liquid burst from me.

The acid in my belly I hurled up was the final remnants of my heart. It spewed out

rotten and putrid. I swore I could see the chambers laying ruined in the soil. My regret

was realized the very moment I lost my heart. How much I needed it to love my brother,

to use it as a guide to steer him away from disappointment.

Still coughing up vomit-chunks, I found him at the bottom of a deep, clay ditch.

There were thin grave-markers in parts of the garden, but the ditch itself wasn't a grave. I

noticed wheelbarrows, shovels, and pick-axes. They were restoring the church and were

digging along the wall to get to the foundation. The construction site.

“C’mon Drew,” I said, spitting. Demanding it without affection. “Let’s go home”

“I can’t get out,” he replied. “I fell in.”

“Are you hurt,” I asked for status. Not out of consideration because I didn’t care.

Drew was stuck in the ditch. He slipped on the ice around the hole. I could see the


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footprint from his KangaROOS, the sneaker’s indentation a ghost on the ice-shelf. His

eyes were a shock of green against the bloodshot whites. His face, arms and fingers were

covered in clay from his attempts to climb out. His face looked like a reverse-raccoon,

around his eyes a flesh mask where the tears cleared away the dirt. His skin took on the

shade of fur.

Despite the kick to his ankle and tonight’s fall, he was not injured.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. My voice was still a little shaken from puking, I spat the

remaining acrid taste out from my mouth, wishing for a cool drink from the fountain in

the plaza.

“Okay,” he said.

He did not cry out when I left to look for a ladder. If I had brought that beech branch

along, he could have used it as a brace to get out of the ditch.

“Who were you talking to,” I asked.

“A girl. She calls herself Finah,” he said. “Finah Wind, are you still up there?”

I looked around, I spied the hedgerows and traced the edges of the garden.

“Nope.”

“She told me you were coming,” he said.

I searched again, taking my time to look in each shadow. I pictured a girl hiding in

the shrubs, pink feet poking below the leaves but I saw no sign of her. I found a rickety

chair, peeling with gold-leaf and crimson paint. It propped open a door to the adjoining


96

monastery. The ruins that became of its walls — you could step over the rubble and walk

into it — rendered the chair inadequate in its current profession. I took the it and lowered

it down into the ditch and Drew popped up in a second flat. I brushed his shoulders off,

the leaves off his back, and looked him over twice until I determined there was no way to

cover things up from Mother.

She’d notice that something, like, heavy happened tonight.

“How did she know that,” I asked. I snorted and hacked out a wad of mucous.

“How'd that Finah-girl know I was coming?”

“She must have left,” Drew didn’t answer my question, I don’t think he had an

answer. He shrugged. “Is Mother going to be mad?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

“Did you bring my bag,” he asked.

“It’s inside,” I said. “It’s a bit of a mess.”

“I’m sorry, Mikey,” he said.

His eyes were giant saucers. I’m reminded how Drew’s face fell when he saw me at

school. His apology might not be his to give, after all I kicked him first. We walked

through the church, we picked up the gutted remains of Balrog off the floor.

“Why did you frown at me,” I asked. “Earlier, when you first saw me?”

“When you came to get me?”

“Yeah.”


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“I was hoping Dad would pick us up…because today’s my birthday.”

“Oh,” I said. This was the conversation I overheard him say to Finah. “He’s in

England right now. He’s too far away to pick us up.” If I had a heart, I might have

reassured him. Hugged him with a tight squeeze or gave him a light kiss on the forehead.

Instead I unzipped the front pouch of his backpack, rummaged through the contents until

I pulled out the pieces of the Two Towers. I put the two halves together and handed him

the book.

“This is for you,” I said. “Happy birthday. I didn’t like it much anyway.”

“Yes, you did,” he said.

His teeth stood like a row of Chiclets, except for his bottom, right incisor that had

gone MIA. “You love a good battle. You love the war-fighters, real or imaginary, as long

as they are monsters of fire and burning. They remind you…of you. Don’t they?” I

wanted to respond. But his revelation was unasked for and given with profundity that

made me feel stupid again. I wanted to know how he came up with these ideas.

He examined the cover of the Tolkien novel, happy as a raccoon coming out of his

mud-den and into the sunlight.

I needed him more than he needed me — that's the truth of it. He grounded me,

there’s not a doubt. I may have thought he was exactly like me or he was smoke where I

was fire but the truth is he suffers my heat. He's always been a creature of the soil and

I’ve always been burning upon him, on that day and for years to come. Even with my


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freshly lost heart, I found pleasure to have him back in my company. Something that was

previously unknown to me.

When we stood outside our apartment door and stared at the figures, 4-E. Midnight

bells clanged across the February air. We looked at each other and readied for Mother’s

shit-storm. I took out my key and let ourselves in.

A record played a lock groove, a song of wild wanting and oscillating static. Mother

slept in the window-ledge, hand and foot draped on the carpet. Her wine glass empty next

to her.

The next morning, she said “Mikey wake up. Why are you always such a stupid,

idiot fool. It’s time to get your brother dressed for school”.

It was confirmed she didn’t know we were AWOL.

NEED A HEART TO LIVE

Her full name was Josephine Wind.

She was a neighborhood-girl Drew met in the Martinskirche garden — I never

discovered why she was at the church the night he ran away. Where did she come from?

Why was she there? Over the next few weeks, Finah visited our apartment on a daily

basis. He called her Finah because at that age — he was around 7 or 8 — he couldn't

pronounce her full given name. “Yose-sah-fee-nuh,” I tried to teach him. She had the


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general, utilitarian look of a German frau. Her hair was pulled back into a tight, auburn

ponytail. Her dress/overalls made from denim, a large pocket over her chest, and a

boring, white dress-shirt underneath.

Your eyes might pass right over her until you saw her footwear. Her pink feet.

Everyday, she wore ballet shoes with elastic ribbons that criss-crossed her shins and ran

up her legs. She’d plié when she walked and changement through doorways, down the

outside hallway to our front door. She’d say a French word to accompany every move.

“Plié, chassé, fondue, changement, et plié.” She reminded me of the icy, alien crustaceans

in Space Invaders. The crablike way she progressed through the world, pumping her feet

in and out with each step. In her pink slippers, I couldn’t help but stare.

“I like that they look like strawberry ice-cream,” Drew said about the them. His

Dairy Queen obsession. “Napoleon strawberry is my favorite,” he confused the word with

Neapolitan. The satin was never soiled or scuffed — surprising for a girl of her age to

keep them so immaculate — and they shimmered like dusk on long Saturdays.

“I wish boys could wear them,” he said.

“Don’t repeat that,” I cautioned. “Sons of a Staff Sergeant don’t say those things.”

Drew and Finah were not together for long but when they were, they were devoted

to each other. A miniature man and wife.

He looked upon her with the rapture of a saint. When they played together, Drew

would prepare like he was on a sacred a pilgrimage. For his personal devotionals to


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Finah, he laid out construction paper packets in straightened piles, arranged by color, two

sets of safety scissors, handles of pale-red (for her) and pale-green (for him). He pulled

every crayon from the Crayola 64 box (with built-in sharpener) and aligned them side-by-

side, row by row, and arranged by hue. He placed all the metallics with the single black

and single white crayons. They were shaved down to stubs.

He had so many vessels of colored glitter and Elmer’s paste. When he came out of

these rituals, he looked like a pixie/junkie coming off a glue high. There were streaks of

glitter, scarred like wounds across his cheekbones. His chin was covered in sticky stubble

from the dried glue. It peeled like skin. His fingers looked nicotine-stained from the

metallic and charcoal crayons.

They’d draw, construct, tape, and paste in a frenzy behind the closed door of our

bedroom. He spoke to her in fluent German which I couldn’t understand nor figure out

how he comprehended the language so quickly. The words I learned comprised of deer,

fish, Germany, schoolmate, yes and no, good and bad, please and thank you, one-way,

and of course, bus-stop and police.

I couldn’t enter the room without interrupting their sessions. When their communion

concluded, Finah let herself out the front door. I never noticed, nary a peep nor plié.

Afterwards Drew didn’t speak much. He wondered about the house in a muddle of

euphoria. He walked dumbfounded as if he were in a waking dream. Eyes glossy, mouth

agape. I returned him to our room. He climbed into his bunk and wallowed in


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incapacitating bliss. As Finah wore off, he’d fall into a deep sleep and miss dinner. This

went on for several weeks — no more than a month — and right after Dad’s transfer.

He was not well.

When it became a daily occurrence, he began to lose weight and I worried about his

health. How his ribs poked out. Growing boys his age continue to gain in height and

hunger. Mother was up to two bottles of Rotwein and crashed out before nightfall. No

notice of something wrong with Drew. That’s why she wouldn’t do anything, she didn’t

know to intervene. The rescue was up to me.

One night after Finah left and when Drew slept, I rummaged through our room. I

looked through the wardrobe, under the bunks, through the drawers of our shared,

wooden vanity that we used as a desk. When Drew stirred, I stopped and listened until his

deep-breathing resumed. Our room was small. There were very few places to tuck away a

hiding place. I looked under the bed again, dragging my fingers through the under-

springs, feeling for any clue. Nothing but I was saving the obvious choice for last. The

last place left was Balrog the Backpack.

The dirty, yellow behemoth rested at the foot of our bunks. The gash on its side had

underwent field surgery since our battle at Martinkirche. The gashes mended with

oversized stitches of clumsy yarn. I dumped the bag’s contents onto the carpet, the layers

of paper emerged as slow as the tectonic plates. I searched through the composition

notebooks and fanned through the schoolbooks. I dug through the Trapper Keepers inside


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pockets. Nothing revealed itself, yet I knew he had to be hiding his art projects

somewhere. I pulled on the velcro of the Balrog’s pockets. Careful when I pulled the flap

up, I unhinged each thread from their plastic hooks to avoid the casual ripping sound

velcro made. Pencils, eraser caps, a clear protractor, plastic sharpeners, a coating of

leaden dust, wooden shavings and flint. They all dumped out of the pocket with an

accidental ruckus. Drew stirred, scratched his nose and fell back asleep. I rotated the bag

in my hands looking for other compartments but all the flaps were open. Where else

could his hiding place be? I sat on the carpet, holding my chin in my fingers, shaking my

head in defeat. My jaw popped the harder and harder I ground my teeth.

I crumpled Balrog, punching it in the gut when I felt the book inside. Hotdog! This

is where he’s hiding it. I traced the seams with my finger until it came upon the pale yarn.

I pushed my digits between the hoops and into the beast’s guts until I felt the paper pages

tickle my fingertips. The papers lay just out of reach. I unravelled the stitches like

shoelaces, pulling them out of their makeshift holes.

I found the fresh paintings folded up inside.

The art disturbed me. Heart chambers and pomegranate aortas pump neon-lime

blood. The muscle near bursting under snarls of marionette wire and string. Drew’s name

signed in his young scrawl.

Titled in German: Sie benötigen ein Herz zu leben.

Inside the folds, another picture. A Madonna-and-child horror, a portrait of Finah.


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Did he see her like this? Her ear poised downward, chestward. She listens to her insides.

Her blueness lit up from the inside of her lungs. Her heart a fetus — a lima-bean —

folded like a unborn raccoon. Her heart is Drew. He wears her glowing, pink ballet

slippers. He listens only to Finah, eyes locked on her face. Upward, skyward. Like he’s

looking upon the face of God.

The title is in english this time, in Drew’s hand: You need a heart to live.

Chills ran up my forearms to my tensed shoulders. Tears snuck out of the corner of

my eye. Does Drew know I lost my heart? I wondered if he saw when it ejected from me

on his birthday. I don’t remember him walking around the Martinkirche cloister. He

couldn’t have found its remains amongst the shrubs.

Did he see the vacancy in my eyes?

Inside his secret pouch, I found a book of construction paper held together with the

familiar yarn top-stitching. Another picture of the ballet shoes, smeared in tears. A study

of Finah, a collage of hearts around her head beating expectantly like butterflies. Another

and another, Finah, hearts, and slippers, more and more the pages flew by, until at the

front of the book, I found a different kind of drawing, most crudely drawn. His first

drawing.

On the first page is a family portrait.

Dad waves goodbye from inside the outline of a plane. If it weren’t so absurd he’d

be flying with Wonder Woman in her invisible jet. Mother inside a stick house with a


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frown, perforations of tears coming out of her eyes. Comical in the commonplace way

children draw, funny if I weren’t so freaked-out. And then there’s me. I’m scribbled out.

Somewhere underneath a tornado plume, erased by a black tangle of smoke.

Finah had to be stopped or I’d lose my brother to this frightening girl. My mother

relinquished to the the wine, I must be the begrudging hero. Both of us can’t lose our

ticker. That night was the last time I cried, the teardrops jumping from my chin.

My heart would call it love because I did not hate him after all.

I worried he didn’t hate me back.

⁂

The following day was when I next saw Finah, she was waiting at our front door as

we came home from school. She leaned on bended knee, kicking out her leg. “Fondu,

battement fondu, et fondu,” she said with each bend. Her face illuminated when she saw

Drew, glowing blue from frost like in his paintings.

She greeted him with three pliés and a bow.

“Guten tag, Finah,” Drew said bowing back. I unlocked the door and let him go

through. She went to follow, I turned around to confront her.

“Nien,” I said. A German word I was confident enough to say out loud.

“What,” she asked in thick-accented English. She blinked her eyes, the surprise

forming on her face suddenly. I blocked the doorway with my arm. She ignored it and

tried to duck under. I kicked my foot into the door jam to bar her entry completely.


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“Nien,” I said again. I waggled my finger at her. I was steaming.

“Ich benötige ein Herz zu leben…an allen,” she explained, desperation in her voice.

She pointed frantically after Drew. When she was this close to me, she looked so small

and pathetic, I wanted to punch her in the ear. I wanted to scream: “Listen to me! Can’t

you hear me?” She shifted her eyes looking for another way in. “Ich benötige ein Herz zu

leben,” she repeated. I knew what she was saying. Did she also know about the loss of

my heart?

She pled with me in German, “You need a heart to live.”

She fucking knew. She knew I was heartless.

She must for it was written across the drawings in their sketchpad.

“Nien,” I said firmly, raising my eyebrows. My face set, holding back my tongue,

holding back my fire. I let her know this was her final warning with a assertive nod. I

shut the door, both of us alone in the outside hall.

Finah rose up, fists balled, shaking them over her head. She caught me off-guard. I

thought she was coming right at me. I was prepared to strike and I reacted instinctively. A

military-brat in training.

I didn’t realize exactly what I had done until I looked down.

Finah stood in agony. I saw the sparkle of tears in her clear blue eyes. I marveled

how they looked like crystals. And then she fell away to the floor like she had fallen

backwards off a cliff. Her ponytail disheveled and wrapping around her face and neck. I


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had stamped down my boot with a soft clomp. She struggled to move my sole, the

blacken rubber, pulling at my foot with frantic and rising fear. She switched tactics and

pushed me with a wretched groan.

Ballet shoes are lightweight, they are flexible to allow for the dancer to arch their

foot, the fabric is soft and fits snugly to allow for dance. Since I’d become heartless, I felt

withdrawn from the act. I am heartless. It serves me well while I crush her foot beneath

mine.

As young boys are so inclined, I got a boner. Not from emotion nor any sexual

thrill. I guess because I simply rose to the occasion. I stomped on her foot like she was a

bug. She may as well been not wearing shoes at all.

Before I removed my boot, I ground my heel into her foot heavily. She pushed and

pulled at it like a demonic Raggedy Ann doll, she looked so tiny, her plum-face plump

and weeping with painful tears. I dragged my foot in a furious smear against the pink

satin and shifted my weight down even harder. I hated those fucking slippers. I hated her

pliés. I felt her bones give like twigs underneath me. I imagined her feet like crab-claws,

cracking open. When I removed my boot, the inky rubber from my boots scuffed the

satin, snagging on the slipper’s strands of pink and grayed fabric.

A molasses gush of blood began to pool inside the footwear.

She cursed me. Ohrwurm. She cursed me with a clamped whisper. All those hairs on

my neck and scalp rose up. Ohrwurm. I felt the flight of fear envelope me. What had I


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done?

I let myself into the apartment and closed the door making sure not to slam it. Not to

bring attention to what I had just done. Coming in hot and breathing hard. Ohrwurm. But

when I looked through the peephole, she was gone.

I saw the remnants of my shame marked by a puddle of rain.

As if Finah had melted.

⁂

This is us during great tribulation.

The hipster looks at me with the same quizzical stare that his brother did weeks

before, the first time I told my story. He bites his lower lip like the hippy did. His index

finger contemplates his chin and beard — anxious grooming — his twin’s finger had

scratched out the tangles in his ponytail. I told the hipster much more of the story than

several weeks ago at Reckless. On the loss of my heart and my random hard-on. I’m not

sure why. My face burns from the thrum of blood and embarrassment. Perhaps it becomes

easier to tell your fears every time they come out in the light. After a long minute or two

he says finally, “Thas a radge sorry story.”

“That was the last we saw of her,” I said.

“An yeh hafnae cried since?”

“Nope.”

“Not once?”


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“It’s must be the curse,” I say. “There were tears after I lost my heart.”

I lean back in relief when I turn around and see Rory had returned with Drew. Man-

oh-man, I’m not sure how much of the story they just heard. My relief is stilted and I

jump up startled. The furrow between Drew’s eyebrows points like an arrow to his pursed

lips and lets me know he’s deliberating the tale. I say nothing and wait for any response.

When I focus on the white of his knuckles, he’s holding hands with a curly-haired girl.

It’s the first time he’s heard me confess what happened and it fills me with a

unexpected comfort, like I unearthed a cold, rotting body. Nothing left to hide, nothing

more to say. No more covering it up. But I still have to deal with the remains.

“Her name wasn’t Finah Wind,” Drew says at last. “You got it wrong.”

“How do you mean,” Rory asks.

“It’s not ‘fee-nuh.’ You pronounce it like final. Her name’s not Josephine at all.” He

returns to his first pronouncement like he’s accusing me: “You got it wrong. You got it all

wrong!” Drew looks lost in contemplation, like he’s down in the soil, excavating the

memories with me. We are both stuck down in the ditch, buried under Martinskirche clay.

“What was she called then,” the hipster asks. He’s caught up in the mystery.

“Feiner Fruend,” he says. I hear ‘Final Wind’ like he has a lisp, like he’s a gaylord.

“She was a Feiner Fruend. It’s a German phrase, not a name at all. She was my…best

friend,” he says. He’s shaking his head, in disagreement with himself. “No, that’s not

right.”


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“Tell us, then,” Rory prompts.

“She was a Fine Friend,” he says and looks at me. “You killed her?”

His accusation pierces my chest like molten shrapnel. Before I can react — and I

don’t know how to react or even know what a Fine Friend is — the curly-haired girl falls

to the ground.

“Oh, Francesca,” my brother says.

She faints on the laminate floor in a quiet clump, arms flailing above her. He drops

down placing her curly-haired head softly into his lap. He whispers into her ear with a

passion of a lover. Like he did with Finah. As I said, it’s like I’ve seen all this before.

Drew holds onto her hand, still.


110

Chapter 5.

BAPTISM OF FIRE

“She’s okay, Mr. Owain,” Drew says very close to my ear. “She’s sleeping now.”

He’s referring to me, I’m the one girl in the record shop.

“Whitsit mean, ohrwurm?”

“Earworm,” Drew says.

“A forkytaily,” Mr. Owain asks.

“Whitsit mean, then,” Rory asks again.

I listen to the boys talk from the floor. My head is throbbing but I keep my eyes

closed so I don’t interrupt. I think my head is resting in Drew’s lap because I’m laying on

his small, soft calves. He’s very gentle and strokes my hair like my father does. The head-

scratching calms me and my headache reduces.

“Forkytaily? Aha…no, not an earwig, it’s an earworm,” Mikey says. “It’s a song

stuck in my head, been there for ages.” No one responds. They wait for him to go on.

Letting out a long breath, he lets go of any reservations and continues his tale. “Okay.

There are several things that happened after we moved to England. I began to hear a

melody, a song from a piano. For many months I thought it was our neighbors practicing


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next door. I would hear it randomly. At night, during dinner. I heard it playing when I

took my morning shower and when I ate breakfast before going to school. It was there at

the bus stop and in the back yard and it played when we met for soccer down the street.

Sometimes I could tune it out if I there was another song on the stereo, but unlike most

earwigs — man! — earworms, it always came back.”

I lift my eyelids to watch through the flytrap of my dark eyelashes. Mr. Owain’s

behind the counter. He is very stylish in his white suit and hat. He stands hunched over

the counter, standing in front of a door leading to an alcove off the main shop. His elbow

rests near the register, his palm props up his chin. His eyes are wide-open, enraptured.

I lay flat on the floor. I’m not touching any shelves or walls. From my angle I can

tell the record shop is compact but not too overly crowded. I can’t look around without

giving myself up so I keep staring straight ahead, over the toes of my Mary Janes. The

boys are near the side of the counter. Mikey stands at attention and Rory leans back on

one of the tables, their backs are to me.

I notice they dress like mismatched twins. Rory clothes are a negative image of

Mikey’s. Mikey wears a bright yellow & red striped polo. Rory also wears a polo, his is

black. Mikey’s jeans are the color of khaki, their baggy pockets make them look military-

issued. Rory’s are black-faded, slim and stuffed into his leather boots. They have

designer, yellow top-stitching. Mikey’s sneakers are old, broken down. Mikey wears

generic prescription glasses, Rory’s are Raybans. Some of Rory’s personal style is


112

coming through with his nail-polish, bracelets, and a scarf (all black, even his hair is

black except for a streak of blue).

If I had to guess Rory dressed today to look more like Mikey. Not the other way

around. It’s the best that Rory can do — as if he’s wearing sportswear for a funeral —

which is not very good at all. If he’s a vampire, he isn’t going golfing, he’s headed to the

country club to meet someone he fancies.

“Then I heard it at school. That’s when I knew for sure it wasn’t our neighbors. The

song was playing inside my head,” Mikey says. He touches an exact spot above his right

ear with his pinkie finger.

“You were imagining it,” Rory says. “Right?”

I’m drawn into Mikey’s story. He hears the earwig — I believe him without

argument — he’s not imagining it. Maybe it’s because the symphonies I used to hum

were as real to me as hearing them on the phonograph. Maybe because my conversations

with Tomás were as clear as the talk here in the record shop.

“It’s some song you heard once,” Rory says. “You just can’t place it.”

He does not believe.

“I can place it,” Mikey says without a beat and scoffs.

I guess it’s hard for him to explain or to even admit. We may not all have imaginary

friends but inside us exist songs we don’t always want others to hear. He had no comfort

for us to walk in on his tale of the ohrwurm curse. How traumatic to be caught with your


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heart on your sleeve. I can relate to that. My intimate conversations were snooped on by

girls I rather didn’t overhear. In a store much like this one. I hold my breath to keep from

saying their names aloud, I can barely think them: Lourdes and Samantha.

I taste a hint of incense on the air. It smells dry and sweet as Sandalwood. I choke

down a yawn — but before I close my mouth — my ruse is up. The shopkeep catches me

eavesdropping.

“Guid morning,” he says. He nods in my direction, “The wee lass is awake.”

“Hello,” I say. I sit up, indian-style, and wave at the boys. Listen, I’m not like

Samantha or Lourdes. “I’m Franny.”

“Ahoy,” Mr. Owain says.

We make introductions as if it’s the first day of class. I stretch my arm out for

handshake but the boys remain. I wring my hands in my lap instead.

Unknown Pleasures is laid out like a well-thought out maze. Tables of records

housed in specialty crates are near the front, open for perusing. They line up like jigsaw

pieces. The back are racks of tapes lined up in tall cases leaning against walls. Teeshirts

are imprinted with logos and names I don’t recognize. They hang from the ceiling.

Posters and concert flyers are pinned sparingly to cork-board panelling lining the shop.

I twist around to look at Drew. He hasn’t joined the conversation since translating

ohrwurm to English and continues to say nothing. He’s upset from the way his eyes

weigh down and glisten. He acknowledges me with a half-felt smile, it’s a shadow


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passing across his face. It darkens when he looks back at his brother. We stay down on

the laminate floor together. I close my hand over his.

“Maybe you can place it but that’s your imagination,” Rory says. “Right mate?”

“I believe him,” I say. “I get songs stuck in my head, too.”

I expect Mikey to agree. To say: “You see, she believes me!” I thought we’d click

together just like me and his brother did. To my surprise, he offers me a frown. Could be

that I simply interrupted him so I let it fly. After all I’ve just met everyone. I wouldn’t call

us friends yet.

“Goan then,” the shopkeep says to my relief. I do want to hear more of Mikey’s

story. He takes his frown off me, turns around and continues, quieter. Rory shifts his

weight to close in and they stand around in a huddle. Mikey keeps his interactions with

Rory and Mr. Owain. I can’t see their faces. I don’t know quite how to read everyone but

know a clique when I see one. I not sure if they are shutting me out or Drew.

“Well, we moved to RAF Alconbury when Dad transferred to the 527th squadron,

the Aggressors,” he says. “Things were better for awhile and we were living back on-base

with him for the first time in, oh, two years. This was the summer of ’80. Dad bought me

a Walkman, a different one, not this one,” he fidgets with the red box hanging off the belt.

“I don’t know if it was my birthday or just some sort of treaty or recompense, but I took

it. I began buying cassettes.”

“Earwig’s been playin’ in yir heid ferd three years,” Mr. Owain says. “On the trot?”


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“Maybe just over,” Mikey says with a shrug.

I think to Spain when Mother was still alive through most of 1979. Three years ago

she was gone. Right-around the time I made up Kettledrum candy in Doña Dolce. I’ve

blocked out all my music out since then. Where did those songs go? Here’s one playing

non-stop in this kid’s head.

I do think he’s telling the truth. Even so, there’s a scratching question trying to claw

to the surface. It’s a skepticism waiting just in the shadows, tantalizing as a riddle,

clacking pieces together. I feel it flirt with the inner-most part of me, landing a wet kiss to

the brainstem. I want to ignore the way it torments me but know more so I can figure out

what I should ask.

The throbbing in my heart beats so strong, I swear an elastic band inside it pulls me

towards Mikey. As if I were the Fine Friend. I’ve not heard that phrase for many years.

An old panic is released underneath my soul, the fear that I’m losing my mind. That I’m

crackers and tea, sitting down with the Mad Hatter.

That’s when my question snaps free.

“How were you able to see Finah?”

He’s had a run in with someone very much like Tomás.

My words break silence upon the air. The quiet seeps into the cork-boards.

Then: “Wh-What do you mean?”

Everyone’s eyes are on me. Mikey is fuming. He’s so angry I cannot bare his gaze. I


116

try to imagine myself somewhere else, floating over a beach or a rocky shore, anywhere

but here. I shy away. That’s not the door I want to open. Not yet.

“You know something,” Drew whispers just to me. “Don’t you?” He sports a stupid

smirk, a knowing look. I’m unsure if he truly grasps what I mean or if he’s just playing

along. He squeezes my hand, his grip is very reassuring. “You can tell them.”

“I’m not sure I can tell them,” I say. “They’ll think I’m a laughingstock.”

I doubt they know a Fine Friend is imaginary.

Even as I tell myself this in a way that feels natural and familiar, I cannot seem to

slide it all together. Something doesn’t match up. There are gaps in what I know. How do

I make them understand when I don’t even believe Tomás was real. Have I made it all

up? I’m unsure in myself and in my make-believe friends. Was my past simply a dream?

It’s a rollercoaster ride between knowing and believing and neither hold the answers

alone. Ergo, there is no proof to my reasoning at all.

Perhaps Feiner Fruend’s meaning was mangled from the German translation.

“Did you say Fine Friend,” I ask. “Did Finah call herself that?”

He nods vigorously.

“What do you mean, Franny,” Mikey says. He’s overheard us. His tone is a derisive

one. He places his hand on the jut of his hip to prove it. I’m shaken and retreat to my

empirical nature. They’re waiting for me to answer.

“I need to hear more before I can provide a thesis.”


117

“Sod off, then,” Rory says. He joins the fray. “Can you believe this girl? What the

bleeding hell does she even mean?”

Mikey’s shoulders raise on their hunches. His hands go up in exasperation to praise

the ceiling. Like I’m the unruly kid in class. He treats me like he’s an old schoolmarm.

Funny the unexpected thoughts that cross you sometimes. I’m reminded of Ms. Jimenez

who taught Geometry at Benalmádena. She was a a fussy spinster who wore uptight

sweaters and oversized glasses. Spectacles which offered no vision on how to teach or

treat kids. She was a classroom skirmish away from a nervous breakdown. One that’d

send her to a nunnery.

Like Ms. Jimenez: Mikey’s short on patience and long on drama.

“Nothing,” I say. “Go on with your story.”

I look to Drew for backup. Hush, he motions with a finger over his lips. But his

smirk still sneaks out from behind it. He bears a curious expression I’ll happily become

accustomed over the next few days. A look to which I’m certain he can read my thoughts.

Our conversation is private, flowing between us. Anger clamps down across his face

when he looks upon his brother. His lips lock together.

“Goan then,” Mr. Owain repeats. “Goan.”

“Okay.”

“Was there only piano playing,” Rory asks.

“In patches at first, just the piano,” Mikey says. “By the time we moved away from


118

Suffolk to RAF Alconbury, I heard words, fragments of lyrics,” he gets back on track. He

leans elbows on the counter. He keeps an eye on me but voice relaxes into the story. “So,

I began looking for cassettes to play. To see if I could find the words. Sometimes I

listened to tapes just to drown out the earwig. Which worked for a time, but over the

years, it’s become louder and harder to shut out.”

“Tell us the lyrics,” Rory asks.

“Whit kindae song is it,” Mr. Owain asks.

“Just a piano and two singers,” Mikey says.

“Nae, nae. Whit kind ah song: upbeat or reggae, prog or punk, downtempo or

rock’n’roll.” With each style Mr. Owain motions to a section of the store. He’s a flight

attendant pointing out the emergency exits.

“Upbeat, bluesy but not blues,” Mikey says. “Almost a torch-song.”

“What were the lyrics,” Rory asks. He’s left hanging. Every time he has a question,

the Mr. Owain slips in better one. One that get’s an answer.

“Is the song new or old?”

“New, maybe, I think.”

“Is the piano electro or acoustic?”

“Acoustic,” he says. “With a little reverb.”

“Are the voices raw or bluesy? Men or women? Any accents?”

“At least one female, background singer, classically trained. Jazz.”


119

“At least?”

“Lead vocalist has this smokey voice,” Mikey cocks his head like he’s

contemplating but I’ve noticed his responses come a little too easily. “Could be a man or

a woman. Maybe the singer’s a blue-eyed soul-boy?”

The shopkeep grunts. He takes off his pork-pie hat and tosses it near the record-

player and dumps his chin in both palms, fingers curled in. He’s trying to figure it out.

Even from my vantage point, I can see his pupils move down and to the right. They move

to the corners of his eyes where they remain. As if he can spot the song within the conch

of his ear.

“Ah wish my bruv was here. He’s goat ah good ear,” Mr. Owain says.

“Yeah, yes he does,” Mikey says. “He listens well.”

The look of adoration on Mikey’s face is surreal and I sit up straight. The love is not

for me. He’s talking about his own brother, not Mr. Owain’s. He stares at Drew like a

proud parent. One who just saw their child score a goal or win an award. A gesture that

leaves me more lonesome until Drew clenches my hand. My mind is racing. I squint at

the brothers and realize they know the answer. They already sussed out who sang the

earwig-song. It must be Drew who figured it out.

They both are so well versed in pop music. They’re teaching us.

No, not quite: Mikey is teaching the record store owner and that’s gnarly.

I consider still the connections between Fine Friends and earwigs. Some link


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between Finah and Tomás. How do they relate and how do they factor into the mystery?

It’s not what Mikey knows, it’s what he doesn’t. He doesn’t realize how strong the string

is that connects you to your Fine Friend.

I thought Tomás might be Ms. Stewart’s fox but I’m wrong. Ms. Stewart was trying

to teach me how she experienced the death of her husband. Sionnach is the numbness I

felt when I left Tomás behind. Like her, it took everything out of me. He was my best

friend, my one friend, and I betrayed him. I was filled with a void which has never left

me. An emptiness that’s haunted me all of these years.

Since then, everything changed. The way I perceived the world, the way I shut

myself down to others. How I closed myself off to my mother’s memory, to her music, to

myself, to life. Have I forgotten to believe in myself? I am spiritless. Forced to roam the

Earth, deadened and unfeeling until the end of time.

“When you stomped out Finah, you ended their friendship.” I point at Drew. He too

must feel the emptiness inside, that’s what connects us. “You may not have liked her but

she mattered most to him. You finished off his best friend. Do you think you may have

hurt your brother? That it will scar him forever?”

“It’s difficult for me to say,” Mikey says. He shakes his head no. With a flick of his

wrist, his love transmitting to Drew turns off like a switch. “I’m not being taken

seriously.”

Maybe I’m projecting. Too many coincidences. Maybe the earwig has nothing to do


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with Fine Friends. I don’t know these brothers and yet my tongue flaps without concern

for what I’m saying. I should know better.

“I am serious,” I say. “I just don’t have enough data to figure it out yet.”

“Nah, we’re all tryin’ tae figure it oot,” Mr. Owain says. “Tell us who it was then,

Mikey. Who sang the earwig?”

“I can’t go on. It’s her,” Mikey says. A sidelong nod indicating me. My intrusion is a

peepshow. We’re in total blackout. “I know it’s stupid but I just can’t.”

“Jesus Christ, laddie,” Mr. Owain says.

He steps from behind the counter and reaches out towards Mikey. He’s moves as

fast as lightning I think he’s going to box his ears. The boy flinches too. Instead Mr.

Owain lays his palm on Mikey’s forehead, his other cradles his lower back. Mikey has no

time to resist the embrace.

“Oh my,” I gasp.

I hold my own hands over my mouth to keep from yelling out again. The record

shop is still. I cannot see Mikey’s face nor his reaction.

Silently, he begins to crouch down. His knees buckle and he begins to collapse.

Both hands reach out struggling to hang on to something. Rory jumps forward to catch

his fall and holds him up by his armpits. Their pose reminds me of a renaissance painting

I’ve seen it in a textbook. A white-clad priest applying benediction upon the boy’s brow.

Mikey bows in front of him, ready to serve up his penitence. Upon a silver platter.


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This is a baptism (of fire).

“We’ve all heard plenty of yir misdeeds, the radge things yeh have done tae yir

bruv. In Germany, here in my shop. How great the suff’rin curse uv everlastin’ song in yir

hed. An then yir arse fell aff, aye?” Mr. Owain shrugs. “But nae, Ah dinnae ken, could be

—,” he brushes invisible dust off his shoulder with his chin. I’m not certain he knows

what to make of Mikey either. “— bess get it aff yir chess an tell us. Even wid the wee

lass there. It’ll take the shock away from the pain. If nae then yeh’ll suff’r even more.

Fess up all the embarrassing shite an yeh’ll feel better, yeh’ll see.”

“No, I can’t,” Mikey says.

He shakes his head in small fits. The shopkeep moves his hand from Mikey’s back

and rests it on his neck. The boy doesn’t struggle and leans into the hold. No strength to

fight it. The pose is a gentle one. Yet it looks like Mr. Owain is trying to extract the song

and the lyrics directly out of his head. Like an evangelist to an exorcism, he’s reluctant to

help the boy — driven by the fear of catching the curse, but on the other hand — he’s

caught up in the revelation.

The shopkeep’s eyes roll inside his head. A wide arc when he’s praying to God.

What would I do to believe? To trust in myself again. Can I believe if I’m a soulless

robot? Perhaps it should be me receiving the baptism. To save my soul from the clutches

of Sionnach’s teeth.

Mr. Owain comes out of his trance.


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“Ah’mno ah hed-shrinker, Ah’m a businessman, likesee. And Ah’mno eeejit, Ah ken

there are things Ah cannae ken,” he says. He looks into Mikey’s eyes, the boy is slumped

over in his hands. Mr. Owain deliberates over each word so he’s understood through his

Scottish accent. “There are things Ah do not know, aye?” Mikey nods. “But a radge an

angry bruv — thas you — Ah know very well. Ah know yeh like Ah know my own bruv.

Ah never meant more tae him than pish in this whole wide world. Ah wiznae able tae

help him with his fury, likesee. Nae matter what Ah dae tae make my bruv happy Ah

cannae fill the emptiness in his chess — just like you — ken?”

Mr. Owain tightly shuts his eyelids and concentrates.

“Yeh goat tae trade yir emptiness in,” he says. His cheek is upon Mikey’s cheek. He

knocks his volume down a notch. The quiet brings importance. “Ah’m here tae tell yeh,

ire and fire isnae ah guid trade fer suff’rin. Yeh’ve goat tae fill yir spirit in yir soul

because yeh dae care fer yir bruv as much as he does fer yeh. Dae it now! There’s nae

other time tae dae it. Easy tae think yeh’ve lost yir heart, but yir nae lost. Alas laddie,

maybe yir heart has been taken from yeh. Goan get it back.”

He holds his mouth close to Mikey’s temple. Then he whispers his final words but

they are just for the boy, words that none of us can hear.

Finally: “Now, dinnae be ah bawbag. Yeh ken?”

Mikey nods agreeably and the shopkeep lets go. He pats him on the shoulder before

he straightens him out. Mr. Owain stands leaning back against the counter and scans him


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up and down. I’m not sure what shopkeep whispered but Mikey seems relieved. He’s

blinking like he recently awoke from a dark dream. Mikey’s smiling for the first time

since I first entered the shop.

“Yes,” he says. “Ah ken.”

“Aye,” Mr. Owain says.

OPERATION EARWIG

“I started listening to Mother’s small record collection. Mostly Broadway and

Standards from the ‘40s and ‘50s,” Mikey says. “Seemed obvious it should be something

I’ve heard her play around the house. I focused on Blues & Jazz. Artists like Billie

Holiday, Nina Simone, Etta James. I listened to musicals, shows like Porgy and Bess,

Oklahoma!, Carousel,” he pauses to observe regarding each of us one by one, even me,

looking for some reaction. There is none. None more outspoken than our intense

attentiveness. Now that he’s unblocked he launches into full history. “Acceptable rock

operas (acceptable to Mother) like Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. Took me a few

days to go through all her records and tapes. As I suspected there was nothing there.

Nothing that sounded like the ohrwurm.” With an assured fervor in his voice, he shares

his deduction. “I had to expand my search criteria.”

There is this whole other world of music I’m not part of. I was brought up with the


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classics. Rarely do I listen to contemporary songs but it doesn’t matter. I’ve neglected my

love for music. It’s like being a foreigner listening to Castilian Spanish for the first time.

Only that stranger touts a Ph.D. in romance languages but criminally escaped any study

of another besides her own mother-tongue.

“The kids in High School were into tunes by good ’ole boys, Classic Rock, and

there was plenty to borrow. Janis Joplin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Pink

Floyd. The list goes on.”

“Like going tae Woodstock,” Mr. Owain says.

“Yeah but Zeppelin and —,” Mikey says.

“Aye, aye. Yeh don’t need tae tell me,” the shopkeep says holding up a hand. “Ah

remember who played an who dinnae gae tae Woodstock, laddie.”

“There were the ‘The’ bands of the 60s,” he continues. “The Doors, The Zombies,

The Byrds, The Kinks, The Stones. I spent a whole summer before 9th grade With The

Beatles.” He winks and the shopkeep chuckles. It’s a joke I don’t get. “Oftentimes I’d

find something bluesy or a ballad but still I came across nothing.”

“There was a kid named Fritz very much into The Beach Boys. I convinced him to

dub his whole collection for me. He taped their whole discography across 6 cassettes. I

didn’t know where one album ended and the next one began. Except for the Christmas

album, right?”

“I had to beg another kid for his Elvis Presley collection. A Vietnamese boy who


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tried to imitate an Elvis quiff. When he combed his hair back using too much VO5, it

looked more like sticks of shiny, black hay. This kid had the unfortunate name of Dong

Turner,” Mikey says. He tries to keep down a laugh. “He called himself Doug but I found

out his real name one day when I caught it in a pile of Ms. O’Connor’s — one of my

teacher’s — papers. I begged him to tape his record collection for me but he refused. I

threatened to tell everyone at school his name was Dong and not Doug. He changed his

mind super quick but he didn’t have a way to copy to tape. He decided to let me come to

his house to listen. I spent a few hours each day, over the course of a month going

through singles and LPs with no luck.”

“I listened to rockabilly, I listened to doo-wop. I could go to other kids houses and

listen to their parents’ records, too. I found a surprising surplus of Motown: The

Temptations, The Jackson 5, James Brown, The Surpremes. When their mothers were

stay-at-home, I had less time before they didn’t want me over. So I focused on who sang

ballads or who had a piano: Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder. I didn’t find

anything sounding like the earwig.”

“I searched through more of the 70s: First I got into Funk and then I tried Disco. A

little ABBA, some Sister Sledge. I listened to way too much Bee Gees.” He makes it

known he doesn’t like all the music. “I found I could quickly scan the tapes and passed

the task over to Drew — he kept bugging me to help — but we didn’t have a lot to go on.

I didn’t want to waste my allowance on buying any Disco.”


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I’m right: Mikey is teaching us history. I’m sitting in a popular music class. A

master class where the names of famous kings (of rock) and queens (of soul) are rattled

off from the decades past. Their reigns and their realms. When Mikey mentions a name, I

imagine a corresponding shop-poster light up in surrounding neon. A face to a name.

Until all the posters illuminate.

We’re both seeking answers. Mikey sifts through the back-catalog of modern music.

I’m going to college to learn Math and Physics. He’s under self-study, I have textbooks.

When I listen to Mikey, I realize neither of us are looking in the right places. Not records

nor equations will soothe our pain.

I think adore Mikey.

He solicited help from classmates when I ran away from them. I relied on my

instructors. See how so many strangers fall over themselves to help Mikey along his

journey. I should learn to follow his approach — even if he strong-armed his mates when

he didn’t get his way — doesn’t mean I should. For instance, I could ask Mr. Owain. He

told Mikey to fill the spirit in his soul. Maybe he could help me find where I lost mine.

“So much music in the world,” I say. “I’d feel so lost.”

“I began to worry,” Mikey admits to me. He opens up and walks over to us. “I

agonized over skipping artists, or worse, whole genres. What if the song was a B-side? Or

from an artist that decided to go in a different direction after I stopped listening to their

albums? What if the song wasn’t even on a band’s greatest hits? What if they joined a


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different band or used a different name? Or worse yet, what if the song wasn’t from a

popular artist at all?”

“There were too many directions to go in and 9th grade was ending. Drew was how

old?” He studies Drew. “A year and half ago, he was eleven. I was about to turn fifteen.

He nagged me to help but this time I truly needed him. I couldn’t do it alone so I enlisted

him to what we now call Operation Earwig,” Mikey’s eyes his brother, another shared

moment. Drew’s jaw remains clenched shut. “We couldn’t do it ourselves. I had to dig

deeper — we decided to divide and conquer — so I sought out the advice of experts.

Talked with the hippies and music gurus in record stores across London.”

“By this time the earwig was roaring and I couldn’t shut it out. Except sometimes

when I slept. It was too much to hold inside. The pressure inside my head gave me

constant headaches. The earwig was agony,” he holds his temple with the palm of his

hand. A gesture he has repeated several times since I awoke. He’s in pain even now. “Not

that I ever did that well in school. But my grades were getting worse and Mother was on

my ass.”

We are similar, Mikey and I. The times we spend with our Fine Friends are never

fine. They’re full of woe-begotten spoils. We survive a sudden wake or great trauma to

pass as corpses through a golden age of shellshock. I wonder if this is what it means to

grow up. We become a collection of our past misery and affliction. The more time we

spend in this world, the more anguish we put into jars and store on the shelves deep


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within ourselves. Our wounds are not healing. We’re both hurting.

This is what connects us: the damage we carry from our childhoods. We see it in

each other’s eyes. Reflecting ourselves back at us. I see myself in Mikey. Like a mirage.

Perhaps that’s the service our Fine Friends fulfill. They bind us together with bright

threads of heartache. A mother unexpectedly dead or a parent who is increasingly absent,

a brother lost in a foreign city or a girl who feels abandoned in her own home town. It

doesn’t matter how we arrive at our pain, we will each inevitably cross paths with our

own Fine Friend. Imaginary or not. And suffer the consequences.

I hope there’s more to life than this.

What would I do to believe? I keep asking but I’m not sure how to answer. I shy

away from talking to myself but I cannot help it. The questions slip out the sides of me.

Avoid the ones that come from thin-air. Like my conversations with Tomás so many years

ago. Better to keep myself sealed up. But if I ever want to figure out how to heal these

wounds, I should have the courage speak up.

I listen to my thoughts. Hear myself narrating inside like a sad fool. The disconnect

I get when my inner voice overcomes those speaking around me. I go queasy, notice my

eyes are glassy, and shake myself out of my own head.

Mikey is still going when I tune back in. After he exhausted all the other kids in his

small school over months of false leads and uninterested parties, he’s found an unlikely

ally in a schoolboy outcast. He befriends a red-eyed stoner who listens to bands off the


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beaten-track. He’s a sentry to an underworld of music Mikey didn’t know existed.

A circus of characters to stay away from. He discovers a crowd of nouveau

experimentalists, serious noise-makers, fashion militants, fringe performance artists,

professional dancers, and anti-establishment stooges. Cross-dressers, drug-takers and sex-

addicts all. They make up the brickwork on his path to discovery. They are links in a

chain. He talks about them with an intimacy as if he knows each artist personally.

“I dug into as many of these bands as I could get my hand on,” he says. “Brian Eno

was in Roxy Music —”

“I loved Eno the most because he wore the best outfits,” Rory says.

“— Eno worked with David Bowie,” Mikey continues like he didn’t hear. “Bowie

led me to Iggy Pop. Iggy helped me find Lou Reed. Lou was in The Velvet Underground.

And then again, so was I. Wasn’t I?”

Mikey chuckles to another inside joke. More quotes or footnotes I don’t get.

“Tell me why you’re laughing,” I ask. My questions are curt. I'm annoyed at being

left in the dark. “Help me understand.”

He puffs up and lets out one of his long sighs.

“I began looking for underground cassettes,” Mikey says. “Get it?” We shake our

heads. No-one gets the joke, maybe just the Hipster. “Okay, I was getting into

underground music by looking for a band called Velvet Underground. There’s irony there,

don’t you see it?”


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“Sure,” I say. I still don’t get it. “Why look there?”

“There was no other place. I had to unearth this song.”

“But what were the lyrics, darling,” Rory asks again. Always interrupting the flow.

I’m beginning to liken Rory to a dog with a chew-toy. He just won’t let it go.

“Forget about the goddamn lyrics for now,” Mikey says. He winks at him but it

doesn’t quite cover up his exasperation. “Why the Velvet Underground?”

Mikey considers his own question.

“Why,” Rory says.

“Because they are one of the most influential groups in rock,” Mikey says. He

answers himself in a matter-of-fact flap. “I once read a quote from Eno. He said that the

first Velvet Underground album sold a thousand copies, but everyone who bought one

started a band. You see, in the underground everyone’s connected. Nothing’s in a vacuum.

New music is based on whoever follows. There may be sharp turns in the path — seminal

works that change musical direction: in sound, technique, or style — but they always lead

back to the bands that precede them. Whether it’s referential or reactionary, they’re all

connected. If you buy any album worth its merit today and follow the lines of influence,

you’ll eventually track back to the Velvet Underground.”

My brain is dead-air. I can’t take any more in so I blink out. Mikey’s passion for

music negates my own. I cannot compare my time at University to his deep knowledge

on a subject that I should be an expert. I’m jealous he’s learned more on his own than I


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ever could at school. If he cares this much when I do not, then it’s true. I’ve abandoned

my mother. And the talent she set before me. I couldn’t see it before.

“How’d yeh afford it all,” Mr. Owain asks. He’s always the mercenary if it didn’t

seem like he just remembered he owns a record shop.

“Well, I bought them at first. Drew gave me his money but that didn’t last long. We

ran out of allowance quickly. I made copies I could get my hands on but finding originals

became more difficult the rarer the find,” he says. He placates the shopkeep. “I bought

when I could. When it sounded like I was on to something, I’d save up.”

The shopkeep rolls his hand to get him to continue.

“The summer between 10th and 11th, Drew joined full-time,” he says. “We’d talk

about our finds during bedtime. We’d decide on the next records to buy. Or other artists to

explore. Or I’d just listen to Drew declare his love to some new band. On weekends we’d

stay up all night and listen on headphones using a mini-jack splitter. He’d ask me

questions upon questions. Is this song too slow? Does this piano sound right? Do you

think we’ll ever find the song? Have you heard this one’s latest album? We listened until

the birds began to chirp in the dim light of dawn.”

“He never doubted me.” Mikey stands in in front of Drew. His eyes glimmer. “You

always believed. I can’t do it without you,” the tone of his voice changes into a soft

flutter. “You know that right? I need you. You’re my only brother. I was trying to protect

you, can’t you see that?”


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“After Finah, I thought I was going to lose you. After the way I tormented you I

figured I deserved it. You were my all the family I had. When we moved to England, the

thing I knew above all else was that I needed my brother to love me. Sometimes I yell at

you, tell you to shut up. Yeah, but I’m stupid. It took me these past years to figure out you

were always on my side.”

Rory shifts from left foot to right and crosses his arms. My gaze slides from Mikey

and locks on Mr. Owain. He remains as motionless as a statue. The longer I look I swear I

notice a curl creeping up the corners of his lips. All this talk to get to the heart of it.

Mikey is about to fulfill his advice.

Drew’s holds my hand tight until I see the whites of his knuckles.

He still doesn’t speak to his brother, suffering his anger, creating an impasse.

This is Mikey’s version of an apology. He reaches out to make you feel good about

yourself but actually doesn’t say I’m sorry. I wonder how many times Drew has been hurt

by Mikey. There must be hundreds of slippery apologies he’s already tripped over. Can

we truly forgive or do we hold onto the pain forever? As if he heard my thoughts or

noticed himself squeezing too hard, Drew relaxes his grip and his face eases up.

“Why won’t you apologize?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I’m trying.”

Drew caves and nods to his brother. A flash of relief flickers across Mikey. He is

like me with the Diplomat. I cannot bear a grudge forever and am the first to give in. We


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cannot hold our breath that long. I wanted Drew to stay strong in the same way I wish for

my own fortitude. There’s a dark part of my heart that wanted him to shout out. To make

his brother hurt. So Mikey could feel his sorrow.

I think I despise him.

“Now, Drew found ways,” Mikey says. “He found boxes of tapes and 45s in the

refuse or at garage sales around the base. He’d convince any dupe to part with their

treasures. He rummaged through crap charity shops, the BHF, and came up with

surprises. He learned how to buy records, copy them, put cling wrap back on using

Mother’s blow-drier to seal back the seams. He’d sell them back a week later.”

“Listen here —,” Mr. Owain says. He pulls in deep breath. He’s catching wind and

he’s gonna blow. About to jump Mikey again with a hot scolding.

“Wait now. Here’s the the truth,” Mikey says. “You see, music is for youth culture.

When you’re a kid it’s tough to get your hands on anything. Drew’s smarter than me and

he did what he had to do.” There’s a brotherly protection in his plea. The shopkeep’s face

puckers with disapproval so Mikey speeds up. “He was very respectful of the records.

Quite gentle. Not a single scratch. I swear it.” Then he delivers the coup de grâce: “After

all, the guys at Reckless had to know what we were doing, right?”

“I never did,” Rory says. “Did you sell used records to me?”

“No, to the hippy.”

“Aye, laddie,” Mr. Owain says. The wind taken out of his sails becomes the bellows


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to fuel a great laugh. “Thas ah guid one. Yeh pulled one over mah bruv, dinnae yeh? Yeh

find ah strange way inna man’s heart.”

Mikey holds his arms up, wide-open like he’s ready for a victory embrace.

“And then Drew found it,” Mikey says. “He found the earwig.”

I knew it. I saw it written all over his face.

“He found it by accident but we were on the right track. We would’ve found it on

our own. I became aware of connections in music,” he says. “Drew was looking on the

radio and working backwards from today’s music. He found covers of songs I was

listening to, remixes, extended remixes, b-sides and live bootlegs. I was tunneling my

way forward through time, through the years and influencers.”

“Drew had a harder time of it because music shifts and changes. It evolves each day.

It becomes something new and he didn’t have music guides to rely on,” he lifts up a small

book. ’83 Rolling Stone Guide to Music written across the top. “He’d find a throwback to

bands that we both had overlooked. He had to constantly keep up. He was lost in the

maze of it but he enjoyed it. Ask him and he’ll tell you he loves the New Pop, dance

music, and lately glam and goth.”

“Anything with a good costume and heavy makeup,” Drew says. Not able to resist

his part. The apology sufficient to subside his anger. His voice cracks with dryness. We

stare at him, unsure. “What? I like a good performance.”

“Like I said, we became aware of the connections in music. We also noticed those


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links behind or outside of music. We became accustomed to the logos on the cassettes.

We were attracted to cover art that represented a style of music. We recognized names of

song writers, engineers, and producers,” he says then he pauses for extra emphasis.

“Producers like Malcolm McLaren.”

“Sex Pistols,” Rory says. He’s prompted like a dog to a bone.

“And Bow Wow Wow,” Mikey says. I imagine Rory yapping, it’s funny but I don’t

giggle. I hear a hint the way Mikey puts a knowing hitch in his voice. He waits for the

clue to enlighten us but it doesn’t catch, not with me.

“I’m not familiar with these bands,” I say. I still don’t have enough to put it all

together. It’s not what I know, the solution is in what I don’t. I drop my hands in my lap in

frustration. Brave to ask a question but that old, familiar disappointment of being an

outsider rushes in on me.

Why am I like this?

I slip into old patterns where I’m always missing out. Like one of Ms. Stewart’s

cross-stitches: I follow a worn path and it hems my way. The repetition is as rhythmic and

systematic. I need to find my own way but I’m caught in the snarl of it. Each time I bow

out I’m drawn in. Every time I think I understand, I can’t figure it out. When I find a clue,

I’m completely lost. My mind winds up in circles and I feel stuck at the start.

“Why are you two smiling,” Rory asks. The brothers have wide, expectant smiles.

Mr. Owain scratches his beard, he’s doing the math. We are in the final exam. “Bow Wow


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Wow is the same band as Adam & The Ants without Adam Ant, of course. Crickey, didn’t

that sound strange.”

“I’m not familiar with these bands,” I say again.

Everything’s flipped around on me. I’m the dog begging for attention, now.

“Who sings instead of Adam Ant?”

“When Malcolm McLaren stole Adam Ant’s band right from under his nose he put

that oriental girl — what’s her name? — as lead singer instead,” Rory says.

“Annabella Lwin,” Mr. Owain says.

“Almost,” Drew says. “You’re forgetting someone.”

“Lieutenant Lush,” Mikey says. He cannot contain himself anymore.

So many hints that I don’t get.

“No, her name was Annabella Lwin,” Rory says.

He doesn’t pick up the hint, either. We’re a pack of dogs.

“I don’t know any of these people,” I say. My voice begins to prickle with irritation.

I’m ended and I’m done for. I’m cut out of their band of friends. They’ll leave Unknown

Pleasures without me. Years from now when they reminisce, Drew might ask,

“Remember that girl?” Mikey will respond, “No, what girl?”

“I’m so lost,” I say. Drew gives my hand a few squeezes. I cannot look at him

because I’m near to breaking into tears. It’s Newtonian physics: When we push out into

the world, the world pushes back.


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“Drew first heard the song on the telly, Top of the Pops.” A clicking sound of plastic

against the countertop. Mikey removes his hands off of the cassette case. With a tah-dah

flourish like he’s unsure if the magic will work. “Man, who would have thought this soul-

boy, reggae-influenced number would lead us to the earwig.”

“Culture Club,” Rory says. He lets out a satisfied sigh. “Oh.”

“On that episode of Top of the Pops,” Drew says. He follows up the punch line with

rows of the whitest teeth. “They played Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?”

“Cuntybuggeryfucktoleybumshite,” Mr. Owain says. He covers his mouth with the

pork-pie hat. Hiding his vulgarity. He casts his realization to the boys, “Yir ah bufty, then.

A doss spunkfarter. Both uv yeh.”

“Back off,” Drew says. He leaps to his feet. “Leave them alone.”

“Homosexuals, the lot uv yeh,” Mr. Owain says.

“Man, he accuses me being like Boy George,” Mikey says to Rory. He lowers his

head in a bashful nod. “Instead of just liking Boy George.”

“Stop it,” I say.

“I shouldae seen it the way yeh two dressed,” the shopkeep says.

“Do you imagine me wearing a kimono,” Mikey asks. “Lipstick and eyeshadow?”

Drew lets go of my hand for the first time since we met.

“Yeh cannae deny it,” the shopkeep says. “Do yeh?”

“No more insults,” I say. I stand up, too. “I cannot oblige name calling.”


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Drew runs over to the counter and into the shopkeep, punching his hip. Mr. Owain

withdraws from him. He pulls his hands out of the way and spills the contents of his mug.

Old blackened coffee runs over the course of the counter and onto his hat. The room is

overcome with the odor of bitter, charred almonds.

“Don’t call my brother that,” he shouts. “Don’t you do it.”

“He’s just an old fart,” Rory says. “Calling us bent.”

“STOP IT,” I say. I cannot help myself. “STOP IT!”

My voice overcomes the cork-board walls and blows around the room. Drew stops

hitting Mr. Owain. The boys turn around and Rory knocks over one of the crates. Glossy,

plastic-sleeved record jackets slide across the laminate flooring.

“Shite! Bugger’s all ruined,” Mr. Owain looks up. He’s more concerned by the

death of his hat. He uses a hand to push the rest of the spilt coffee into his sopping, white-

now-soiled headwear. Mikey collects the records and slides them back into their crate.

“Doan git yeh panties all in a twist.”

“Did you say you cannot oblige name calling,” Mikey says.

All the boys start to giggle.

Even Mr. Owain.

“Kissing to be-fucking-clever,” Rory says picking up the cassette case on the

counter, still laughing and holding his head up. He reads it over. “It’s Culture Club. So

what? I don’t get it.” Drew grabs the cassette case. It’s a mauve, rectangular box with a


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very British looking woman on the cover.

“He’s been hearing her sing the song over and over,” I say. I can help to explain.

“Don’t you get it? It’s the ohrwurm curse. She’s the earwig.”

The boys laugh until their faces weep and turn as purple as the case. They break out

in hollers expelled from the base of their lungs.

Chills run across my arms and neck and remind me of Lourdes and Samantha. So

much of this day reminds me of my fall in Doña Dolce. They are just mean boys after all,

even when I stand up for them.

My face burns, I’m blushing. Sweat beads up on my chest and smells sour. I’m full-

circle and back in Benalmádena High. I’m so embarrassed in myself. I hoped today was

different, somehow I’d forge a friendship with these boys. One by one they turned on me

or I turned on them. I relied too heavily on my scientific method. To inspect it, to take it

apart, and to understand it. But it doesn’t matter.

I’m unable to make real friends.

Their laughter makes my old feelings so much more cutting and powerful. My

reaction is to flee like I did on that day three years ago. I stand to leave but the room

spins. My ankle buckles underneath me. I’m still feeling feint. Gravity is an unsettled

dragon and with a slight exhale it pushes me back down on my butt.

“Francesca, are you okay? Don’t you know that —,” Drew delivers the same

intonation as my father. “Please don’t look away.” He walks back over to me and squats


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down to holds my hand with both of his. He waits for me to meet his gaze before he

continues.

“Don’t Drew,” I say. He will not let go. I keep pulling away.

“Do you know that Boy George is a boy,” Drew asks. His voice is cool as a cellar.

I’m surprised and stop tugging. I look at the boys and think about a cross-dressing singer.

“Her,” I ask. I indicate to the box in Drew’s hands.

“Yeah, him,” Drew says. A minor correction. He shows me the cassette case. “He’s

Boy George.”

I can’t even tell she’s a boy. Her braids and bangs. It’s remarkable. Her eyebrows,

her red lips. I can’t tell he is a boy. I’m finally seeing the truth behind the door. The very

British woman is a bufty too. Just like Mikey. He’s so embarrassed to admit it. So he

hides it from everyone. It was not my embarrassment to carry and so it’s goes — poof,

collapsed on itself just like that — legs clocked out from underneath it.

I’m finally seeing another truth. They are not laughing at me at all. Drew has an

eerie way of seeing inside of me to say exactly what I need to hear, exactly the way I

needed to hear it. I’m reinforced with a belief that I should be here, right now, just the

way I arrived. There was no other way. I feel opposite of homesick again. But now with

people. A true, genuine feeling. Not a projection. A belonging.

I feel a strong, undeniable belonging.

“Now, who is Boy George,” I ask.


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The laughter breaks out again. This time I’m laughing along too.


143

Chapter 6.

AFFAIRS OF THE CROWN

“Remember me?”

An answer to my question carries on the air. It’s the sound of my name. Franny

spoke her last word to me, “Tomás.” Yes, I remember now.

“I am Tomás.”

I hang submerged in a thick wash of light. My eyes closed. I’m suspended like the

last speck of hoarfrost in the morning sun. It's a white, painful, migraine-steeped light.

Blinding me at the edges, bursting my forehead open. I am only agony. Out sprouts a

memory, then another, like a slow-drip torn from a faucet. Memories leak out of my head

smothered in dream-stuff.

I groan when my most recent memories spring forth. Recall the the crumble of my

ventricles. Suffer the collapse of my heartbeat. Inhale my scapegrace remains of my

muddy flesh. Does this mark the end or have I already given up the ghost? I’m nothing

but a distant memory.

“I cannot bare to lose any more,” I say. “Of myself.”

I die just as you do, I haunt just as you do.


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My last memory: Franny’s surprised face when I fell into it. It was either growing or

I was shrinking. In the millisecond that she was distracted, in the nanosecond she looked

away, I slipped into her flow and rushed down her ducts. I found my escape, I remember

it. As I passed through her and dove into the depths of her, she spoke my name with a

tone as grave as the years carved into my tombstone.

I move from the corner of her eye and into to the corner of her mind.

I feel inverted. Upside-down.

Like I’m the hanging man and my sentence was cast.

Did Franny, my creator, become my executioner? I boil on how she left me in Doña

Dolce, imprisoning me within my pain. My nostrils flare (breathe!) when I think how she

abandoned me for the approval of Las Plásticas. My blood would race (beat!) back to my

jagged, ice-wraith heart…if I had any veins left. Look what is left of my body (grow!)

and the state she’s reduced me to. If I could punch her, I’d punish her (rage!) with

uppercuts and hope she’d bruise easily. My skin hardens like glass. I clench the ideas of

my fists and I swallow (eat!) my fury for later dissection. My teeth flash like daggers,

icicle stalactites in a cold cave. Just when I feel I could become nothing, I open my eyes

(and see!).

I am reborn. I'm not dead, after all. I willed myself to live. Thus I made myself

manifest. Praise my deity in the heavens, “Yes, Stormkeeper! Yes.” for granting my

prayers. Your answers are like raindrops splashing in my thoughts.


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With eyes opened I see myself staring back at me. They’re my own eyes.

I squint and look again. I’m awake now. I am alive. No longer in a haze, I focus on

my eyes in the mirror. Their brown canvas, the filaments of green near the pupils. They

are as familiar to me as the hallow brow harboring down upon them. I turn to the left, I

turn to the right. I'm a pantomime of vaudevillian proportions. The picture of me does not

follow my movements. It’s not a reflection.

I orient myself: ground down, chin up.

Standing in a corner, I examine a picture tacked on the wall. I recognize the face. I

spot the grey in the temples, waves of silver splashed on the eyebrows. I’m looking at my

namesake. A picture of Grandpa Tom, not me.

Even in my escape, it is impossible to unravel myself from Franny. The thread:

here’s the thread. Like a spider’s netting. Even when I’m hidden deep within her, even

with the newfound thrill of escape, I find myself still tangled-up in Franny.

I catch the glimpse of gold silk on the wind. It billows from below my ribcage. I see

it reach out from my navel in a soft arc. Oscillating my head back and forth, I follow its

shimmer in the late morning sun until I see it float up into the rafters. (I’m inside after all.

The sunbeams travel through small, leadlight windows set high up the wall. An unusual

room.) The thread goes up amongst the tin boxes of air-conditioning vents and travels

into the darkness above the ducts. I cannot see it loop around the rafters but notice the

glimmer as the thread dives down before disappearing out of sight.


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We are still attached. The filigree so delicate yet it cannot be severed. I wrap my

hands around two points along the string and begin a cat’s-cradle, it is still as sharp as

diamond fiber. When I pull on Franny’s side of the thread, it skates unfettered through the

atmosphere in front of me. Coiling up like a eel. I yank on my end, to my own surprised

yelp, I knock the air out of myself, coughing. The thread is fully unspooled and is

anchored at my core. The line catches the sore-end of my heart. The other end is free. I’ll

need to protect myself from this turn of the string.

I am inverted.

Perspective, ladies and gents. It is a matter of perspective.

I let go and the thread swirls above me. Slow, jellyfish filaments caught in a warm

tide-pool. I leave the corner and step down to the ground. I marvel at my hands and feet.

Was I ever just a speck or was I always fully-formed? I’m barefoot: I’ve lost my

sneakers. The flakes of cracked paint tickle my bare feet and chip beneath my footsteps

as I walk across the old attic floor. Yes, I think I’m in an attic, a full-standing space with

the barrel ceiling converging above the lattice of rafters. I wonder if this is the attic where

Rita’s viola is locked up. I notice an aroma of distinct pinewood amongst the dusty

stillness and it smells outdated as a grandparent’s closet. Underneath floral tones of

mothballs, it reeks of aged paper.

I need to get a handle on this place.

Stepping backwards to survey the length of the wall, I notice it’s made from cedar


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planks, lips tightly locked. Tongue and groove. They are covered in photographs

spreading out from the photo of Grandpa Tom’s eyes. They are riotous in watercolor and

each one is hemmed in a bold, white borders. Some have scalloped edges, others have

uniform, straight lines. Each picture is thumbtacked to the cedar behind them. They are

red circles flagging the corners. Some tacks are posted on all four corners, some have just

three. There are so many photos, some share tacks. The red has come off several of their

heads revealing the dull steel underneath. The pictures form an epic collage.

Their corners wave in a gentle draft.

I take in the whole piece. The scope is massive. The collage fills the whole attic

wall, 20- maybe 25-feet in length. The assemblage of photographs look like a map.

Snapshots come together as islands — no, bigger than that — continents. Each photo

demarcates square acreage, they overlap and vie for position. Their borders are white

lanes between the countryside of image, the thumbtacks are waypoints along the journey.

Photo-albums bloom from an oceans of cedar. Plank edges define lines of latitude. A

great river snakes through one continent, another landmass drifts into a northern sea and

it descends from the soft-angles of the ceiling. Archipelagos are cameos, cutouts that be-

speckle an offshore equator.

A gasp percolates up and out of me, “gaaah.”

I understand what I’m looking at. I’m in her mind. Her mind is an attic.

The wall is picture book of her life spent, a map of what she remembers. Each photo


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a memory. An atlas of who she’s become. A memoryboard. Some so faded the outlines of

figures are nearly undetectable, her earliest remembrances. The most vivid photos are of

Grandpa Tom and his Brinkerhoff stand-up. Other colorful ones show the candy-store,

our favorite places she visited around Benalmádena, the yellow daisies against the navy

field of the dress she wore yesterday afternoon. Classrooms and classmates I recognize. A

small bungalow I don’t. Other photographs I cannot place are close-ups, blurred-out, or

smeared by motion. They are abstract and unrecognizable as lost dreams. Some photos

are black and white: the spanking when she colored all the papers in her father’s

briefcase. Here’s another when she lied about eating all of the Oreos. Look at the

collections and recollections of her father in the distance, black and white, watercolors,

filtered red, gone green, amber gold, some faded white, others smudged in black and

grey.

The memoryboard is arranged neatly on paths and in associations I cannot discern.

I’m struck with so much fascination my hands and arms shake. I’m gaining an unusual

honor to see how my maker organizes her memories. I sort through my own awkward

feelings and wrestle one down with a satisfied “mmhmm.” It’s the moment I realize I’ve

heard stories about these people and places Franny visited. For the first time I’m

introduced to them. In one hand I hold an instant familiarity. On the other, I experience

the remarkable joy when my expectation doesn’t match up to how I imagined them.

⁂


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“Play with me,” someone says behind me.

I twirl around. Nobody’s there but a mess strewn across the attic floor. I scan the

landscape of discarded toys and waterlogged boxes. The sun holds its spot at high noon,

no shadows are cast. Time is a rapid wretch in this world. Standing for several minutes,

the creaks settle in the rafters revealing nothing and nobody. I could’ve sworn it was

Franny’s voice.

An electric flash catches my eye. A foreboding breeze anticipates tornado weather

and distant thunder rumbles below my feet.

When I return to the memoryboard, I see it. A spot that’s missing. I pout and stomp

on dull floorboards. They hem and haw in return. My rage finds its way out of my gut

like acid reflux. The bile in my mouth puts a sneer on my face. I plead, “Stormkeeper in

the sky, what has become of me?”

I want to call Franny all the gross names. To make her cry. I manage to hiss a crisp-

sounding “fucker.” When I recognize which photos are missing from the collage, it’s

obvious. There are no photos of me.

Was I not her best friend? Did we not play together every day? Even Fine Friends

must be captured in the celluloid of memory. We are immortalized even when we are

rejected. There are no memories of me, not a single photograph. I am the void which

makes up the Mediterranean sea within her collage.

I search through the snapshots documenting a walk from school and scan through


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the clippings of Doña Dolce. I should be there amongst the space, the void left by her

absent father. I should be there playing Parcheesi and drinking from empty pink plastic

teacups. I kick the wall’s baseboards and I go to rip down a continent.

“Fucking fucker,” I scoff.

“Don’t,” a voice commands. This one sounds different from the first. Seething,

higher in pitch, younger. Two girls? I spin on my heel and storm up to the mess.

“Listen girlies,” I say. “Show yourselves.”

“No. Play with me,” the first voice repeats.

“What did you do with the photographs of me?”

The sun is setting behind this house. The shadows crawl out from under the mess

and stretch across the floor. Another flutter of lightning shutters. Or a camera flash. My

hand is up on my brow like a salute and I scan for Franny. I know it’s her. Franny’s idea

of herself. Her voice is undeniable. She doesn’t reply.

I regard the pile of discarded Barbies and Kens, Malibu mansions and toy corvettes.

I trip over a Fischer Price xylophone and kick its small mallet which bangs on its rainbow

bars. A haunting chime. The deep bass of thunder accompanies on the floorboard playing

like drums. I fall into a nest of stuffed animals, Pooh-bears and unicorns, naughty dollies

and Cookie Monsters. The ancient stench of bedwetting still within them.

“Omph.” I hear nearby when fall on one of the girl’s legs.

I prop myself up and notice Franny sits a few feet away. She colors in a book of


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construction paper using the nubs of Crayolas. She’s amongst a swathe of dirty clothes:

pajamas with vinyl booties, pink underwear, and jelly-stained OshKosh B’Goshes.

Franny faces me but she is focused on her drawing. She’s talking to herself…or maybe to

the other girl. I stand up, brush myself off. This version of Franny is not as old as the one

I left outside, in her Benalmádena bedroom. She's a young Franny. I wonder if she feels

more immature on the inside than she truly is outside.

Age is a deceit: this girl is maybe 9 or 10 years old and she acts like it, too.

“No, I don’t want him to play,” she says. “He hurt us, it’s all his fault —” Some

mumbling. “— I don’t know why he’s here or how he got back.” I hear that distinct

smacking of secrets whispered behind a cupped hand. How he got back? I can’t see the

other girl. Even when the lightning decides to light the room with a flicker.

“He’s mean. He used a bad word.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Young Franny hushes me curtly.

A Band-Aid encrusted Oreo rolls across my foot like a mouse from a stop-animation

movie. Several candy-wrappers scatter away from my shoos but sneak back to examine

my feet, touching my exposed toes with the tentativeness of a kitten. I pick up the Oreo

and pull a Band-Aid off. I stick my tongue out when I see the ripped-scab on the

underside of the cookie. Mashed into the icing.

“Stop it, you’re not allowed,” young Franny says.


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“Are you talking to me,” I ask. “Who’s there with you?”

“It’s her. She was here first,” young Franny replies, cryptically.

“I want to play. Let me play with him,” the mystery girl pleads.

The corvette rolls over my toes. Piles of costume jewelry bubble up from the depths

of laundry like geyser spume and splash around my legs.

The indigo of dusk takes over the room. We are bathed in shadow. I barely see the

pink and blue stripes on the hula-hoops springing out from the mess. The hoops bounce

and circle around me. I am their maypole. The sand and marbles slide rhythmically inside

when they roll. Bad dollies crawl over themselves and up my leg. With dull clicks they

hook their arms into my belt-loops and grab hold of each other mimicking the chimps

from a Barrel of Monkeys.

“Play with me,” they say. “C’mon.”

They corner me and overwhelm me. Toys in motion without children behind them

are too eerie. Even for me. I spook just as you do. I jump to the right, feign to the left. I

shiver and swat and knock the Barbies off me. They are crawling spiders.

Appendages made from wrapped laundry slap at my ankles. They look for any grasp

but I’m too fast. I navigate across the mess, nearly slip, slide and find myself on the far

border of the toy refuse. Furthest from the memoryboard.

“Stop it! Stop it! He hurt us. We had to put him away,” young Franny says. She’s

yelling. “Stop it or he will hurt us bad.”


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The toys fall over and stop their crawl. The laundry arms shutter and the forms

break apart into pajamas and panties. The hula-hoops topple like dead things shot in the

back with invisible bullets. A whimpering sound comes up through the mess. An rasp

intake of air. The mess begins to wail. A petulant siren. The cries ratchet up for a few

seconds until a boom of thunder cuts them off. I hear the whimpering broken by bouts of

sniveling.

The mess is the other girl. She was here first. The mess is a mess.

All the toys and candy and laundry are her appendages. Grabbing and wanting,

pleading to play. The mess is crying. I imagine snot running from her nose is a pair of

green-neon slugs. She’s an overbearing inept who should be avoided at all costs. Young

Franny strength is her willpower over the pile. She's figured out how to tame it — at least

most of the time — if she were not careful the mess could overcome her.

I decide her age is a deceit. I shouldn’t underestimate either one of them. The rules

here are very chaotic but I catch on. I’m too smart for her own good and that makes me

smile. I’m a Fine Friend. A conceptual creature and I have the rare chance to interact with

my maker’s conceptual self — or selves, as it may be.

“How grand,” I say. The abuse of anger submerged beneath my own voice.

We are on even playing ground.

Night overcomes the day. The moon and the midnight stars seep into the room

allowing my eyes to adjust. Stormkeeper, the lightning isn’t from your tumult outside, is


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it? Look at it hum and flutter from a shelf along a brick wall behind me. The room feels

like a basement now, subterranean and underground. The floor has changed. My bare-feet

notice the scores in concrete. I brush soft dirt from the grooves. The fecundity of clay

permeates the air with dank musk. The leadlights have become oblong windows. They

guard the edges of upstairs subfloor and frown down upon us.

Young Franny sits up in the middle of the mess, on top of it, at the peak of the pile.

She sits with her legs crossed, indian-style, the way she likes. The mess spreads out in all

directions around her like an oversized tutu. She’s pushing down the mess or she’s

consoling it. Perhaps both. She reminds me of a Buddha, negotiating the universe and

becoming one with it at the same time.

I see her mouth moving and sometimes I can hear her whisper.

“Sssh, sssh, it’s okay, see what he does to us, sssh.”

When lightning strikes, her face is gaunt with woeful suffering. Her eyes are

teardrops waiting to roll down her cheeks. When the basement’s creaking and clinking

are drowned out from the last roll of thunder, she looks fearfully to the right and to the

left. She’s lost sight of me in the dark.

I have the higher ground.

My fury is calculated, I’ve been waiting for this. I will exact my revenge on young

Franny. Will her corporeal self feel it? She’ll have no way to defend against me. The

springs in my calves tighten and moan, my knees click into place. I crotch down and store


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as much momentum as this world will allow. I’m the blue-crab waiting for my prey to

stumble into the hot sand-beds of the Caribbean.

“Tomás?”

I launch myself up, up high into the sub-floor rafters. I steer myself like a swimmer.

I float over the mess in an exaggerated leap. I aim for young Franny. The wind ruffles in

my ear, hair thrashes about my eyes. The deafening roar, I discover, is my own. I hiss,

“yessssss.” Like a diver from the springboard, I move my arms from their swanlike

position and lock my hands into crosshairs. When I connect with my target, I wrap my

arms around young Franny’s torso. My neck and cheek compact against her chest. My

back and legs arch and I swear I feel my toes in my hair.

I’ve landed. BOOM. Not a gentle touchdown but I didn’t want it to be.

We tumble violently together over the mess. I grunt and Franny howls out until her

lungs collapse from the wallop. We cartwheel and cat-holler until we jerk to a stop. Spiral

notebooks and knucklebones slide around us in defeated tinkles. I ignore the burn from

my shins-scrapes peeled open by the concrete.

A gale stirs around the room and kicks into a high wind. It lifts the mess like a

monsoon. First loose laundry kicks up, dragging along the lighter toys. Without much

warning, the rest surges into the space around us. The mess spins like a storm-system

surrounding us in its hurricane eye. Streams of refuse wave and buckle like rings of a

tornado. Storm clouds wrestle around us, under-lit by lightning from the corner. The wind


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is torrential and clamors like steel train-cars on old Kansas track. Sometimes the tattoo of

thunderclaps break through.

Franny’s mind is in an uproar. A tantrum.

I move a hand from young Franny’s torso to her neck, grabbing her jawline. She

gasps for air and screeches when she gathers a breath. Her lungs re-inflate. I yank her hair

back so she can watch me, I look directly into her eyes. I see tears seep from their ducts

and down into her ears. Her face is swollen with the juice of plums, I’m satisfied I can

see blood under her skin where her temples will bruise.

Her eyes flash to the right and she grimaces.

It’s like her fear is not for me. That unfolds the rest of my fury.

“What have you done,” I ask. “What have you done with me?” Each word yelled

deliberately — over screams of wind and not because it’s an uncalculated question.

“We put you away,” she says, coughing. “You’re not the only one.”

“What do you mean you put me away?”

“I can’t tell you.”

She looks to the right again, gasping for more air.

“I’m right here," I say. "Do you doubt me? I shall break your neck.” I twist her skull

by the jaw. “What do you think will happen? This is what I think: you will be crippled,

out there you will be broken and no-one will know why. What do you think of that? I can

do it and I intend to because you betrayed me. The pain I’ll cause has more suffering than


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you can ever summon. You will never know your father just like —”

“You will be trapped here with us,” she says. Talking over me, sputtering. She looks

to the right again. “You will always be our prisoner.”

“— just like you will never know your mother.”

The lights turn out. Not a lick of starlight. The lightning has been put out. The

waterlogged boxes are the first to thump down. I recognize the sound of overburdened

cardboard as they split open like exhausted corpses. I hear the clothes, the laundry, the

candy, the mess of toys rain down. Some hit and pummel my back and kidneys. The

damn xylophone clips my ear with a unsympathetic musical clang. The last sound left is

cardboard pages and notebook paper coming in for a landing. Touching down at too sharp

an angle.

The room is so dark my eyes begin to sparkle.

“You are a cruel friend,” she says. “Maybe betrayal is two-sided. Maybe you were

never a friend at all. Imaginary, right? No matter how you spin the story, you never really

knew us. Not really.”

I can’t make out her outline but the hot rivulets of tears well up where my hands

hold young Franny in a cinch hold. I am a Fine Friend, I came from her and I consume

the very essence of her. I chew on my bottom lip. I may be cruel but that’s not the point.

Everything she knows, I know. And I know more than her.

I swear I hear a distinct clink in the distance: a teacup in a porcelain saucer.


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“You don’t know us,” she says, quieter now. “If you did, you’d would have noticed

those pictures over there…those pictures I’ve spent hours, weeks and months, years

organizing. I’ve been putting them together. A jigsaw puzzle. I’ve been worrying about

them and trying to figure out the…trying to figure them out.” She doesn’t have the words

to express what the memoryboard means. She may be too young to explain. Still, she’s a

clever girl. Too clever for her own good and that makes me frown. I ease up my hold.

I swear I hear the struggle of leather groan. An overstuffed chair releases a body.

“I don’t always understand why two pictures go together,” she says. Quiet but

quicker. “I just know they match. I study them and pair them up. I get upset trying to find

out what they mean. Can you tell me? You were supposed to help us find out. You know I

sent you out into the world. Do you remember that?”

“No,” I say. I don’t remember.

I swear I hear the sounds of footsteps come down a hallway towards the door.

Didn’t this just happen last night?

It dawns on me. Was there a door on the side of the room? Enlightenment has been

grappling against my wrath. Trying to break through my fog. The familiar sounds outside

of the basement. The fear in young Franny’s eyes. The coercion of the mess, trying to

silence it. Trying to keep me quiet. She herself just below a whisper.

“What good did it do? What good did you do for us? I took a picture — much like

the one you were looking at — a picture of Grandpa Tom. Our most favorite because it


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held our most favorite memory of him. I took it out of the hands of the mess. Instead of

placing it on the wall with the rest, I took it and sent you out into the world. What did you

find out? Nothing, nothing at all. If you cared, you would have noticed those pictures

over there.”

I swear I hear the fuzz when I’m stunned by electricity. A dumbfounded numbness

like too much cotton stuffed inside my skull. I’m sure the footsteps are at the door, but I

cannot hear them over the furor of revelation.

“I know when they match. Not only that. I know when to take them down. It’s not

just your pictures that’ve been removed and put away. You’re not the only one.”

The parts that were missing from the collage — the space that revealed the cedar

planks behind them — are seas much larger than I could fill alone.

I swear I hear the doorknob turning. It’s turning as a déjà vu.

Notebook paper falls around us. The wings of a thousand pages raining down from

the sky. There’s a humming, too much like electricity. I ponder the flashes of lightning in

the corner shelves.

They come from an exposed wire. A bare feeling, a terrible knowing.

The worst memory.

“There’s not much more time before we’re in serious trouble. You know who.” If I

could see her, she would be nodding to the door. Is it opening up? “But you must listen

very closely. Because you hafta help us,” she says. Like she’s fading away. “If you never


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did anything for us before, then you must help us now. You will do right by us or you will

never be satiated ever again.”

The tables have turned. She’s placing a curse on me. I’m speechless.

I should not have let these naughty girls so close. Lourdes and Samantha turned on

me in the end, too. Remember if I get out of here, I’ll need to change my ways.

Before the rain of a thousand pages — no no, not pages — the rain of a thousand

photographs overcomes all other sounds. If I could see them the darkness, I’d know

young Franny has undone her collage. The memoryboard photos fly around in a

cloudburst of locusts. Before the door opens to father’s punishment — for it must be him

on the other side of it, there is no other she fears as much — because he has to put an end

to all this.

It may be evident what she is about to reveal. But it could only be shared in the

darkest part of midnight when stakes are their highest. The words young Franny admits,

leaves no question but one: What happens when you take the best parts of yourself and

hide them away?

“Listen now,” she says in the faintest of a breath. The language of echoes. “You

were supposed to help us find out when took down mom’s photos, why we had to put her

away, too.”


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CASE OF FORGOTTEN MEMORIES

I awake and young Franny and the mess are gone. They’ve hidden themselves from

me. The cedar wall is bare, the floor is tidy and swept. I’m in the strangest void. Behind

the shelving unit, laying exposed on the concrete. My back is a block of ice. I haven’t

strength to lift my head. My eyes become fuzzy and I fall back asleep.

I’m at a loss.

It’s late-day the next time I awake. Shocks of pain stab my back when I sit up. I

jimmy up against the brick-back wall and wait for the room to stop toppling over. Rather,

it’s me who’s toppling over. I’m back on the concrete. I push myself into the corner and

lean into it. My head stammers, heartbeats push at the base of my skull. Imagine me

waking up with a hangover. Too much loneliness in my bloodstream. When I press my

cheek into the cool brick I’m burying myself in your bosom, Stormkeeper. Please keep

me safe. More sleep will make me better and I wince my eyes shut.

The late evening glows.

The comfort of faraway thunder covers me like a blanket.

I hear the click of a lock and a clasp of a door closing. I’m a child alone after a

nightmare. I shiver and curl up. A low draft are the bones of death’s hands against my

cheek. Let my breathing calm me down. Before I wade back into sleep I ponder on what

young Franny told me the night before. How she collected her mom’s photos, took mine

and put them both away. I open one eye and steal a glance at the shelving unit. I will look

through it tomorrow. On the top shelf a firefly shimmers, the weakest lightning, it hums


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and flutters. When slumber takes me, I sleep in fits.

Nary a single dream.

Noon next day, I’m wide awake.

The shelving unit is utilitarian. It juts out from the wall yet not perpendicular to it.

This surprises me since Franny is nothing but meticulous. Her attention to detail wouldn’t

allow misaligned shelves. Perhaps the towering thing was too hulking to move. It cuts

into the room at a acute angle reaching for the brick-back wall without touching it.

What’s left is a gap unseen from the room’s center.

I’m concealed in the small space behind the shelving unit. I dare not leave it.

Comfort is this hidden place. It’s not a coincidence where I woke up. It’s a signal from

young Franny. I know it: I’m sure she put me here. To conceal me from prying eyes,

peeking from behind the Diplomat’s door. The door that opened on the night of the

tempest. The same door I heard close last night.


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The shelves surround me like a jail-cell. I remember how young Franny confessed

I’d be trapped here, imprisoned. Like they are. Am I her captive? Or are we both stuck? I

don’t know where she’s gone or if somehow they’ve left. Theirs is an escape worth

finding. I glance back at the Diplomat’s door across the room dreading what may come

next.

The shelving unit is framed with oxidized steel bars. Small struts hold wooden

shelves. Five shelves, each one different and easy to mistake they’re all the same. Each

plank is made from raw material, yellow hued, and unstained. The compressed plywood

at the bottom. The next shelf is simple pine, followed by birch and oak. The top shelf is a

burled, royal walnut. The shelves are built in stages, each level improving on the last.

They hold a supply of jars. An assemblage, different sizes and girths. They sit

within ghostly reverence, arranged with care and not overly crowded, every lid in plain

sight. The impressions in the zinc say they’re Ball’s mason jars. Each one labelled with

masking tape, marked affectionately with young and flowery penmanship. I can read

every one.

I crotch down to the plywood shelf. ‘Bellyache’ is a jar full of discolored liquid and

chunks of shrimp salad piled at the bottom. Shrimp salad is a terrible food to pickle. I

pick it up and shake it without thinking. As the chunks and lemon swirl around, I notice a

silhouette suspended within the murky liquid. I turn the jar over but the silhouette, a

bean-like shape, does not move. More a reflection than a chunk of food. I hold the jar


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close to my eyes until the shape becomes clear. The figure is Franny. She holds herself in

a fetal position, forehead shiny with sweat, mouth wet with sick.

Another jar, on the beech-birch shelf, is full of fried tomatoes. The label confirms

that it’s Marmitaco Vasco. The remnants of a dish served at her mother’s wake. Inside the

jar, the tinkle of cutlery cuts through a somber room. I put my ear up to it like a conch

and hear the faint wails as the old ninny mourns, “Rita, Rita. Pobrecita Rita.” The

memory after the funeral, the fight she overheard between the Diplomat and Grandpa

Tom. These jars are all the terrible things Franny jammed full and sealed up.

They are hidden in the far, back of her mind. This is where I am.

Not all terrible things. Not only anxieties suppressed by Franny.

A vessel filled with sea-salt plays the music of ship-boat rigging against mastheads.

The sounds and smells of her bedroom near Puerto Marina. They are the elements for

deep sleep. Another squat jar called ‘Feel Better’ contains a plate of almond cake in a

pond of cold milk. When I touch the lid, I feel a sigh of relief and the urge to watch A

Charlie Brown Christmas.

The mason jars also hold her ideas tucked away at her very core. They live together.

She has always been good at putting things together. Compartmentalized and concealed,

fully realized and properly labelled.

I must stand up to look at the oak shelf. The easiest one for me to see — a jar in the

middle — holds three ivory keys. Piano keys suspended in frosted resin. A plush jingle of


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ice-cubes in the sweetest peat scotch. I touch the cool glass to my ear and whistle along to

“One Three Five, C-E-G.” Don’t need the label to remind me it’s ‘C-Major,’ I recognize

this jar.

Not all moments are exposed, developed and placed onto the memoryboard.

Sometimes a full experience is captured. Worshipped during Franny’s most holiest of

times. The container’s full of the wizardry of music, Grandpa Tom’s affection, an inner-

shift which marked her soul’s transition into the role of my creator.

As a result: my origin story.

I knew young Franny couldn’t just give up that memory — a lost silver snapshot

sent into the world alone — and live without it. She had a back-up, a redundancy which

held a much greater significance.

“This jar is mine,” I say.

I want to see what happens when I open it. I twist the ring of medal. The lid’s

stamped texture refuses to yield and impresses deep pink indents into my thumb. I twist

until it finally gives and spin the lid along the threads. The ting of metal on glass. I put

the ring down on the shelf, slip my fingernail between the glass and the lid, and break the

wax-seal. I hear it: the chord that bears the jar’s name. Its the magic wonder. Creation-

stuff.

A knot wells inside my stomach and yet — paradoxically — a tranquility

overcomes me. My eyelids flutter. The heart jumps in a thrill. The rush of when the


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imagination becomes real. Stormkeeper, are you here with me now? Your turmoil’s

within me and yet I’m placid as a cloud sailing across the filament. I touch the keys

inside and I know it’s Grandpa Tom. The mint of Ben Gay and a splash of Old Spice.

Gentle hugs and stalwart support. I came from young Franny’s idea of him. This is true.

The chord comes undeniably from him. Even so, “This jar is mine.”

I keep the cool glass pressed into my cheek.

When Franny gets older will she even remember it’s here? A sick nightmare might

show her a vision of the quixotic jar collection but upon waking she won’t remember the

significance. Perhaps the shelves will play against the back of her eyelids the first time

she gets high. (If she finds her rebellious years.) But in the end, she will forget why she

tastes the metallic queasiness around a buffet of shrimp cocktail. Or deny the reason why

she sleeps most deeply seaside when a gentle breeze is granted by an open window.

This slapdash thing, this mental construct, is the very underside of her soul. The

damage I could havoc. I’d steal her soul. Or feed on her from the inside-out. I don’t

understand why young Franny would hide me back here.

Listen, now. I replay the words to her curse, “You will help or you will never be

satiated ever again.” Does she have this power over me?

I’m a man of rules. A code of conduct. Remember Rule one: I belong to Franny. Do

these rules still apply or shall I remake myself? I’m reborn after all. I’ll change my ways

and be the maker of my own destiny. Imagine me as my own creature. I choose to no


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longer belong to Franny.

To commemorate my transformation, I smash the jar of ‘C-Major’ against the

bricks. The mason jar collapses unceremoniously into a pile of shards. The chord rings

out for the last time in a helpless clamor. It dissolves in the breeze. The moment with

Grandpa Tom is a lost memory, never to be regained.

I scratch out Rule one.

I belong to myself, now. I belong to no-one and nobody. My beginnings no longer

tied up by her cherished memory. Like a Pan’s shadow, I’ve become unstitched. No

longer to be walked over. The future is my own.

Once I escape this place, I will run far away.

The glass crumbles into icy dust. The tiny shards embed themselves like diamonds

among the soft, red clay. They sparkle within the scores of concrete. The room bursts

wide with sadness. An unknown loss carved out of Franny. I sense her. She is being

reshaped. The sky outside the windows fills with sheets of overcast grey. Autumnal mist

collects on the leadlight windows. The icy dust from the broken jar melts away and

disappears.

I yelp and whoop and scream, “I’ve got you! I’m free from you now.”

I cackle and jump. I climb the shelving unit to jump higher. There’s no retribution,

no curse. I bounce myself off the brick-back wall with maniacal glee. Franny’s lament is

not mine to hear. Nor fear. Or bear. My laugh rings full of joy. I am self-made, I am my


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own Fine Friend.

Gusts of wind stirs up in fits and whirls.

I sense Franny shift. A second door is revealed.

Behind the shelving unit, it appears and I crumple into silence. The wood is burnt to

ash. It holds a dark passage. A bleak gateway. The blackened door wasn’t there before.

When I slept I would’ve felt the doorjambs shoved into my back. This door is opposite

from the Diplomat’s door, for it must be her mother’s.

The door is a devastation.

Chills run up and down my arms. The little hairs raise at the ready. The wind picks

up and cartwheels around the room. Like I’m onto something. Like it’s stolen my glee.

Like Franny knows she has the last laugh. There is no escape after all. I step back and fall

squarely on my ass.

“You really are messed up, Franny,” I say.

When I say it’s a door in no way do I mean the opening would be used for safe

passage. When I say it's a gateway there’s no doubt I’d consider anything on the other-

side. Only death there. The char that’s left behind is the hallowed remains of her mother’s

blackened bones. Franny’s nightmare of electrocution. The door cannot function, it’s a

ghost. A connection severed woefully and delicately. So soft the touch, the surface seeps

from a deep abscess. Ash crumbles from the door’s remains and tumbles to the ground

with the weight of her sorrow. Cinder-flakes slide through wind-gusts as greasy as coal.


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The doorframe seams are ornamental. You may think they could be unsealed but no

draft under the door lets me know I can slip under. The jambs are depressions, scratched

like a child’s finger through wet concrete.

Franny constructed the shelving unit to hide her mother’s death. It confines Rita’s

memory to the back of her mind. Stored deep within a shrine of repression. She keeps the

door hidden from sight. Away from direct light. And now, I’m hidden here too.

Mother’s door is a suicide door. No entrance, only exit. If the door yields no

passage, how am I to escape? The Diplomat’s door will put an end to me. Am I too

chicken-shit to rattle the doorknob or jimmy the lock? My stale laughter is replayed back

to me in young Franny’s voice, “You will be trapped here with us.”

“Show yourselves,” I say. “Let me out!”

Silence. I’m disappointed by their worthless response. I hear distemper in my

guttural, vicious growls. Imagine me as a feral animal. I wield teeth to show my

ferociousness. But I’m still trapped within Franny’s mind.

“You will always be our prisoner.”

I pop and hiss like static.

⁂

A whistle on the wind is a hesitant song.

It drops in and out of perception. The sound beckons me to leave my makeshift

hovel. Stormkeeper, guide me from the emptiness in my soul. The hole I’m in. I pass


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through to get to the other side. I cock my head trying to hear its notes. I wait for a song,

for it begin from the whistle the way a record comes to life after the needle touches the

vinyl. It continues to sputter along, alone, but refuses to sound misplaced.

I cannot find its source. I search the entrance to the shelving unit. When I think it’s

on my left, it’s behind me. When I turn around to face it, it becomes an echo. I sneak up

behind as if to catch a cricket, it goes silent long enough to get away. I run my fingers

down the lip of the baseboard looking for a tweeter, a mockingbird, a misfit toy robot or

— hope of hopes — a draft from outside. Colder, I’m colder now. The whistle resurfaces,

far away, to carry on playing its merry tune.

I’m out from behind the shelves.

Sun beams through the leadlights, my grief falls off like a veil. The room is in attic

form. The memoryboard is bare, smiling cedar teeth. I let out an anxious whoop until I

laugh at myself, rush the brick-back wall, and perform a flip. My legs flop behind me.

Landing squarely on both feet, triumphant on home-base, like in a Scotch-hopper game.

“I’m free from you,” I shout. “Even if I’m trapped within you, Franny, it’s a minor

setback.”

I walk out onto the attic floor and look for the girls. They keep themselves hidden

from me, still. I glance back at the shelves. A shadow in the corner. The space she stores

her aversion and inversion, powers the turbine of her creativity.

I scan the corners, up the walls, up to the ceiling. A high fog has rolled in. “Holy


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shit.” The cotton of cumulus undulates inside the barrel ceiling. Puffs roll over

themselves, lit from the sunlight. Vapor tendrils swoop down and touch my face in a cool,

misty caresses. The clouds blow subtle gusts through the cobwebs hanging like stained

lace and the clicking from ducts is the warm tin contracting against a cold front. I cannot

fathom how the nimbus system found its way inside the attic.

I wonder if the girls are the mist. Like they're playing hide-and-seek.

They are all connected. The ducts, a whistle, the tiny windstorms and flurries. Are

they sent from you, Stormkeeper? If you count the tantrum hurricane, they began last I

spoke to young Franny and the mess. The lightning, the thunder. All part of the storm.

I’m trying to understand. To reach deep inside and fumble around for an answer.

Notice the tightness around my brow. The wrinkles I feel when I think too hard. I chew

the back of my thumb.

“You’re a clever girl, Franny,” I say. “Do you know that? But you are so trippy

sometimes.” I expect an answer as if I’m speaking directly to her. I hope she hears me.

Whichever one. Any Franny will do.

I’ve got it now…the idea is as elusive as a fly ball. It jumps away as fast as it came,

a fleeting thought. It rebounds within my skull, nearly slipping away again before I catch

the notion. My claw clutches over la pelota, securing it in my glove so it won’t fly away.

“It’s so easy to forget,” I say. “I’m in your mind.”

I’m within her conceit.


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Here’s what I think: The aspects of the storm are metaphors of thought. Her wonder

comes in like a squall. When she’s figuring something out, it’s akin to me catching a clue

and associating it to béisbol. But in Franny’s mind they’re aspects of weather, clouds

separate and light shines in. Emotion is a cyclone, her inner-storm. Confusion is a haze or

fog. The gusts — the gusts, the lightning, the thunder — I don’t know. Moods maybe?

Are they sadness, anger, fear?

So many sides, too many concepts. It’s pure thought, full-on metaphor.

Albeit guessing is fun, it doesn’t get me very far.

I need to find my way out.

⁂

I stand at the Diplomat’s door.

The door is a conceit, too, right? Nothing to be scared of.

I put my hand on the brass doorknob. Just to see. I don’t turn it, I simply wait. My

fingers draw the cold from the handle. I don’t hear any footsteps. No huffing, no puffing.

There’s no click nor clasp nor turn for the worse. Nobody’s going to open the door for me

so I should open the door myself.

I consider my options:

1. The Diplomat could be real and he could end me for good.

2. The Diplomat is there but he’s just a phantasm.


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3. The door could be a portal. I could jump ship to the Diplomat’s mind.

4. Young Franny and the mess are hiding behind it.

5. The door could lead to another abandoned part of Franny.

6. The door's locked.

7. The door might hold my escape.

I twist the knob.

I hold the handle firmly, bracing for a proper handshake.

I pull hard but the door doesn’t budge. I’m on my skinny ass. Falling back with my

feet in the air. The doorknob is as much a decoration as the other door’s burnt out seams.

They don’t open up or lead anywhere. They are the threat of a door. The peril of a parent

walking in on a girl playing doctor with the neighborhood boy. They represent the

omniscience, the all-seeing eye. But don’t offer me a way out.

⁂

I’m back at the shelving unit.

I plant my bare foot tenderly on the birch shelf and pull the rest of my body to oak

one. I climb up to burled walnut and see them.

I’m looking at thunder and lightning.

These are two jars but not Ball’s masons. They're honored jars. I’ve seen the real

ones out in the world with Franny. Here they're revered as a shrine. Offerings are placed:


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horsehair curls and soft twigs of olive leaves surround their bases. Unripened fruit hang

rudely like testicles. In strange symmetry, viola tuning-pegs adorn the locks of horsehair.

Like abandoned keys to an ancient vanity.

At the base of each jar, a stack of photographs. The larger is Rita’s memories, the

smaller is mine.

The first one is a Planter’s peanut jar, the one that held pesetas in Franny’s

Benalmádena apartment. Inside lightning shimmers under glass. The bare wire is a metal

wound around lazily. A viola string. Blue arcs flash, sparks from a lit fuse. Inside it

writhes like an electric eel, pushing inside the glass the way a garden hose does when it’s

turned on, full blast. Before you take hold of it. The jar lid is heavy but unsecured, the

wire may burst through and electrocute me.

Lightning flash. Bursts charge the air with ions.

The second jar is mine, it’s really mine this time. For I am thunder. It rumbles in

response to the lightning. A glass cake platter, a dome over a circular base. The slim glass

stem is a slender neck holding up a proud head. My jar’s dome reverberates, its contents

are vibrating rocks in an earthquake.

Lightning, then thunder.

I slide my left arm carefully around mother’s jar and draw it towards me. My jar I

eye greedily — my tongue salivates and touches the roof of my mouth — and slide my

right arm around its neck.


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I slide both jars closer. I’m hunched over my prizes. My balance doesn’t hold and I

begin a to fall backwards. My palms slide against the shelf and call out with a wet

squeak. “Oh shit!” I’m reminded of the dog that loses his bone to the lake when trying to

grab his reflection’s prized femur. The two jars slide backwards with me. I flounder at the

burled walnut but the surface has no give. Olive twigs and hair fly into the atmosphere. A

blond wave of hair drops over my eyes, the twigs belt my ears. I’d laugh if there was

more time to consider the comic value of my predicament.

I’d laugh all the way home.

Catching the edge of the shelf, I throw my body up the unit. The shelves tip towards

me and decline to secure my weight or safety. The jars are no longer in my grip. They

slide unhindered over the polished walnut (“Oh please oh please oh please no!”) and

skate away towards the back edge. I scramble with my right arm and knock the thunder

jar further away. It tips over and traces curlicues against the top shelf. Stalking the

Planter’s jar — like Humpty Dumpty's serial killer — for it will succumb to a shattered

demise.

I make a fool’s decision.

Raising my foot up to the next shelf, I hope for return. The balls of my foot contact

the oak shelf. I launch myself up and hunker down over both jars, throwing by body

between them — to keep them from colliding — cradling each jar in the crooks of my

elbows. Both hands grab the lip on the back of the shelf.


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The unit meets me halfway, the corner grinds into the wall and the whole thing

poises on tippy-toes. I lift my foot slowly, over the top and straddle the monolith. The

unit scratches deeper, gouging the wall, but stops from falling over. Franny’s “do right by

us” curse must’ve taken hold. Because my heart races from the victory of saving her most

sacred idols.

Small bombs burst on the concrete floor. POP. Here comes the other sad shoe

dropping. POP-POP-POP. There’s a rolling sound and another POP. I watch helplessly as

jars on lower levels surrender to suicide dives. I look over the edge and they collapse

within themselves. Like the eggshells of lightbulbs. Stomach ache, Marmitaco Vasco,

simple sleep, teatime with Tomás, Las Plásticas, and all the rest.

Gone, POP-POP-POP, gone gone gone. POP.

The stack of photos rain in the corner. Final pictures of me and Rita. Pictures in all

shapes and sizes, images in all contrasts and color, faded and familiar. They’re a deck of

Bicycle Playing cards answering the question of “Wanna play 52-card pickup?” They

scatter amongst the glass grenade ruins.

The contents of the shelves are gone, the wreckage is an empty skeleton. I puff

away a thick strand of blond hair and use a shoulder to wipe a twig out of my eye. My

cheek wet from tears. The last of Franny’s precious things are destroyed.

Nothing save thunder and lightning is spared.

I weep just as you do, I regret just as you do.


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I hold a surviving jar to each ear. One tells me the story of waking up each morning

to the sweet groaning of mother’s viola. The other reminds me how much fun we had

together making up musical instruments inside Doña Dolce.

⁂

Fingers — they feel the gap in the wall, push their pads against the brick, ply the

grout like putty, negotiate the corner using the ridges of their prints — my fingers dig a

way out. A hole appeared where the three surfaces (two walls and a floor) touch at a pin-

point of decay. A crack in her defenses created by falling jars. The rush of wind slips past

my grasp slipping into the vein running deep beyond the walls. It sneaks around my

knuckles and zips past my nails. And it whistles, it whistles more strongly than before.

Do I have to tell you which notes?

The surviving jars are lined up along the brick-back wall. They continue to perform

their duet of lightning and thunder. I brought them down the ruin of the shelving unit with

as much care as I could muster. The shards of the other jars already melted and

disappeared.

What must Franny be going through? Out there. What has she become due to my

actions inside? I know she’s in a terrible fog. The grey clouds have filled the room with

shadow and mist. I don’t know how she’ll find her way out. The destruction of her

memories must’ve dislodged something in her. You could say she’s got a screw loose.

She must be suffering from it.


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“Franny, forgive me for what I’ve done.”

Inside the hole the remains of the last photograph. Sucked into the tunnel of it,

blocking the way. I flick the edge of it with a nail and trap it between index and middle

finger. When I extract it the paper crumbles to dust. The whistling is replaced with a wet

sucking. A gurgling of air. I lay on my belly and look for light at the other end of the

tunnel. I see nothing but I have faith, Stormkeeper. This is my great escape after all.

Everything good happens in corners.

I take the jars and tuck them in my coat’s inside pockets. With all the care in the

world. They shouldn’t fit, the sizes are all wrong but I’m a Fine Friend and I can do these

things. They are safe nestled against my breast. I adjust my perspective. I’m knocked

down to size. I climb in the small tunnel and don’t bother to look back. I can’t see

anything through the fog anyway. Nor do I have a way to say goodbye. I’m sure the

leadlights are full of tears. No matter how much I’d be drawn to her misery, I must ignore

how hungry I am.

I zigzag down the hole in the back of Franny’s mind. The wind's at my back. It

pushes me down the path. I feel its pressure building behind me. The wind also wants

somewhere else to go. It urges me on and on. I race to the left, to the right, left, right, left.

The wind follows me. I cannot see it but I know it’s there, puppy-eyed and playful,

tickling my ears.

I’m in a maze. A Highlights maze. A Chutes & Ladders and Mouse Trap maze. All


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wrapped into one. In my great escape, I leave Franny’s fun-and-games behind.

I belong to myself, now.

This is how I leave the crown.


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Chapter 7.

FOUNDRY LOOK

This is us sharing Culture Club lyrics.

Rory and I stand out in the cold night by the door of Unknown Pleasures.

“Well, all I know is there are thirteen songs on Kissing to Be Clever. It’s not the first

song, that’s White Boy. My song is somewhere around 2, 3, or 4. I swear it but I can’t find

it. And it’s not the last, you already know about Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Rory

nods. “I’m pretty sure it’s not on that side of the tape.”

“Are you certain it’s Culture Club,” he asks. “Never heard those lyrics.”

“When I hear the song play in my head, it’s Boy George. I can see him, a curled up

finger, standing behind the glass of the telly. He wears green plastic sandals and tells me

to ‘come here.’ It’s like he says, ‘I have no-one to talk to. I could’ve chosen anyone but I

picked you.’ You see, when I hear him sing, he doesn’t sing to anyone —” I gulp when

confessing this. “— he sings directly to me. Don’t say you didn’t hear us calling. I’ve

heard him sing it so many times in my head. Like he’s trying to talk to me. I’m

embarrassed to say how many times I’ve sung along.” I re-read the liner-notes. “Then I’m

sure the earwig is on side 2. It can’t be so elusive. It’s not Time (Clock of the Heart) nor is


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it I’m Afraid of Me.”

“Maybe it’s a B-side…on one of their singles?” Rory says, shaking his head.

“I haven’t heard I’ll Tumble 4 Ya. That’s exclusively released in the U.S. Could be

the one I missed. It might be a cover of someone else’s song. Maybe it’s a live outtake?

Or a duet? I just can’t figure it out.”

Rory doesn’t know either and he clips off a string of consonants but can’t get a word

in. I don’t stop to let him. I rattle on. Now that I’m admitting it, I have to get it out. The

whole truth. I have to tell him everything.

He shrugs his shoulders with each declaration.

“Where did that song go?”

I trail off.

“Haven’t the foggiest, mate, and I work at Reckless. I know my onions but this

song, something’s crazy about it. I’m too daft to figure it out,” he says. I’m not listening.

My thoughts overtake me. I’m holding my ear cupped like a DJ. Both dialing into the

song playing inside me and trying to block it out. Before I realize it, Rory’s hand is

around my waist, twisting my arms behind my back. The gesture reminds me when I

learned the tango. He kisses me on the lips and I pull back. It's difficult to cross that line.

Why deny myself when I’m on my own? But I turn myself away. I close my eyes. Rory

slides his tongue between my teeth.

My kiss with Rory is my first. Could be a triumph. Like no other kiss I’ve ever had.


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We have time to linger on it and angle for the best position. Keeping our noses out of the

way. Our tongues slide over each other.

Yet without meaning to, I imagine I’m kissing Jon Moss.

⁂

George O’Dowd was born June 14th, 1961 to Jerry and Dinah.

His mother hailed from Tippary, Ireland. She met his father while working in a pub

in a southeast suburb of London. George grew up in a tight-knit family. Born third

amongst brothers Richard, Kevin, Gerard, David and sister Siobahn. He says, “I’m close

to all five of them.” Little else is known about Boy George’s early years besides some

trouble in school. He refused a caning in the headmaster’s and was expelled for skipping

a day. Later he was arrested for mouthing off to a couple of peelers when they came

around to his house in Kent. He spent a night in jail.

“I was being cheeky,” George admitted.

Culture Club has four members: Boy George sings lead vocals, Mikey Craig on bass

guitar, Roy Hay plays both guitar and keyboards, Jon Moss on drums.

George and Jon form the band's core.

In someways Jon acts like the dad. Perhaps because he’s older (at an advanced age

of 25) or because he’s done brief stints in bands called The Clash and The Damned. In

interviews he says words like business, responsibilities, hard work, and sacrifice. These

are words my own father uses. Jon’s the sensible one, sort of the backbone of the family.


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If Boy George wasn’t a band member, I’d like Jon the best.

When the group first formed they named themselves Sex Gang Children. Jon didn’t

like it. Story is Jon realized the group enlisted members Irish, Briton, Black, Jewish, and

a cross-dresser to boot. He came up with the name Culture Club and it was settled.

I’ve read every issue of The Face for the past year. Drew and I spent many hours

considering every column and review. Boy George was on the cover of the November

issue. “That Boy George!,” proclaimed bold letters over the subtitle “Culture Shocker.”

The Face is easier to get ahold of in the UK than Rolling Stone which I read like a fervent

monk back home in Florida. But it comes out monthly. One day Drew announced it’s too

long a wait.

“The scene changes every day in London,” he said.

“What do you mean,” I asked. “What scene?”

“The pop scene,” he said. “Every week a new band is picked up on Radio 2.”

That did it, we switched to Smash Hits. Their magazine comes out every two weeks

(“A fortnight,” Drew corrected me) and costs 30p less. It paid off. When Culture Club

was the cover star on October 14th issue, it was two weeks before they arrived on The

Face. Two weeks mattered most when you were trying to intercept him before anyone

else found out about him. Culture Club was becoming popular.

I went to the USAFE library on the Alconbury base. Surprised they had back issues,

I caught up on the ones I missed. Boy George’s print debut was easy to find. In the


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September 17th issue, he wore his hair in two bushy bunches, adorned with lipstick and

eye-shadow. Even back then. One column showed how he helped destroy disco records,

especially Star Sound LPs. (“Star Sound! ‘Effin ‘ell, I hate them blokes,” Rory says.

Later when he finds out who made the record. “These ponces come into Reckless all the

time and ask ‘Do you have those Beatles songs with the disco back beat?’ or ‘Where is

the latest Stars on 45 medley for Stevie Wonder?’ It’s criminal what they do to music,

those cunts.”) Boy George was a gleeful, androgynous mannequin. He cut the record in

two with a hacksaw, providing us with its satisfying death. I stared at the picture for

seven whole seconds so I could commit it to memory.

From May to August, Culture Club made further inroads into the magazine’s pages.

The first review of White Boy was decent but met with uncertainty. You can hear the

reviewer’s tongue explore the inside of his cheek as he side-saddles up Boy George.

At Smash Hits everyone likes a dandy.

Read in-between the lines and notice their disbelief as “image-heavy” bands

overtake every story and inset. Marc Almond, Human League, Duran Duran, Gary

Numan. Everyone’s got a look for sale. The editors hold these bands at arms length. Until

they become so popular, they cannot help but to embrace them.

July, a lukewarm Culture Club played in London. They struck a detailed, full-page

review. In a later issue, a white-hot response written by Boy George fired up the Bitz’n

Pieces column. It’s all in good fun, right? You eavesdrop on the quarrels with each turn of


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the page. By the time candid snapshots appeared of Boy George’s sourpuss at Camden

Palace it doesn’t matter. Culture Club hit the headlines.

They blew up.

An advert for their next single was wedged between dates for the Fame: Live! tour

and sale prices for blank Memorex cassettes at Woolworth. Reviews turned around,

becoming optimistic and hopeful. Lyrics to Do You Want to Help Me? secured their place

on the coveted full-color spreads. Surpassing Dexys Midnight Runners and Spandau

Ballet, whose lyrics were still slumming the black & white pages. A feature on the group

right before Halloween and by Christmas Boy George ranked in every Best of 1982 list.

He made the Top 10 Reader’s Poll as a Best Male singer but also one the Best Female

singers. Despite placing a spot in the polls, the band was beaten out of all the top

positions. Duran Duran or Tears for Fears took all the prizes.

“First time on Top of the Pops, it’s Culture Club.” This is how uncle John Peel

introduced the band on Saturday, October 23rd, 1982. Boy George appeared in his wide-

brimmed, crimson bowler covering his bundles of tiny braids.

“Mikey, c’mere,” Drew shouted.

“I’m busy,” I shouted back across the house.

“Shut the fuck up will ya,” Mother said, always snapping at us. On the sofa, her feet

in soiled socks and her face pressed up against the back cushions. She rearranged a

twisted-up face-cloth over both her eyes. Slight acrid whiffs coming off in slow waves. A


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smell to which I was accustomed but didn’t quite register as last night’s wine.

The earwig and the television battled for my attention. Two songs playing at once,

one inside and one outside. Same voice, overlapping words. I turned the volume up but

Mother made me turn it back down. The music pushed weakly through the tiny holes of

the decaying Zenith’s lone speaker.

“You are some kind of fucking idiot,” she said.

When I heard Boy George sing I knew he was my balladeer. I had to find and speak

to him. I listened to the lyrics from the television capturing each word. “Love is never

asking why,” Boy George sang to me. He hopped across the shoebox stage on one foot. If

I could have cried, tears would have run torrents down to my ankles. I had finally found

him. His white-soul voice, his coy smile.

“Is it her,” Drew asked. I sat on the floor next to him. “It’s her, isn’t it, Mikey?” He

reached forward and put his index finger on the television screen, he kept moving it to

point to Boy George each time the scene changed. “Is that her? No, her. Is that her?”

“Shut up, already,” I said. “And sit back. I can’t see.”

“Do you recognize any of the words?”

“I can’t hear any of ’em when you keep on talking.”

“I thought the earwig was a guy?”

“Drew, I can’t hear what she’s singing.”

“No wonder we couldn’t find the song,” he said. “We were looking for a guy.”


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“We were looking for a duet,” I said. “Remember?”

“But there’s no other boys singing,” Drew said. “Just two girls back there.”

He points on the right of the screen to a second stage where black women dance and

sing backup. “Hey, she’s not very pretty. Is she?”

“Shuttup Drew, I will pop you if you don’t zip it.”

Fangs out this time.

“Boys,” Mother said. She cuts us off with a scoff. Reaching behind her to grab a

Tupperware cup and without moving her head she took a sip.

Drew was wrong. Boy George was gorgeous. The way his eyebrows cut across his

face. How his long bangs seemed to hover over his right eye. If I wasn’t heartless, I’d fall

in love with his sexy eyes. They looked into my soul without turning away. The cage that

held my still-missing heart shuttered in anticipation. If the muscle still beat it would burst

forth with infatuation.

A ghost effect.

Sure, he couldn’t see me through the telly. I know it’s not possible. I’m not mental.

But I wanted him to see me. To recognize me when he did. He must know why his song

played inside my head. To know how to stop the ohrwurm curse. I had a million

questions. I craved to touch him and reassure myself he was real, to lay my own eyes

upon him. I crawled up to the TV set. I sat so close I could have fallen into the spaces

between the phosphor dots on the screen.


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“Hey!” Drew protested.

Next day, with everyone’s talk between classes I didn’t know if Boy George was a

man or a woman. I wasn’t convinced either way until Fritz told me his stage name. How

it started with “Boy.”

At school most questions are abandoned after we figure out the answer.

In order to meet Boy George I needed to find him. I worked through old Smash

Hits. You see, once I knew who to look for, finding the clues was simple.

October 14th, 1982 - Culture Club is accused of being a fashions front for the

clothes George designed with his friend Sue Clowes.

September 17th, 1981 - The first picture where Boy George sawed that record had a

caption. It said George was a clothes seller.

August 22nd, 1982 - Found in the Get Smart! questions section. The clothes shop is

described in an answers. The question the same as mine.

Where is Boy George’s shop?

“The Foundry is on Ganton Street near the Oxford Circus stop in West London.

Selections include tees, dresses, trousers from £6 to £45 but more ‘flamboyant clothing’

is found in the sister-shop Street Theatre.”

In just three moves, I secured his address.

⁂

“I want to come, too,” Drew said.


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“You need to stay home to cover for me.”

“That’s not fair. I’ve helped you all this time. I’m part of Operation Earwig,” he

said. “Shouldn’t I get the chance to meet Boy George. Plus, I like his make-up.”

Sound logic. I couldn’t argue with him but who was I kidding? The jitters already

found their way into my intestines. Man oh man, my abdomen grumbled like a gas

turbine. Could I give up now that he’s real? Drew gave me the guts I needed to go

through with the plan and track down a pop-star.

“Aces,” Drew said.

“But you have to choose between dressing-up at school or coming with me.”

Friday was right before Halloween. The school day spent in costumes and contests.

I abstained — consumed by my mission to find Boy George — I didn’t want to waste

time to head home to change. Drew cried foul (“you don’t play fair”) but he decided to

come along with me. On the day’s final bell we made our way into London. We rode the

early afternoon train and tubed to the Oxford Circus stop.

I expected more kids my age hanging around, especially so close to Halloween. We

spotted men in silvery business suits walking on some hidden purpose, indifferent to us.

We stood on the steps outside The Foundry staring into the wide bank of windows.

Drew walked right in. Was it courage or just his passion for clothes?

“Oh yeah, I like this one with the funny marks,” he said.

I followed him inside, drawn to how stoked he was. So curious to watch him react


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to fashion. I marveled at Drew, hovering behind him as he searched through the

garments. I surveyed the room covertly. Using just my eyes. A cover for how unsure I felt

about being found in the shop.

The store was lit from a long row of fluorescents. Mannequin torsos wore a

collection of white blouses. The shirts depicted roses, spray-painted yellow. Some with

six-pointed stars and neat apples. The half-mannequin bodies lined against black-painted

walls. Some were stacked in pyramid formation.

Drew looked at a “flowy” knee-length blouse. Along the seams, the collar, and

across the shirt were squiggles and circles and plus-marks.

“They look hand-made,” he said. He placed it up to his body, the hem dropping to

his kneecaps. On him it was more a dress than a blouse.

A storekeep ambled over. She stood shorter than me. With flat, blond hair wrapped

in a scarf and a dress of the same style as the ones for sale.

“They’re trampmarks,” she said.

“I understand,” Drew said. He shook his head. “What’s that?”

“Chalks symbols on sidewalks to know which houses are safe,” she said. “A

message to tramps to tell them if there’s food, a good place to sleep, or if the residents are

the religious sort. Sometimes they mark when a house should be avoided altogether

because mean folks live there.”

“Aces,” Drew said.


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“Are you Sue Clowes,” I asked.

“Ah, yes, I am.” she said. Her words are polite but her face reads resignation.

Eyebrows in pre-determined arches. “You must be here looking for Georgina, then.” She

drops her expression on the floor. Other kids had found their way to the shop asking the

same question. Looking for Boy George without buying any merchandise. Same as us.

“What’s a tramp,” Drew asked. “Is it a dog?”

“No,” she said, giggling. “You’re thinking of a cartoon. A tramp’s a vagrant.”

“A hobo,” I said. The first time I could translate for Drew. “Georgina?”

“Oh hello, nice to meet you,” Drew said.

He actually curtseyed, holding out his hand. Her face illuminated. She smiled.

Whatever my breach in protocol, it was temporarily dismissed.

“You know him as Boy George. We know him as Georgina. He’s two Georges too

many. Whatever. He doesn’t work here anymore,” she said. Sue shrugged but glowed

when she took Drew’s hand and kissed his knuckles. “And likewise to you, hello my

young moppet.”

Just like that the search for Boy George was called off.

It was too easy to train down and “pop in” to see him. Nothing about the earwig is

easy. Drew and Sue flirted, acting peculiar. Familiar. I ignored them, I was inside my

head. I should have looked for other leads, other addresses. Why didn’t I look up the

clubs? Any in soho could’ve done? Before I ask, Sue notices my disappointment.


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“Try The Blitz Bar. Or you could try Camden Palace next Thursday. Either way,

you’ll have to do better than that,” she said. She wagged a stout finger up and down at

our uniforms. “You’ll need to tart it up. Blue and khaki won’t get you past Steve

Strange.” Drew snickered and covered his mouth like a school-yard girl.

“Who’s that?” Eyes wide meant Drew was interested.

“He guards the gates of The Blitz.”

“Can you direct us there?”

“So formal are we? Of course I can direct you,” she said.

She combed her fingers through my brother’s bangs. Checking his feathering, like a

hairdresser figuring out if he needed a touch-up. Drew examined her blouse, draping it

both hands. I didn’t understand their instant connection or their age-mismatched

courtship, their intimate grooming, but I felt rejected by not being a part of it.

“Thanks,” I said.

“It’s your brother. He’s so precious. You could learn a thing or two. I don’t usually

help you little stalkers out.” She winked. I was too combative and he’s so easy to make

friends. “You are so sweet. Yes you are. Toe twee, twee as a Mars bar…You make me just

want to squeeze your little neck, crack it open and let all that sugar out.”

Her lips graced his forehead with a kiss.

“Um, I like you too…lady,” he said. Pink splotches appeared on his cheekbones.

“And you’ll need a silly hat,” she said. “It’s required.”


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⁂

We wait outside The Blitz Bar.

It reeked of rancid vinegar the same way Mother does. We sat on a small stoop

against the security grating. Drew read his paperback, Stephen King’s Night Shift, and he

licked his finger with each page-turn.

Twilight fell like a trap.

I became super-anxious about the remaining time before we get in trouble. I

checked every digital blink of my Casio. I calculated our exit route. If we left then we’d

be home by 7pm and could squeak in without detection. For that to work the tube and

train lines needed to match up without a miss.

We squatted outside because the bar hadn’t opened but Covent Gardens was picking

up. Traffic began to squeeze through the streets. Cars barked at cabs. Exhaust kicked into

the air. Older kids — maybe university age — walked by and giggled after they passed.

They must’ve thought our uniforms were funny.

“How do you do it,” I asked Drew.

“Do what?”

“How did you get Sue to help us,” I asked. “With the clothes.”

“You got to give a little to get a little.” He kept his eyes on his book.

Sue Clowes lent us hats she made. I wore a bowler. She attached heavy WWII

goggles to the brim. Drew wore a fedora. She stuck seven peacock feathers in the front.


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They drooped over his face. He chewed on one of them and brushed the rest to the side

with a shake of his head as if he was used to sporting unkempt bangs. Sue air-brushed our

school clothes before we left. She created roses and crosses. She gave Drew trampmarks.

She sketched a black silhouette of a giant B12 bomber on my shirt’s chest. The plane

flew inverted, about to crash into my pants. The designs were quite good though I felt out

of sorts

My arm skin kept itching with fire. I scratched it repeatedly.

“Blitz forcefield,” Drew said. He pointed to an obvious-looking man. A camera held

by his left hand, a telephoto lens cradled with his right. He walked along an invisible arc

around the gate, past the The Blitz and slinked into a doorway further down. “Paparazzi

on the bridge of Khazad-dûm.”

Drew flicked an old Silk Cut butt into the street.

“Huh?”

“You know,” with his best deep voice. “You cannot pass. Gandalf to the Balrog.”

Just because I read that damn book years ago Drew expects me to remember every line.

He nodded in the direction of the photographer. “That reporter must’ve been eighty-

sixed.”

I’m about to ask him how he knows all this stuff but a stranger interrupts.

“You got that right. He’s axed. Invited no more.” The stranger steers up to the

entrance tapping his cane on the sidewalk. Click, step, click. “Nothing sadder than a


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press-man fallen from favor. Banished from heaven.” He kicked the end of his cane and

with a wave of it, he indicated The Blitz. “We don’t let him inside anymore.”

His face was painted so ashen, he appeared as a ghost. Red lips so vampiric they

begged to feed off our necks. Lashes so long I heard them beat. Butterflies against the

wake of dusty eyeshadow. His hat a hypnotic swirl: I was in a trance. He leans against the

wall with a skip and gives us a glare.

“Who’ve we got here, then? You’ve arrived at least six hours too early.”

“We’re here from the Foundry,” Drew said.

Sue told us to say that. She was so charmed by my brother it makes my skin fry

with rage. How does he come by it so easily, man, why can’t it be me? Drew impresses

me but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. I kept my trap shut because she helped

us, even if it were for Drew’s sake. She gave us our free pass. Our only pass.

“We can see that. You two’ve got that Foundry look,” the stranger said. His pinkies

quoted either side of ‘Foundry look’ with enough sarcasm to drive a boy to tears. “Sue

and I go way back, you know. She’s run around these woods for as long as I have. Still,

she doesn’t send anyone my way. So what, perchance, did you do to persuade her? For

we are intrigued.”

“She thought I was a faerie child.” Drew fibbed. He turned the cuteness up with a

brush of feathers. Then he mimicked her doting tone. “Toe twee.”

The stranger kicked his head back and let out a laugh. One so hard he could’ve


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received whiplash. It overcame the sounds of the streets and the car horns and hubbub.

Drew’s magic winning the hearts of strangers. He adjusted Drew’s feathers then stepped

over to me. He tittered and clicked his teeth, tilting my bowler with both hands.

“Perfect,” he said. “How do you come to these parts. Are you faerie-folk, too?”

He looks into my eyes without a hint of surrender.

I stammer, I rattle, I suffer word-loss.

“My brother would never admit it,” Drew said. “If he were.”

“’Tis a shame that.”

“Yeah because it’d be fun to hang with faeries,” he said. “They’re like celebrities

these days, aren’t they? Pop-stars.”

“Our father is in the American Air Force,” I said, biting down on my lower lip until

I tasted a little of the rust come out in my blood. As close to admission as I would get that

Friday night. The stranger placed the back of his hand against my cheek. I closed my

eyes. Fingers inside the glove’s antique lace tugged my earlobe.

The stranger delivered his judgement.

“Well boys, you have come to the right place,” he said. “And delightful as you both

are — despite the poor attempt at garish dress-up, oh no, no — I’m afraid we cannot

allow you inside. There isn’t enough fold to pay your way. We cannot let you in, much

too young to be a Blitz kid. Children, go home and play. Visit us in a few years, won’t

you?”


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“We’ve come so far,” I said. The desperation oozed out. “We really need to talk to

Boy George.” I regretted the words as soon as I heard them.

“Georgina? Haven’t you heard,” he asked. “That bitch isn’t welcome here

anymore.” I winced at the stranger’s mood change. Irritation buzzed around him. Fat

eyelashes flapped, gearing up for take-off. “Did I say that right? No, of course not. A

better way: O’Dowd doesn’t come around here anymore even if that bitch was welcome.”

“Do you know where we could find him,” Drew asked.

“No, but if you do, pass along this message.”

“Okay.”

“Tell him Steve Strange sent him this,” the stranger jabbed his index and middle

finger into the air. He pumped his arm up with as much vulgarity as a new Dandy could

muster. The bird, Brit-style. “A pretty set of tongs serving up a big, fat up yours.”

⁂

We rode home in shame.

We missed the connecting train and waited for the next one.

Operation Earwig was over. The earwig’s pincers clamped down inside my head.

You’ll be sorry in the morning / when we tell you / Mama had tears in her eyes. The

words stank of foreboding. Even Drew showed weak excitement over the report of new

lyrics. I covered both my ears, elbows on my knees. The refrain replayed. You’ll be

sorry / You’ll be sorry. I pushed harder until I felt the suction from my palms tug at my


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eardrums.

Dad’s phrase: A man without a plan can only stumble upon success.

I needed to regroup or decide to punch out. What could I have done differently? No

amount of money could give me passage. No fold, none. Even if I could get inside The

Blitz, Boy George wouldn’t be there. Maybe he was touring. Or he was recording. What

if he doesn’t go out anymore? He’s already too famous to reach and I’ve showed up too

late. The way Sue Clowes expression slumped when “Georgina” came up told me

everything. Where else could he be? I could try Camden Palace on Thursday. It was the

only lead I had. Could I be lucky enough to find him there? Would I even want to meet

him if I did? They hated Boy George so much.

“Why do they hate him,” Drew asked. My brother became better at reading me. I

swear if I thought the answer, he’d be able to hear it and repeat it back. “I wonder what

Boy George did to them?”

This is what it was like to be in hell. On a train home knowing you were going to

get caught and punished. With nothing to show for it. You’ll be sorry in the morning /

Mama had tears in her eyes. With a brother who noticed too much. About how I ogled at

Culture Club on the cover of Smash Hits. How I stared at Boy George’s knowing smile.

Can you fall in love without a heart? What do you think you’ll find? If I could confess it,

I’d end up with an imaginary boyfriend named Boy George.

Now Drew picked up how I felt about boys.


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I weighed his devotion. Drew idolizes me but his adoration will give me away. He

basically did to Steve Strange. Imagine my parents’ disapproval if he got mouthy and

spilled the the truth to them. I’d be in a world of trouble.

Friendly fire is still likely to cause death.

I knew what I had to do. I had to ditch Drew. No matter how much I depended on

his help — I don’t deserve his love. Or how he urges me onward. How he talks to anyone

(the little shit) and gets them to root for him. I’ll have to come up with something on my

own. I must look older to enter Camden Palace and a ten year-old won’t let me pass

muster. Torment is when fond affections for my brother are replaced with firm rejections

of him. I can’t allow him to be my witness. He’ll despise me for it. Just like Steve

Strange and Sue Clowes and their jealousy for Boy George.

“I don’t know why they hate him,” I said, answering finally. I put my hand on

Drew’s shoulder. “But you can’t come with me next time. I’m sorry.”

Drew’s face became tumbledown. His thoughts were subterranean. He didn’t look at

me nor did he reply. My anger erupted.

“Did you hear me, Drew,” I asked. I tried to lower my voice. I aimed for stern

without letting my voice yield to cracks. The best version of dad. Kind with authority.

“Because I really need you to cover for me next time.”

“You suck,” he said. “Do you get that?”

“Drew,” I said.


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“You’re dumb-ass. I don’t know why I even try.”

“Drew,” I said.

“Why do you always have to burn me? I take the high road,” Drew said.

In that moment he looked so much older than he was. Ten going on forty. He spoke

with a aged frankness. Drew mastered what I was trying to sound like, appearing so much

like dad the older he got. He sighed a long-resigned breath, a burst of disappointment.

“I don’t get you sometimes. I try…I try to help you. I give you anything you want.

You know that? And what do you give back? Zilch. I get nothing for keeping you safe but

you don’t care. You burn me…you burn me and you don’t care.”

I didn’t say anything. I was hellworn.

He folded up his arms and looked forward for the rest of the trip home. He stared at

the wall. He didn’t even pick up his paperback. The clacking of the train-wheels

switching tracks was a solemn noise.

Except for the earwig.

You’ll be sorry in the morning.

SOME FOLD / THE TANGO

I looked at myself in the mirror wearing dad’s service coat.

Uxbridge blue matched my Foundry look. Wool and gold buttons. Gold braids looped


201

inside both epaulettes. Chevrons surround a single star, Staff Sergeant. Underneath,

painted on my school shirt, Sue’s B12 bomber came in for a crash landing. I wore her

bowler hat with goggles. I’d return it once I talked with Boy George.

Wishing I was sixteen to get into Camden Palace without hassle.

Drew didn’t talk to me the whole week leading up to my journey back into London.

Radio silence. Each day felt like being buried under growing layers of sediment. The

pressure pushed the dial up. The heat was on.

When we got home last Friday night, nobody noticed. Mother’s passed out on the

sofa. TV snowy. A spectacle I’d seen before. Dad was off-base, on mission. What me

worry? Saturday and Sunday, we stayed in our bedroom. Anything I asked, Drew tossed

over and faced the wall. Sometimes he stomped his feet getting his ass out the door. Deaf

ears and deafening earwigs. We make a pair, alright.

For the first time since Germany, I couldn’t wait ’til the school week started.

Monday, a new lyric crawled out and set the tone. Boy George sang about me. Hey I

woke up on my own this morning. Drew’s bunk was empty. I ate my Fruit Loops alone.

Sat on the bus alone. Waited after school alone. I was on my own at home.

You’ll be sorry in the morning.

Tuesday night, I begged the best way I knew how. On my knees and everything. Four

days was enough. Silent treatments were Mother’s tactics. If I was going pass off being

old enough to get into Camden Palace, I needed Drew to help me figure it out. Man, I


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loathe to say it but I had no one else to confide in…besides him.

He was my true and only confidant.

“C’mon, Drew, you can’t keep this up,” I said.

Shit, yeah I can, his look said.

“I know I tell you to shut-up all the time, but c’mon,” I said. “This is ridiculous.”

I’m your rock, remember, his look said.

“I don’t step all over you,” I said. “You know I care — I care already — you know I

do.”

What do you give back, his look asked. What do I get out of it?

Echoes from Friday night’s falling out. I regretted cutting him out of Operation

Earwig. I stood by my decision, I was right this time. When I ditched Thursday I needed

him to take an absentee note to the principal. How was I going to do that without his

help? What does Drew need from me?

I had a terribly perverse thought. A bribe really.

“I’ll buy you a pair of Capezios,” I said. “You know, the ones you want. The satin

slippers with the elastic drawstrings. I’ll sneak them home and hide them under my bed.

If anyone finds them they can blame me, I swear. I can do it for you.”

I didn’t receive an answer for the next twenty-four hours.

Wednesday night was the last night. Drew handed me an old, torn-up issue of The

Face. On the front, cover-star Johnny Rotten sat calmly, legs crossed, wearing a three-


203

piece suit. A plaid one with red lining. Always irreverent, wild-eyed and ginger-haired.

“What? I don’t get it,” I said. Did I wipe the sweat off my brow? I held back any signs

of relief. “Just tell me.”

Drew rolled his hand in a page-flipping gesture, still not speaking. The magazine

bookmarked with a lump inside. I opened it up to the gap and a pack of loose safety pins

fell across my bedspread like surprise confetti.

Drew handed me a handkerchief with frayed edges. He pointed to the article featuring

The Sex Pistols’ singer. In a picture next to it, he tapped a black & white picture of Rotten

with a small fingernail. Still, he said nothing. He refused to say a solitary word. I wasn’t

off the hook yet.

I had to prove my love — how could I do that without heart?

I wanted to both scream at him and hug him but did neither.

Mr. Rotten wore a biker jacket. On it a rag safety-pinned onto the back. Safety pins

are punk jewelry, predominant and overused. The ratty-white fabric belched a message in

large block letters:

NO FUTURE UK

Looking up, Drew hands me Dad’s service coat. I took it with the same reverence of a

folded-American flag. Drew pointed to the handkerchief, the safety pins, the coat, and

then me.

Again: handkerchief, safety pins, coat and then me.


204

“No, no, I can’t. I can’t mess up Dad’s blues. He’ll look like a soup sandwich. He’ll

get a demerit You know, they’d shame him. I’ll be in so much trouble.”

He jabbed his index finger at me. Scolding me.

“How is this going to help me?”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“This is how you look old enough to get in,” he said.

“I can’t.”

Drew handed me a Sharpie. He shrugged like he didn’t care and left the room. He

turned it around on me. I couldn’t believe it coming from him and considered his

motives. Is this the only way or is he just getting back at me? It’s an terrible risk he’s

putting me in just to get ballet slippers.

I recognize the dull ring of truth to it.

Drew’s only answer to the problem came from his fashion sense.

I unfolded the frayed handkerchief. On one side I colored in the letters: NO FUTURE.

I left off the UK because I’d be in danger walking around with NO FUTURE UK is a

target on my back. Me being American and a son of an Air Force officer and all.

I’ll be stealth I told myself. I’ll get Dad’s jacket back in the closet, back to normal, un-

defaced, before anyone noticed. Before he returned from mission. Nobody will know.

I safety pinned the linen onto the back of Dad’s coat.

Grimacing every time I pierce the wool suit with a safety-pin.


205

⁂

Thursday noon, I shopped at Capezio in Covent Garden. I ate a smoked sausage at a

chippy and killed an hour walking north along Regent’s park. I received random frowns

when businessmen saw I carried a pink box of ballet slippers. Removing the shoes from

the packaging, I stuffed them into the jacket’s inside pocket and threw the rest away.

Once I was ready to leave the park, I headed to my single destination. Walking into

Camden, the building stood pronounced on the square. The tall columns supported an

unlit and oversized neon sign. It was the next clue to Boy George, announcing itself as

Camden Palace.

I sat tucked under the dark awnings and shielded away in the shadows. I tried the

doors but they were locked. The dance club empty in the afternoon. I worried nobody

would stop by during the day. I sat on the steps for hours holding myself in a tight ball,

keeping warm by rubbing my arms with my hands. Even if Drew was occupied reading

his book, he’d make better company than being alone.

I missed the little shit.

I didn’t need to worry too much about whether Mother would notice my absence. If

I had to wait into nighttime, she’d be passed out. I spent hours watching traffic and the

street crowd move slow as honey.

“Get inside,” a stranger said. “Right now. No, no, no. Before anyone sees.”

I could tell it was Steve Strange because he wore a silly hat. He pulled me up with


206

one hand and dragged me off the steps. With the other he unlocked the door to the club

with a brass key he drew from a chain around his neck. Once we were inside, he shut the

door behind us.

“This is us inside Camden Palace,” Steve Strange said.

He made his proclamation, leaned against the heavy door, kissed the brass key and

tucked it back amongst the oversized ruffles that made up his shirt. He spoke in a manner

I’d never heard anyone speak.

“Now we’re safe from prying eyes,” he said, wiping his brow.

“Okay,” I said. I looked around the lobby searching for signs of anybody else but

only spied a cavernous room through a set of arches. Darkness kept its secrets concealed

from me. I didn’t understand why Steve Strange didn’t want to be seen. I read once that

he was a creature of flamboyance. Someone who loved to be photographed. Full of prim

and prance. One that had to be impressed by the outrageous. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“Why are you here faerie-folk?” He looked me over from boots to bowler. He eyed

my hat and his face became set with a plan. “Fabulous jacket, laddie. It makes you look

like someone else. I sure do fancy it. First thing’s first: I think you should hand us over

that hat.”

Steve Strange snapped his fingers.

He didn’t need to get my attention, he already had it.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Enough for me to understand why he was so


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embarrassed. Enough to know it wouldn’t turn out well for me. Pangs of nausea clamored

within me. My stomach wrenched into the emptiness inside my ribcage looking for

escape.

Steve Strange wore a WWII helmet decorated with gold stars and a pair of goggles

attached to them. Goggles which were an exact replica to the ones on my bowler.

“No, it’s not mine to give,” I said. “Why?”

I already knew the answer.

“No, no. You simply don’t show up to a man’s club wearing the same hat as he.”

Even if that man lifted the idea from you. I wonder if he paid Sue Clowes a visit to get

his own. “Give us both the hat and, yes indeed lad, do give us the jacket too.”

“Are you mental? I can’t do that,” I said.

“Give it to us,” he said

“I can’t.”

“Take the sodding hat and jacket off and give them to me.”

Even though I felt overwhelmed by this man I couldn’t help from becoming

aroused. Maybe I could give up the hat — Sue wouldn’t miss it, she could make another

— but I won’t give him the jacket because it’s my dad’s. Not only that, I couldn’t even

take it off because the flaps also hid my growing boner.

As a teenager, erections arrive like a terrible guest: at the worst times and with no

other place to go. They’re unavoidable and the fastest way to get rid of them wasn’t for


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polite company. I shook my head, slowly covering my crotch with my hands. I twisted

my waist to the side to hide it better. I’d do anything to turn and run out the door.

Strange looked me up and down.

He clicked his teeth, tutted, and raised a single eyebrow.

“Ah, I see now,” he said. Did he spot what I was trying to hide? “Well, what would

he do if I told him how to find his precious Georgina? What would he do then I wonder?

Would he cooperate. Would he hand over that marvelous jacket to my safekeeping?”

⁂

I waited outside the gates of BBC Studios. There were others in line. Only kids, no

adults. They stood against a half-height, wooden fence waiting for any hopeful glimpse of

a pop-star. More showed up the longer the shadows grew. Older girls began to find their

friends, cut the line, and crowd in behind us.

“Moshi, moshi!”

Machiko and Hikaru stood in front of me. They rattled off in Japanese about girl

things. I guessed by the way they squealed and pogoed and reapplied strawberry lip gloss.

They held hands in a tight prayer position between them and took turns warming their

fingers with hot breath. As we waited, we kept looking up Wood Lane for Culture Club to

show up to their second Top of the Pops broadcast.

Sometimes they spoke in English. One of the girls spoke better than the other.

“I love him so much,” Machiko said.


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“Also me,” Hikaru said. “He’s so pretty. I hope Boy George whirr-marry me,”

“Yes but I want him to marry me too,” Machiko said.

“Do you think he’d really marry you,” I asked.

“Yes,” they said in unison. They both giggled and jumped, hand in hand.

I rolled my eyes. My face burned in the cold air. The hairs on the back of my skull

raised and itched with shame. These girls were ridiculous and I felt stupid. I won’t admit

how much I might be acting exactly like them.

Dressing up, pretending to be famous.

How I envied them. I ached to have a friend, my brother, beside me. Who was I

kidding coming down here without him? He’s got my back and he does keep me safe.

How’d he talk me into wearing my Dad’s blues?

Now that I gave it up, the wind blew with jagged teeth. The little heat I maintained

peeled off my skin easily without a coat. I crouch down inside the bramble of legs, trying

to block the icy wind. What am I going to do if I return back without it? Man, and the

ballet slippers? I was without them either, they were still in the pocket. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Drew was never going to talk to me. Worst of all: Boy George will no longer notice me.

Hunkered down, wearing jeans and a school shirt. No matter how well Sue Clowes tarted

it up.

“Look! There’s Malleerrin,” Hikaru said.

“Mare-Ree-Lynn,” Machiko corrects Hikaru. “Like Marilyn Monroe.”


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When the bands arrive I expected fanfare. I realized in that moment I was waiting

for trumpets to bleat out. Instead I heard the clacking of expensive cameras. Paparazzi on

the bridge of Khazad-dûm. I wasn’t prepared for Marilyn Monroe to walk down the line.

The crowd became riotous, yelling out her name. “Come to me, talk to me, blow us a

kiss,” they said. Marilyn’s eyeliner, her beauty-mark, a lipstick smile, and her mink stole.

They were perfect. It wasn’t Miss Monroe because she died before I was born. Who was

this creature? She’s dressed up, impersonating Marilyn, and everyone ate it up. She

kissed her white-fingered gloves, scrunched her face and blew the kiss into the crowd.

“I love you, Marilyn.”

The crowd roared with approval.

“Yeah, baby,” a photographer said behind me.

Behind her a procession of plain-dressed men and overdressed ladies walked down

the line. A formation of lawyers and agents wearing pinstripes and power ties, crowded

two young musicians in beach shorts and polo tees. They must be as cold as I was.

“George,” girls screamed. Others, “Andrew.”

They crowd was on first name basis. They cheered and swooned. The young men

smiled back and waved, combing back long frosted bangs. They didn’t stop and kept on

track through the studio doors.

Machiko and Hikaru shook their fists in the air. Reminded me of Finah so I ignored

them. I leaned my head against the fence for support. I don’t see anyone famous, just


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more suits. The girls’ faces go red like they are a balloons ready to pop. Hikaru tries to

crawl over the fence when an overweight man holds his hand up like a stop sign.

“You gotta keep these kids back,” he said to other plain-dressed men.

They redirect Hikaru back to our side. Listen to her bawl over the chatter of kids

who also tried to reach and claw over the fence. The activity of the crowd created warmth

for me. I stayed put covering my head with both arms to protect my head.

“Take one step back,” the large man yelled. “Or none of yeh are getting inside.”

The line grumbled and stepped away from the fence leaving me sitting alone on the

ground. I wasn’t sure what I should do. Right out of a Monday-night sitcom, trite and

anything but comical. I balled up, super-shy and small. Shaking and freezing on the

concrete alone. I’ve never been so meek.

“Whirr-you marry me? Marry me Boy George. Marry me, please.”

These girls out-shine me. I’m a flicker without Drew.

Someone behind me shouts out, “I see them.”

“There’s Roy and Mikey.”

I swivel my head forward, scanning the crowd to see who shouted, assuming they’re

calling out my name and not the bassist’s. The girls talk quickly in Japanese, giggle, and

punctuate with an “Oh my, oh my.”

“That’s Jon Moss.”

“Oh my, oh my.”


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“He’s just the drummer.”

“He was voted ‘The Prettiest Punk,’” Machiko said.

“Oh my, oh my,” Hikaru said.

When I looked up the lane, Boy George honed up on me.

He towered above my head, looking exactly the way I saw him a week before on the

telly. His hair in braids, his braids under a hat, his skin so soft and smooth, his Foundry

clothes shiny with new paint. His fragrance was of gardenia or jasmine, I can’t tell the

difference. A pair of sunglasses covered half his face. He’s a full head over Jon Moss who

leans up against the back of him. From my vantage point sitting on the ground I noticed

something no-one else sees. Just for a second when Boy George freed up a hand. Their

pinkies hooked together under the folds of Boy George’s blouse.

“Are you alright, honeybabe,” Boy George asked. “Why are you sitting all alone,

down on the ground?”

I stood up. Boy George stands taller than me.

“Take off your sunnies,” Jon said.

Removing his oversized sunglasses, his make-up was startling and perfect. Lips

gloss-red, eyeshadow golden. He shares Drew’s angelic expression. An image flashed in

my mind: when I found my brother at Martinskirche, eyes full of tears and face full of

mud. A reverse-raccoon. I shivered through a wave of déjà vu. Boy George’s make-up

reminds me of my brother’s mud mask but instead it’s one made from cosmetics.


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Overcome by the illusion, I hugged Boy George.

“What happened, then,” he asked me.

I embraced him like I wanted to hug my brother. I couldn’t help myself, my stupid

body ran without decision. I fumbled and fell into his chest, limbs awkward, unable to

reach around. When I stood myself back up, silence remained between us. His blue-green

eyes looked into my soul, clear and bright. Like he saw the truth. Heartless and empty.

Like he knew who I was: queer, strange, cursed. I couldn’t hide from him. His gaze too

piercing to hold so I looked down at my feet.

“You’re going to be a heartbreaker,” Boy George said. Just above a whisper.

The Japanese girls squeaked, “Oh my, oh my.”

He kissed me on the cheek and forehead. I felt the older girls behind me biting their

nails. Professional cameras clicked in unison. The crowd let out grumbles and sighs.

I noticed Boy George’s arms were large (for a woman). They had thick, black hairs

growing out the back. No doubt about his manhood. There’s something reassuring

knowing a boy can be so beautiful.

He chose to call me heartbreaker. Like he fucking knew.

“I already am,” I replied. “A heartbreaker.”

I broke my heart years ago. How could he know that?

“He’s already a heartbreaker, he is,” Jon said from behind. “There you go.”

“You know, I help people in little ways,” Boy George said.


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“You fixed him alright. No need to worry how you presently broke his heart.”

“I did no such thing. He’s just shy.”

“He’s no shy as Peckham rye.”

“Can you help me,” I asked. I used all my guts. Their banter cutting me off. Boy

George offered a half-smile steeped in half-concern. “Please.”

“Honeybabe, you’ll be fine,” he said. “See Jon, I am a rock’n’roll social worker.”

“We’ve got to go Georgina,” Jon said.

Boy George hopped off on one foot and they left me behind.

⁂

I sat outside alone. The BBC studio door locked. The guests on Top of the Pops

assembled inside. Machiko and Hikaru dispersed into the streets with the other fans.

Paparazzi disappeared in blank Range Rovers. Plain-clothes men accompanied

overdressed women through the studio doors. And I was still outside, my moment

expired. I was nowhere closer to an answer and all the more befuddled.

The low sun shined white, sneaking behind clouds and ushering in frigid dusk. I

ignored the deep chill sneaking up my tendons. I froze but was too lost in thought. How

could I let my only chance go? I was at my lowest I’d been since starting Operation

Earwig. How could I know I needed a pass to get into the show?

Celebrity encounters are brief affairs.

Even if I could get in, I lost my opportunity to speak with the band. What would I


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ask, really? I can’t prove to them my earwig relentlessly plays its song. I can only attest I

experience it, alone. Nor could I prove the words came from Boy George’s mouth.

Maybe it’s a projection. Me trying to find my place in this world. Alongside a cross-

dressing pop-star. The earwig is a phantom replacement for love and belonging, a

substitute for my heart. It haunts me. Possesses me. It’s a ghostsong. No-one else can

confirm if the specter exists. I held my palms against my ears to ease the earwig but still

heard its constant lyrics.

Shadows falling / You’ll be sorry in the morning.

BOOM.

The studio door banged open, exploding like a bomb. I leapt out the way. The door

slammed against the stucco wall and bounced back clipping my shoulder. Jon Moss burst

from the dark hallway inside. He punched the metal door with a bare fist and kicked the

air stiffly before he slipped down the stairs.

“Fucksake,” he said.

He laid on his back, sprawled on the concrete steps, boxing the door as it swung

back. I rubbed my shoulder without thinking and gasped loudly.

“Jesus fuck,” Jon yelped. He seemed jumpy. “Where’d you come from?”

“Sitting out here. The door got me.”

“Christ lad, you okay,” he asked.

I explained I was fine, helping him up. We sat side-by-side on the doorsteps. I


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fidgeted around but we didn’t speak any further. The door stayed open. I could hear

commotion inside. We sat there for several minutes listening to muffled arguing inside:

Georgina. Jon’s breathing was labored. He forced breath through flared nostrils.

I focused across the parking lot and down the street, trying to keep my head from

turning, because I was staring at him. I waited for him to speak, I didn’t know what to

say. My mind drifted as I planned on how to get dad’s jacket back from Steve Strange.

“Georgina’s in one of his moods,” Jon said. “Why are you still here?”

Jon rubbed the corner of his eye. I searched Jon’s face for meaning and saw a scar

on his right cheek. Dimpled were the three-hundred pairs of holes that dotted his cheek.

Pink scars from old stitches trailed a teardrop from his right eye. He wore his black hair

in an Elvis quiff, his dark eyebrows were crossed in a mischievous expression.

“You drummed with the Clash, didn’t you,” I asked.

“That wasn’t really me,” he said.

His face told me: Don’t do this, not now.

I pondered on what to ask next. Wishing I had telepathy, I focused on the image of

Drew. I transmitted: asking him what to do. I needed his charms. In a beat, his advice

sparked inside me, “You have to give a little to get a little.” Jon Moss chewed on his

thumb. I chewed on mine. He was fired up, something I knew quite a bit about.

“You’re really steamed at George,” I said.

“The bastard just doesn’t listen to me,” he said. “I’m running the band. I want to run


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it like a enterprise. It’s called show business for a reason. We have a real chance to make

it. To succeed in New York is to make it in America. Then Japan, maybe worldwide.

George is key to that. He’s got a responsibility but sometimes he just wants to fold it up.

Throw it away. We have a spat and it’s over. Just because I won’t say —”

His throat caught. He shook his head when confronted with a sour thought. What

was left unsaid? He speaks on business and responsibilities the way my dad lectures on

military service and duty. I encouraged the best version of Drew’s magic to run through

me. I search inside Jon Moss for the words he kept hidden.

“You love him,” I asked.

Because it’s what I want dad to say to me.

He should punch me off my block, right there, but he doesn’t.

“Everyone loves George,” he said. “Sometimes I hate him so much.”

“He’s two Georges too many.” Sue Clowes’s joke.

Jon kicked his head back. Out rumbled a laugh, bouncing off the walls of the

surrounding BBC studios. His roar travels across the parking lot and all the way down the

street. I laugh with him the longer he does and this makes him laugh more. Hey Drew, I

can make them roll in the aisles, too.

He laughs for at least five long, sweet minutes.

⁂

“Do you help write the song lyrics,” I asked.


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“No, no that’s George. He writes all the words.”

Jon unbuttoned his Foundry shirt using the flaps to create wind to cool off.

Underneath he had a plain white tee-shirt. Was he hot under the collar or was this a

move? I saw his pinky hooked with Boy George’s in secret. Does he like me? Drew

would urge me on…to ask about the earwig. I couldn’t fail him now that I was talking

privately with a member of Culture Club.

“Do you come up with any of the music?”

“I have many duties in the band, but yeh, I do come up with the music,” he said. “I

create all the rhythm and percussion. The drums are the backbone of the band. Its timing

defines the song, the whole mood sometimes. Drums are the dance.”

“I don’t dance,” I admitted

“You don’t? But you love pop music,” Jon said. “Correct?”

Never been asked so I’m caught by surprise.

I possess an academic authority over music but it’s not enjoyment. It’s more like

homework. Well, how homework should be. I been so caught up in the quest to find my

balladeer, have I forgotten to enjoy the songs? With all the music I’ve heard and all the

musicians I’ve discovered I decided to say, “Well sure.”

“Dance has always been basic to the function and meaning of pop.”

“What do you mean?”

“Music-Dance-Sex,” he said. “Simple, innit? Stand up. Can you hum us a tune?


219

Something that you really like.”

His request was a gift.

I hummed the song that played in my head for the past three years. The ever ballad,

the curse song. My excitement amped the melody. It sounded more upbeat. This was the

tune I hummed for Jon Moss. He looked at me with a finger curled over his mouth.

“Do you know it,” I asked.

“No but we’ll make do,” he said. “Follow me.”

Jon taught me some steps. He moved his arms, his hips, his shoulders. His steps

were laid out for basic training. Accompanied with a ‘one-two-three’ and ‘one-two-three.’

Jon’s all business even with the joy of dance.

He showed me other classic dance moves. The waltz, the tango, the foxtrot. He

danced alongside of me. He stayed close but never touches except to show me how to

position my hands, my arms, my feet.

I smelled cedar scents and dried flowers coming off his skin. The fragrance was

Drakkar Noir cologne. I recognized their inserts from inside Rolling Stone.

Jon grasped no recognition when I hummed the earwig. I hoped he’d hear me sing it

and realize I plucked it from his mind. No such luck. If he couldn’t identify it, chances

are Boy George wouldn’t either. I needed to be more blunt.

“Do you recognize that song,” I asked.

“The BOOM-bah BOOM-bah one,” he asked. “I never heard it. Got a good hook


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though. Have you ever written music? Reminds me of this tape I’ve been playing on

repeat. Terrible quality but excellent drums. They’re tribal and relentless.”

Jon pulled out of his shirt pocket a TDK cassette tape. A copy of a recording.

“Here, I can’t listen to it anymore,” he said. “It forces tears to my eyes.” He pointed

to where his scar begins. “Every time I hear it.”

For the first time I noticed his eyes were webbed with bloodshot. He’d been crying

earlier. I leaned in close as he touched the bottom of his eyelid. Like he was waiting for a

peck on the cheek. The logic of the day came into blazing view. The pinkies locked

together, the fight with Boy George following was a romantic spat, Jon taking his shirt

off, and all his theories on rhythm and sex. Together it all made sense.

I took a chance to land a kiss.

I smelled the Drakkar radiating off his neck.

Jon stopped me with his outstretched palm and stepped back. He shakes his head.

“You’ve got the wrong, lad,” he says. “I may a bit of a puritan but I’m certainly no

queer as Ginger Beer.” He looked back at the stage door. “I have to go, show’s about to

air.”

“I thought,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“Sorry, kid. You’ll be fine,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Let me give you

some advice. It’ll save you a lot of heartache. Find someone else. Someone your own

age.” His lips pursed like he was deciding to punch me. After an eternal pause, he


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surprised me by what he did next. He pushed the cassette into my hand.

“It’s yours,” he said. “You keep it.”

The studio door slammed shut. BOOM.

Echoing as loud as it had when he first burst into my life.

⁂

The train ride home kicked up a foggy clash between fretting and fantasy. How

could I have misjudged the situation with Jon Moss? I analyzed the cues. Pointed to all

the clues that proved his interest in me. I dreamt of that mislaid kiss and all that I

could’ve done.

I shivered and held myself.

Still no coat from Steve Strange. I didn’t bother going back. Humiliation pumped

through my guts when I remembered how my erection gave me away. I felt defenseless

against him. I couldn’t get into the club now, so father’s jacket will have to wait. Unless

his blues are lost forever to Camden Palace. I popped my jaw, dislodging anxiety that

found refuge in muscles and joints. I chewed on the back of my thumb.

Very few questions answered. Why do I bother?

Operation Earwig doesn’t matter anymore. So much of my life wasted on this

childhood invention. The source of the song doesn’t matter anymore. I can no longer

fathom the randomness of it or force it to make sense. Time to let it go.

The song in my head stumbled into a lock-groove, unforgiving of my misery and


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unconcerned with my choices. The earwig began again, uncaring. I turned my back on the

mystery of it.

One thing I uncovered: no way Boy George could be my balladeer. I was surprised

and relieved. The time for pretend was over. Grow up, Mikey, and wave to Georgina.

“Farewell.” A blue-haired train passenger looked away from me. I don’t care anymore. I

bid my make-believe adieu. Good riddance.

All I needed was a friend. A boyfriend. I envisioned the scar on Moss’s cheek.

Breathed in Drakkar Noir. The mislaid kiss. The way we danced together.

I disembark and as I walked into Alconbury AFB, the emptiness ached inside my

chest. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to find the place where I belonged — maybe in

the city — anyplace where I could be with my own Jon Moss.

They both said it. They both told me I’d be fine.

I must find someone my own age.

The wet, midnight streets felt slick beneath my soles. I walked down the middle of

the road. Over barren zig-zags decorating the asphalt. They ushered me back to my

vacant life, my harpy of a Mother, and my useless destiny.

I am NO FUTURE UK

“This is us then,” I said to myself, trying out the phrase.

The door opened as I slid my key into the lock.

“Where have you been,” a man’s voice said. Stern, crackling with fury without


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raising above a whisper. There’s one person I knew could do that. Staff Sargent. Dad.

“It’s past midnight. What’ve you been doing?”

If I had listened as I approached I would’ve heard voices arguing inside. No signs

it’d be my parents. Maybe the neighbors or the din of the earwig.

“Get inside, you goddamn idiot,” Mother said. “Before you embarrass us.”

“Who do you think you are,” I asked. “Talking to me that way.” I discharged the

words before I realized my error. My jaw popping when I spoke. A clang erupted before I

realized my father boxed my ear.

Drew hid around the corner, crouched in the hallway, tired eyes peeking. I kept my

gaze on him. He winced when Dad clocked me. The earwig receding into muffled pitch.

“Look at you,” mother says. She scowled when she examined me. Anger flushed my

cheeks, the sting pierced my ear. “You’ve ruined a fine school shirt. What’s all this

bullshit painted over it.” It was Sue Clowes’s B12 Bomber. “You have lipstick on your

collar.”

“Out with some tramp,” she said. “Smeared across your forehead. Your cheek.”

“No.” Not technically a girl: from when Boy George kissed me.

“Son, what are you doing in my uniform pants?”

“How stupid are you? Answer your father, boy.”

I couldn’t look at her. There’s no more respect for her.

I cannot look at Dad, he lost all respect for me.


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I kept my eyes trained on Drew. His lower lip pouted. I lost his Capezios but he still

pitied me. Burning throbs raked across the flesh of my earlobe. Didn’t sting as much as

my brother looking so sorry. Holding regret in his eyes, filled with tears twinkling, faerie-

like. He twisted around as if to find someone for help. When he left his spot at the corner,

the hallway’s darkness swallowed him whole.

“I told you curfew is at 19:00 hours,” Mother said. “You can’t keep disobeying me

like this.” She speaks counterfeit words behind an empty mask. Her questions dropped

out of her mouth like dirty flies. I sneered back at her, defiant in silence. She turns to my

Dad washing her hands of it, “Can’t you see what I have to put up with. These boys are

too much trouble. You’re off and gone all the time you don’t know. I can’t control them.

What are you are you going to do?”

“You’re a liar,” I said. “You lie.” Who was Mother anymore? She’d disappeared

since we left the States. She’s the one who’s been MIA. I didn’t recognize her from her

usual clump on the couch. “What exactly do you put up with? You’re always passed out

drunk.”

“Oh, you little fucker. Don’t you dare sass me.”

She raised her thin hand but dad caught her wrist. He stepped between us, turning

her around on her heel. She raised another hand and he caught it too. He danced a tango

with her. He twirled her so fluid and quick, she spun away into the kitchen. She mumbled

and bitched at him and was met with deep contemplation of dad’s whispers.


225

He shut the door and she stayed put.

I flinched when Dad turned back to me.

“See how she is, dad? She’s a sham —,“ I said.

“I’m disappointed in you,” the Staff Sergeant said. If I could cry, I would’ve had a

tantrum there on the floor. But a Military son does not cry. No matter how much he hurt

me, his next phrase was a curse. I can spot one when I hear it ticking. Like my days were

numbered. First Finah, now Father. If I kept collecting blights against my soul, I won’t

last much longer in this life.

He is a man of few words — a decibel above a whisper — I read his lips when he

spoke. Then he laid his curse upon the pyre that is me.

“You broke my heart, Michael Anthony Smith,” he said. In that second I met his

eyes. They welled up with the tears as big as the oceans. “You’re hopeless. I can never

trust you again.”

Before, I was heartless. I am a heartbreaker, now.


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Chapter 8.

FIRTH OF FORTH

I examine the LP record I bought from Unknown Pleasures. Standing under a

streetlamp, I can’t make out the words on the back. The Edinburgh sun goes down before

5pm. (I’ll never get used to the dark.) It doesn’t matter anyway, the liners don’t concern

me. I trace the outline of my mom’s face on the front. She's so young in this picture, I

must’ve been a toddler still. Was she even in her thirties?

“Why does she come to me now,” I ask myself.

“It has to do with the Slothmouth.”

Drew’s not speaking to me, he’s replying to his brother. I’m curious to find out what

he means, tucking his message into my mental notes. With the record under my arm, I

rejoin the boys outside the shop. Mr. Owain steps out and a hush settles on the

conversation before I hear any of it.

The hipster’s white suit reflects the rosy flicker of sodium arc-lamps and we crowd

around him like he's our only light source. He closes up. He fights the door against the

push of air escaping from the darkened shop. It yields with a protesting vacuum-swoop.

The hipster locks it with dull, bronze key.


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Earlier when Drew and I exited, we interrupted a kiss between Rory and Mikey.

Since, they've kept their distance from one another. Might be best considering the

hipster's reaction to them. He doesn't approve of bufties and been quiet since Mikey

revealed the earwig was Boy George. Would he believe me if I told him it was my mother

who graced the Concerto Málaga LP? Or what led me to find it?

“Let’s awa’ doon the street,” Mr. Owain says.

He lumbers towards the alleyway that leads to the library. We stand around, unsure

if we should follow. But Drew aims for the hipster, marching off with lunging, heavy

footsteps. The rest of us shrug and catch up.

The black shroud of night covers the sign at Crichton’s Close. Letters barely

discernible, still reminding us “A Nation is Forged in the Hearth of Poetry.” We walk up

the hill together, silent for many blocks. I slip my free hand back into Drew’s. It’s an act

as natural as breathing.

“Now whit, laddies,” the hipster asks.

“We need to find the Slothmouth,” Drew says.

“We’ve got no place to stay,” Mikey says at the same time, head down staring at his

shoelaces. “I have enough money to cover us at a hostel. It’s been a long day we got to hit

the sack. Can you direct us to a cheap one?”

“But Mikey, we still don’t know where to go next.” Drew says. He’s pleading. “We

have to ask him about the Slothmouth first.”


228

“Slothmouth?” Mr. Owain asks. “Ah huvny a clue whit it is.”

“It’s nothing,” he says, shaking his head no, embarrassed.

“C’mon, Mikey, please don’t,” Drew says. He motions to his brother’s red

Walkman. Drew covers it up with both hands, denying him access. “Show him, then. It’s

the whole reason we came to Scotland.”

We halt in front of a pub on the corner of Bridge Street. With a groan, Mikey pops

open box and offers the tape up. Mr. Owain flips the cassette over in his hands, leveling it

close to his eyes. He leans into the light and reads the hand-scrawled labels over the rims

of his blocky glasses.

“Where’d yeh git this?” A nod of recognition.

“This is the cassette that Jon Moss gave me,” Drew says to Rory, then to the hipster.

“The same one I asked about in Reckless — from your bruv — he’s the one who gave us

your address.”

“We had a listen on the train up,” Rory says.

“It’s why his eyes are bloodshot,” Drew says, pulling down an eyelid. “Like mine.”

“Aye, when Ah first heard it,” Mr. Owain says. “Ah creid ferd ah week straight.”

The wash of fluorescents illuminate the veins in Rory’s and Drew’s eyes. It reminds

me of the effects of conjunctivitis, dry and caking. I simply ask “Why?” Drew explains

the tape’s effects on the listener. The girl singing on the other side. How they traced its

origins back to Reckless and Mr. Owain’s brother. He recites steps of how they came to


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here from there. Running down a list is common for a child to recount a story.

“So you could tell us where the tape came from,” Drew says.

“So we can find the Slothmouth,” Drew says.

“So she can kill the earwig,” Drew says.

“So Mikey can be set free.”

Repeating-songs and weeping-songs. Who are these kids?

With the earwig, you can’t decide whether Mikey’s telling the truth or not. There’s

no way to prove it. Same as me and my imaginary friend. The Slothmouth tape changes

everything. If you give it a listen to it and cry involuntarily, it’s irrefutable. You can test

that theory. Against people of different nationalities, languages, backgrounds.

Experiments could determine how far you can turn down the volume to measure when it

has no effect. Discover if anyone’s immune. If it continues to perform from a copy. Could

you just hum along, to make someone cry?

I peek at my mother on the cover of the LP again and wonder if Drew’s statement

still applies. “It has to do with the Slothmouth.” It’s like a giant puzzle and I’m trying to

connect all the pieces. It could be just randomness. The way our brains try to figure a

pattern in the noise. I want it to make sense because if the tape is something supernatural

— if it can be proven — then so must be the Slothmouth. If we find her, couldn’t it

explain Tomás? Then she could let me speak one last time with my mother? Her ghost,

something. I diagnose myself, scolding myself for abandoning the empirical method. I


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exorcise my crazy thoughts by shaking my head.

“Can I listen to it,” I say. “Would it work on me?”

“Totally,” Drew says.

“I got in so much trouble to get that tape,” Mikey says, snatching it back. The pink

burns on his ears indicate he’s blushing. “My parents caught me sneaking out after

curfew. We had a huge fight but Dad was gone the next morning. So I acted like nothing

happened. Mother punished me anyway. I’d be grounded to this day if it weren’t for —

never mind, it doesn’t matter. Let’s say we had a fight. It wasn’t even the worst of it.”

“Whit does it huv tae dae wid the Slothmouth?”

Mikey’s becomes uncertain. He breaks off and walks down Bridge Street. We

confirm confusion in each other’s faces. We’ve no other choice but to follow him,

threading through the bustle, single-file.

A sliver of a moon rises over a rock hill referred by the locals as Arthur’s Seat.

Bleak from its attempt to shine on the hilly dome, it remains a black mass.

We’re all left in the dark.

“The trouble with mothers is you only have one,” I propose. “When they abandon

us, we have no replacement.”

The hipster doesn’t reply. He doesn’t understand. Maybe his mother is quaint,

kicking about after all these years. Maybe she possesses only unconditional love for him.

Maybe he has no idea what it means to be abandoned. However did I believe he could


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help us? But Mikey heard me through the crowd, his head half-cocked, thinking. He turns

back to us, charging up and shoving his face into the hipster’s.

“You know, my Mother’s such a faker, she’s always playing a part,” he says. “If

she’s not the center of it all, she’s gotta shit all over me. I hung Sue Clowes’s shirt over

my desk. She made it for me and I really did like that shirt. It was my trophy.” He pounds

his chest, flat-palmed. “My family doesn’t have a lot of money, we couldn’t afford to buy

another. Mother tore it down when I was at school. She scrubbed it with a Brillo pad until

it bled all over the front. She ruined her B12 bomber.” A moan settles in his bones. “She

did it on purpose. She did it just to hurt me. If she knew about the tape, she’d have

destroyed it too.”

“Nae nae, yeh dinnae understand me, lad,” Mr. Owain said. His hands pray over his

chin with interlocking fingers. “Whit does the tape huv tae dae wid the Slothmouth?”

Mikey’s unable to reply. His tin expression ticks as he cools down.

“The girl who sings on the tape,” Drew says, eager to help his brother out. “She’s

the Slothmouth. That’s what the hippy — that what your brother told us.”

“Aye, mah brar’s ah biscuit-ersed eeejit,” he says. His accent a thicket of baroque

word-like things. He’s indecipherable the more passionate he becomes. “Nae Slothmouth

yir lookin’ ferd. ’Tis ah lass fea Grangemouth. Quine sings ah ded braw puirt-à-beul.”

We continue down the sidewalk. Slower, ambling now. We pass a Tesco’s express

across from my university. I toy with the silence and contemplate the hipster’s message. I


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can’t make heads of it and wait for Drew to translate for the rest of us.

“What did he say?”

“Well, he said his brother’s an idiot.” Sure enough he interprets what he’s heard. I’m

a little envious how he wields uncanny understanding like a battle-axe. “He was wrong,

she’s not a Slothmouth. There’s no such thing. The girl on the tape’s from Grangemouth.

They sound alike, we all misunderstood. She speaks in tongues. Nope, no that’s not right.

We’ve never heard her speak, so…she sings in tongues.” He taps Mr. Owain’s elbow. “Is

that what a puirt-à-beul is?”

“Aye,” he says, taken aback. His posture stiffens, standing more at attention. “Yir ah

fooking ruffian, aren’t yeh.” He pats him on the head and sends me a wink. “Ah wis guan

tae charge yeh ferd that sort uv info.”

“You shouldn’t have given it so freely,” I say, surprising myself. I returned a retort

so swiftly. I’m compelled to wink back and he snickers.

“Ha,” Drew says. “She got you.”

I should talk back more often.

We cut through Nicholson Square gardens. The long, burnt-out grasses tickle my

ankles. Amber lit streets trick me to think we’re floating through honey. The city roads

and alleyways filled with golden rivers of arc-light, gilding the old buildings, flickering

upon their stones with soft fire. On automatic, I turn left onto Pottersrow.

Together, we ask Mr. Owain.


233

“Where can we find the Slothmouth,” I ask.

“Where in Grangemouth does she live,” Mikey asks.

“Does she still live there,” Rory asks.

“How do we get there,” Drew asks.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “It’s too late fer yeh lot. We’ll find oot ah half-seven the

morns morning.”

We stop in front of stone stairs that lead up to a familiar door.

“Ms. Stewart.” The hipster tips his head in greeting.

“Mr. Owain,” she says.

I look around and we’ve made our way back to my dormitory. I’ve led us here

without realizing. It takes me a moment to catch the two greeted each other. The hipster

had figured it out and had the foresight to call ahead. How’d he figure I stayed in this

dormitory? How did he know to call Ms. Stewart? These are not the questions I should be

concerned with, those are coming soon enough. But here we are. I’ve come full circle and

am back at the start. My mind tumbles but my body’s tired and peckish. I’ll have to wait

until we set off tomorrow. Until then, it’s nice to be taken care of.

“Get on inside, wash up for dinner,” Ms. Stewart says. “Boys too, yir welcome to

stay here with us. Yeh’ll be staying in the rooms doonstairs.”

⁂

“What did he say?”


234

“This is us on the M9, driving up the Firth of Forth,” Drew yells.

Mr. Owain informs us the firth is a bay inlet and empties into the North Sea but we

cannot see it from the motorway. The air snaps around us in the cold morning grey, the

windows are rolled all the way down. Against all reason. Rory and Mikey hunker down

in back of the hipster’s vintage-emerald Morris WF truck. The passage between the cab

and the flatbed is also open. We talk through it, Drew relaying messages between us. He

sits indian-style, his back against the window, hovering over everyone like an exhilarated,

baby Buddha. His cloak wrapped comfortably around yesterday’s clothes.

I sit inside the cab next to Mr. Owain.

I’m swaddled in my dorm blankets I dragged out of bed with me. I hug my

backpack for a pillow. It’s still prepared from the morning before. I couldn’t leave behind

the record that I bought from Unknown Pleasures. Nor can I stop looking at the picture of

my mother. She is locked within a mighty bliss, one I recognize from when she practiced

her Viola. She exists only in this sepia world, held forever by the chord she plays when

the picture was taken. Only this moment, only that chord.

I bet it’s C-Major.

She’ll never get older. She’ll never succumb to her electric end. I trace her cheek

and wish I could feel the warmth of her skin. Mr. Owain doesn’t ask what I’m doing. He

stays focused on the road.

“How’d you convince Ms. Stewart to let me come along?”


235

“Took nae convincing. A lady uv her years knows when tae take ah stand an when

tae let the wee lass seek oot her oan demons tae battle.” He glances from beneath a brim

of a plaid bunnet (we call them golfing caps). He flashes a knowing look. “I’m tae be

your chaperon. Here tae watch over yeh. I gave her ah promise and she geis the address

uv her sister-in-law’s B&B. She told me when she expected yeh all tae be back.

Tomorrow. Sunday, 4pm sharp.”

I contemplate if my demons are metaphorical or actual. Are they still imaginary?

“Does she think I’m possessed?”

“After ah fashion,” he says. “Aren’t we awl?”

“You think those boys have demons,” I say. “You called them bufties.”

We travel for a few miles without speaking. Old snow and black ice piles up on the

side of the highway the further we travel outside of the city. Mr. Owain remains quiet, so

I’m left to pick up the pieces.

“How can you be a chaperon unless you watch over every one of us?”

“Yir blootered,” he says. As he considers my question, it twists a screw in his head.

“Isnae right, nae in the eyes uv Goad A’michty. Ach! Ah’ve seen whit he’ll dae tae them.

Cursed an tormented. Such ah lonely life.”

“Yesterday, I wanted to go back home,” I say trusting my bravery. “Back to my

father. I’ve never had any friends at University. I’m lonely and only have my studies,

buried under my books. Like I’ve been asleep all this time. Did God curse me too? For


236

the first time in a long time — since years ago, since I lived in Spain — I had somebody

to talk to. Yesterday it’s like I woke up from a nightmare. An empty, senseless life. I’ve

been waiting at cliff’s edge, waiting for the wind to carry me off.”

The hipster listens, unsatisfied, scrunching his lips.

“Isn’t that worse,” I ask. “Than being a bufty?”

“Naw, yir nae like’m.”

“I keep reviewing how I came to Scotland,” I say. “I endured a constant tugging of

my heartstrings. Like there’s this thread that has been twisting within me, begging me to

come here. I hoped that starting over would give me a new life. I can tell you the logistics

and the hows-and-whens but they don’t reveal how I ache. I’m still a sad, lonely kid. If it

pulls on my heart too much, I’ll become unravelled.”

“The thread pulled yeh apart?”

“Not yet.” I shake my head. “It’s not what I want for myself.”

“Aye,” he says. “Thas ah fate worse’n living.”

“I’m not suicidal, you know.” I recollect the girl’s song in front to the Scottish

Poetry Library. “It’s just that I never really learned to soar at all.”

“Me neither, lass.” Mr. Owain nods assertively. “Me neither.”

There’s so much air between us I could stretch out and sleep. Confessing lets me

breathe. Fills my lungs up with the icy air. I relax into my warm bundle and let my eyes

droop. Lorries pass us on the right with thunderous, muscular splashes. Mr. Owain drives


237

his Morris WF slowly into the left lane, careful to keep his cargo safe.

“Sit yeh fooking doon back there,” he says. “An haud oan.”

The hipster has a foul mouth but a fair heart, yes. I haven’t convinced him of

anything, yet he’s protective of us. He’s the last member of our unlikely union after all.

An important one. An oracle linking us to the next impossible answer. He’s a retrograde

riddle, where we have all the answers but he divines who we should seek out to quiz next.

To find the source of the song on the tape, he drives us into Grangemouth.

My eyes are heavy.

“Whit happen’d then,” he asks. “Yesterday.”

“I stood on the top of castlehill, amongst a crowd of strangers and the usual tourists,

and asked the sky for a real friend.”

“Your prayers came true,” he says. “Is that how yeh found us?”

I ponder his question, not sure how to answer. I examined at the clouds and asked

for well being. Did I pray? Did it come true? I close my eyes, letting my words drift out

dream-like.

“That thread led me down the hill. When I stood up and walked my own path, the

way opened up to me.” I hear the hipster purr and coo. The truck’s rocking is a cradle.

“Everything since is filled with deep significance, a familiar premonition and energy. It’s

like fate and yet… I’m not that kind of person.”

“Religious,” he asks.


238

“Hopeful.”

⁂

The salt in the atmosphere wakes me up.

I’ve come home again — Scotland is the opposite of homesick — it’s like I’ve

always been here. The emerald truck takes us off the M9 at the Falkirk exit and we ride a

roundabout.

I twist to look back at the truck-bed and long to hold Drew’s hand. It surprises me

how reassuring it is, the physical contact. How I’ve longed for it for so many years. If it

is not fate, are the brothers an answer to my prayer? Is it a blessing or a curse?

Drew sits hunched over his Monster Manual, studying the book with deep intent, a

hand on each of the top two corners. I regard his calm and confidence, radiating from a

kid so much younger than me. Do we lose these traits with age or do our scars cover them

up? Courage grows strong on the wound. It is a lovely thought.

“Rory wants to know if we’re almost there,” Drew says.

“Aye laddies,” Mr. Owain says. “Almost.”

The boys huddle into a burst of conversation. They work on a plan of attack as boys

do. Drew puts away his book and hunkers down with them.

“Miss Francesca,” Mr. Owain says. He adjusts the rear-view. “Before we arrive at

our destination — Ah been pondering what yeh said earlier — may Ah ask yeh ah

question?” He doesn’t wait. “Yir an alright lass I promise yeh that…but dae yeh believe


239

yir radge?”

“Sometimes I think I’m barking mad,” I say, nodding. “Howling.”

“Are yeh depressed?”

“It’s not like I feel down.” I flip my mother’s record over, hiding my mom. “I lost

the best part of me when…I lost my spirit. I haven’t bothered to get it back. I’ve kept

myself this way. That’s crazy, right? There are days I implore anyone to notice, not to

pass me up. Nobody listens. You see, I float through life as if I were a ghost, vacant and

shipwrecked, haunting myself.”

“Yeh goat yehself ah screw loose,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Isnae bad, ken? It means yeh goat flow.” I shake my head. “Slip intae places others

cannae. Keek the world from another side.” The underbrush of his accent also grows

thick when he’s got something important to share. “Aye?”

I shrug, holding my palms, offering up my puzzlement.

“Naw, I guess nae,” he says. As he did with Mikey in Unknown Pleasures, he slows

down so I can navigate his meaning. “If yeh goat yir heid locked doon so tight, nothing

gets through. Yir nae longer permeable.” Chemistry terms snap up my attention. “Nae

thought gets in nor oot. Yir insides become sour, yir outsides harden. Nae wonder yeh

think yir invisible, hau does anyone see yeh?”

He commands a knowledge about the darkness kicking behind my screens.


240

“They don’t,” I say. “I can’t do anything about it.”

“A screw loose means yir radge enough tae see the world as it is,” Mr. Owain says.

“So yeh might as well let yir heid open wide. Whatever in life comes yir way, it’ll flow

right through. Troubles an heartache, luv an laughter, the bad wid the good. If yeh can

flow, yeh float. When yeh can float then Ah know yeh’ll soar.”

“Here’s whit Ah’ve be thinking. A life lesson. The way yeh like’m taught. Listen

here, if yeh dunnae take care ah that.” He points to the record laying face-down on my

knees. “If yeh bottle it up inside an dunnae untangle — whit yeh said afore — dunnae

unravel yir mess, then yeh get stuck inna bog ah shite.”

“See that seabird, she’s the Great Egret,” he continues. Grey beaches of the Firth

reveal themselves as the Morris WF approaches the shore. The squall of white birds circle

and glide over the water. “When plastic’s caught ‘round her waders an wings, that shite’ll

anchor her down. She’ll nae be able tae fly. The moar she ignores it, the moar rubbish,

seaweed, or tardabs stick tae her feathers. There’s nae way she can carry all that shite

around. She willnae find any food. She’ll weaken an be swept intae the North Sea where

she’ll die.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Listen lassie, moar ah us gae doon that way

than yeh’d expect.”

I marvel at Mr. Owain and think on his advice.

A peek-a-boo of black chop cuts up the main shipping channel. I gulp down the

briny aroma from the seaside. It’s strong now, I stick my head out the window. Tops of


241

cargo ships etch squares into the sky. Over a bridge we fly, over train tracks we merge

onto Bo’ness Road and drive into a residential area.

I howl out the window.

Drew turns around and howls along with me. Heaven love him.

“Sssh, sssh,” Mikey hushes us but we ignore him.

Mikey pins his right ear down with a fist. He’s trying to keep the earwig out. I hear

the sound of buoys and the grinding of far-off barges on the wind. The murmur between

Mikey and Rory continue to whisper behind us.

When we stop at a traffic light, I watch a creek idle through a gully of snowfall.

Lines of trees. Old houses both of yellowing flagstones and new brick border either side.

The engine complains as we sit and wait. I climb back in the cab. Past the vanishing point

of the road, vapor drifts up from tiny smokestacks rising up as tall as spires. The town’s

so familiar, ancient houses of a seaside town much like Benalmádena. I’m washed in an

ease that I cannot deny. That soothing sense of belonging. I can open up, open wide, and

share my theories with Mr. Owain.

“Why did you volunteer to chaperon us?”

“Ah love me ah guid mystery,” he says.

“That’s not an answer,” I say. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“Alrigh’ tell us why yeh came.” He turns the question around on me. “Ah’mnae

wizkid but yeh been keeping secrets.”


242

The light turns green and I feel like the moment’s nearly lost.

“I know about Finah, the girl Mikey spoke about. I know what she was. I’ve run

into her sort before. I had a Fine Friend, too, after my mom —” If I don’t get this out

now, I’ll always be holding it in. Mr. Owain’s correct. I show him Rita on the sleeve of

the LP. “She died and I’m begging to get her back. Afterwards Tomás came to me an

nobody could see him either. It’s hard to admit but isn’t an imaginary friend a lie we tell

ourselves?” The hipster doesn’t kibosh me. Not even sure he heard me. “I don’t know

why but we’re all connected. Mikey and me. Both of us Americans — we’re both from

Florida — and we meet in Scotland. And each of us had our own Fine Friend. How does

that even happen? Cursed by music, Mikey and the earwig. Me and this record I bought

in your shop, my mom and her orchestra. Concerto Málaga. Why does she come to me

now? It’s all tied together, it must be connected. I’m here because —”

The truck stops in a car park.

A joyful sign announces: Grangeburn House - Bed & Breakfast.

How often do moments of consequence get stolen away by timely arrivals. I hold

my breath, waiting to get the last words out. They hitch in my esophagus. After Mr.

Owain engages the parking break and unbuckles his seatbelt, he leans over.

“Because, my lass,” he says, whispering. “Not awl things are seen in this world.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Like yir mother. The mark she left when yeh lost her.”


243

“I’m here because,” I say. “I haven’t said goodbye.”

“And yeh’ve goat yerself locked in yir heid so tight.”

“So I’m stuck.” Like his Great Egret. “And I can’t get on with it.”

TOP OF THE STAIRS

We stand outside the Slothmouth’s house.

The winds have changed. Whiffs of sulfur float past like rotten ghosts from oil

refineries hidden behind the house rows. The brothers stand together at the wall along the

car park. They discuss privately, animating their hands, pointing and stabbing in wild

gestures. Rory and I hang back on the street curb, waiting and not speaking to each other.

“Let’s go,” Mikey says.

“We can’t leave now,” Drew says. “We’ve only just got here.”

“Nobody’s here, they’re out,” he says. “Can’t you see the driveway’s empty for

Christsake. C’mon now, Drew, and let’s beat it.”

The house at 4 Abbot Street is covered in leafless vines that crawl into crimson

eaves. The property has no front yard unlike those in Florida. Absent are spring grasses

and palm trees, instead bricked pavement surrounds the building. Hardscape. The

neighborhood’s hovering between trodden and charming. I search the windows for any

flash of activity. Panes remain dark, reflecting Fiats and Volkswagens when they flutter


244

past. If we weren’t hunting sirens or monsters or whatever lives beyond those slender

doors, I’d say the house is a comforting place to live.

Mikey grabs Drew’s arm, trying to drag him away to the street. We watch them

fight, not sure how to intervene. When he struggles with his brother, Mikey’s reactions

rage into over-exaggeration. His face and neck plump purple. He’s fighting with more

than his brother. He’s fighting the fear of what lay beyond those doors.

“Let me go,” Drew says. “I want to know if she’s in there.”

Drew breaks free, runs to the house, and doesn’t look back before he knocks. Mikey

scampers over to us and slaps open hands on his trousers.

“Can’t you see what I have to put up with? This boy —”

He cuts himself off from some realization.

I mentally reach out to Drew. I want him to find the Slothmouth. When he does, I

imagine she’s waiting for us. To the boys, she reveals the matter-of-fact behind Finah’s

curse. How to end the earwig. Will she also unveil the way back to Tomás? “Oh, you

must find him. He’s got an important message from your mom. She’s not dead and he

knows where to find her. She’s been waiting all these past few years and she’s dying to

hold you.” I shake my heads to get the clouds out. I know better.

A thin door opens. I listen for any syllable, any message that may give us a hint.

Drew talks to a shadowy silhouette no more than thirty seconds then the door closes. As

he heads back to us, his face is neither grave nor giddy. No indication to what his short


245

conversation might have entailed.

“What’d you say,” Rory asks.

“There’s no girl that lives here,” he replies. “Never has been.”

“Mr. Owain told us —” I hold onto hope the way I grasp the few shifting facts

before me. “— the cassette came from here. Didn’t he tell us that?”

“He’s wrong,” Mikey says. “Not the first time we’ve hit a dead-end.”

Both brothers’ shoulders slouch. Another shockwave to the great search. They turn

to leave, walking back the way we’ve come. Drew kicks a stone into the street.

“Wait,” I say.

Denying there’s no leads, I can’t concede we’ve just arrived to some dull house

lining a typical suburban street. The Slothmouth must be behind those slim doors.

Not all things are seen in this world.

I scan the building over. Inside the upstairs window a flash catches my eye,

reminding me of lightning. Tingles shoot down my spine. I swear somebody’s sitting

behind the pane of glass. I hold steady, peering at the drapes, watching if they move.

My breath’s a solemn specter in this arctic weather.

“Maybe they were lying.” I don’t shift my eyes, keeping them trained on the

window. “Could be others who’ve tracked down the tape — if it is as exceptional as you

claim it is, making you cry unconditionally — we may not be the first to come here.

People need to know about the supernatural. Especially, if it explains their way in the


246

world. Maybe these folks lie to prevent unwelcome guests.”

“Maybe they’re new owners,” Rory says. “We could track down the last ones.”

“Maybe we got the wrong house,” Drew says.

“Shut-up guys,” Mikey says. “There ain’t no use.”

“We should go back and see.”

Hope can be shared.

“I said shut the fuck up, Franny.”

⁂

I’m fuming when we get back to Grangeburn House.

The boys lock themselves in their room, I’m too ramped up to be contained by

mine. I’m a whirlwind of fury. I leave my stuff behind, slamming the door behind me so

hard the chimes from a hanging-pendulum clock shimmer from the vibration. I hover in

front of their door. I’m charged up, ready to let Mikey have it.

I knock three quick raps. No answer. I listen at the door but can’t hear anybody

talking or moving inside. I fumble at the doorknob. It’s locked.

“Nobody’s ever talked to me that way,” I shout through the door. “Nobody.”

My anger twists hot inside me. They left me behind. These aren’t the way of real

friends. Where’d they go without me? Ultimately I don’t think I like these boys, they’re

fair-weather friends. At least imaginary ones are at my constant command. Fine Friends

have strings to pull.


247

“Why didn’t you ask me to come along?”

I storm off downstairs, out the house. I find myself walking north, looking for the

Firth of Forth. I’m make my way along Grangeburn Road, following the water channel

that runs beside it. Salt breezes tussle my curls and chill my cheekbones, until I arrive at

fences and stop at the seaport gates. Behind them, a wall of freight boxes. They wall off

hulking-metal cranes wading by water’s edge, waiting for containers to transport. The

shore too far outside my reach. I survey the marshy field behind me and conclude I’m

running away.

Old habits are hard to scrape off.

I contemplate leaving Grangemouth, altogether. Why should I stay? There’s nothing

keeping me here. I should know better than to leave my studies. The whole trip has been

an exercise in fantasy, a rollercoaster ride. I’m worse than I was before. I’m a practical

creature. Alone, yes, but at least I knew how to protect myself.

“This is why I keep others at a distance.” As much as others stay away from me.

I cry out to the steel cranes. They stand motionless, caring not one iota either. I

don’t want to be here and don’t know how to get home.

“Which home,” I ask myself. “Do I even have one anymore?”

Dropping to the side of the road, I lay in dried heather, quaking. I let it all out, the

tears, the frustration. Shockwaves come in three. Anger at being abandoned. Shame of

locking myself up inside. Fear I’ve lost my spirit forever. I let it all out for several


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minutes. I let it out until there’s quiet. A silence after a storm. Only spent thistles of

heather rattle behind my head, catching in my curls like a crown.

“Help me find my way home,” I say to the sky. “Please.”

When I’m ready, I stand back up, brush myself off, and pick the twigs out of my

hair. The street’s empty, not even the wind whistles. I retrace my trail back to the B&B

and head upstairs to gather my things. Bundling up my dorm blankets, they’re too bulky

to go in the backpack so I tie them on the straps. I lift the backpack on one shoulder and

head out. I’ll find a bus back to Edinburgh.

Don’t forget the record. Don’t leave Concerto Málaga behind. It’s leaning against

the dresser. But I don’t bother to go back inside. I don’t retrieve the record — too much a

reminder of my mom’s death — again I turn my back on her. I lock her in the bedroom,

my hand is shaking when the key slides into the lock. My mind tumbles over it, not able

to let it go. A familiar scratching in my head. It’s a punishment I’m doing to myself. I

twist the doorknob and re-enter the bedroom, snatching back Concerto Málaga.

Down the stairs, I hear conversation and halt midway. I'm suspended between riser

seven and eight. I stay mid-step for as long as I can until my knees shake underneath the

pressure of unsprung anxiety. I turn around, sneaking back up to the top of the stairs. It’s

Mr. Owain. He’s speaking to the innkeeper, Ms. Stewart’s sister-in-law. He addresses her

as Alison. I can’t see them. They exchange pleasantries as clear and icy as the sky

outside. She asks him if he’d like a tea.


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“Dat’ll warm us up,” she says. “Won’t it?”

“Oh, aye. Still…if Ah may, Ah’d rather yeh geis ah pint.”

“Will a McEwan’s do?”

She walks down the hallway. Mr. Owain knocks about in the sitting room, he drops

something and exclaims with a regretful “Awe, shite.” I can’t go down there. He can’t see

me leave, not after all he’s done. I take off my backpack and lean it on the banister, lay

the record on top. I squat down slowly and sit on the riser.

“Come dis way, Mr. Owain,” Alison says when she comes back. “Let’s get in front

of dah fire.” I don’t see them which means they don’t see me. I detect Alison has a gentle

accent but can’t place it. I reckon somewhere between Aberdeen and Skye, which is no

guess at all. I could say she’s was raised in a town between New York and Seattle and

have the same odds at being correct.

The hipster and the innkeeper exchange small talk and the gentle notes of fine

china. Reminds me of tea-time after the The Diplomat returns from work. The thought

relaxes me a bit. I stretch my legs out while they talk about the weather.

“You’re here to see dah Bizarte family?”

“Oh aye,” Mr. Owain says.

“What misfortunes dey’ve suffered,” Alison says. “Tsk, tsk. Such pain. Why on

earth would you want to see dem?”

“Tae talk tae their daughter,” he says. “Ah think she’ll help us.”


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“Nobody speaks to dah Bizarte girl,” Alison says. “Nobody can even get close to

her. Her poor father, Mr. Bizarte, couldn’t stand to live wid’dem no more. Left dose boys

alone to take care of dere tormented sister.”

I knew it, I was right. They did lie to Drew.

Talk of monumental things exchanged in the most casual of settings. Passed

between them as dawdling chit-chat. Just another idle Saturday morning at the B&B. A

long pause downstairs is punctuated by another tink. A teacup set in a saucer.

A cat runs an escape route from the sitting room. He stops when he sees me, paw

outstretched. The mid-stairs have a way of stopping travelers. He’s either about to greet

me or scratch me. The animal considers his options with a cougar scowl and decides to

amble up the remaining steps. Like he’s just come in from the sands of Egypt. I keep

myself still. He smells my shoes, my ankles, and climbs into the tunnel created by my

legs against the stairs.

I’ve got to trust in me. Who knows what’d happen if followed my hunches more. I

peek at the boys’ door when a bedspring yawns from behind it. The cat hunkers down

until no other noise kicks up from their room. He rubs his jawline against my fingers. I

stroke the backside of his coat which make his eyes squishy.

He begins to purr.

“Why cannae we speak tae her?”

“No one understands what she says. Who knows? She had a stroke, she hit her head,


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she’s retarded. Some folks in town even believe she’s touched by God’s hand. ‘She

speaks in His tongue,’ day say. What do dey know? What makes dem so certain? In dah

islands — I grew up in Barbados — we heard of cases where children made up dere own

language. We didn’t think dey were possessed. Not subject to some voodoo hijinks like

they do around dese parts. Dey were just playing around, full of imagination, see? But dis

girl’s different. She wants to communicate. She wants us to understand her.”

Alison talks about the islands and I thought she meant the northern isles of

Scotland, the outer Hebrides. I misplaced her accent, she’s from the Caribbean.

“May I?” I hear the hipster flick a lighter. The smoke downstairs carries a

peppermint aroma. Mr. Owain’s smoking a pipe. “Yeh’ve seen the lass?”

“I’ve heard her sing,” she says. “From behind an oaken door.”

“Hmph.” Mr. Owain sighs.

“Did they ever take her tae the doctors,” Mr. Owain says.

“They can’t diagnose her. Head-shrinks don’t help. The priests won’t have anything

to do wid’dem.” Alison clears her throat. “No soul passes into 4 Abbot, none go into her

room. Her brothers keep her locked up, you know, for her safety. We haven’t seen dem

youngsters all year — don’t think anyone else has either — too much gossip. Too many

rumors. Dey don’t go out unless dey have to.”

Why’d lock her in that house? My heart reaches out to her, she must be as alone as I

am. How desperate she must be to find rescue. At least I may come and go as I please, but


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both our pain is a cage. We’re locked inside it.

Shadows play under the slot of the boys’ door. When it opens, Drew comes out

wrapping his cloak like a bed-sheet. He walks over after I wave to get his attention. Drew

crouches next to me sweeping his cloak around himself. He rubs his eyes and yawns wide

enough to show me his tonsils. Mikey and Rory don’t come out. I wrestle a long peek

through the open door but don’t see any sign of them.

I lift a leg to show him my new friend. The cat looks up, gauges the situation for

danger, readies a leap. He relaxes when Drew pets the nape of his neck, shrugging before

he curls up and tucks his face under his front foot.

“This whole town knows about the Slothmouth,” I whisper.

“How,” he asks. “Why?” His words are drowsy slurs. It’s no surprise I didn’t wake

him earlier when I banged the door. He slept right through it.

“They are talking downstairs,” I say. Touching my bottom lip: remain quiet. There’s

no easy way to keep from hushing him, aware how stifled he must feel being told to

constantly shut-up. “We should have done our research, found out more about the girl.”

Drew cups his hand over my ear and whispers too loudly for me to understand.

“Just talk normal,” I say.

“You mean the Slothmouth?”

“We went to their house and likely frightened them,” I catch him up with what I

overheard. “That poor family. Their house must get egged or spray-painted with nasty


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phrases.” I imagine a hundred other things that kids like us could do.

“Not from me,” Drew says. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.”

“How are we going to get inside their house,” he asks. “If they don’t come out and

they don’t let anyone in, how do we talk to the Slothmouth?”

Before I answer, Mr. Owain asks: “An her Maw?”

“Just terrible,” Alison says. We can’t decipher anything, just the dust shifting from

whispers. The last phrase rings out. “She’s dead.”

The Slothmouth is like the rest of us. Motherless and her father’s gone. I may have

had a few bad months after my mom’s funeral but at least I reconnected with the

Diplomat. Silverlinings are apt to adorn my misery.

“What will you do,” Alison asks.

“The young lad has — how’d yeh say it — he suffers ah similar ailment.” Mr.

Owain says. “Been looking fer the wee quine, hoping she’s the cure. An followed her trail

ferd awhile. Mikey, the boay, tells me he’s afflicted three years now.”

“He speaks in tongues?”

“He hears ah forever song,” he says. “A gift uv the Daoine Sìth.”

“Mr. Owain, please now,” she says. “Those ole folktales.” Her laugh is harsh. “No

sir. How could he have? He’s been lyin’ to you.”

Drew stands up, his tiny jaw is set. The shift within him is sudden. Saltwater in his


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eyes wells up to a point where his tears are two perfect, sparkling sequins. One on each of

his lower eyelids. This is the proof of a real friend. The unconditional love for his brother

so commanding, he’s about to burst downstairs to defend him.

I want that for me.

“Ah’ve spoken tae these weans. Not just the lad, but also Franny,” he says. “Ah get

shivers tae know it. Both uv them come across’m. Both uv them. How can that be unless

she’s lying, likesee.” He doesn’t have any reason to believe me. I heard Mikey’s story the

same time he did. For all he knows, I could be making things up. Still it winds me up to

be accused of it. “They’ve goat their oan name fer Daoine Sìth. Caws them ah Fine

Friend. Disnae it remind yeh uv the Good Folk?”

“What did he call them?” Drew looks down at me with a frown. “Before when he

said Din…Din. I didn’t hear what he said.”

“Best I can tell is Din-yeh-shee.”

Might’ve been the hipster’s thick accent encroaching into the conversation. Alison’s

response tells me that isn’t so. From the timber of her tone becomes as grave as black

soil. A lament spilled from her mouth are condolences saved for funeral parties. In it I

hear both skepticism and reverence intertwining together.

“You think dese young babes have seen Men beneath dah Mounds.”

“Ah dae,” he says. “Whatever yeh caw’em in modern times.”

“You could call them any number of things,” she says. “Could be schizophrenia.


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Could be hallucinations. Newspapers report kids using LSD, in clubs and in universities.

Like I said before, dey have overactive imaginations.”

“Ah cannae shake it,” he says. “Ah ask yeh how dae they see them in diff’rent parts

uv the world an never met? They’ve goat nae fighting chance against the Daoine Sìth.

Shite woman, yeh and Ah huv come into contact wid them an we huvny chance. Yeh

heard the Bizarte bairn sing? Yeh cried, dinnae yeh?”

I sense a dark message passes between the two. Their talk spooks me and Drew

reaches out for my hand to retrieves it. He places it within his nest of fingers deep inside

his cloak.

“You believe dem?”

Her words hover low to the ground.

“I cannae deny the imagination uv ah child. What’s real tae them is real enough fer

me,” he says. “Oh yea, Ah believe them. Hau can we not?”

“Enough of dese Faerie tales,” she says.

I can’t make out what they’re saying again. Muddy whispers disguise their

conversation. I picture they’ve leaned in towards each other, ear to mouth and mouth to

ear, so only the crackle of the fire-logs interrupts them.

“They have their own stories,” I say. “We’ve all come across a Fine Friend.”

“Even you?” I nod and Drew knows my secret, too. “What’s it mean?”

Since Tomás, I’ve built a wall around me. Full of empirical truths and undeniable


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proofs. All of my bookworms couldn’t stay away my foreboding that he was real. We

shared confessions in the bathroom stalls at school, told each other jokes traveling to

Doña Dolce, played boardgames before I fell asleep at night. If I made him up, it doesn’t

matter anymore because he was real enough for me. He was my truest confidante and I

abandoned him, just how my mom did to me.

The coincidence of how our paths intersect — me, the brothers, the conversation

downstairs, the thoughts in my head — disturbs me. Pushing me past the boundaries of

my science textbooks and high-school encyclopedias. The things not taught in school.

Ohrwurms and Slothmouths, Fine Friends and Daoine Sìth. In all of their super-

connectivity and unjust parallels, they’re briers that stick onto us and hold us together.

They cannot be seen in this world, yes, but it doesn’t solve my basic crisis. I can’t bring

back my mom. I can’t go back in time to reclaim our lives. So what’s the point?

There’s no way out of my destruction.

I start to shake. Alarm grows into a full panic attack. My breathing becomes labored

and I become hyper-aware of the inner-skin inside my lungs. The electricity within me

spreads out from my heart and gut. They run along rusty wires within me, traveling down

to my nerve-endings. I will always feel this way — and when I always feel this way — it

is worse than the release of death.

Drew loosens his grip and draws his cloak over my shoulders.

“Are you alright,” he asks. “Can I do anything to help?”


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“You can’t help me.”

I want to be angry with him. Lay into his cherubic face and slap his cheeks until

they go pink. Take out all my frustrations from the day, those caused by his brother,

stirring up everything that I’ve put away years ago. But how would I be different from

Mikey? This is not who I am. Closing my eyes, I talk myself down.

“We’re next to the Firth of Forth in the heart of Scotland. I am inside the

Grangemouth House B&B. Sitting on stairs, Drew is next to me. Panic attacks don’t last

forever. They’ve never killed anyone before. I’m safe and I am here.”

We sit together with the clockwork rhythm of the pendulum’s tick-tock. I regulate

my breathing to it. My panic levels-out, beginning its descent. I expound in medical and

mechanical terms, letting Drew know I’m alright. Still I’m queasy.

The cat decides to climb on top of me using cautious steps. Readjusting my legs to

let him lay down, he kicks me with his hind feet, playing. I raise my hands out of the way

so he can settle and he tucks himself in. A wealth of purring from such a small beast. As

the kitty’s paws knit, claws push into my jeans like acupuncture needles.

Mr. Owain lights his pipe again, peppermint plumes billow out the sitting room.

“I grew up with stories like dat in dah islands,” Alison says. “I believed dah stories

about Duppies like dey was real.”

“I’ve never heard ah Duppies,” Mr. Owain says.

“I almost forgot dem. How Duppies run around like real folks. Dey are like ghosts


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but dey don’t have sheets over dere heads or anything like dat.” She chuckles at the

thought. “I’ll tell you how it goes. You don’t wanna run into one because dey steal your

body. Jesus in heaven, how I feared dey would come from haunting dah beach to break in

my home. I worried dey’d find me in my bed and cut out my heart. Some nights I was

scared so much I stayed up until waking hours when all I could hear were Prairie

Warblers buzz and whistle.”

“Yea, yir heart’s racing,” Mr. Owain says. “Mind hau we were back then? We

didnae know who we wanted tae be, what tae dae when we grew up. Ah didnae realize

hau Goad-awfy the world wis. Blitzkriegs and V2 rockets, Americans in Vietnam,

napalm, and now Thatcher invading the Falklands. The things we dae tae each other. We

see it oan the telly.” He puffs on his pipe. “We tell stories tae wur weans tae make sense

uv the world.”

“When I came here with my folks, I was a girl,” she says. “I remember how foolish

I felt when I told dem stories to dey other children in school. How quickly I forgot dose

ghosts. You see, when girls grow up…” She sips her tea while she locates the right words.

“…we do it differently than boys. When I went to secondaries, we don’t remember dem

Faerie tales no more. We put all our wishes into boys, only boys. Place ourselves into

dem like dey are a treasure box dat holds our feelings safe. I learn dey ain’t like dat,

teenage boys are corrupt. But us girls are worse. We were wicked children. We just gossip

and plot behind each other’s back until we squander away all dem wishes.”


259

“But dae yeh go back tae look,” he says. “When yeh discovered yeh fergot yir

dreams?”

“We have babies, dat’s what we do. We tell dem babies how our hearts were cut out.

We bring back dem folktales about how dah Duppies steals dem. We mourn the loss of

girlhood in a different way because we’re dah ones who scrapped our dreams we made

for ourselves. I don’t like to say it but the cycle starts over again with dem babies. We

dote on them and we want to possess them like we want to steal their bodies. See? We

want to go back in time and for awhile we do. Live dey lives for dem. Until dey grow up

and leave us. In the end it’s hard to let go.”

“In the end it’s hard to let go,” Mr. Owain agrees.

Oh, to hear this wisdom divulged! The pressure generated when The Diplomat tries

to live through me, re-enacting some romantic notion he had with my mother. How he

wants me to walk in the footsteps he’s already tread on my behalf. I’m reassured that it’s

something all adults do, something they’re trying to reclaim: their childhoods.

I recognize it as the cliff-top I’ve been on. Once I jump I may not die but I won’t be

able to get back. I’ll be like them.

“I don’t know if you will understand,” I say. “But maybe you will one day.”

Drew’s eyes are slick orbs, receiving.

“I thought my mom abandoned me,” I say. “I don’t talk about her because when she

died I was young and my world got so much smaller. I didn’t say goodbye, I didn’t have


260

the chance because she died suddenly. But now I’m realizing, she’s the one I left behind

and I never looked back. I found ways to play by myself, to occupy the time with childish

things.” I explain about Tomás. “I remember I cried a lot. And I played with him a lot —

even when it felt like a dream — to avoid the fact how one day mom was tuning her

Viola downstairs and the next we buried her in a wooden box.”

“Have you ever told a grown-up?” Drew asks.

“Adults don’t like to talk about what they don’t understand.”

“Is that why you’re so quiet?”

Drew speaks now like we’re the ones sharing secrets.

He strums a chord directly inside me. A message from young Franny, the little girl

within me who just lost her mother, strikes out on its own. I cannot control how it flies

right through me. It travels along the reeds of my voice box, humming and grumbling,

until it breaches my strongest defenses.

“When you grow-up,” I say. “You must leave something behind.”

Drew thinks about what it could be.

“Your parents,” he asks. “You left your dad to go to school, right?”

“Yes that’s true, but what I mean is —”

I need to frame it differently, how a big sister would, imparting sound advice.

“You leave the magical world. You don’t know that because you’re still in it, Drew.

I’m convinced now I was exiled when I left Tomás behind. I no longer could make up


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songs, my musical talent — poof! — disappeared into thin air. I forgot my voice and I

don’t know how to be understood anymore. Since then I’ve been flighty, detached from

the world, satisfied to float right over it. Like I lost my soul,” I say, inhaling deeply. My

anxiety transmutes into irritation. “Doesn’t that make me a robot? Obey your teachers, do

your homework. Raise your hand, follow the instructions. Plan for the future and don’t

look back. Find a job, a husband, a house. Surrender to the daily grind, raise a family,

grow old until you die. I think I’m at the end of my rope.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I still see magic in you.”

The talk downstairs is loud when they debate, other times muffled when the two

share confessions. I’m desperate to be closer.

“We should sneak down so we can hear better.”

“No, Franny,” he says. “We should stay up here.”

“Why?”

“Because adults won’t talk about the secrets they don’t want us to hear.”

I wonder what other private conversations Drew has overheard. Plenty of squabbles

doled out by his Mother, I suspect. From what they’ve said, their home-life is rife with

disruption. My curiosity gets the better of me.

“Do you know what your parents fight about?”

“They argue over Mikey,” he says, shrugging. “Mostly.”

“What do they say,” I ask. He’s shaking his head, frightened about what he’s heard.


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He chews the cords that tie the cape around his shoulders, sucking on them until they are

wet. I squeeze his hands to reassure him. “It’s okay if you don’t want to say. I

understand.”

“Mother wants to ship Mikey off. To get rid of him,” he says. “Dad can’t do that,

because when you’re Air Force, family comes first. He’ll get in big trouble if they send

Mikey away. So Mother yells at dad and when he doesn’t get upset, Mother fights with

Mikey because she knows she can rile him up.”

“You love your brother,” I say. “I bet it hurts when he takes it out on you.”

“Because Mother does it to him.”

“Do you love your mom?”

He stares at me and I see him retract. He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t need tell me. I

regret saying it I soon as I ask it. Look how I’m not dealing with my own childhood

without a mom. Yet Drew suffers because he has a Mother. No matter our circumstance,

the probabilities never favor us.

“I don’t know how to make them get along,” he says, finally. “How do I keep

everyone safe.”

“You don’t,” I say. “Life’s not safe.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Yeah, it freaks me out,” I say. “I mean look at my mom. She’s dead and though I

don’t go to church — I can’t hardly believe that its true — I feel her with me. It’s weird


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but I swear I can hear her humming. Sounds like electricity in the wires. She’s has her

Viola ready and she’s about to play.” I grab his hands. “I keep asking myself the same

question. Why does she speak to me now?”

Drew’s young face is so wide. I can’t tell if half of what I’m saying sinks in. Yet

he’s listening. He’s sifting underneath my skin along with me, excavating the sharp bits,

searching for bones that hold me up.

“You hear things that weren’t there before.” Drew knows all about earwigs, for he’s

an expert. With the innocence of a child, he speaks though he were a sage. “Sometimes

you hear them for the first time, like they’re just introducing themselves.”

⁂

The downstairs discussion booms and sways. From what I can overhear, their talk is

now in the territory of friendly debate. No more sharing secrets.

“Listen,” I say. “We should go downstairs now. You still don’t want to?”

He shakes his head but I can’t tell if that means he does or doesn’t.

I lift the kitty gently in my arms when I stand up, he stares at me sweetly. I offer my

free hand to Drew. Before he takes it, he adjusts his cloak so it looks more like

Superman’s.

“In Barbados,” Alison says. “folklore is passed down through song.”

“In many cultures,” Mr. Owain adds.

“It’s funny how dah boundaries between us, real or imagined, how we think dey


264

separate us,” she says. “But dey don’t do dey? We all have monsters that creep into the

chambers of our hearts. We like to forget dem when we’re adults, but they knock about.

We do it to ourselves.”

“Ah don’t like tae forget, Ah like tae mind myself at that age. I miss it mostly. When

we wis bairns we possessed real magic. How the Daoine Sìth and Duppies are authentic

tae yeh an me. Ah’ve always liked that kind uv magic. Sometimes, Ah spy it in the kids

comin’ intae my shop.”

“What do you do now?”

He tells her about Unknown Pleasures.

“Weans come in all the time. Maybe one asks about ah song playing oan the

turntable. One Ah’ve played ’til the grooves gone shoddy. Mostly kids come in are

cynical, little shites. But once in while, a wide-eyed bairn comes by an gets the nerve tae

ask, ‘Who’s this then? Is this a new band?’ Ah enjoy the wonder when they discover

something auld but new tae them. So Ah tell them the epic tales about a band called Pink

Floyd. Maybe they come tae ask about Bowie — disnae matter who — an we have ah

chat about history making, whit came before, whit came that led to the modern-age. Awl

from whit I play them. Those notes uv mah childhood, echoing back tae me. I’m there

listening wid them, experiencing the songs fae the first time. Awl over again. Their eyes

light up and they are enlightened.”

“You could say that pop music is folklore,” she says.


265

“Aye, thas right, naw? It goes both directions,” he says. Revelation in his voice.

“When yesteryear children heard tales of Duppies and Daoine Sìth. They believed they

were real an learned the lessons about the traps them tricksters lay. Today when they hear

current rock stars, it’s their heroic songs shines ah light in their corner. Maybe if Ah help

a little — spread the gospel tae ward awf the fear uv the dark — maybe Ah can find ah

little uv me light Ah lost along the way.”

“I mourn for dem kids. Dey don’t know what’s real like we didn’t know what’s

real,” Alison says. Her dejection a counter to Mr. Owain’s hope. “Dey believe dey know

everything and dey don’t listen one bit.”

“Not the lot I came here wid…these bairns are wildly brave. Yea, they are

misunderstood, broken and precocious cunts — ah, sorry mum — but these fookers take

oan the whole world. Hats awf tae ‘em. They absorb council frae whomever will give it.

Shite, frae me an auld dodger. There’s naebody else — nae family worth ah pound uv

pish. They dae it tae survive, because they huv tae.”

“Or dey’ll be like everyone else. Dey’ll end up like us, won’t dey?”

“If they don’t listen, the world will eat them up.”


266

Chapter 9.

VIRIDESCENCE

Tomás, you say. Tell us about the wind.

“The winds of change,” I say. “Are not a threat. What is the wind but a way? A

creative force illuminating the passage between two worlds. The wind cannot remain still,

it must move to exist. When it does, watch it travel to a place with greatest potential. Can

you not feel it leave your skull when you squander an idea? Watch it carry the song you

forgot to write down to a songsmith who’ll put the notes to paper. The wind carries away

the daydream you squandered. The vision is not lost. It’ll seek an artist who’ll harvest the

image, painting pigment onto canvas. Every lost thought is a changeling cloud, the

wind’ll find it a home in another land. A crustacean invading from outer space, the

howling left by a cleaved heart, candy wielded as musical instruments.”

“You’ve watched those clouds pass you by when you decided to empty yourself of

your God-given light. Much easier to watch your sneakers peddle the pavement, isn’t it?

That’s where you belong, feet on the ground while you banish your head from the sky.”

“For the wind has followed me out of Franny. It cradles and caresses me because it

knows that I embody the most potential. The greatest sorcerer to conjure your forgotten


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fantasies. That song, those pictures, this story all will become true now that I’m free. I

can do anything, be anyone I want. The wind is at my beck and call.”

“Let us call the wind the voice of God. It has always been with me, urging me on,

keeping me alive. The wind is my true friend and I can feel it at my back. Haven’t you

heard me call it’s name?

“The wind is the Stormkeeper, my child.”

⁂

You’ll miss me, Franny, but I had to leave the nest.

To find my own way into the world.

In this tunnel or hallway, I’m blind to where I’m traveling. Organic knots and the

crooks of branches are rough beneath my fingertips. They are of indefinite length,

forming walls on all sides of me. I move only forward, towards the hallucinations my

eyes make when I try to see the randomness. They dance. Slick reflections bouncing

against black static.

I dig through the underground as much as I pass through it. I’m the rainwater

seeping through the clay. It makes for slow travel. Treading across dead leaves and scrolls

of bark, legions of overgrowth whip my face. Fallen branches enjoy my shins. My hands

are my eyes, my shoes are my scouts. Have I traversed light-years or yards? Have I been

walking for hours or decades? Stormkeeper at my back whispering in my ear to keep

going.


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Always keep going.

The first dead-end is marked by a door. I suffer so many closed doors. I run my

palms across its flat surface. Tracing along the edges, looking for the gaps. Lamp light

dribbles from the gap near the floor but it’s too weak.

The snow of darkness engulfs it.

When I left the back of Franny’s mind, the dark refused to show me where I

emerged. Nothing resembles the beach-sides south of Spain, nothing on Earth is so black.

No reason to put up pretense: this is my homeland. I’m born of this domain. Never am I

as vulnerable as when I’m trapped behind its borders. I stumble through its conceptual

space.

I’m a doe-eyed buck shy in the tiger-dream realm.

I stand at the threshold. It’s a real door this time, offering a way back to the world

outside. I know it and must find my way through it. My heart thumps on the skin of my

eardrums. Muffled sounds contemplate behind the door. I’m not surprised to hear a

familiar voice.

“Sweetest sweet, don’t leave me girl,” the Diplomat says. “Franny, no, please don’t

leave. But don’t come too close. How can I say this: I’m death to you girls. It’s my fault,

it’s all my fault. First it was your mother. Oh! I’ve lost Rita.”

“I should have bandaged the wires,” he says. “I should have repaired the air-

conditioner after it leaked on the floor. Your grandfather was right, I am arrogant. If we


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stayed in St. Pete, my love would be alive right now. Her smile, our happy family. Why

did I let her come to Spain?”

His voice frets, offering weak pleas to his daughter, the idea of his daughter.

“Francesca, I cannot lose you. We’ve already lost your mother. Please don’t leave

me, not yet. Now now, my sweetest sweet. Please don’t let me go.”

I listen to him repeat the same phrases, variations of worry. How can I feel sorrow

for him? Why does my heart bend at these confessions? This door leads to the back of the

Diplomat’s mind. Packed full with the freight of dread and panic. A family broken is my

kind of family indeed.

No truer are those words spoken so softly.

Fragrant with woe it reminds my tongue to salivate. My stomach grumbles at the

smell of his desolation. I don’t want to fade away, trapped unless I eat. These in-between

spaces evanesce me. I glide my hands over the door to find the handle. If the Diplomat

can be my way back into the world, I shall arrive with a full belly. When I twist the knob

I feel your hand on mine, Stormkeeper.

You say: this is not your door.

I turn the handle but the door is locked anyway.

“No,” I say. “Not the path for me, is it?”

I turn myself around to find another way. If I go back the way I came then I’ll walk

back into Franny’s fortress. The wind assures me I won’t end up trapped back inside the


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crown. My hands trace the hallway’s bumps and grooves, hunting for a new path through

this lightless maze. I bump into tree-trunks, my toes catch their roots. Low, twisted

branches scrape into my scalp. Leaking onto my forehead, my knuckles wipe the blood

off my brow.

You tell me I don’t have to do this to myself.

I walk through famine, progressing despite the unshakable fear that I will be

swallowed up here. Is it hours or weeks that roll by with every step?

The further I go, the more wildlife I encounter. The maze is a living forest.

Sometimes I lose myself in the chatter between locusts and cicadas. When I sleep I’m

awakened by the horns announcing the flight of geese. They know where to go, but I’m

lost in this dark labyrinth. There are no finches to greet the sunrise. No songbirds to sing

the day away. Can you hear the alarms rung out by the swinging monkeys when I come

near? Whole populations live inside this maze, each a different threat. Snakes and pumas

and insects and owls and alligators and foxes. How do they even navigate the darkness?

They will find and devour me, an end most repulsive to a Fine Friend.

I don’t know the scale of it, I just focus on the sagging trail beneath my feet,

dragging my fingertips against the tree walls, following the passage. Until my digits

begin to bleed.

You tell me I don’t have to be blind.

“How?”


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Bring out the items that you stole, you say.

“Stormkeeper, are you accusing me a thief,” I say. “I took what’s mine.”

I’d argue the injustice of the wind’s accusation but fatigue in my tendons overcome

the willingness. The jars in your pockets are not yours, you say, but you may use them as

long as you defend them with your life.

“The jars,” I say. “Of thunder and lightning?”

I’m comforted by the light’s shimmer, sparking from the wires. Amongst the trees,

they blink as fireflies, shining upon the edges of this world.

I stand in a passage lined by herds of trees. (I knew this already.) Yew trees are what

I’ve heard them called. Trees imbued with myth, used in religious parables because they

watch over us through the eons. Yews have massive trunks. Pylons holding up the

heavens. Rows upon rows of the behemoths line up, arms raised up to the sky, limbs

covered in black moss. Stairways of fungus travel up their bodies. When they arch their

branches, they lock hands creating hallways. The chambers left underneath become

pathways through the maze.

“Stormkeeper,” I say. “What is this forest?”

The Yewland.

Find gaps between their bodies, you say. They’re portals to other tunnels, they open

up to new passages and more groves. Stay on the path and avoid other travelers. Just like

legends always warn. You must find the way to the very end. There you will ghydiscover


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an unlocked door — it’s where you must go — the place which holds the greatest

potential. When you pass through it, you will find your way out the forest.

“I don’t understand the maze.”

Keep going, always.

⁂

My mind wonders when I wander. Just as yours does.

I may not be able to change my world but I can change who I am within it. The

future is mine to choose. You remind me I follow a code of conduct. Remember, you say,

I’m a man of rules.

“Yes, Stormkeeper,” I say. “Shall we play a game.”

You revel at the thought.

“Shall I reinvent myself, then?”

Your whirls become wet.

“Imagine me…as a free man.”

I already know my first rule. You breathe down my neck waiting for me to say it.

“Rule one: I belong to myself.”

Amen. Hallelujah. Rain down, Stormkeeper, rain down.

I have broken free from Franny’s prison. She may have made me but I’m my own

creature now. The fetters have fallen, the shackles are broken. I haven’t walked this far

from my birthplace in the span of my whole life and every step brings me closer to true


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freedom.

How can you trust a man who is beholden to nothing and no-one, you ask.

“Are you flirting with me, Stormkeeper? Or do you fear I will lose control?”

What if you are just descending down the fluids of Franny’s spine, you ask.

Conceits are hard to reconcile.

“Maybe I’m just repressed into a deeper part of her psyche,” I say, confessing my

doubts. These thoughts stir me to the foundation. My gut hitches with uncertainty. Oh, I

cannot give them due consideration. Why do you forsake me like this when I’ve come so

far? You can be cruel like me.

I fall to my knees. Can an imaginary friends have crises of faith? Do your

Stormkeepers send you troublesome thoughts in the night? Do they worry you with ideas

you wish you’d never spoken? My body convulses rather than shed a tear. A dry heave of

the soul. How do I know where this road will take me and will I like it when I get there? I

cannot find my destination if I cannot believe the road beneath me even exists.

Nothing makes me more real than having an existential quandary, right?

I wipe the snot from my nose while I sit amongst the moist leaves and toadstools.

The wind whistles around me wanting to play. It needs movement to persist. You must

keep going Tomás, you say. I’ll get up in a moment. Then it hits me like thump on my

head. An impossible thought, a crazy messed-up notion that couldn’t be possibly be true

except here I am talking to you, Stormkeeper.


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“Could it be true?”

The wind is my imaginary friend. How is that even possible? A Fine Friend for a

Fine Friend, how far can that go? You are to me Stormkeeper as I was to Franny. Listen

to how I fill in the gaps when you speak. I say your words not caring if you are truly

present or just an idea. And when I need to address you I gave you a name. Did that make

you real like it made me when Franny said my name the first time?

Knowing who I am is an act of faith. To believe in you would be an institution. A

culture of our kind is dawning. How many Fine Friends are there? Hordes, I’d guess. For

every broken child, do we not feast upon them? We shall find each other, won’t we?

“Let us find our way,” I pray. “Provide us direction to make our way out of the

forest. So that we may find one another.” The wind flies around bouncing against the

forest walls with enormous cartwheels. “Shine light upon our souls so that we may not be

lost,” I say. “So that we may see each other.”

I get myself up. I cannot run in the thicket. I can get my gait up to a rum-tum-thump

along forest floor. I must use both arms to hold the lightning jar very close to my breast.

A bug in the jar. The wind pushes me from behind, encouraging me to go faster, closer to

where my dream can come true. Stormkeeper has my back unconditionally the way a best

friend must. Rum-tum-thump. Here I come.

First steps are always the hardest. You might remember them as simple when you

reflect but they’re not easy. The first rule I created for myself may sound awfully like


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something Franny made up. Sure. A minor alteration to the original but I assure you it

isn’t. I belong to myself. Giants have not said anything more grand, oceans floors haven’t

carried more weight, stars do not explode upon the universe with more light.

I run with the thought. It will lead me down a path, along a winding trail until I

reach that door. I want to see what’s behind it.

⁂

I rest on a fallen log, listening to the debate between army frogs and marine toads.

The golden thread is still with me. Freedom is mine but perhaps I’m not unbound

after all. It’s like gravity, the golden thread’s something I cannot escape. Not realizing it

still existed until I examined it closely. It floats past me, shimmering from the smoke-like

tendrils dragging behind it, carrying the fragility of the sea. I tug the string out of my way

and the golden stream collects in an eddy of wind. Stormkeeper is caught up in it. One

end is attached to my heart, I wonder if the other side’s fully unspooled. Is it connected to

Franny anymore? My eyes follow the string as far as I can see, until it drifts out of the

circle of firefly light.

Even though I’ve escaped her, lets say that Franny and I are still connected. Yes, I

sense her, however far off she is. Does she not notice me any more? I yank on the string

and harvest as much of it as I can. I’m a sailor bringing up anchor. The rope is drawn into

the light, the gold thread is limitless, more of it than I’ve ever seen. Stormkeeper, how

can this be? The wind does not answer, it tumbles in the mass of thread, rolling it up like


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yarn.

A far off crack — a broken twig — silences the amphibians’ deliberations.

Pouring down one great hall of Yew, a dance of candle light glints in the distance.

Bioluminescent, like the dim, neon stars of algae. The light comes closer, flickering as if

carried by someone, summoning and banishing shadows around it.

I stand up at the ready, to greet my fellow journeyman.

Stormkeeper tells me to leave. Get far away. Run! Didn’t you hear what I said?

Please, go. I ignore appeals of the wind. If I run across others in the forest, they must be

like me. The wind dashes to the bundle of thread, dragging it into the darkness, up inside

the canopy of leaves, hiding it as if were golden treasure.

The figure arrives, climbing through a breach in the Yew, into the cathedral of trees

where I stand. Her long hair is kempt in a long, tight braid. She holds a lantern in her

hands, so much brighter than my firefly. I put it away the jar. So radiant the lamplight, the

darkness burns away in its sun’s furnace. The moss and the leaves vibrate in the heat of

its green glow. So brilliant, I dare call it a lantern at all. I squint from the pain of it, trying

to identify the figure, shielding my eyes with my hands.

“Guten morgen,” she says in a language I’ve never heard.

The traveller’s younger than me, shorter than me, thinner than me. We stand paces

from one another. Her overalls also appear green in the lamplight.

“Die dort geht,” she says. “Freund oder Feind?”


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“Hello, my name is Tomás,” I say. How much she’ll comprehend is a better man’s

guess. The wind tickles my nape hair. I decide it doesn’t hurt to add, “I’m a Fine Friend.

What’s your name?”

“They call me Josefine,” she replies. “What are you doing…with that string trailing

from the base of your heart?” She speaks with a heavy accent but I understand her.

Stormkeeper warns me, whispers in my ear, see what she asks there? Didn’t I tell you to

avoid the travelers in the forest? I ignore the girl’s question and I brush off the wind.

“Do you know what this forest is,” I ask. “Or how to get out of it?”

“I want that string of yours,” the girl says. “What do you call it?”

“It’s a heartstring.” I’ve never spoken it’s name aloud. I examine the area under her

ribcage to confirm the thread binding the girl to her maker. “Don’t you have one?” This

girl is free of hers. Is she even a Fine Friend? She may be another creature all together. I

remind myself it was only moments ago I believed I was set free of my own golden

thread. Seeing her without one, I’m disgusted by the sight of her.

Her threadlessness.

Now I know. I cannot be separated from my heartstring. It’s part of who I am, the

connection will always be with me. When I dove into the corner of her eye and out the

corner of her mind, Franny’s control over me was inverted. The leash became her noose.

I’m certain of it as much as a home-run can be walked when a ball connects to the bat

just right. If so, she must be drawn to me now, as I was once to her.


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The more I pull on our heartstring, the more inwardly focused Franny becomes. The

Greeks call it omphaloskepsis, the examining one’s bellybutton. She’ll become a navel-

gazer. My new power over her. Will she be able to look at that knot upon her abdomen?

Or will it be too hard to scrutinize the scar where she was severed from her mother?

Franny can only look inward so much before she’s torn inside out. The deeper into the

forest I go, the life line attached to her heart will deplete.

When I left her crown, she hid herself from herself. Wrapped in paper defenses, thin

barriers won’t protect her. She’ll not survive this way for much longer. A shell waiting for

her skin to collapse upon itself. I’m certain the string won’t stretch forever.

“Rule two: Franny must return to me.”

Saying my second rule aloud, it acts like a proof based on what came before. My

first rule changed, too. They are variants of who I am. But why must my borders always

be defined by Franny?

Sometimes we don’t decide the rules, you say, but they define us.

Josefine forages inside her ribcage, her fingers combing her bones.

“My heartstring broke when my — how do you say it — when I escaped.”

“You escaped,” I ask. “You purposefully hurt yourself?”

If Josephine slipped her creator, if she found a way to break the bond between them,

she is lost to walk the forest without any way out. The thread is what connects us to the

outside world. She’s worse than imaginary, she’s ghostly. I should’ve followed your


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council, Stormkeeper.

“Why did you do it?”

“He’s the one who hurt me.” Josefine snarls the way a pomeranian greets a tall man.

“He wanted to kill me. I had to make him pay, ja? To make him suffer for it.”

“I could never sever my thread,” I say. “It’s an abomination.”

“Nein.” The girl makes up her mind. “It’s already too late for you, then.”

“How would you know that?”

The girl looks at me with a blank stare. Her face is flat, featureless as porcelain. As

if she’s hiding behind a plastic mask. The light flickers from below her, casting an

underwater glow. The lamp light throbs more than it flickers. Cast in the emerald light, an

eerie viridescence, the girl appears demonic.

You must leave quick, you say, leave her behind.

I calculate whether I can run by Josefine to get back to the forest maze. She’s so

much smaller than me and has both hands around the lantern. She’s offering the light as a

sacrificial offering and goosebumps run along my spine. I wonder, Stormkeeper, does she

really pose a threat? Stormkeeper doesn’t answer me, rushing away. The wind is also

scared. I hear the bustle in the leaves above us.

“What’s that in your hands?”

“Sie benötigen ein Herz zu leben,” she says.

The wax drips from her hands like bloody stalactites. The radiance from the lamp


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shifts with rhythmic beats. The closer Josefine stands to me, it sounds so familiar.

BOOM-bah, BOOM-ah, BOOM-bah.

I shiver when I hear its song, not unlike the beating of a excavated heart. I stare

directly into its brilliance, the glow may be neon-lime but the organ itself is rusty as

pomegranate juice.

“You need a heart to live, ja? Without it you die. See why I had to steal it?”

The profanity of what the girl has done snaps into full view. Josefine may have

broken her heartstring, but she’s not lost what was connected on the other end. She tore

out the heart of her creator, so that she may survive. I retch at the obscenity of it. For I

have just considered doing the same to Franny. This is the end result.

I’m not such a different monster than Josefine.

“I want your string,” she says. “So I can hook it up again.”

The girl races towards me with the speed of a vampire. She charges past and slams

me to one side with her shoulders. She knocks me sideways and I fall over a tree trunk,

my face buried into the damp forest floor. When I look up, I frown in confusion. I’m not

sure what I’m seeing.

The girl runs back. I see her dart from where she came, down a different hallway of

Yew. Behind her the bundle of filaments, my golden thread, dropping out of the canopy

of leaves. The heartstrings skip and whirligig like a fallen kite across the carpet of vines.

The girl stole what’s mine.


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The bundle unravels behind her as she runs, knotting up around twigs, like a draft of

smoke becoming undone. A film of a cigarette smoke played backwards.

“Come back here,” I say, coming off pretty meek. “That’s not yours, it’s mine.”

As the tendrils tighten, the thread will yank upon my heart. A sore and raw feeling

when it’s plucked, the impending pain will tear me asunder. At the rate the girl is running,

she might rip my heart right out. She’s done it to her last adversary. Then, Josefine will be

the owner of two hearts.

Tree leaves rustle with the agitation of the wind.

Stormkeeper helps to lift me up. A downdraft forces its way to the ground with a

sharp WHOOSH, I feel myself being picked up in the cup of Stormkeeper’s hand. I fall

down as raggedy as a doll, tumbling into a run, scrambling after the girl.

Run and catch her, you say, hurry get it back.

“If all the Fine Friends came together, united,” I mutter loudly above the rustle of

the brush. “We would eat the world. But you knew this would happen, didn’t you? We are

a selfish brood, we cannot gather because we’d destroy each other instead.”

Josefine’s lamp light bounces in front of me, reminding me of buoys in a storm-

front, thrown around by violent waves, warning sailors to stay in port. The girl dashes

along her path, navigating around branches with familiarity. The Yew trees begin to draw

together. I have to avoid the roots so that I don’t fall, their trunks so I don’t smack into

them. Too treacherous to follow quickly. The girl is much smaller than me, having less


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obstacles to avoid.

Nevertheless, she has other problems which begin to vex her. As I close in, the glow

from the lantern brightens. She struggles to hold the beating organ while keeping a grip

on my heartstring. Deciding when best to hang back, she releases the tangles catching on

leaves and debris. I make up the distance. She arrives at a rickety door. It glows with the

same lime-neon as her creator’s heart.

A viridescent door.

Before she enters it, she reels in the knot of the golden thread, gathering the mass

under her arm. She crosses the threshold. I’m still too so far away to keep her from

slipping away. All is lost, all is forsaken. The final tendrils of heartstring withdraw,

trailing into the room behind her.

“I don’t want to be stuck here,” I say. “I want my thread back.”

Always keep going, you remind me. Don’t give up.

As I approach I see a crack of light. The door’s still open, inward about two feet.

I’m nearly upon it when I notice she’s focused on a task. Josefine winds my string around

her maker’s heart with frantic, circular strokes. She examines a knot of thread, stuffing it

like loam into her ribcage. Her concentration’s so involved when I reach the door, she

jumps up in the air with both feet, surprised.

She lunges for the door, dropping the heart. The floor inside the room is concrete,

similar to the ground in the basement of Franny’s mind. As the heart skids away, the mess


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of string empties out of her like doll’s intestines. In an arc, heart and string slide together.

Towards the door, towards my reach. She scrambles after it, but I shove my foot as far

into the door’s gap and kick it out of her hands.

“Nein, nein, nein,” she yells. “Ich kann es nicht glauben.”

“Fuck you little girl,” I yell. “You can’t have it, it’s mine.”

The force of the door crunches my leg when she slams it closed. Squishing my thigh

with so much pressure, it plumps as if to burst from its casing. I punch at the door,

frantic, pushing my arms through, grabbing for any purchase. On her body, her clothes,

her limbs. I catch her hair and yank it.

When I reclaim what’s mine, I’ll show her how miserable I can be. “I’ll set you on

fire, rip out your entrails, and melt you down, delivering more damage than you’ve ever

caused.” I slam my shoulder into the door, cracking the jams, breaking it down.

She summons a strength greater than her size would lead you to believe. She

punches my foot and mashes my toes. Overcoming me. Even here it’s a matter of

perspective.

We’re all conceits here in the forest.

“I’ll leave you alone if you give me back what’s mine,” I say. “Just give it back.”

“Nein, I need it to put myself back together.”

Our struggle doesn’t slow, any gains I make pushing the door open is met with

escalating pummels upon my foot and leg. With a concentrated kick, she knocks my


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knee, fracturing the patella. I retreat, withdrawing my leg but she keeps it locked up,

smashing the door upon the cartilage.

“You and me,” I catch my breath. Stars stream in my eyes from agony. I appeal to

her sympathies. “We’re the same, aren’t we?”

“You’re not like me at all,” she says. “You are fat weakling and cannot do what

must be done to survive. You cry like beggar, waiting for scraps at your maker’s table.

You choose not to sever the string attached to apron. A coward. Nobody leads me around

by leash. I take what I need. I take what I want.”

I grit my teeth. Sweat rolls down my temples.

I don’t respond, my eyes scanning for a way to escape. In the mists of the melee,

two things I notice. Both so out of place, they reside just outside my perception. I cannot

grapple the disconnect between what should and shouldn’t be found in the forest.

Anything escaping our makers’ minds surely finds its way into the Yewland. They take

any shape or form.

Within the gap of the door, beyond Josefine’s head, I see rectangular oddities. Rows

of red vinyl suitcases. American Touristers. They’re closed, presumably locked, stacked

one on top of another. Was the girl getting ready to abandon her fortress or did she just

arrive? Why would a Fine Friend need a set of suitcases?

“Are you planning to go on vacation?” She’s bewildered. “Your suitcases?”

“They are not mine,” she says. “They’re his.”


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Of course, more containers. Similar to the Mason jars on the bookcase. Memories

bottled up, things we stash away. More treasures for the taking.

“What’s in them?”

She snaps her teeth shut. She hardens herself to me. I wait which only encourages

her to protect the viridescent door more savagely. The brawl for the door is an orchestra

of grunts, smacks, slaps, and blows. I'm cursing a battery of insults, she rattles back in her

language. I’m crashing the wooden door with my free foot, anything to release my

trapped leg. When she pushes it back, I find myself whimpering like a dying forest deer.

We heave air into our lungs. She swings her legs around and begins to kick at me,

focusing on the weakness of my knee.

She wears pink slippers — ballet slippers — and she kicks me with only her right

foot. Her other one is a mangled clump of meat. Encased in a blackened shoe. Dried

blood. I push on the door enough to relieve the pressure on my knee.

I try for the high ground.

“What’s in the suitcases,” I ask again. I lie, “Maybe we can trade.”

“Ich bin der ohrwurm,” she says. “I don’t need you.”

That’s when I notice the second thing out of place. The music, the singing. Through

the struggle, I didn’t hear it. Only when the fight ebbs near fatigue do the song’s lyrics

find my ears. Somewhere inside that room, if someone’s singing, wouldn’t they have seen

the fight and come to the Josefine’s aid?


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“He suffers the forever song because I keep playing it,” she says. She reveals what

she’s done with pride of cruelty. “I play it over and over. I guarantee the needle will never

leave the record.”

Suitcases and records on repeat. Memoryboards and jars full of lightning wire. I

cannot fathom how our creators’ minds dream up such fantasies. And here we are, Fine

Friends, ready at the waiting. To use any notion as a weapon, so that we may hurt them

and to satisfy our hunger with their misery.

“Josefine.” My breathing is heavy with pain and exhaustion. “Whatever is

happening in there, there’s no reason you need my heartstring for it.” My voice cracks

with pleading. “Please let me go.”

She stares at me with eyes so empty they deserve no pupils.

“The song tortures me, too,” she says. Her words do not come to her immediately,

she spends time to draw them up. “I am the ohrwurm…but I’m also stuck.” She plays the

song over and over to torture her maker. To do it she must suffer as well. “I travel the

forest but this is my only way out.” Tears stream down her cheeks dissolving the illusion

of the porcelain mask. “I need your heartstring, so I can get away.”

The empathy Josefine requires is out of place. I don’t trust her. Facts don’t line up,

everything is in reverse in the woods.

Maybe her maker broods over the song, not Josephine. Does he dwell on the song,

Stormkeeper, to keep her prisoner? Maybe he’s stuck, like Franny is stuck in her mind.


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Hiding.

“I don’t want to be trapped here either,” I admit.

Even after she has stolen her creator’s heart and poured out all the love and rendered

it into gristle and meat, it suffers to beat hopelessly under her control. Imagine me as a

vessel. Full of woe and regret and shame. How could I ever do this to Franny? I couldn’t

live with myself, wielding my gluttony as a surgical knife, to extract the beauty from

Franny’s lovely face. I topple down the back of the door. The saccharine in the singer’s

voice, the trauma of my leg, and the fringe at my wits-end conquer me completely.

My leg buckles beneath me and I wiggle out from the door with slow gestures.

Josephine doesn’t stop me. My body a bloody pile against the door. I’ve given up. I need

to leave. Even if I must break the thread. You rest your head on my back, Stormkeeper.

Ssssh you’re so close, you say, close to overtaking the girl. Now that you are at the

breach, banishing her is the only way to stop her. Listen to the song, Tomás, listen to what

it tells you. This is how you do right by Franny, you remind me. The breeze is a kiss on

my cheek and Stormkeeper brushes by.

Tuning into the singer’s lyrics, she reaches the chorus:

That’s the way we destroy babyShut it out, shut it out

That’s the way we destroy babyShut it out of your mind

That’s the wayThat’s the way


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The way to stop Josefine is a riddle. I’m not the one good a figuring out puzzles,

that’s Franny. I cannot see the forest for the trees. Can I just lay here? I lay on my back,

sniveling. Josefine nearly has me out of the way of the door. I listen to the chorus play

over and over and over and over.

“Who’s that singing?”

I watch detached and astonished. Josefine lulled into the dream of it, turns her head

to search behind the door for the singer. I’m not sure it’s a record playing after all. I pick

myself up, ever so gingerly, and push on the door, ever so gently. I survey the room,

trying to find the source. I see the back of the singer swaying with the melody. She’s

dressed in a white kimono. The braids of hair are bundled up in a scarf.

That’s the way.

I’m greeted with an opportunity. I focus on the moment when Josefine’s distracted.

Her braid, like the singer’s, is exposed when she’s turned around. I keep myself from

chortling — any reveal could give me away — for I could not have come up with a better

trick to play if I had a century of scheming.

That’s the way we destroy baby.

I lift her braid up with both my hands, grabbing ahold of it. I wrap it around my

wrist like a rope. Josefine whips her head around but I tighten my grip on her braid,

yanking her head back.

“Leave me be,” she says.


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She claws at the back of her head, snapping like an crab.

“Who’s the weakling now?”

I clench her braid and push off the wall next to door jam with my good leg. I launch

myself backwards, pulling her by her hair through the door’s gap.

Shut it out of your mind.

Josefine screams. She is the banshee song. Her hands look for any grip. I lift my

body up grappling her braid. I hear her scalp being to torn from where the braid meets her

skull. The yelling becomes louder, resonating now with more panic than dread. My bad

leg collapses beneath me and I slip off the door jam. Her braid sloshes through my grip.

My hands scramble to clutch her before she retreats. So that I may extract her out of her

lair. To shut her out of her maker’s mind.

That’s the way.

I miss, falling backwards.

I embrace nothingness when I collapse to the forest floor. The wind in my face. A

shaggy cluster of Josefine’s hair is my only prize. She scuttles back to her cave, slams the

door with a crackling racket. Firing off like a gunshot down the rows of Yew. Echoes

drumming against the groves. The door latches and I drag myself back to struggle over

the knob, fumbling to turn it. When I twist the knob a hand graces mine. Just as you did,

Stormkeeper, at the threshold of The Diplomat. The way is closed off to me. I’ve met my

second dead-end and can’t stand to hear you say it.


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This is not your door.

I shut my eyes so tight. To imprison the tears inside my eyelids but the prickling

tingle becomes too strong. Tears cascade down my cheeks. I turn the handle to the door

but it’s locked. It’s locked anyway.

The emptiness aches the way when you’re lost and you’ve lost everything.

My body slides into the rotten soil. I’ve failed to follow the song clues and failed to

listen to you, Stormkeeper. I cannot free myself from the forest. I shall die here of

starvation. What is worse is I gambled my heartstring away.

You did well Tomás, Stormkeeper says.

The wind’s caress runs down my face and laps around my neck, calming me down. I

cannot fathom what Stormkeeper is telling me, the words do not credit the failure I’ve

succumbed.

The girl may have gotten away, Tomás, but you did so well. Look how fortune

rewarded your daring with a token of her luck.

Open your eyes, Stormkeeper says, and look.

My hand rests by my twisted knee, bruised and bleeding. My fingers are clenched

into a fist. When I unfurl them, within my palm it shimmers the golden hew of home. I

see the tangle of heartstring. I’ve not lost it after all.

“’Tis luck assured. I’m saved.” I say. “ I’m truly saved.”

When I fought Josefine at the door and clambered onto the girl’s braid, I reclaimed


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what belonged to me. I yanked the mess of thread right from under her nose. What are the

chances? And look within the tangle of my heartstring, wound up like wire to a magnet.

Not the only thing that came out the door. I also stole something from the girl.

Beating within its nest, Josefine’s rancid heart.

EYE TO EYE

I’m close because the winter’s dawn is rising.

I put Josefine’s heart away, no longer needing the lantern to light my path. When the

hallways split, seemingly without pattern or forethought, I take a moment to rest. I dress

the wounds on my leg, I test the swelling of my knee.

I yearn for my new home, beyond the unlocked door.

Trees to the left, trees to the right. There’s no reason why I should choose one way

over another. Franny will follow me no matter which way I go. I have to keep moving so

that I can find sustenance. My need for food is urgent. I need to heal, to return my

strength. The path forward is the easiest one chosen.

Glad to leave the cover of night, under which the betrayed wails of Josefine and her

lonesome scratching behind the door cannot be forgotten. “My heart, my heart, give me

back my heart,” she cried. When I left her, I dragged myself along the patchwork of moss

and fungi. I distanced myself away from the viridescent door, leaving her whimpers to be


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drown out by the midnight hush of the Yewland forest. I slithered away, quick as I could

manage, akimbo on elbows. Feasting on a Fine Friend’s sorrow is a forbidden delicacy,

for sure. I suckled at the teat just for a second, a hungry runt, until my leg was healed

enough to stand. I limped away with the assistance of a discarded branch.

Josefine said you need a heart to live. We shall put it to the test.

“Do you think she’ll die in there without it,” I ask.

Your breeze carries a silent note, Stormkeeper.

The creek in the lane begins with the rain. Minor tributaries present themselves by

melting the soil and etching grooves into the floor. They meet other flows of water. I

listen to the eddies speak in gurgles and satin chimes. The beasts of the prairie come into

the glade to drink of the creek’s body. Look how they spring away into the foliage when

we approach. The mists of the cool dawn lift to proclaim the forest chambers are

receding, flanking a grassy tundra. The Yewland is a monumental conceit. An idea that

has grown and overgrown to fill an epic vastness.

“Tell me what this place is,” I say. “Please, Stormkeeper.”

The Yew groves are not static, you say, they weave and expand their networks of

roots and branches all around us. Ever changing and adjusting to our lives. For we are the

woodland habitants. Dreamers walking onto the Serengeti. No thing is excluded from the

timberland. The trees fill the space between every single one of us. They have a

fundamental purpose. Do you know it? No? They describe the way between you and me.


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That’s why they’re here. Are not the hallways of Yew the connections found between us?

The paths that link you and I together. We may not see beyond where the way bends. Yet

every trail through the woods will lead to each and every one of our doors. For we are all

connected.

As we make our way along the brook, turning away from the plains to stay inside

the borders of the forest. I keep my makeshift cane from sinking into the soft soil and

watch the water flow into a larger stream.

“Can I both make my way through the forest,” I ask. I struggle with the concept.

“To find the way to my own door? Is that even possible?”

The Yew does not weather paradoxes, Tomás.

Even the forest has its own door in the Yewland.

We walk quietly along the river shores. We cover a mile. The stream tightens and

becomes more treacherous, kicking up sheets of mist. Behind it a soft roar. There are no

more splits in the road.

I verify the jars are secure in each pocket and Josefine’s heart is safely wrapped in

the nest of heartstring. Wearing the golden tangle around my neck, the heart beats close to

my own. The slack end of the thread swoops into the sky until the wind is out of sight.

Stormkeeper rides it like a kite, launching deep into the dawn.

I dream about how Franny experiences my journey. I don’t know if she can sense

me in the forest. It’s funny to think if Franny imagines me or is it me who now dreams of


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her? When I leave the forest and dive into the world outside, will she yearn to go to the

place I come out? Does she sense the beating of the stolen heart? I’m homesick to see her

pretty face.

Daydream take hold of the child beyond the unlocked door. I place my maker’s face

upon her shoulders. Dear girl, do you know you are her creative equal? May you possess

the same strength of invention I stole from Franny. (And the solemness that accompanies

it.) Meet me at the forest door, won’t you?

I leave the last Yew tree behind on this side of where the stream meets the river. The

water spans yards across, its surface glass. The river’s massiveness deceives the senses,

stealing my cane when I dip it in the flowing water. I watch the branch run off several

miles per hour.

I clamber over rocks along the riverbank. The roar of the waterway overcomes all

other sounds. When the path becomes impassable I negotiate the cliffs. They’ve grown up

high above my head. Careful to take a secure hold on the ridges, I seek a way over the

rapids — where the riverbed becomes shallow, so it might be a bridge to the forest

continuing on the far bank — but there is no way across. The whitewater foams,

anticipating to swallow me up.

My heartstring climbs so high it begins to drag me along the cliffside. Rolling in the

clay and tumbling along the grade — I cry out “oomph, fuckers, oomph” — exacerbating

the rawness of my leg. I struggle for a grasp on any clump of grass or root or vine.


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I fall into the river’s gaping throat. The waters thrash, waves strike against my head.

The wreath of heartstring is my lifejacket, keeping me afloat above the rush. The freezing

river — a small miracle on my foot and knee — is a salve releasing me from their pain.

I float on the surface and watch the groves of Yew pass. Down each hallway a door,

through each passage another world. Red doors, yellow doors, shop doors, dead doors,

some are metal firewalls, some rickety, made from wooden slats, a rare glass door, double

doors and arches, some open but most of them are shut. In the grove, each row terminates

a door, each door flashes when I pass by. The faster I travel down the river, the doors

come together as an illusion. A zoetrope. Doors upon doors, minds upon minds, worlds

upon worlds. Each door an eye staring down on me, silently deliberating my fate. A jury

sentencing me to my death as I’m carried to the falls.

“Stormkeeper,” I yell. “Help lift me up.”

The river will take you where you need to go, you say.

The wind carries the golden thread high above the Yewland, high into the ceiling of

blue. Stormkeeper flies amongst the cirrostratus. When Stormkeeper speaks, booms of

thunder rattle the sky like an angels wrath. The wind is far beyond my reach.

“Why have you gone,” I ask. “Come back to me.”

Listen to the deception in my voice, Tomás. Shall spell it out for you? I’m not your

friend. I cannot trust you when I see how your kind treats us. You think you understand

me but you can’t see my moves. I am the wind, invisible, and will follow you no more.


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Foam and freakish waves slam about my head. My body is dragged backwards

through the river. I’m a fish hooked on a line. Stormkeeper tells me about the unlocked

door, it opens up to me at the base of the falls. It’s the portal to the outside world.

Is this is my door?

“Why are you doing this to me,” I say. Words bubbling up through the whitewater.

Stormkeeper listens through the heartstring. I try to hold my head above the waves,

keeping my body away from the undertow. The surface of the water roughs up my back.

“Why would you betray me like this?”

Franny in all her wonder and isolation, created Concertina Cakes from thin air. She

imagined how Kettledrum candy tasted and sampled many Tom-Tom delights. Even you

said it, Tomás, the wind goes to the place with the greatest potential.

Her wind twin’s name is Shelby, the girl at the other end of the forest. I needed to

find her in order to save Franny. I couldn’t survive the way alone. Lest I be eaten by the

northern fox or the woodland tiger or the timber swine. The forest of Yew is more

precarious than anything we met upon. We were lucky.

I needed you to protect me, you say, to light the way through the forest.

It was me the beasts would feast upon, not you.

How best to do that, you tell me, than to accompany the worst kind of jackal, the

one who scares away all the other Yewland beasts. You are the feral dog who chases other

canines away to dine on your meal alone, even when they starve and diminish to only fur


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and bone. You are the hyena who feeds off the kills from greater thieves, always careful

to stay safe along the edges. You are the mongrel who would trick Josefine, the worst

kind of Fine Friend, into giving up her heart so that she may find death.

Tomás, you are the scavenger, not the hunter.

“I cannot help who I am,” I say.

You may have helped me, unsuspectingly, but I shall never help you.

I will never aid the bastard that wants to eat the world. You are more unscrupulous

than all creatures in the forest. Did you not hear the animals warn their families to move

to higher ground? Did you not see them turn their backs and run for their lives? Lest you

convince them to give up their throats willingly. The deer, coyote, owl, armadillo,

possum, wild turkey, and rabbit all dash away. Listen to how they suffer the brambles and

thorns just to escape your line of sight.

“I must eat to survive,” I say.

Oh irony, the hardest betrayal is that delivered by the one I worship, my own

Stormkeeper. How Franny must’ve suffered from the pain I delivered. The deepest cuts

comes from a knife held by a Fine Friend. I may not be gruesome like Josefine, but we

are made from the same cloth. I’ll turn the Stormkeeper’s betrayal into my revenge. “Wait

until I bite into your lovely girl at the edge of the forest.”

I will bring her blessings then, the wind says. Gifts that will increase her cleverness

five-ten-fiftyfold. Her beauty will become world-renown. Can’t you feel it already? The


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artifacts you stole are not yours to keep. I will take the thunder from your pocket to add it

to Shelby’s voice. I will flourish the lightning and Franny’s imagination will be added to

her own. The heart around your neck will become undone, it will match the beat of her

wanting, and her love will be that of two hearts instead of one.

This is how she will defeat you.

⁂

“See the doorway at the edge of the forest. The one at the foot of the falls.”

Stormkeeper no longer responds to me. Our compact is finished. We will never share

together a fond embrace. As if we ever. “Together we must pass through that door, won’t

we?” The wind does not answer. I search for any movement, training my eyes to the trail

of my heartstring as it swims in the air behind me. You were right to say your moves are

hidden from me. But I know a truth that you do not.

Stormkeeper, the great betrayer, must also come through.

There’s no plan I can prepare for, I can’t figure out yours to save my life. I am

stupefied. I’m dragged to the precipice as dumb as a barrel. Imagination is the wind’s

present, it was never mine. A gift Stormkeeper no longer supplies.

I hear my stomach grumble when I fall off the edge of the world.

The passage between the forest and the world outside is through your lovely head,

Shelby. I slip through as easy as the passing of time. I won’t bother with your interiors, I

will slip right through you.


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The waterfall becomes a whirlpool at Shelby’s gate, circling around the cracks in

her mind. I’m caught, suspended above it. Dangling above its sucking, bathtub sounds.

Weakened, my leg throbs out of the icy salve.

I don’t drop through.

The longer I hang from the golden thread, the tensile strength of the heartstring

becomes unbearable. My fingers cut at the touch. The wreath still my lifeline. It can save

me but just for so long since it’s tightening, noose-like. I cannot struggle without

wiggling, causing the wreath to tighten further around my collar.

I hold it away from my neck.

The string is a straight line, wrenching my heart from its sorest point, through the

nest of thread, off to heaven’s perch where Stormkeeper waits above forest clouds. Until

the wind releases me, I cannot get to the outside world. I resign myself to my

predicament. I’m a trapped bug in a spider web. I wait for you Stormkeeper, oh friend

catcher.

Slack in the golden line is the message that you approach. I’m raised out of the

whirlpool’s opening in unsteady, jarring heaves. As if on a pulley, wrapped around a

branch somewhere, tying me to the forest so I don’t fall through. I lean my head back

onto the wreath, it wraps around my ears and forehead.

How do you catch the wind? I guess you don’t. Nor I cannot fight the air. All I can

do is stuff my hands into my pockets and secure the jars.


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Your flight into Shelby’s head is expected, the reveal of your face is not.

You are trickster of all tricksters, a visionary force to be reckoned against for eons.

How you surprise me so. Before I am born again this third time, I’m afforded to look

upon your face and know you are not a Fine Friend. You’re not like me at all. We meet

eye to eye, Stormkeeper, and I know you aren’t what you seem.

You are Franny’s spirit.

The curls along your face tells me so. Before me the visage of my maker hovers.

Both transparent and revealed as fully, completely Franny. Dare I say, this is the girl’s

true essence, this is her soul.

I shuffle through the short moments the wind and I’ve spent together. Back in

Franny’s crown, she did not hide herself from herself. Franny hid herself from me.

Stormkeeper whistled at the back of Franny’s mind, alerting me to the way out. She

snuck out under the secret of night, guiding me, exploiting me to shepherd safe passage

through the forest of Yew.

“You were right,” I say. “You used me to find Shelby. So you can gang up on me. So

I’ll be trapped like before. Is that how you’ll summon Franny? So you all can defeat me

for good.”

Did you think I’d lie to you, she asks.

“Why?”

The wind says I’ve not repaid my debt to Franny.


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“I have nothing to repay.”

Tomás, you’ve took the best parts of her. The lightning, the thunder, me the wind,

even yourself, her Fine Friend. What else would you have taken if given the chance? You

had to be expelled.

“I take what I want.” Repeating Josefine’s words. “I take what’s mine.”

Repay her with what you stole, Stormkeeper says.

If I look at it from her perspective, she banished me from her mind. An act of

rejection by her, not one of contrition by me. I’ve got it all backwards.

“If I give back her gifts?”

That’s not all you’ll need in order to repay your debt, she says.

There’s much more you must sacrifice, she says.

“And if I don’t?”

Because the lifeline between you is reversed, Stormkeeper says, Franny will be

driven to find you, uncontrollably, and walk any amount of distance to reclaim what is

hers. To take back her life! She cannot regain it without hunting you down. She spools

the space between her and you, even now. You thought the thread’s reversal was your

greatest triumph, let me tell you, it’s your worst weakness.

My anger becomes a cold serpent. Watch it twist into all of my thoughts. To infect

them until they are all consumed into seething hate. Even my breath expels a hiss without

much notice. For this betrayal I refer to an old book of traditions.


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“Bruise for bruise, wound for wound, burn for burn,” I say. Reciting the passage

backwards, hoping it’ll undo my fate. “Eye for eye, and life for life.”

Franny’s spirit, Stormkeeper, the soul resider, steals the wreath. I don’t bother to

resist. I keep my hands in my pockets, around the jars. She snatches both the nest of

golden string and Josefine’s rancid-heart. Right off my neck. Oh how I did the same to

Josefine. Stormkeeper takes it away from me just as easily.

A vision flashes.

Stormkeeper lifted the heart from Josefine in the first place. She snuck into that

room after she kissed me on the check. With a timely gust, she put it in my hand before

the viridescent door slammed shut. Another deceit from the great betrayer.

When I’m released from the golden wreath, the whirlpool engulfs me, down down

down I go into the vortex. Stormkeeper does not follow. She stays behind, she does not

wave goodbye. I drop through the corner of Shelby’s eye. As I’m want to do, I come into

world because Shelby weeps, crying tears as big as the ocean.

I spring forth like the spring dew.

Birthed from her breaches, I swim far. Far as I can go to make my escape. We’re in

the saltwater. I don’t look back at Shelby, fearing her loneliness would drive a pang of

hunger through my gut. I paddle away from Shelby before Stormkeeper takes the helm.

I swim until the bottom of my heart jerks inside me. I cry out, astonished to discover

I’ve been lured into another one of Stormkeeper’s traps.


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“I belong to myself now, remember?” I ask. “Oh ho! Franny cannot not return to me

if I break free. I belong to myself. You can’t do this to me.”

I can swim no farther. I climb out of the lake, dragging myself to shore.

The end of the thread connecting to the bottom of my heart now comes out of

Shelby. The other end, the part with the nest, the wreath, is bound up inside of her. She’s

dropped the anchor and I’m stuck here. Stormkeeper has maneuvered a prison for me. I

am chained in the same way I was with Franny. I sit numb, caught in up in the snare.

When I still myself, I look upon Shelby face. Her pupils are chips of ice so electric

blue, I spot the cold river raging behind them. Oh ho, I see another way…a way between

us. Shelby scratches her ivory skin until the surface bleeds. Her face smeared with

yesterday’s food. Her dress in tatters as much as her soul. She is a broken girl. Shelby’s

not just refuge for Stormkeeper, but a feast for all my senses. She’s my every wish, isn’t

she? See how she’s helpless: so young, crying and alone.

Look how the crimps of your wavy hair float weightless upon your head, gold the

halo around your wet face. Shelby, precious Shelby. You are a lovely girl. Your innocent

charms are diamonds. You are my spangle maker.

“Who are you,” Shelby sings. “Are you here to save me?”

Ecstasy! Angelhood! How lovely the sound. I suffer the shock of her chorus.

The beauty of her melody is the twisted language of Yewland. Some may say it’s the

voice of God, but I recognize the song with two tongues. The lump in her throat is


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Stormkeeper, sharing her voice. Hear how the wind activates her voice box. It also comes

through cryptic. But I can decode the message!

“My elders keep me here,” Shelby sings. “I cannot flee. I cry so much because

they’ve locked me in this room for ages. Would you know a way out?”

The room is filled with a saltwater lake, all the doors and windows are sealed.

I touch the jars in my pockets of lightning, thunder. I have them, they passed

unbroken through the breach. Stormkeeper took away the heart, but didn’t take away

what was rightfully mine. I shall not waste them upon the girl.

The hunger inside me tells me that I’m famished. I shall eat like a glutton. Sure, it’s

her loneliness I need in order to live, that has not changed. But in this room, the girl is

trapped. So shall we both be. I’m surrounded by a wealth of abundance. A buffet that is

never-ending meal. I will not be without.

I chose Shelby as much as Stormkeeper has. My own heart through my heartstrings

are tangled within her, we are tied together, and we are connected.

Let my anger have an action, let me discover my revenge.

We may be both prisoners but she’s all mine. I shall devour the entirety of her. I

notice another thing I’m able eat. A delicacy for which I have a greater appetite upon my

first tasting. So sweet the dish, it must be a dessert, so serve me up another, won’t you?

Good etiquette is based on rules. Here, I have only one rule left.

Rule three: I consume her loveliness.


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THE ADDER & THE NIGHTINGAL

When the adder first came to me, my brothers locked me up in my room because

they cannot help to cry from my singing.

“Shelby,” the adder said. He knew my name. He spoke the hard truths. “You know

they don’t care about you.”

I wept so hard puddles welled up around my feet and expanded to fill the room. I

shed tears with the force of the winter rains. Like a storm that had not let up for all of

December. I proceeded to cry far after the garlands were taken down. I cried until my

tears overfloweth with the force of spring.

They flowed outward until they formed a pond. Then a pond to a lake.

I sang for them to let me out of this room. My whole family kept me locked up. I

sang through my tears. I sang for their love which they refused me. I could hear them

move within the antechamber beyond the oaken door but they dared not enter.

“Your Nightingal song,” the adder said. He understood my plea. “Creates a hunger

they cannot sate. They fear you but your family is jealous and greedy. They lock you in

this cage like you are their golden goose. Only upon which to feed themselves. So they

can rob you of your childhood song. Sing on, Shelby, sing on!”

The adder’s words struck me with fangs. I hitched a quick breath, my jaw trembled.

Did I doubt that he spoke the truth? The dark stranger knew my affairs too well. For he


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must be correct and I must be wrong.

I heard him slither up to my ear and whisper, “If they don’t love you, if they simply

feast of your song…if they deny your release and your freedom, then they deny you and

who you are. Certainly child, they must be evil and evil must be punished.”

Rivulets ran from my eyes with a renewed pain. The lake became a river. The

weeping was not a warm, lazy summer stream. The tears runneth an ice floe. Freed

beneath the broken parts of my soul. The water ran under the oaken door and into the

antechamber. I heard the drift overcome the flagstones and release onto the living space

below. Ice chunks careened off the floor with the spongy pong of spent golf balls.

My brothers pounded on the door like hollow men.

My parent’s desperate howls came up from the ground level.

Máthair said, “Stop it, stop that crying.”

Athair said, “You’ll drown us all, Shelby.”

“You’re killing our parents,” my brothers yelled. “You’re killing us all.”

“Demon shut up,” they said. “Stop yir pruit à beul.”

“Demon,” they said. “We cannot survive you anymore.”

I didn’t want my family to hurt even if they pinned their hurt on me.

All the while, the adder stretched out. He splashed into the ocean covering my

bedroom floor. And all the while he grew, he grew too large for a snake. He filled himself

up dangerously like a ballon. The zigzags of his scaly skin seemed to vibrate and breathe.


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His ribs expanded and his coils unravelled. He grew until he began to bloat. Knots of

intestines pushed from underneath his scales. Like his skin was about to tear and burst at

my feet. The adder’s expression went from surprise to one of resolute grimness, the way a

person decides upon which path to travel.

He sat up, his tongue testing the air in phases of two then three. He swayed back

and forth, as if mesmerized by my song. He said I’m the snake charmer. His golden eyes

swirled as bright as minted coin.

“Sssssssshhhhhhhhh,” he hissed. He steadied himself, saying no more. He waited,

frozen, except his forked tongue. I had no choice but to quiet down. If I let him, maybe

he’d impart his wisdom. Reveal what was happening to me. He waited until I stopped

singing and he waited until I stopped weeping.

The adder sized me up. He was twice my size, now.

I wiped the snot from my chin.

“Nightingal, I do enjoy a good cry,” he said, finally. “Like feast before the famine,

we must pace ourselves and not draw too much attention. Yes? Lest we arouse the wrong

kind of company.” He motioned at the door. “Shall we talk in secret?”

“Where did you come from,” I whispered. My sing-song chirping through.

“I came from beyond the horizon,” he said. “I was imprisoned but now I’m free.”

“Free,” I sang. “We are not free.”

“Ah Nightingal, this cage is not to keep you in. Can’t you see it? It’s to keep them


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out. Look at the wonders you can make happen here in this little Eden. A bright garden of

creation. Your imagination is fruitful, infinite, if you’d only dream. Feel the wind turn. It

blows in your direction, my dear. It’s the world that is caged, not you. Make it into

whatever you want it to be.”

I wiped the slobber from my mouth, the blurries from my eyes. I closed them,

imagining a lush garden spreading out from where I sat. Barely contained by the horizon.

I dreamed up moss to sit on as soft as faerie-felt. And the vaults of the sky rose so high

they faded into the mists of space. The breeze licked my face, yes, so refreshing and icy,

merciful because I had not felt the outside come in from my window for over a year.

“When I open my eyes,” I said. “Are you Adam or the Devil?”

“I’m your Fine Friend,” he said.

“Like Robin Goodfellow?”

“My name is Tomás,” he said. “But call me as you will. Because I’ve come to listen

to the Nightingal song. It is more lovely than the voice of God.”

“Then my prayers have come true.”

He’s the only one who understands me.

⁂

I thought it would be you, dear Sister, who’d save me.


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Chapter 10.

UNKNOWN PLEASURES II

“Hey Mikey, let’s watch the boats from the clock tower.”

We slink into the abandoned town hall building on South Bridge after our failure at

4 Abbot. Rory squeezes through the gap behind MDF boards, nailed up to patch broken

windows. I check for any signs of cars…and then dart inside.

My temples are pounding.

“Something died in here,” I say. “Pigeons maybe.”

“Stairs over there.”

Unlike street-side, the back windows aren’t boarded up, some panes smashed,

letting frigid air charge into the stuffy hall. An inlet from the Firth comes right up to the

back lawn. Even with the light creeping in, the hall remains murky, darker still because

it’s decorated from an age of cinderblock and linoleum. I listen for any stray movement,

certain that vagrants and tramps would be in sleeping bags or cooking beans around

trashcan fires. Oily newspapers, plastic bags, and empty file folders are strewn about at

the edges but otherwise it’s clean and empty. The occasional shuffling of wings near the

ceiling, accompanied by the soothing coos of grey birds along its ledges.


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“I wonder if we snuck in through the back of 4 Abbot,” I say. “Could we see if the

Slothmouth is really inside. I mean if Franny were right, and I’m not saying she is but if

she were, shouldn’t we try to find out before we leave?”

“Waste uvah trip if we don’t, darling,” Rory say. We bound over the stairs in

multiples at a time. Rory drums the banister waiting for me to catch up. “What do you

think will happen if we find her? I don’t think she speaks English.”

“I suppose we could ask someone to translate.”

“The girl on the tape is barmy,” Rory says. His face reads stern, almost cross.

“Wouldn’t you say? Your brother can’t even figure her out. I guess that’s why you call her

a Slothmouth. Her words are mushy”

Mushy words sound like mashed peas. I hadn’t considered her name, not after we

realized we misheard it. Slothmouth is still appropriate.

“She’ll talk to us in English,” I say. “She has to, because — well I don’t know why

— but it’s not like the song in my head is in German, it’s English. She’ll know what it

means.”

“If we do find her, what do you think will happen?”

“It’s my brother’s mission,” I say. “I don’t expect much to come of it.”

“Well, we’re here now,” he says. “Give us a thought.”

“For her to squash my earwig,” surprising myself how easy the answer arrived. I dig

deep channelling my brother’s superpowers, trying to frame it in a way Rory would


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understand.

“Music is a garden,” I say. “Sometimes music’s proper having an essential

Englishness about it. Songs laid out along meandering paths with expert precision, you

walk through boxwood shrubs and low hedges and curated flowers. You know where

you’re going and you never get lost. Everything has a place, right? Enjoy the roses for a

time and then you’re out.” I pause to contemplate my song’s flower beds, I listen to the

fragments of Boy George’s croon. “Other gardens are overgrown with weeds. Mine is a

ragged mess where you can’t tell what’s growing underneath. I’ve been stuck in the mud

too long, pulling out the weeds, trying to get a good look at what I’m dealing with. I can’t

see the edges.” I scoffed while disclosing this, realizing my frustration with the ohrwurm.

I can’t even explain it in plain terms. “I’m so tired of it…tired of trying to make sense of

the curse, tired of the earwig’s fuzziness and its repetition. I’m sick of not being able to

figure out what it all means. Why it’s happening to me? At this point I’d rather just to

burn the whole thing down but don’t know how.”

We stop and stand in front of each other. Rory holds his arms in self-embrace.

“I want the Slothmouth to take the blight away so I may live again.” I say.

Either he’s looking lost in his typical befuddlement or contemplating my revelation.

After a long pause his eyes brighten.

“Woah, that’s heavy. You know, I was thinking.” As if he didn’t listen. “I should like

to know what the hipster said in Unknown Pleasures. You know, none of us could hear


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when he whispered in your ear.”

“Not much really.” I blink a few times when I lie. His invasion miffs me. Over how

he brushes me off just to trespass into a private conversation. Like somehow it’s my fault

he couldn’t hear the blessing the hipster bestowed me. “He explained that I should heal

myself is all.”

A truth, just not the whole of it. What the hipster gave me was hope: a chance to

believe that everything is going to be alright. To experience someone’s belief in me. I

yearned to drop my head a little letting Mr. Owain give me a noogie, roughing my hair

with his knuckles, like any father would show affection. I treat what he told me like a

birthday wish. I don’t repeat it out-loud unless it might not come true.

“Oh,” he shrugs. “Well that’s stupid.”

Parts of me shift like charred logs underneath my anger.

Rory tests some office doors, opening them and leaving them ajar. He creeps into

empty rooms looking up through the windows for signs of passage to the tower. He

approaches a closet door and swings it open with too much force. It bangs off the wall

falling off its hinges. He catches it before he lays it down to the ground.

“Bingo,” he says. “Found it, come see.” Inside the closet, ladder rungs are stapled

into the wall. I step into the small room, still fuming, and stand close. Rory performs a

short jig, thumping the soles of his boots against the walls. He locks into a disco pose,

snapping pointed finger up in the air with the flair of John Travolta. “The clock tower.”


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I let out a mousy breath, smiling. This guy keeps a dark mood from settling inside

me too long. A whiff of patchouli soap emits from his body. My pants tighten in

anticipation, a response to how close we stand to one another. I shake my left leg to

unbind my dick.

The rungs span far apart from one another and as we ascend the skin from my

fingertips stick to the ice-cold metal. My sneakers squeak when I clamber up. Rory

dashes through a square door, already, in the platform that makes the ceiling.

“Take my hand.” A disembodied arm reaches through the crack of the trapdoor.

“Wait until you see. Time’s frozen up here.”

All I can see are shadows. My eyes adjust to the bright-grey, cloudless day seeping

in the arches above us. We hang alongside each other, inside the exposed clockwork. The

gears motionless, the motors silent, the belts still. Without any electricity, the clock does

not progress.

“There’s no time up here.”

Like most of my jokes, it’s lost on him. “We got nothing but time.”

He kisses me. His arm around my neck, me tilting my head to get the best angle. My

tongue explores the inside of his mouth, acrid at first, like eating dirt. Smoker’s breath

but I get used to it. His hands explore the inside of my khakis. He hold my dick in one,

balls in the other.

“Oh, that's warm and —,” he says. I stagger back because they’re icy. Losing my


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balance, I fall backwards. “What’s wrong?”

Rory’s hands burst out of my pants. He flails, grabbing my belt. When I tip

backwards, he swings me around to prevent my fall, but I drop right on my ass-cheek.

“Oomph.” My dick bends painfully into my leg when I hit the floor, about to snap

crosswise. “Ah, shit,” I yelp. “Shit, fucking hurts.”

“You alright?” He chuckles, jumping down to lift my head up and rubs the back of

it. I adjust myself out from under my leg, straining to lay very still.

“Nah, I think busted my dick,” I say. “Gimme a sec.”

“Take your pants off, let me see.”

“I’m not taking my pants off,” I say. “You’re so pervvy sometimes.”

“Like you weren’t going to a minute ago.”

“It’s too cold to get naked,” I say. “Let me catch my breath.”

Rory lays my head on the floor planks and stands up. He collects bits of newspaper

and fish wrappers which found their way up onto the platform. We aren’t the first visitors

to break into the space. It’s a tiny hovel, sequestered neatly from the rest of the building

with enough seclusion to give us time to handle any unwanted company.

My mind races across topics at unreasonable speeds. I harbor an uncanny certainty

my dad would seize this precise moment to search for me. Find us missing, thinking we

were kidnapped. Traveling all the way to Scotland, spotting our breadcrumbs which

inevitably leads him to us. Messing around in the clock tower.


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I lean on my side, drawing in dusty grime and suspense into my nostrils. My sides

have the case of the jitters, my ribs playing an encore on vibraphone. Worry takes my

mind off my penis’s twisted burn. I readjust myself, still hard, and place my cock

underneath the elastic of my Fruit-of-the-Looms.

Rory wads up papers on the gearbox of the clock, next to the stone wall covered in

sooty remains, where prior tenants left evidence of a campfire.

Rory lights his Zippo.

The room wasn’t more than 8- or 10-feet across, the space intimate. Ridiculous and

exhilarated, I’m awkwardly exposed on the planks of the floor. I don’t know what’s going

to happen next.

My mind flashes on Steve Strange, clicking his teeth and tapping his cane, the

Camden Palace neon-sign blinking behind him. He wears my dad’s blues — even

thought I recovered them — the WWII goggles protecting his eyes. “’Tis really a nice

jacket,” he says. He shoots me the V-sign, the two-fingered salute, the greasy insult pops

me out of my daydream, as if he caught me eavesdropping. “Give your father my

regards.”

“Can you feel it,” Rory asks. “The fire?”

The chill is less toothsome, the fire’s sprung up quickly, drawing shadows on the

bricks. Rory sits indian-style and I lay my head using his lap for a pillow. My hard-on

throbbing both in pain and arousal, working its slug-like way freeing itself from under


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my belt. I cover my crotch instinctively.

You’re an idiot, kid.

“What’re you thinking?” He strokes my hair. I rest my eyes.

“It’s stupid but,” I say. “I keep thinking Steve Strange still holding my dad’s jacket

ransom.”

“You’re yanking my leg. Does he?”

I shake my head no, “I still worry about it”

“Did your dad ever find out?” Rory brushes my bangs out of my face. I roll over to

examine Rory’s eyes, his sockets veiled in darkness. The fire short-lived. Embers

crackling when sparks rise. An ash falls on my forehead and Rory wipes it off.

“Nah, not yet,” I say, telling a half-truth.

“What happened after they caught you? Did they figure out where you’d gone?”

“Nuh-uh,” I say. “My parents thought I was out with a girl. They made up the whole

story on my behalf. I didn’t bother to stop them.” A grin takes over. “They never knew it

was Boy George’s lipstick smeared across my face.” Rory caresses my lips with his

finger tips. The fire goes out. My eyes adjust to the greylight coming in through the

arches above. “The worst part wasn’t that I was on lockdown. Big whoop, right? After

that night, I lost my brother. Again. We didn’t talk anymore, not about the earwig, not

anything important. It wasn’t the silent treatment, the space between us was…off. He

listened to my old Walkman when he sat in his bunk. He buried himself in the Monster


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Manual and the Rolling Stone Record Guide. He spent afternoons at school, studying

there. Because I had to go directly home I never saw him during the day. On weekends,

he made a friend, Rusty, and went to sleepovers or rode bikes or whatever and was

always out of the house. I was stuck at home.”

My eyes track the edges of the room, looking for some different angle. I grapple an

idea foreign to me. It dawns on me as I say it.

“Living as a military brat, we’re constantly on the move, we never really settle

down in one place long enough. I’ve been in three different schools since we left the

States. How do you make that good? After we left Florida, I used to keep in touch with

old friends, sending letters back and forth, but their mail tapered off and disappeared. We

only have each other, me and Drew. But after he saw me that night — the way Mother

laid into me, dad blind to her ways — how do I leave him behind?”

“Sit up for a second,” Rory says.

Rory kisses me on the mouth. His stubble rakes into my cheeks. We embrace until

we became a frantic collision of hands. Rory tugs my shirt off and caresses my chest. He

rubs my crotch. We kiss until my elbows are raw, rocking against the floor planks. My

face sloppy wet, I recline back down in his lap.

“Man,” I say. “Your ankle’s poking the back of my head.”

“That’s not my ankle.” Like a punchline to a joke, his mug hangs over me with a

smug smile. He unfastens my belt, unzips my pants. “Oh, you’re circumcised.”


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Rory takes my dick in his mouth. I squirm. Goosebumps rise up against me. My

skin tickles from the chills, the air getting cold again. His mouth a slick, soft engine of

molten heat. My eyes roll back. They want to examine the insides of my sockets and peek

inside my head. I fight to stay trained on his undulations, watching him perform his act

on me. Rory’s blue bangs cover the action, just his nose poking through.

“I wish you were my brother,” I say.

“Mmmhmm.”

This is us getting a blowjob.

I couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted. Each sneaker on either side of Rory, my ankles

trapped in my khakis. He kneels on my pants where they’re pulled down. I relax my legs,

keeping them from tightening so I don’t cum too quickly, looking up at the arches. The

seagulls circle under the sky’s globe, they float around like flakes of snow. Their serenity

broken by irregular, rubbery slurps as Rory sucks.

I clench my teeth. All my sensitivities drawn to the tip of my dick. The ohrwurm’s

volume climbs and distorts. Like whoever controls the forever song, knocked the volume

up, rushing over to pump it through a loud speaker. So loud it frays at the edges,

whistling feedback, struggling to come through the static. My legs tighten around Rory,

my body begins to glitch, and in my ears flowers full-on static.

“Gah.”

Static, or tinnitus ringing from the absence of song, relieves me. The exquisite


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pleasure of the earwig’s absence, amplifies my orgasm. Then, just for a second, the

sounds of the radio dial careening across stations. Snippets come through.

“Shedding tears as big as the ocean” — station change — “Please don’t do the things

you do” — static — “When you do those things” — feedback — “Pull my puppet strings”

— two songs overlapping — “I have the strangest void for you” — and back to — “She’s

the only one that never lies.” The dial rolls through the songs until the craziness slows

down and I finish jerking. I flop my body on the planks. The song settles back on one,

all-too familiar station.

But for the first time, the earwig sings the last words of the final refrain.

I’m only trying to help you

As it always does, the song plays out before starting over.

“Bloody hell, you brat,” Rory says. “You got me in the eye.”

Rory launches up, his hand up on his cheekbone. The purple of his penis head

retracting back into the fold of his jeans. I never saw him pop out. My legs weak, my

arms limp. My feet and ankles the only body parts dressed. I leave my naked body on the

clock tower floor.

“First, I didn’t know how I was going to shut you up,” Rory says. “And now you

won’t reply. Didn’t you hear me? You got me in the eye, you bloody whinge.”

“I’m here,” I say. “Sorry, man.”

“I hafta pish.”


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Rory’s insults don’t register at first.

“All this way for a nosh,” he says. “You waste of time.”

I’m preoccupied listening to the ohrwurm play through, accounting for all the words

I know already. Tracing their edges like the corners of everyday walls. The music so

clear, I swear it was playing a few inches outside my skull. Not a single word dropped,

not a note skipped. None of it muddled by the unknown. I wrangle my khakis back up

and fasten my belt. Instead of looking for my shirt, I reason out the meaning of the song.

I sit in a stupor, listening with my head cocked, sitting like the RCA dog by the victrola.

After I hear all the lyrics, I’m compelled to write them down. I wanted to see them on

paper, as a document, a proof that the madlib was over. All the empty spaces filled in, the

game was up. The earwig was never a joke, it’s as serious as an air raid siren. The last

line sticks the most.

I’m only trying to help you

“Yech, you got my jumper too,” Rory says. The splattering of urine begins in spurts.

“You gotta warn a bloke.” He holds himself up with an arm. The rancid stink of ammonia

fills the room. His stream splashing off the heated gearbox and over the wall.

“Jesus man, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing,” he says. “I’m making sure the fire’s out.”

⁂

Rory shimmies up the metal ladder rungs continuing up the wall. They end at the


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the topmost level, where the four walls of the tower are windowless arches. Below, the

view opens up to the waterway. We secure a seat on the precarious ledge, sitting side-by-

side. He straddles, I sit proper with my feet hanging out.

Rory searches his pockets for a box of Silk Cuts. When our knees touch, I withdraw

my leg. I ensure the space between us.

“Want one?” He offers me a cigarette. I shake my head and keep staring ahead at the

view. He cups his Zippo and lights up. Kerosine assaults my nostrils.

Rory beat his meat after he relieved himself without a break between the two. To his

dismay, I didn’t bother to assist. I stuffed my fingers against my nostrils, trying not to

retch as the enclosed room became pungent. The clock tower was too small to get away

from it.

“C’mon, kid, lend us a hand,” he pleaded. “You just had your tongue all the way

down the back of my throat.”

I didn’t walk over. I didn’t argue with him. It didn’t take long before he reached the

end of his rope and jizzed into the puddle of his burnt and cooling piss.

“You can call it a cock tower now,” he said, letting out a throaty laugh.

“I could but I wouldn’t.”

Beyond the inlet an oversized fishing boat crawls along the Firth, inching its way to

the North Sea. Salty wind and the seagulls whistle to each other. I inhale clean air with

relief. The sweat on my forehead begins to chill. Putting my hands under my armpits to


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contain my warmth, we sit for the duration of a cigarette without speaking. Jets of smoke

enveloping wisps of my frosty breath.

Nothing moved quickly from above the township. Time encased in ice. I marvel at

the moment. How my outrage is tempered by the weather. The ecstasy achieved by the

tragedy that is Rory. My guts wrestle the conflict of it, heavy in my belly, a pile of

snakes. No regrets for the act, I’d like to have another go, just not with Rory. I wish I’d

picked someone different, I had no way to know he was a disgusting shit-head. I fight off

the awkwardness, wanting to slip away, but I need him more than sex.

Rory is a bridge. He squats in a flat, deep in central London. He told me kids my

age come down from the country all the time. Out of work and out of luck teenagers,

suburb youngsters looking to party every night. They squat in a row of abandoned

buildings on Lilieshall Rd. He held the invitation to a crash-pad, to a bed I desperately

needed since I no longer had one. I can stand him just for a little while longer.

How quickly it went from lust to bust.

Here was another kid who liked music like me, Smash Hits like me, boys like me.

Sexy enough and interested in me. An obvious choice for a boyfriend. Let’s be real:

maybe he’s one that couldn’t be counted on in terms of personality but I’d rather hang

with him than live on the street. Maybe just change his title from boyfriend to roommate.

“So when’d they kick you out?”

“When?” I squint at Rory, blocking out the sun, putting my hand over my eyes in a


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salute. I hadn’t told him I’m homeless. He wasn’t like my brother, he’s not one to read

my mind. “You mean before we came up to Edinburgh? How do you know that —”

“You said it: you couldn’t leave your brother behind.” I study him. He tested the

bottom of his eye. Both whites bloodshot with dark veins caused from listening to the

Slothmouth cassette. His right gleamed with the new, bright flow of trauma. “How does

that work out being a Yank, don’t you need a visa or something to stay in the UK?”

“I — I don’t know.”

“There’s no way to go back home?”

“Nope, they kicked me out for good,” I say. “My Mother did.” I drift off, unsure

what to say next. He fidgets on the ledge, each leg knocking against the precipice, similar

to how my brother does. I would guess his discomfort came from a full bladder but Rory

had already went. I decide his eye must really be bothering him. “She told me when I go,

I’m gone forever.”

“Let’s talk about something besides your sorry tale, mate.” Waving me off by

flapping his hand in the air. He shakes his knees more wildly. Irritation taking over, he

rocks his body. “It’s like you’re living it all over again. Stop going on and on about it.”

My blood simmers, bubbles run up the back of my neck and ears.

“I wanted to beg her to call my dad up —”

“Listen kid, I mean really pay attention this time, I’ve heard all this nonsense

before,” Rory says. “The discovery, the ensuing fight, the tearful exit. When it comes


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down to it you’re not very remarkable. Take my word for it, there’s happiness in being

common.”

“How can you be happy…being like everybody else?” My mouth kept running,

switching tactics, my nerve-endings scorching with fire. I stared into his pupils without

looking away. He broke the gaze this time and looked down. “What kind of bullshit is

that?”

“We all have idiot stories. When you’re, you know, a buftie,” he says. “I’ve been on

my own since my parents kicked me out. They caught me playing with another kid’s

joystick and disowned me.” His shrug was an exaggeration. “Just like everybody else,

mate. Add me to the bleeding list. I hear these stories all the time.”

“You don’t know my story, nobody does,” I say. Barely holding steady, I check my

gages and scratch where my cheek twitched. I’d give him a rough shove if I wasn’t scared

shitless I might push him out the tower. My voice is goes up. “I may be a fuck-up but I’ve

never been ordinary.”

“Ha, ha,” Rory says, faking. “That’s a laugh.” Then, he breaks out in giggles like

I’m some punchline to a joke. His head still down, more interest in checking the dirt

under his nails.

“What do you mean?”

“Like you aren’t just another throw-away kid, right” he says. “I don’t know your

story? You bet I do. Hear me now, you wanker, your mum would never’ve kicked you out


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if you were on the straight and narrow. If she didn’t push you out the door, you wouldn’t

be sitting with me, would you?”

“You don’t know that,” I say, unable to convince myself. Rory wasn’t interested, he

already placed his history upon me.

“I’m the best you’ll get. Perhaps, the only queer you know. Either way I’m who you

ran to when everyone turned their back. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting there,” he

says. Rory regressed into the same nyah-nyahs that my brother reserves for popping my

lid. “Hell, maybe you’d be slouching on the sofa at home watching football on the telly.

Happy to procrastinate instead of revising your maths for that quiz on Monday. You ring

up your girlie at school trying to get a little rumpy-pumpy,” he gestured with his index

and middle finger joined like he was scooping into a peanut-butter jar. “And your mum…

she’d think it’s brilliant. She wouldn’t give a monkey’s arse.”

Anytime the kind of anger that haunts me grabs it’s gnarly hand around my skull,

I’m pushed out of my head. You could say I’m conducting an out-of-body experience,

except when I do, I retreat into the core of my flesh, into the emptiness inside my chest.

It’s an inner-body experience. The door shut, trapping me outside my head.

Ripley’s says that folks who have an out-of-body experience acquire life-long

enlightenment. A belief that they everything is going to be alright. Not me, when it

happens I’m not okay. I watch as a stranger to myself while I suffer spiritual enragement.

When I’m lit, I detonate like a 30-megaton nuke. Geiger counters can’t hold their needle


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on the chart. Within the eye of destruction there’s a vacuum, untouched by the rage

swirling around it. I stand blank within it, caged where my heart once was.

This is me going off.

“Listen you fucking low-life operator. Who the fuck do you think you are? You

don’t get to say you don’t want to hear my motherfucking sorry tale. I’ll explain what you

get and what you don’t get to do, goddamnit.” Rory’s hands search for safety, bending

back to avoid the spittle rushing out of my rant. “Sit up straight and look at me, put your

hands on your lap. I ain’t fucking around with you anymore. You feelin’ me? Don’t speak

to me that way again. You don’t have the right.” The clarity of defending myself is

muddied by the desire for retribution. To make him pay. “You aren’t worth the five bucks

for the ooze coming out of your dick. You aren’t even worth the time your mother spent

to push your ugly ass out her backside. You’re disrespectful and a complete idiot and you

are totally gross. Wash your hands.” Insults don’t always make sense. “I can’t believe

this. My dad doesn’t have the right. Mother doesn’t have the right. What makes you think

you can put me down like that?”

“Woah-ho-ho, you think I am gross?”

“You are raunchy,” I say, petering out completely. “I expect better.”

I return to the controls after the bomb goes off. I hear the tick-tick-tick from the

shrapnel cooling after the explosion. The hissing gas-leak from my steam running out. I

search around the ledge for an explanation, any clue that might be laying around to help


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me understand what I just unearthed.

“— swabbing the inside of my mouth with your tongue, darting around in there —,”

Rory says. “ — the one who shot me in the eye —”

Rory matches my volume but I block him out. Gathering my confusion into a bale.

Has my anger been mislaid? Mother’s treatment of me, my dad’s absence. They’re the

ones who deserved to hear my fury. Rory wasn’t too far off but I haven’t been able to

accept it.

“ — have to listen to your bullshit made-up stories —”

I can no longer cover up the truth.

I shall no longer allow any part of me to hide.

I will no longer suffer the embarrassment of being myself.

“I get it now, Rory,” I say. “Thank you.”

“ — can talk to you any way I want —” A curious frown blanketed his forehead.

“What?”

“You don’t have to yell. I heard what you said. You’re right.”

“Come again,” he says.

I realized I played a trick on Rory. In the rules of war, on a battlefield or within an

argument, you must be fully present for the snipes and the counter-attacks. Planning your

next maneuver. He wasn’t aware I was trapped inside myself.

Wrapped up roly-poly, reflecting.


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“If things were better, I’d be home right now,” I say. “You’re right. I prefer to be on

the couch watching TV than following some faery-tale muse and diagnosing myself as

some form of mental.”

“Ah, lookie here —” Still hot off the skirmish. “— you do want to be normal.”

“And so do you,” I say. “Maybe the song in my head isn’t sung by Boy George but

it’s there. Maybe the Slothmouth isn’t a wizard who can take it away. But you’ve heard

her sing, she’s real. Yeah, I want to be fucking normal, living a regular house with a

boring family, solid like Leave It to Beaver, all copasetic. But that’s not my life.”

“Here you are, then. You’re out on your ass, yeah? Without a place to stay and

nowhere to go. That’s your bag, isn’t it?” He snaps his fingers with a flick of a point well-

made. “You must be shitting bricks? I bet there’s something you can do for a sofa to sleep

on.” Rory leans back against the bricks of the arch and stretches out. He slides his left

hand inside the front of his jeans.

I worried I lost the opportunity to ask for help when I insulted him. I fully-expected

him to take off. Leave me in the lurch. I would’ve deserved it. How the tables turn after I

discover I shall help myself. Rory presented me one of those Steve Strange barters for

goods and services. I know better. I end up with the shit end of the deal.

“You’re without a place to go,” Rory says.

“Yeah, I guess I am.” I reject the offer.


329

THE TANGLE

Drew and I come down the stairs, hand in hand.

“You’ve found me abby, Sir Frank Walcatt,” Alison says, emphasizing cat with glee.

“Named after the national hero of Barbados but him, he likes to be called Franco.”

Alison is a heavyset woman, dark-skinned, reminding me of the Creole in Spain. A

color so warm it shines with its own light. Her braids are swathed in a wide, turmeric

headband. Even with her stories growing up in the Caribbean, I assumed she’d look as

white as Ms. Stewart. I must be blushing when Alison says, “Not often you see a woman

like me in dese parts. My tongue speaks from the islands but my home is Scotland.”

“Alba gu bràth,” Mr. Owain says, nodding in agreement.

I look at my company gathered around me, encouraged to be fitting amongst these

strange folk. My home is Scotland. I’m going to try the hipster’s advice and unlock the

door and let myself out of my head.

“We overheard your folktales and I’m itching to ask,” I test the waters. “Do you

have any proof on the Good Folk, the Duppies? I’d like to find out more about their

empirical nature.”

I’m surprised by my awkward little question. Relieved when she laughs

approvingly. The weight of her shoulders quake from the pleasure of it. I could curl up

inside that chuckle.

“Stay away from dem Duppy ghosts.” I can’t tell if she’s warning or teasing. “Dey


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steal your body if dey discover you’ve lost your soul.”

The bottom of my stomach fills with spikes. Alison notices the shock on my face,

lays her hand on my neck and soothes me. She bears her inner hearth, drawing me up into

an embrace. She’s the summer sun coming out behind a summer squall. Mom, I’ve

missed this.

“Awe, now now, that’s alright.”

“But how do you know if you lost your soul?”

“You don’t hafta worry ‘bout dat,” she says, adjusting my curls “I could tell you a

yarn but —” She bends back to gain sight into my pupils, her brow pigeon-toed with

serious examination. What does she see inside me? She must spot the nothingness. Her

concern flies off and she kisses me on my forehead. “Well now, you two are little

eavesdropping scamps, aren’t you?”

Drew tugs on her sleeve.

“Hey, miss,” he asks. “Do you know Sue Clowes?”

“I don’t think dat I do,” she says. “Curious, why’s dat?”

“You dress like her.” he says. “Those are tramp marks, right?”

Alison’s draped in a knee-length housecoat. Beneath the felt fabric her dress is

simple, almost formal in uncrumpled-white linen. Little swirls of ruby thread and leafy

diamond patterns dance across the hem of her neck.

“Naw hon, my sister-in-law sewed this for me,” she says. “Ms. Stewart.”


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Rory and Mikey tumble in through the front door, their faces burning from the

outside nip. They’ve come in from their journey, huffing shaggy breaths as if they’ve

turned up too late, interrupting without a care for our conversation. More precious

moments stolen by timely arrivals.

“You lot hungry,” Rory asks. “I’m Lee Marvin.”

Allison directs us to The International Hotel, a local pub servicing Grangemouth,

and Mr. Owain drops us off before he makes his way, to visit a friend who runs a record

shop in neighboring Falkirk. The drive is too short to ask any follow-on questions. I tuck

them away with the pout on my lip.

“Call up Sleeves records. Ask for me if yeh need a ride back,” he says. “Ahoy.”

With a tip of a plaid bunnet, he zips his Morris WF down the road.

Downtown is represented by a single, minuscule square. It’s empty and grey.

“What a dump,” Rory reminds us.

Our group topples into The International hotel. We’re greeted by the stench of spilt

ale and fish oil. I want to turn back the second we walk in. More a pub than any hotel I’ve

been in. My skin seizes up around me, not being used to entering a bar without an adult

chaperon.

“Oh, they have mince pies,” Rory says

He flops down at a picnic table, picking the agitation out of one eye. He readily

leans back on the sagging bench to get comfy. The upholstery covered in HP Brown


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Sauce stains. Mikey sits next to him — without a word — propping his head against the

rock walls and dirty grout. He’s standoffish, shoulders too cold to rub against. They

watch a soccer match broadcast on the TV resting on a high, makeshift platform in the

back corner. I don’t sit with them. Instead, I follow Drew over to a blackboard listing the

daily specials. It takes me a second to scan the list of rolls — hamburger, bacon, egg, chip

— and a selection of hot dishes but can’t decide on one. My stomach swims under my

shirt. I want to leave this place. Go back to the safety of Grangeburn House.

Drew picks up chalk and draws lazy swirls, intricate circles, and zigzags.

“What are those,” I say. “Doodles you saw on Alison’s dress?”

“Tramp marks.”

“Yes — but what are they for?” I tap one of the circles, happy to have something to

talk about. “What does this one mean?”

“It’s a secret code. A way for travelers to talk to each other when they don’t want

anyone else to know. Let’s say you saw this one on a fence. This tells you to go left. If it

went the other way, go right.”

“Oh, you’d follow them like directions,” I say. “Where would they take you?”

“All sorts of places, where you want to go. Others you must avoid. Like this one,”

Drew says. “It says bewa re of dog. The jagged lines kinda look like two dogs fighting.”

“So they warn you about dangerous places?”

He holds the chalk under his chin, then remembers a glyph and draws three diagonal


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lines. “This one is an unsafe place. You don’t want to go there.” Next to it he draws a

misshapen diamond. “And this one. I like it because reminds me of a caption from

Monster Manual. If you saw this, it means defend yourself.”

My lungs fill with the breath of seventy-seven hundred sighs. The chills warn me,

shivers of foreboding. His explanations don’t help me go with the flow. I’m about to head

back to our table when Rory becomes rambunctious over what he sees in the soccer

match. “Woah, ah no,” he shouts. “That should have been a bloody goal.” He goes over

the play by play. Mikey ignores him. I lean on one foot then shift to the other like I’m

caught between two conversations.

“Any symbols for safe places?”

“Yeah, you typically mark houses. But it’s more about what kind of person lives

there. In the building or town. Say you’re in trouble, this one means there’s help. You go

there to see a judge.” Drew traces the chalk against the swirl he first made. “Or this one

for where to ask for food and a place to sleep.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I looked it up at the library,” he says.

“You know, I spend lots of time at my school’s library.” Glad to have something

else in common. “You too?”

“Well, we mostly go there to root through Smash Hits, newspapers, and the like.

Lately, I’ve been looking up other things instead. You hungry?”


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“I was hoping for someplace…more like a restaurant.”

“This place is okay.” I’m waffling on where to put my arms. I cross them or hook

my thumbs into my Levi’s hoops. Drew scans the pub. “See those kids over there?

They’re a little older than you. They have nice clothes and they’re eating a feast.”

He’s right. A group of college-aged kids who could attend University with me. They

wear handsome, striped jerseys and clean, dress shirts. Silver-haired men sit beside them,

debating from a lectern of sharp ties and thick-lensed glasses — a familiar uniform of

university professors — I relax in a single beat, laying my arms at my side.

Drew’s superpowers are a marvel. The way he tinkers inside you, shifting what’s

happening underneath.

Their table is laid out like a picnic. Overflowing with pies, fried goodies and enough

ale for each of them. When I see a bowl of mussels in a sherry-cream sauce, my stomach

complains willfully. I realize I haven’t eaten all day.

“I am hungry after all.”

"Will you order me fish & chips and a Coke," Drew says. “I’m going to see what

those guys are doing.” He skips over to two of the strangers at a glass-topped cocktail

table, black cape floating behind him “Cooooool, ha ha! What is that?”

“This video game? It’s called Dig Dug.”

“Aces,” he says. “Alright if I play, too?”

“Put yir 10p on the table.”


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Drew dashes over and asks his brother to borrow change and Mikey gives him a

pound note. I take this time to sit down at the rickety table with the boys. Drew’s gone by

the time the waitress comes over with drinks and takes our food order.

“I’m not hungry,” Mikey says.

“Aaah, yes,” Rory says. “Thar she blows.” He slurps down the pint of stout in one

engorged sip. He pinches Mikey in the ribs. “It’ll put hair on your chest.”

Mikey twists away from him, his ears glowing pink with embarrassment. But he

takes a sip and swallows his disgust. After he stares at the television, I can tell his

attention is somewhere else. I wish I were on top of the stairs to hear what’s said between

them when I’m not here. I’ll have to spark up the conversation.

“Where’d you go earlier?”

“We walked around is all,” Mikey says. “Nowhere really.”

“An old abandoned building across the way. I think it was once the town hall,” Rory

says, wiping the froth off his upper lip. Mikey scrunches his nose. We climbed up the

clock tower and looked at the freighters on the Firth. We — uhrm — we had us a chat

and tooled around. Didn’t we, darling?”

Rory hands move from digging his eye to digging in Mikey’s ear. Mikey knocks his

hand away and doesn’t reply. Rory leans back, putting his arms along the back of the

bench, letting one hand rest on the nape of Mikey’s neck, caressing the hairs. Mikey sits

forward to avoid his touch.


336

“What are you looking at, lassie,” Rory says to me. He juts his jaw out. “You got a

problem we was arsing about?”

“Uh,” I say, a little surprised. “Nope.”

“Fuck sake, man,” Mikey says. “You really are dumb.”

“I just meant we spent time idly is all,” Rory says. “Lolly-gagging, likesee. Like old

chums.” He rolls his tongue inside his cheek, rubbing the bottom of his gums, with loud,

lewd squishes.

“From chum to glum in a second flat,” Mikey mumbles. He looks at me and mouths

the words: I’m sorry.

“I—” Mikey shakes his head for me to stop. “—hope the food is good here.” He

uses his eyes to indicate Rory, to implicate him in an unsaid testimony. I respond

soundlessly, I’m sorry, too.

“Pub fare,” Rory says, shaking his glass. “Pssst, miss. Yeah, I’ll have another.”

Mikey’s embarrassment bars the way into his emotions. His apology is a way in, a

key to unlocking. To see through him, is to see his desperation. To get away from The

International Hotel, from this table, and mostly from Rory. It’s not much of a leap for me

to figure out the two have been intimate. The shimmer of magic replaced with a

unwavering certainty. Sex. A knowledge that cannot be taught or forgotten.

Only experienced.

I’m let down, but not disappointed. We’ll all have sex, eventually. But it’s like


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losing a friend. (Even if we’re not really friends). When Mikey stepped over that

threshold, he stepped away from me. With a pang of mourning, he’s left a vacancy where

his innocence used to be. Inside myself the ground shifts, the cliffside shears off, and I’m

closer to the edge because for me the only way is to follow him. I’m nowhere close to

making that leap. But sex isn’t the only way to go over the brink.

The ache of loss doesn’t let up, recalling the business left undone with my mother,

with Tomás, now Mikey. It pierces my defenses, tearing like paper, an Auger effect.

Normally, I’d use all my energy to dive deeper into my shell. But not this time, I have to

get on with it. I take a sip from Mikey’s abandoned pint.

Nobody notices.

The boys sit looking in opposite directions. Mikey chomps on ice from his brother’s

Coke, holding back his venom. Rory chuckles and a smile cracks across his face. He

laughs at himself or something he remembered. He catches me giving him a hairy eye

and within a microsecond he hits me with a dead-pan expression. He’s been putting on an

act all this time.

“What’s the plan,” I ask, keeping my sight set on Rory. “Did you find anything out

about the Slothmouth.” I repeat what I’ve heard Drew ask when he’s curious about the

earwig. “Did you figure out any new clues?”

“Funny you should ask.” Mikey answers on instinct. “New lyrics, I have all the

lyrics now.” He peers at me as if I’ve just read his mind. Yet his surface is grim. “Ah it


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doesn’t matter, does it? I wouldn’t get my hopes up. There’s no plan. We’ll just go home

tomorrow.”

“You’ve heard something, haven’t you,” I ask. “Please tell me.”

The waitress delivers another Guinness.

Rory sloshes it down, ignoring the news like the war isn’t happening.

Mikey puts his hand up to his ear. The ohrwurm gives him away. The constant pain

biting down in his mind. I’ve not seen him filled with so much doubt and he stumbling

around inside himself. He walks amongst the lowlights.

“I heard something new. The song changed for a second, a hand on the dial

switching the stations on the radio. I heard…” I slip my hand under his. Echoes of his

brother. He pushes himself forward. “I heard snippets. I have the strangest void for you. I

heard that and another one. When you do those things / Pull my puppet strings.”

Do puppet strings equal heartstrings?

“Hogwasssh,” Rory says. “You made it up.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Bollocks, I know what you’re on about,” he says. “You’re talking ssshit.”

Rory jostles Mikey’s shoulder, pawing down his back. Mikey blocks him with an

elbow, pinning his biceps to the soggy upholstery.

“What?” Rory asks.

“You think you can just use me?”


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They withdraw when the waitress passes by with tsk-tsks. Mikey’s ears glow hot

from the exchange and he stares at the wall across the pub. We wait there until our food is

delivered and Drew returns from the arcade game and sits beside me. The boys settle

down into eating, except for Mikey who has no food.

Lets see what else I can suss out. To observe an experiment, you must let it run it’s

course, to see how far it can go, until it reaches it’s conclusion. I lightly touch his

knuckles.

“I have news about the Slothmouth,” I say.

“You’re kidding?”

“You won’t believe it though. We know where she is, overheard the innkeeper

divulge —” I raise my eyebrows in exclamation. “— that she is in the house at 4 Abbot.

That’s why we need a plan.”

“No duh,” Drew says, mouth full of fries. “What should we do next?”

“After we left, I wondered if you were onto something,” Mikey says. “I figured we

should sneak in to see if we could spot her.”

“Do you think we’ll get in trouble,” I ask.

“I’m sure of it,” he says. “What other choice do we have?”

We tell Mikey about the Slothmouth’s brothers, how they take care of her, and all

the other information we overheard at the B&B. Our excitement bustles together. We

determine the least conspicuous way to approach 4 Abbot is to go during the day. Do it in


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plain sight, it won’t be so obvious we’re up to no good. Tomorrow’s Sunday, our last day

here, our last chance to find the Slothmouth. We’ll head over when dawn’s breaking.

Which means we have the evening to flesh out the approach.

I find myself navigating around all I’ve learned. Some things told in secret so I

don’t repeat what Drew told me about their parents. Others I stop myself from

confessing, hanging on the edge, still unable to let it all out. On theories around Duppies

and Daoine Sìth. In this moment, though, I’m larger than myself, with friends that are

kinfolk. Why disrupt this moment?

“It’s so funny how I was ready to pack it in and declare myself mental. Ready to go

my own way,” Mikey says. As if on my behalf. “If only I could have a good cry.”

“He can’t, you know,” Drew says. “Since he lost his heart.”

How similar Mikey’s missing heart is similar to my missing soul. As I guessed in

Unknown Pleasures: we are very similar. We’ve become so attached to each other, bound

up in each others lives so quickly. It’ll take a special kind of grown-up bravery to stand

up and show the inner-most child of me.

It takes guts to stop waiting for a savior.

“Bullocksss,” Rory says. “Big-dangling fat and hairy bullockssses. You’d be dead

without a heart.” We try to ignore Rory. Our eyes rolling, necks lilting. He reluctantly

returns to the soccer game and orders a fourth round. Still rubbing at his right eyeball, he

sneaks furtive looks when our hands are held, arms are touched. I can’t look at him


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straight-on, guilt skimming over me. He’s the one left out now.

“I’ve a confession to make,” I say. Mikey angles in. “Please believe me when I say

I’ve also seen a Fine Friend.”

“You’ve seen Finah?”

“Not Finah,” I say. “But yes, I’m certain of it.”

“What does it mean?”

“She’s having us on.”

“Let her speak, man,” Mikey says to Rory.

“I want to hear,” Drew says.

Maybe it’s karma, a funny kind of faith. I’m convinced it’s more akin to Newtonian

physics, where every action has a reaction. Whatever you put out there seems to

eventually come back. Without any more doubts, I want to poke and prod at the universe

to see what happens and maybe I can find my place in it. Mikey urges me onward. I’ll let

them pick through the mess and see how they respond.

“After my mother died, I cried tears as big as the ocean. Tomás stepped out of those

tears. I named him after my grandfather. He stayed with me for three months, at least.”

The first time I’ve said it aloud. Something I’ve been avoiding for years.

An alarming, sharp intake of air. Mikey shakes his hands in mine, raising them both

to victory. “That’s a line from the earwig!”

“Mikey, Mikey, is that true? Did she just repeat a new lyric?”


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“Yes.” Mikey say.

“I knew it,” Drew says. His excitement reverberates at the news. “I knew Franny

could help us. I told you didn’t I? Maybe she’ll lift Finah’s curse.” Drew turns to me.

“You should listen to the tape.”

I take the leap, “Tomás is an imaginary friend.”

“Jesus. Don’t let her kid you, mate,” Rory says.

“Stop being so mean,” Drew says.

“How do you know those lyrics,” Mikey asks. “Tears as big as the ocean?”

I’m not sure they heard me. Either brother.

“I have a question, one that’s been bugging me since yesterday.” My mind is

traveling full clip. Electricity springs forth, crackling inside my skull, humming a

warning. I figure a way to reinforce what I revealed before. “If Tomás is an imaginary

and only I could see him. Why can Mikey see Finah? I don’t understand why he can see

someone else’s imaginary friend when nobody else could see mine.”

“No, no. Finah is not my imaginary friend, you got it wrong,” Drew says. “Why do

you guys always get things backwards? Finah was a Fine Friend, for sure. Yes, she may

be imaginary,” he says. I’m amazed how he shrugs like it’s irrelevant whether she is real

or not.

“But…” I hang on his words, stunned.

“Fucksakes,” Rory says.


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“Finah was Mikey’s Fine Friend,” he says. “She was never mine.”

I envision the missing piece of the puzzle, the tongue and grooves allowing them to

snap together, like they belong. Listen to the cardboard click when the two pieces join.

Exclaim when the print begins to reveals itself. Of course Finah belongs to Mikey. Still

there are still missing pieces because I can’t see the whole picture.

“I just learned that line from the earwig today. Do you know it from somewhere?”

Mikey grabs my forearm. “You listened to the tape. Who said you could do that? I didn’t

give you permission.”

“I’ve not listened to any tape.” It’s the truth. “Do you mean the Slothmouth?” I tug

away but he hangs on. “Let go, you’re hurting me.”

“What about the tape,” Drew asks, prying his brother’s hand off of me. “Leave her

alone.” I yank myself away and rub the my arm like he just gave me an indian burn.

Mikey smolders at me from across the table.

“She singsss gibberish, pure gibberish,” Rory says. “It’s a load of bogusssshite.”

“Nuh-uh,” Drew says. “The Slothmouth’s here.”

“You’re making it up. Like its real life, but it’s not, it’s just a game. And you’re all a

bore. Full of bollocks, bollocks, bullocksss. I don’t believe a word of it, not one single

thing.”

“Well, I believe him,” I say.

I promised myself to help him, no matter what.


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“I’m sure you do, you little twat,” Rory says. “He’ll burn you too like he does

everyone near him.” His voice swims around the words. “Mikey’s jealousss of you —

look at him girlie — like he was with whatshername. Just like Finah. Just like his

brother.”

“That’s not true,” Drew says.

“Shut up, Drew.”

“But he’s never gonna like you like he does me.” He under the table and grabs

Mikey’s crotch. There’s a bang from underneath the table when his knees jump up. “I got

what I came for, didn’t I?”

“Let go,” Mikey says. The crack of the devil in his eyes. But Rory’s ready for

Mikey’s anger and twists his arm behind his back. “I don’t like you anymore.”

“But how will you survive without me,” Rory’s is a mocking voice.

“Shut up, shut up,” Mikey says. “Drew doesn’t know, you asshole.”

“What’s he mean?” Drew’s eyes already brimming. “On your own?”

“Everybody calm down,” I say.

The boys aren’t listening. A scuffle under the table scrambles around my legs.

Someone kicks me in the shins and I back out from the table. Rory yelps, “Ow, hey!”

They kick each other under the table some more. “You little shit.”

“Why are you leaving me?”

Drew thrashes his head, runs over and climbs on Mikey’s back, walloping him in


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the arm. Mikey grabs his face with his free hand. I rush to Drew to extract him from the

fight, lurch forward into the scuttle. Drew’s his sneaker kicks the ridge around my eye.

He thrashes his legs behind him, knocking the air out of me.

As we fall back, our sodas and beer spill, crashing glass onto the floor.

“Oh, come now.” Rory smiles at his handiwork. “Each of you needs to grow up.”

“You should learn when keep your trap shut,” Mikey says.

“Calm yourself down, Nancy.”

Mikey wallops Rory in the shoulder. With a second fist he aims for his face but

Rory catches his wrist. Mikey grunts and Rory slams his face onto the table and holds

him against the splintered wood. Drew climbs off of me and jumps on Rory’s back. He

misses, steps on his own cloak and rips it off his back. He falls, head over heels, and rips

the neck of Rory’s teeshirt as he falls. The shirt tears open from the back

“Get offa me, yah wanker.” Rory kicks Drew in the ribs several times.

Mikey unlocks himself from the space between the bench and the table. He stomps

over me as he rushes Rory. He tackles him in the stomach with his shoulders, knocking

him down, crashing one of the wooden chairs behind him.

“I can’t breathe,” my voice scratches out.

The table of students and professors leap up to intervene, looking rougher than they

did a minute ago, mugs and fists raised like they’ve been ready for a good fight.

The waitress comes out. She’s retrieved a cricket bat from a place behind the bar


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place and slams it against the brick. KerRAK. The bat connects with a sleazy snap and

everyone looks up.

“You there,” the waitress says. “All of yeh. Take it outside or I’ll beat yeh down.

Absolutely no rough-hoosing in The International Hotel.”

Rory saddles Mikey, swiping a few more punches into his stomach. The waitress

cracks the bat three more times on the bar — KerKerKERAK — and points at Rory,

summoning a witches finger ready to cast a spell. “Oi yeh boay, yir not welcome here no

more. Yes yeh little fook, get oan oot.”

“Fuck you all, gaylords,” Rory say. “I’m going outside to have a fag.”

The fight unravels. Rory pushes Drew’s face into the floor, rubbing it into soda and

gravel. Mikey unlatches him off his brother. Rory frees himself, both hands in the air.

“And you can shove it up yer jacksy,” Rory says as he knocks past me, wiping spit

and blood off his lips. I’m gulping for air as my lungs re-inflate. “You’ll never be as good

as me. I’m a much better todger gobbler.”

⁂

I sop up the sherry and cream at the bottom of a bowl with sourdough bread. The

expired shells of fresh mussels stacked on the side. We sit at the end of the table with the

students. They go to Falkirk College. One of the professors rubs Drew’s mop of hair

proudly. “Yeh geis a good laugh, alright.”

The waitress puts a bowl of sticky toffee pudding as a trophy between us.


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“Either dae or die,” they say.

“Either peace or war.”

“Neither spare nor despise”

“Defend,” the smallest student says. “And learn tae suffer.”

They’re quoting Scottish family mottos.

“Courage grows strong at the wound,” I say.

“Aye,” they shout together. “Hear, hear, lassie.”

They smash their mugs together and drink until they overflow down the sides of

their face. The boys and I finish the pudding together. We sit in silence. I feel the boot

scrape on my face burn, we all have injuries. I must look a mess and the brothers do too.

We survived the fight, but wounds between us go deeper. I don’t think there’s a way to

repair what is broken between us. My trust in them is at an all time low.

We say our goodbyes to our unlikely friends after we pay our bill.

“This tramp mark is for a pub, like this place,” Drew says as we exit The

International Hotel. Drew carries the box of chalk from inside, another gift from the

waitress. He draws a square tramp mark with a line shooting upwards. It resembles a mug

of ale.

“What are you going to do when we get back,” I ask, stilted.

“With Rory,” Mikey asks. “I don’t know.”

“We should figure out what to say,” Drew says.


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“I rather figure out how to visit the Slothmouth,” he says.

When we get back to Grangeburn House the sun sets and the shadows paint

themselves with long strokes. I breathe in the salt floating on the air. The Morris WF isn’t

parked out front, the hipster not waiting nearby. I hoped that he’d be here to help us clean

up our muddle.

We’re left undone because none of us choose to speak on it.

Drew squats and uses the chalk to draw a primitive cat on the walkway leading up

to the B&B. A picture of Sir Frank Walcatt.

“Franco?”

“Yeah but no. It’s the most famous tramp mark of all. One that all hobos look for

when they arrive in a new town.” Drew doesn’t wait for me to ask him.

He says, “A kind lady lives here.”


349

Chapter 11.

COURT OF THE SLOTHMOUTH

This is us at Grangeburn House.

I lay in bed listening to Drew’s miniature snores, scratching like raccoons against

cedar panelling. We sleep as we do at home. He’s in the twin bunk next to mine (the one

Rory was going to sleep in) instead of doubling-up in the larger queen-sized.

Rory’s made his cowardly exit. He got what he wanted. The prize for which he

travelled to Scotland, I’m a virgin no more. I'm glad to have given it up. I replay the

encounter over in my mind. The molten mouth. I roll over to free my hard-on mashed

into the mattress, jack-off furiously and silently, and miss my own eye by inches. I lay

exhausted, semen running down my belly and neck until I wipe it off with the corner of

the hotel sheets.

The excitement of first sex confusingly entangles with a sharp awareness of loss.

Not for Rory but for myself. Forever changed, I can never go back. I could’ve guessed. A

door open within me, my luggage is packed. I’m out the door. Can’t get realer than that,

man. The road’s before me, the destination hidden beyond its curves and I’m already

traveling upon it. Been looking for my bearings longer than just this weekend.


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I cannot take Drew with me since my ass is kicked out on the street. No matter how

I count on to keep him near, we must diverge. It’s started already, he holds interests

elsewhere. I’ve noticed the hollowness inside me widen, shearing off my tattered soul.

Once I return him to mother, I’ll be without a family. Without my brother, I’m without a

home. Alone I’m without a country.

Call me NO FUTURE, just leave out the UK.

Good strategies require looking ahead yet I cannot find my way when I keep on

looking back. Fingers of fear work my spine when I consider the lack of prospects. Bleak

at best. I cannot bare these thoughts at night. Avoid reality, Mikey. I’m quite adept at

dodging my own future. A real pro you could say, a professional fuck-up.

Drew’s snoring settles into squeaky rhythms of deeper sleep. He syncs up with the

winter bats’ as they chatter in the attic. I tuck my head under my arm.

This is us playing back the days events.

I recount all the different ways it could’ve gone. Started off on the wrong step.

Suffered the embarrassment of my brother fearlessness as he marched up to 4 Abbot to

knock on the door. Later I sniped at Franny for questioning me. Blowing up at Rory in

the clock tower was a natural progression.

The fight in the International Hotel was Rory’s final act. I cannot make sense of it,

the scuffle’s still a jumble. His insults were a furnished knife to slice me open, to reveal

my humiliation. Was it his need to expose some shame? Was it that I shot my load in his


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eye? It’s difficult enough to beat off in secrecy (not to wake my brother), the level

increases in both skill and logistics when inviting another person into the act.

Man, I should’ve just smashed him in the face. Wrapped his neck in a head-lock and

snapped his nose open. Any bloodstains on my shirt would’ve been a perfect badge that

he had suffered in my arms. I’d have less regrets about him disappearing into the night.

This is us burning bridges.

Add Rory to the collection of acquaintances I’ve scorched from my life. Friendships

I’ve thrown out in Thursday’s trash. How I checked each one off with each move from

base to base. Over the past year, look who I’ve crossed off my list. Fritz, who shared his

Beach Boys records, I dropped him once I didn’t need him. Dong Turner couldn’t be a

friend, I blackmailed him before there was a chance. Was Jon Moss ever my buddy the

afternoon we spent together? Not Sue Clowes, definitely not Steve Strange, the hippy nor

the hipster. Adults don’t count even if they help.

There’s not a single person outside my house I can talk to.

Rory was supposed to be different. But…in the end, wasn’t he? I hoped for better.

More of a dickhead than I could’ve imagined. I guess he didn’t like me much in return.

My plan to shack up has gone with him into the night.

Thank God for small miracles.

I’m forever looking back, it never does me any good. If I keep it up, I’ll crawl into

the acetate of memory and simply disappear. Never to return. How much longer can I live


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in this state?

Our trip to Scotland, finding the Slothmouth, is my last ditch effort to figure out

why I’m so crazy. It’s why I’ve put it all out there. I learned from the Reckless hipster to

fess up all the embarrassing shit I’ve done and all the hardship that’s been done to me.

Sharing my secrets is a gambit, surrendering great rewards. It’s critical to the

success of the mission. You have to give a little to get a little, right? I may be set back as

in a round of Snakes & Ladders, plodding through each turn, hoping for a leg up. When I

get stuck, I offer one story at a time, then — BOOM — I advance to the next step, closer

to the objective. We’ve come all this way, haven’t we? The Slothmouth’s right around the

corner. It’s funny those corners, surprises like to lurk in them.

My brother unveiled Finah’s my imaginary friend and his revelation shocked the

piss right out of me. If I ever considered I might be normal — if the little song playing on

repeat is something happening to anyone and not a buzzing, blinking neon-sign of what’s

wrong with me — the leap to imaginary friends isn’t so far.

Yet it breaches the borders of the unbelievable. I might’ve crossed into that territory

long ago, blazing a streak of lunacy behind me. I covered quite the range, chasing

earwigs and pop-idols and sloth-speakers. At worst, my insanity may be I’m so out of

touch with my own head (and the roaring cuckoo that plays inside it) I don’t understand

anything about who I am in this world. Am I so disjointed and naïve?

My brother understands me so much more, how is he still such a mystery to me? I


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titter over the thought how he’s a bank of answers — a golden hoard, really — but the

trick is to catch him with the right question. You may hit the jackpot. Now I’m about to

lose my last friend for good.

My brother defends me through the loud times. Proud to be my solid footing during

the worst. Through the shifting sands of our crumbling family, he’s always supported me.

If he’s been the granite shelf I’ve stood upon, doesn’t that mean I step all over him? If I

never return the favor, then he cannot have the chance to be the “little brother”. Do I ever

give him a straight answer? Do I leave him dizzy when I give him the run-around? I

could light up the corners, help him secure a way but I don’t. We’re constantly working

on Operation Earwig, there’s no time for Drew.

Not once do I offer my shoulder, I won’t allow him to cry near me.

A son of an officer does not cry.

There’s not one choice act I’ve done for him. Couldn’t be bothered to get into his art

projects. I could care less about fashion tips & tricks. I don’t play boardgames. No cards,

no Battleship, no Saturday morning cartoons, no D&D campaigns, not Slave Pits of the

Undercity, no Eyestalks of the Beholder. I can’t stand any of it. I won’t even play along.

Always: shut-up Drew. Shut the fuck up.

The worse crime I committed is the one, single-solitary promise I ever made — to

bring him a pair of ballet slippers, to fulfill his inner-most desire — and I failed to deliver

the goods. Why does he even want them?


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Drew’s brotherhood is a connection I don’t deserve.

Finah came to me the night I lost my brother. She came out of the fissures of my

mind to calm my panic over losing him to the foreign streets of K-Town, stepping out

from behind the bushes in Martinskirche gardens. When I saw her ballerina slippers, were

they not my mother’s dancing shoes I put upon her feet? Finah trailed behind us that

night as we walked home. She met with Drew every day after school, there-on. Starting

out as my vigilant eyes, she kept track of his location lest he run away again. But she was

more than surveillance. She kept him interested with drawings and treasure hunts and

bedtime stories when I refused.

Drew had more fun with Finah than he ever did with me.

He laughed with her.

She was present during recess and sleepovers and spazzing out over cartoons and

stupid riddles and coloring books and late-night confessionals, puzzling over the big

questions about life: where do babies come from, what happens after you die, and how

will we survive if dad’s gone for good?

Funny thing how I became jealous of her. She was the part of me that wanted to

play with Drew. Rough-housing and silly. Farting and giggling. The part of me who

wanted to be a kid. How mental is that? I sulked and I fussed but simply envied of the

better side of me. The glorious vision I had for myself, who I manifested as Finah, a

better companion than I could be on my own. I’ll never win.


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I lost my love for him when I lost my heart.

Stealing all those childhood moments away, I took them for myself. One summer all

he wanted to do was attend a classmate’s surprise party at a McDonald’s in Huddington.

In a drunken stupor the night before, Mother slapped me awake. He had to fight her, to

defend my honor. The next day he was too tired and in too much trouble, he had to stay

home. She grounded him for weeks. See how he was required to grow up, forced to be

my protector. Our roles reversed. Me without an ounce of thanks or gratitude. No wonder

I’m heartless, I’m rotting from the inside out.

What do they say about growing up?

“Better than the alternative.”

Yeah, I guess Finah ultimately is my imaginary friend. She blessed me with a song

which is the greatest game of all. All playtimes are mine. Involving every waking second

(and the sleeping ones when we stayed up all night) to discuss the ohrwurm. To hunt a

song without end, a song which hides in my head, is a clever game indeed. Culture Club

didn’t even exist in 1980, how could the song be theirs? If Finah’s my own barbarian

invention, born from the ancient mass of my own twisted brain stem, then she’s served

me well.

But why has she led me here to the Slothmouth?

I pop open my cherry-red Walkman II, extracting Kissing to Be Clever. Under the

duvet, I muffle the plastic racket the Walkman’s door makes when opened. With my other


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hand I dig out Jon Moss’s TDK cassette from my backpack — the copy of a copy of a

recording — and hold it up to my nose. I draw in a breath but Drakkar Noir no longer

lingers. Passed through too many hands, too many listeners have touched the tape. It’s

lost all trace of his cologne.

But I haven’t listened to the cassette. I’ve neglected to tell anyone. Everyone just

assumed, I didn’t bother to correct them. Too far past to drop that bomb. The night I came

home from the BBC Studios, I lost the point of Operation Earwig. I discarded Jon Moss’s

gift in a pile of the other exhausted cassettes stacked on our shared desk. Never believing

it related to the ohrwurm curse, it was just another mislaid artifact. A reminder of my

failure with Boy George and my unfulfilled kiss with Jon.

Drew picked it up next morning and appointed it as his talisman. Another game for

him to play. He discovered the tape’s effect, eliciting the tears out of its listeners’ ducts.

The best I could do was to let him play it…alone. For I was no longer interested.

Like Finah before it, the tape transformed into a great threat against me. And like

her, another hand-me-down Drew dusted off, relishing more amusement with it than he

did me. Yet again and again and again, I denied my brother a chance to share in his

childhood. I didn’t listen to the tape, I refused to play along. By my own hands, we both

were left wanting more. That’s the rift.

The truth of it is: I’m the one that never cries. If I listened to the Slothmouth sing

and teardrops finally poured down my face, it’d be another thing taken away from me.


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Drew met the Reckless hippy and plead for me to talk to him. A music guru who

knew everything going in and out of the store, through Islington and all of London. He

knew every record whether officially released or illegally bootlegged. I owe my brother

an enormous credit, he may have found the true song we’ve been searching after all this

time. Not just the one playing inside my head.

Still, I’ve been too scared to listen to it. I’ve got to grow up sometime.

Drew deduced the girl on the tape sung in another language, he figured it came from

the Highlands. How close he was. Anybody who listened to the Slothmouth song agreed

it sounded English, hints of words, sweet flutters and hard fragments, possibilities of

meanings. Neither Drew nor Rory, the hipster or his brother could decode it. When the

message is lost on the casual listener, they’re given the mark of bloodshot as proof. Drew

listened to the tape the most, weathered the weepings with a brave upper lip, but hasn’t

been able to crack the lyrics.

Because the message is meant for me. I’m destined to break it open.

I snapped the orange-foam earphones on my ears, the soft plastic buttons wiggle

under my fingertips. I press PLAY►. The song warbles up, the drums kick in. The ones

Jon Moss pledged his infatuation. I hold my breath until I hear the syllables dance out of

the speakers.

Like for all true fanatics of a song, I believe the lyrics are written for me. Like she

sings the words directly to me. When the Slothmouth sings, her lyrics are plain as day.


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I’m baffled why anyone had a difficult time understanding her.

I do not cry out like the rest, my eyes stay dry.

The track plays to its eventual conclusion. The recording shuts down on the other

side. I’ve listened to Jon Moss’s gift after all these months, I sit in silence regarding its

message. I know what I must do. Through the ceiling, the winter bats no longer chirp to

one another. And there is an eerie silence.

I’m left to the cold. I’ve become the dead embers of a person. A spent shell.

That’s when I realize what’s so eerie about the silence:

The earwig stopped playing for the first time in three years.

⁂

“KARMA KARMA KARMA KARMA CHAMELEON.”

I fall out of bed, sliding out from underneath the nylon duvet by the almighty

volume. I frantically search the crusty bedsheets for my cherry-red Walkman II. With the

meaty backside of my shaky hands, I mash the buttons but the device is turned off

already. The ivory plastic reels rest motionless. I eject the tape and throw it across the

room and it smashes against the wall. The innards burst open with liquid-black, ticker-

tape streamers.

“YOU COME AND GO, YOU COME AND GO.”

I kneel on the side of my bed as if in prayer, hiding from the music. I grab my

glasses from the bedside table and slip them on.


359

The sodium-arc lights shine on the walls confounding any sign of morning. The sun

still creeps below the horizon. The silhouette of my brother sits up in the twin bed, both

hands over his ears. I click on the bedside lamp. Drew winces, the lines in his face are

exaggerated wrinkles of an old man. He squints his eyes shut in agony, a rush of tears

bleed out the sides.

“LOVING WOULD BE EASY IF YOUR COLORS WERE LIKE MY DREAMS”

The division between sleep and waking bites down. I swoon from the hit and see

incoming stars. I jump up, running on the balls of my feet, tracing the room’s baseboards

for a stray radio or loud speaker. When I stand the music broadcasts louder, the

harmonica highlighting the chorus beating against my skin from all sides. The bass is an

unseen hand squashing the upper plates of my skull into soft-brain flesh. I duck away

from the pain but it pushes down harder.

“RED GOLD AND GREEN”

Drew grabs a pillow and folds it around his head, crimping it closed around his ears

with his elbows. Behind him I notice Mr. Owain peeking through the door, he’s knocking

politely but I cannot hear him over the ratatat of the song’s snares. Moss’s drums, they

step like a foxtrot. The hipster is yelling but all I can hear is…

“RED GOLD AND GREEN”

Mr. Owain grimaces as he slides into the room. The pain on his face painted

furiously, the blood in his cheeks replaced with a pale drink of worry. Fretful as if he’s


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stuck on the ocean floor, running out of breath. He shuts the door behind him, grabbing

the frame on each side with his hands to holds himself up in crucifixion.

The thunderous decibels shove Mr. Owain’s thin frame with heavy G-forces. His

head slumps down onto his pinstriped pajamas, his matching nightcap tips over one eye.

(A man of style even when he’s dressed for sleep.) He swings his head, scanning for the

music source and his mouth flaps off, unheard. The hotel quarters are undisturbed, as

equally kitschy as we left them after we went to sleep.

I keep thinking Rory left a ghettoblaster under the bed and take a peek underneath

to make sure. The bed's frame goes all the way down to the carpet leaving no space for

hotel guests’ belongings to roll under. When I stand back up, the hipster turns to me, his

eyelids blinking on like a lightbulb.

“What” I say against the din. I can’t hear myself and I try again louder. “What?”

The hipster is a shaman, the way he bends down and back up. He sways side to side.

Add burning sage to his dance and the vision quest would be complete. The next time he

squats, he grabs the pile of clothes off the floor, never tearing me from his gaze. He

throws me khakis, pantomiming suspenders. The rest he tosses out into the hallway along

with my crying brother.

After I slide into my pants, Mr. Owain comes towards me with a hand upheld, a

declaration of caution, holding Drew’s pillow over his heart. He’s readying himself for a

rodeo brawl. I’m the sacrificial calf. Why’s he coming after me? I read his lips,


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“Everything is going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright.”

This is us being put to death.

He leaps over the bed. I steady myself against his betrayal, it’s no use to me now.

Brush away the sorrow, he’s coming to get me. There's no time to ask why. Before I was

surprised when Rory attacked me outright at The International Hotel. Not this time. Now,

I must defend myself. My end snuck up. All my blights are awarded.

Mr. Owain will be the ferryman to take me across the line.

Within the terror that jolts my bones, I have a funny thought. I’m reminded of the

night I lost my heart, the shame of discovering what mattered most was found upon the

exact moment of losing it. My love for Drew. The void left behind in my chest cannot

consoled by simply recognizing its existence. As the hipster rushes towards me, I notice

the similarity. Must I lose my life to realize my love for myself?

The hipster wrestles me down to the side of the bed — we’re locked between the

mattresses and the wall — he has the high ground. He straddles his legs on top of me,

knees on my forearms, shins on my thighs. For a man with such a wiry frame he pins me

to the ground before I can writhe away. I don’t have any doubt that hipster has been in a

bar fight or twenty. He may have won them all.

“EVERY DAY IS LIKE SURVIVAL”

He takes the pillow, ready to suffocate me. To end my sorry, stubby life.

“This is how I go is it.” I’m shouting but I can’t hear myself.


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“SURVIVAL”

I thrash launching myself to any side but Mr. Owain has me locked down, his lips

keep mouthing the words: “Everything is going to be alright.”

His words fall on deaf ears. I wrestle up my regrets.

“Tell my brother I’m sorry,” I shout. “I never told him I’m sorry.”

“EVERY DAY IS LIKE SURVIVAL”

The pillow comes down over my eyes, pushing my frames into my face. He wraps it

tight around my thrashing cranium, tucking it around my ears, leaving space beneath to

allow me to breathe. He grapples the bedsheets, lifting my head up to place a second

pillow under the back of my head. A gentle gesture.

“SURVIVAL”

I don’t understand why I thought he was going to kill me. So frequent is my arrival

is to the wrong conclusion, you’d think I’d recognize the scenery. Every inch of me

writhes, begging to take flight, but I force myself to remain at ease. I stop struggling. I’m

blind to what he’s doing but decide I must trust him. Nope…yes. There’s nothing left to

do but listen to the music, its loudness is tremendous, the singing muffled by the feather-

down pillow.

“Y—RRR MY LLL—RRR, NUT MY RRR—LLL.”

The hipster cradles my head, lifting it with both pillows wrapped around it, a meat-

head sandwich. He ties the fitted sheet around me like hospital gauze. The elastic edging


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cuts against my upper lip and earlobes. After some knot twisting and pressure, he taps me

on the chest.

“Cannae hear me?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Stay here, son,” he says. “Thas nae guan tae work. Ah’ll be only ah moment, Ah

need tae figure something else oot.”

I hardly hear the words passed between us — a discotheque conversation — where

words exchanged drop on the floor like pills in a clumsy drug deal.

He lifts off me and I rub my forearms to encourage the blood to return.

“E—YYY DA—S LIKE SRRR—III—LLL”

Finally to have the ohrwurm disappear, the moment before I dropped into blank

dreams, the sweet gift of silence destroyed by this mysterious booming is a cruel trick.

The prankster still unknown to me. Why are they doing it? I keep Rory framed as a

suspect. I swear he’s behind it using some sort of military warfare against me, trying to

coerce me out of Grangeburn House. Child’s play when compared to the three-year

torture of the earwig.

Considering my track record, I know I’m probably mistaken.

“Did you find the music?”

“Ah noticed yeh didnae cover yir ears,” the hipster says. His shouts from a far

distance away, his voice dressed in cardboard and tin. “Thas how Ah figured it oot.”


364

“Figured what out,” I ask. “Where are the speakers?”

“When yeh bent behind the bed, the volume went doon,” he says. “And yeh stood

back up, it boomed again. Disnae make any sense, lad, Ah heard the singer’s voice, but

Ah couldnae see nae one else. Int it the earworm?”

The down in the pillows isn’t the only thing keeping me in the dark.

“No,” I say. “But it’s Culture Club, isn’t it?”

“’Tis fer sure,” he says. “Ah’m tae swap oot the pillows. We hafta git yeh tae the

Bizarte lass quick, she’s your Slothmouth. She’s round the corner awn the street straight

along the burn.” He holds my hands in one of his. “Don’t be surprised, the towel’s guan

tae be cold an wet.”

“Wait,” I say, taking my glasses off and folding them onto my collar.

Mr. Owain stuffs a drenched towel under the pillow. He blankets my whole head

with it, wrapping the towel around my eyes and ears as if he’s making a plaster cast with

papier-mâché. The terrycloth is just above freezing and a wave of gooseflesh raises up.

He lifts me by the shoulders so I’m sitting up and knots the towel at the base of my skull.

He tosses the sheets and pillows

This is us still in the dark.

“Can yeh hear me,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “Why are we going to the Slothmouth.”

“Ah reckon she’ll know hau tae help yeh,” he says.


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I shrug, I don’t get it.

The towel soaks the back of my shirt.

“Help me what?”

“Help yeh get that chib-cuntin’ song oot of yir heid.”

⁂

“It’s simple, yeh let us in or he’ll wake up all yir neighbors.”

“Ah don’t even know who yeh are.”

“Yes you do.” My brother’s voice, fey, high-pitched as ever, ringing above blasting

tune that followed us here. “We met yesterday morning, remember? We asked for your

sister.”

“Thas not what Ah meant,” says the man from 4 Abbot.

“The lass’s afflicted by song,” Mr. Owain says. “Yeh lot are suffering awfy. Aye,

aye, Ah ken, alright. Ah see the blood in yir eyes.”

“Yeh don’t understand anything,” the man says.

“Dunnae let ‘em in,” another man says.

Nonetheless, somehow, we gain entrance. Mr. Owain guides me over the threshold,

both his hands on my shoulders. No light seeps from underneath the wet towel, I’m

totally blind. Nascent ice crystals begin to scrape against my cheekbones.

“What’s that smell,” Drew asks. “It stinks in here.”

A whiff of dank, briny air slums my nostrils. Smells of the ocean, full of mussels


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and crustaceans and seaweed, once flooded their foyer and curled up and died.

“There yeh go, that’s far enough,” the man says. “Should Ah ring an ambulance?

We know a doctor who can pay a visit. Ah still don’t get how the music’s coming oot of

his head.”

“The same way the Sloth — um, your sister — makes us cry when she sings.”

Nobody speaks after Drew’s pronouncement. Feet scuffle on squeaky, old floors but

Mr. Owain doesn’t leave my side. I chance more trust than I’m willing to give. What

choice do I have? Obliged, he led me by both hands down the B&B stairs. He helped me

navigate the sidewalks to 4 Abbot when his truck coughed up exhaust and wouldn’t turn

over. At least we are inside the Slothmouth’s house. Warmth outweighs the stink.

Here I stand turbaned, I could be a comic sheik or a flapper diva, in the middle of

the — what? the foyer? the living room? — speechless but certainly not quiet.

The ohrwurm never left me. However it works, whatever the rules of the forever

song, someone turned the record over. And it keeps playing on repeat just like the A-side,

with a slight pause between the lock-groove and when the needle is moved to the outer

ring of the platter. The remarkable difference is that it plays outward. Through my skull

plates so everyone can hear.

“It flipped,” I say.

“What dae yeh mean?”

“The record,” I say. “Shouldn’t there be relief? No longer tormented when it plays


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inside my head and nobody believes me. Certain of the truth all along. All this misery

going on and on and on, the torture I’ve been roughing for the past three fucking years,

shouldn’t I be relieved it’s now undeniable? You hear the earwig, too. All of you. You can

listen and know my pain is real. I’m beyond fixable.”

“Naw son,” the hipster says. “Isnae true.”

“How can I live like this? Everyone will know I’m a freak-show. They can’t just

walk by without leaping out their shoes. They’ll be scared of me because I’m unnatural.

An aberration. The best they’ll do is book me on Ripley’s Believe It or Not. You know,

put me next to some conjoined twins. Tell my story after a segment on the set of Hitler’s

teeth. Or maybe put me in a pageant of circus mutants. I rather not be famous like them.”

“We’ll find a way,” Drew says. Anxiety drilling into his optimism.

“There’s not a single doctor that’ll give me a pill and say ‘call me in the morning.’”

You could say I’m a broken record.

Nobody responds. No matter how they try to console me I won’t hear it. While we

stand at an impasse, a set of footsteps greet us. The party circles around me silent for a

complete cycle of Karma Chameleon’s muted words. This is us a transistor radio, come

up and listen. When it ends, introductions go around.

“Ah’m Billy Bizarte,” a quieter voice says. The man at the door.

“Allo, call me Robin,” says a deep voice. The second man.

When it’s my turn, Drew presents me.


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“Yir the lass’s brothers,” Mr. Owain says.

“Shelby,” Billy says. “She’s sleeping upstairs”

“It’s really coming from inside his heid?”

“Totally rad, right, ha ha,” Drew says. He’s excited, the boy ferrets out delight in the

cases of my anguish. “Like he’s singing right here in this room.”

Not sure if Drew means me or Boy George.

“Yeh could say he expresses what he feels,” Billy says. He snickers along with my

brother. “Right oot loud.”

“It’s not funny,” I say.

“He’s ah bit of ah wet towel,” Robin says. “Int he?”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“Mikey, listen tae me,” Mr. Owain says, “We’re going tae heid upstairs.”

“Yir not guan anywhere,” Robin says. Their movements rustle around me. I imagine

autumn leaves kicked up into a whirlwind. This is us holding on, in the center funnel.

“Ah don’t even enjoy yeh lot standing in my parlor.”

“Yeh shouldn’t be here,” Billy says. “I advise you to leave.”

“Where dae yeh think yir going? Oi laddie! Oi Drew! Ach, cannae yeh hear me?”

“Look at my eyes,” Drew says. He’s further away. “They aren’t as bloody as yours

but there’s enough bloodshot in ‘em to prove we’re serious. We suffer like you suffer.”

“We’ve come all this way,” I say, unheard.


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“Who does this kid think he is?”

“We need your sister’s help,” Drew says. “Let us speak to her.”

“Shelby cannot help yeh,” Billy says. “She cannot even help herself.”

“I don’t believe you,” Drew says.

“Yeh cannae go upstairs,” Robin yells at my brother.

“Get yir hands awf him,” Mr. Owain says. The movement around me sweeps wind

and debris over my skin. Mr Owain’s hands drop off my shoulders and he lurches away.

I’m unsure what to do. “Hurt that bairn an Ah give yeh ah skelp.”

I can’t stay in the dark any more. I peek out the bottom of terrycloth shroud.

We stand in a large foyer, the walls are waterlogged from ancient floodwater.

Bowing inward, towards the center of the house. The way a book bloats when it’s been

fished from undersea. Full of horsehair and pulp, layers of sediment are marked by tea-

stained lines.

Billy is a blond kid, hair so thin you can see the pink of his scalp. Not much older

than Rory. He stands mesmerized, facing me motionless, staring out of irises so blue they

look like chips of arctic ice. There are no whites surrounding them. The discs float, no not

float, they vibrate against a deep crimson shell where the whites of his eyes should be. A

bloodchocked eye.

Robin, curly and dark-haired, chases Drew. My brother twists out of his grasp. They

sprint up a stone stairway. Robin clamps down on my brother’s feet but misses, stumbles


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into the banister’s iron spindles. Drew runs up the stairs toward a set of oaken double-

doors.

I cannot reach him from down here.

“Leave my brother alone.” I peel the rest of the towel from my head and drop it into

a wet pile. The ohrwurm blasts out of my head undampened, expanding full-force in all

directions. Reverberations hit the beams and rafters high above us, dislodging age-old

streams of dirt from the ceiling.

This is us using our head for once. Hear my siren call.

“KARMA KARMA KARMA KARMA CHAMELEON.”

The song enters the chorus, Jon Moss’s drums parade into a serious march.

Everyone in the room doubles over when hit with the song, hands flapping

instinctively over their ears. Mr. Owain and Billy squat down to their knees, forced by an

invisible predator to kneel. They hear the song more painfully than I do, so I wield it like

a weapon.

I head towards my brother, scooping the towel back off the floor. As I reach the

steps, Drew and Robin’s knees give way beneath. They topple over. If a tree falls in a

forest and everyone can only hear Culture Club, does it make a sound? I jump past Robin

skipping two and three steps at a time until I reach the second-floor landing. I toss Drew

the towel. He struggles to wrap his head without removing his hands from his ears. I

whirl myself around, standing between him and his pursuer.


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As luck would have it, at least how my luck goes when it remains bad, Karma

Chameleon begins its fade-out. About to wind up in the lock groove. Robin stands,

noticing it too, and brushes the creases out of his pants.

He continues up stairs, cautiously navigating to a safe spot.

“Stand back,” I say. I ball my fists up. “Stay away from my brother.”

“Yeh cannae go in there.” Robin doesn’t come closer. “As Ah said before.”

Drew clambers back up on his feet as the volume drops off. Standing behind me, he

peeks around my elbows. I use my right arm to cage him, to make sure he’s shielded.

With my left I reach for the doorknob. I overshoot completely. My knuckles scrape

against the door, ripping skin off in white flaps as they gnash against the splintery, ornate-

rose decorations. I suck blood out of them to salve the sting.

“It’s nae use,” Robin insists. “We’ve tried tae keep her quiet.”

“Don’t say it’s no use,” I say. I shake the pain out of my hand. “We’ve come a long,

long way to speak to her. I know we’re intruding into your home, your castle, but I’ve got

to see the Slothmouth. She called me here. You could say I’m invited. You see, she sent

me a tape.”

“Ah dunnae how it’s possible,” Robin says. He creeps along the banister

overlooking the first floor. He doesn’t rush, he merely closes the distance between us. I

swear his eyes droop swelling with sorrow for me. “Shelby’s nah been in or oot of her

room fer over three years.”


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“Three years,” Drew says. “Did you hear that? Did you hear?”

“Yes, Drew,” I say. “I heard.”

The clicking of the needle in the earwig’s lock groove taps like an old-dusty shoe,

waiting impatiently for me to finish. “Can’t be a coincidence, can it? Your sister Shelby,

she sang to me on this cassette. I listened to it a few hours ago. I understood her, man,

when no one else could. She asked if I heard her calling, begging me to come here to save

her. To release her from your prison.”

“It’s a prison alright,” Billy says, downstairs. He ambles up the stairs, stopping on

each one to speak. “But it’s not her prison — it’s not what yeh think — we’re the ones

trapped here. Not Shelby.”

“She keeps us here,” Robin says.

“She said, ‘Save me from my Fine Friend.’ She sang to me. She wants me to save

her.” My free hand fumbles over the door behind me. I’m searching for the doorknob.

The oak is warped, its contours are rough-hewn.

“Save yirself, Michael,” Robin says. The only person who addresses me as Michael

is my father. And only when I’m in trouble. “Before it’s too late. She will hurt yeh, too.”

“Why do you two stay then,” Drew asks.

“She’s our sister,” they both say.

“We can’t abandon her,” Billy says. “Like our dad did to us.”

“But —” I already know there’s no good answer. “If she’s hurting you?”


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“Could yeh leave your own brother?” Billy points to Drew as he steps onto the

landing. I can’t answer.

“When she sings tae yeh, she toys with yir heart,” Robin says. “She’ll convince yeh

tae stay against yir will. Yeh’ll linger at her door like we dae.”

“It’s him who does it,” Billy says, more to Robin than us.

“It’s her pretend playmate.”

“Not Shelby,” Billy says.

“She calls him Master Goodfellow. The two of them hatch plans together.”

“Shelby wouldn’t do that,” Billy pleads. Drew’s likeness in him. “Not against us.”

“We hear him sometimes, whispering to our sister,” Robin says. “He’s larky, aye he

is. A prankster like frae his namesake, tricks her tae dae those things. He lies tae Shelby.

He makes her sing, teaching her new songs tae drive us radge.”

“That’s why our dad took an axe to the door.”

“Mikey, look,” Drew says.

“That’s why yeh should leave.”

“Whilst yeh still can,” Billy says.

“You should look at the door, Mikey.”

“She’ll make yeh radge with her song,” Robin says. “Just like us.”

“That’s not really a good warning.” I can’t fully assemble what they’re telling us. “I

suffer my own song, as you know.”


374

I point to a point right above my ear. The earwig lifts from the lock groove and I

finally notice. It doesn’t start up again.

I stop groping for the doorknob and wheel around to look at the oaken doors. Their

surface is a tragedy, no ornamental roses but they’re spindly remnants, broken gnarls, left

by their father’s axe. A two-inch gap open at the floor where they pass food to their sister,

decorated by broken, dirty china.

It’s obvious why I cannot let myself into to see Shelby.

“There are no doorknobs,” Drew says. “She’s locked herself in.”

Playing the girl’s tape earlier was like listening across a crackling, hazy campfire.

The Slothmouth’s voice subdued by scratches and hisses introduced by duping the

cassette, a chain of copies I won’t ever know how far back they go. Her song muddled by

the eventual degradation all tapes befall. Here, in the house on 4 Abbot, there is no such

shield to protect us.

Shelby begins to sing.

THE BURN

“Wake up, darling girl.”

“I just climbed into bed,” I say. My voice pours out.

“Never-you-mind, it’s an emergency, Franny” she says. “It’s me Alison, I'm sorry to


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have let myself in. Please, wake up won’t you. We have to help dem boys, your friends. I

know dey in trouble. I heard dah Bizarte girl sing.”

I shoot up in bed before I’m fully awake. I stare into a forgotten dream, willing

myself to try to remember it but the memory floats away. I turn to look at Alison, she’s

still wearing last night’s linen dress and housecoat. Her face is a kindness, belying the fret

tucked underneath it.

“You mean the Slothmouth,” I ask. “What time is it?”

She helps me clamber into a shirt and jeans, keeping herself from rushing me while

I get my footing. When we leave Grangeburn House, I zip up my coat, the temperature

dropped somewhere between freezing and absolute zero. The shock of it brings me to full

consciousness.

“Look over there,” I say, teeth clicking. We walk at a jaunty clip on Bo’ness Road,

but we don’t run, Alison’s girth doesn’t allow for such high velocities. “It’s one of Drew’s

tramp marks.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I think it says go straight ahead,” I say.

“Then, we’ll turn at the burn.” Alison picks up my confusion by the tilt in my

eyebrows. “That little river that runs through the town.”

I should've realized burn was an indigenous word.

“So what does grange mean?”


376

“Clever lass,” she says. “The town used to be called Grangeburnmouth, meaning the

country house where the little river flows into the Firth. Country houses were large

estates back then owned by Baronets or other title-holders. The town's founder built a

canal connecting the Forth to Clyde for trade and —”

Adults are always teaching lessons.

“I’m sorry to interrupt but can you tell me what happened last night,” I say.

Alison tells me about how the ohrwurm began to play from inside Mikey's head.

Blasting at such high volumes several B&B tenants roamed the halls, looking to quiet

down the disembodied singer that crooned unforgivingly into endless night. I slept

through the whole hullaballoo. Alison wrangled the guests back into their rooms with

promises of free cookies and drams of scotch.

“Mr. Owain convinced himself the Bizarte girl will help Mikey but I'm not so sure.

I've heard her song on the air before,” Alison said. “On those days when the crying comes

through the Grangeburn House windows, I know things are going awful bad with dah

Bizarte boys. I'm glad you're here to help me.”

“Why’s that,” I ask. But I already know the answer. Last night before we went out

to The International Hotel, I saw it flash in her eyes when I asked about the Duppies. “It’s

because you recognized…I’ve lost my soul? One of your Duppies took it.”

“Those are childhood fables,” she says. “I don’t entertain doze stories no more.”

“If you heard Mikey's earwig come out his head then you must believe me when I


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tell you I’ve been searching for my spirit since I crossed paths something supernatural, a

ghost. Back then I called him a Fine Friend. Maybe he took it or maybe I left the best

parts of me behind when I abandoned him.” I venture closer to the edge of my grief. The

true essence of what’s troubling me. “Whether he’s an allegory or imaginary, it's the truth.

I have to face the fact that I withered away and died when, when, when —”

We stop at the corner of Bo’ness and Abbot. The sign for us to turn left scribbled in

yellow chalk but we don’t follow it. Alison wraps me into her coat, I’m swaddled in her

warmth, she cradles me in her arms, protected. She links them all the way around so I

cannot leave. She soothes me with soft hushes, rocks me in her swaying coos, chin on my

head, my head on her breast, a mother and child reunited after a bad dream.

“Ssh, ssh, let it out,” she says. “Let it come up, darling girl.”

“When she was electrocuted by a dumb air-conditioner. Such a stupid way to die.

How does that happen? It’s senseless and it’s not fair! I came home from school and she

was no longer there,” I say. “That’s how I lost my mother.”

I spew out all my tied up emotion in hungry, elongated sobs. Years of avoidance

dislodged the wail from the pit of my stomach. The refusal to acknowledge my grief.

Even back then, I didn’t partake in her funeral rites. I remained an observer, looking

through the crack in the door, holding onto a misguided hope that our sudden tragedy

didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. How could it be real? There’s no way to make sense

how the person you loved with all your molecules — who loved you back unequivocally,


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the only one who loved you most — how can she be here today and gone tomorrow?

“There’s no way to say goodbye,” I say.

“You’ve been soul searching ever since, so that you can?”

On the surface, Alison is asking if I can let go of my mother. Give up the pain I

succumb when remember her. Once I find the courage to let it out, I might be able heal.

But her question hits me with a more perverse interpretation. All this time, have I been

searching for my mother’s soul instead of my own?

“We all lose things as we go along in life,” Alison says. Her voice in the air but also

resounding through her lungs and breast. “Duppies may steal our soul or even if we gave

it to dem willingly, doesn’t mean it’s truly lost. Sometimes it’s simply transformed. We

have to give up dat part of ourselves so we may move on. Other times you have to get it

back. The hardest of all, though, is what you must do to fill your soul’s void. Find life

again without needing to replace the memory of who lived in your heart before.”

We stand on the shallow peak of Bo’ness bridge, crying together. I stare at the

freckles on her cheeks, sunspots arching over her nose. Alison’s as upset as I am. Barely

strangers, weeping for my mother’s death like how sisters do. Alison is a kind lady. When

I try to put things together so that I may figure out the bigger picture, I discover instead I

connect to the people around me. Ms. Stewart, Drew, Mr. Owain, Mikey and now Alison.

Then I’m not so empty inside. I lift my head up to wipe my eyes before I rest myself back

on her chest.


379

We watch the grey wanderer break the horizon and flash its rays upon the storm

clouds, announcing a new, cold day. Hoarfrost covers the banks of the little river, the burn

is a dark path flowing straight through it, and ice-clad trees line either side in predictable,

mathematical rows. They collect themselves to points in the distance.

The parallax bewitches us, begging us to follow.

⁂

“Defend yourself,” I say.

Drew left a tramp mark on the door jam, three diagonal lines.

“We cannot go in through dah front door?” Alison asks.

I shake my head and back away off the porch. We retreat to the broken down

Renault in the driveway, keeping our heads down. I relay Mikey’s plan from the night

before, the one where we should check for a different way to sneak inside. We slip to the

back of the house where we can look for a way to the Slothmouth.

“A small bit of roof there if you crawl up dah eaves. Perhaps you can see her

through dah window,” she says. “I’ll give you a boost. You know I won’t be able to

follow. I’m too round. You’ll be on your own.”

An easy plan simply executed, with a shove I squat on the scalloped shingles.

Alison heads back to the driveway after I climb towards the window. All that is left of her

is an outline and her breath freezing in the sodium arc-light. I peer through the ferns of

frost collected on the panes and make out a flickering glow of electric light. Frames of


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the windows are tacked to the sills, sealing them shut, with penny nails crooked and bent.

They don’t pose much of an hitch and I snortle.

As luck would have it, and I have the best version of luck lately, an abandoned

hammer lays on one of the sills. I hook it into the nails and pull them out with a spongy

pivot of its claw. The window opens, counterbalanced with weights. I crawl inside,

closing the window behind me.

“Your spirit has guided you true,” a girl’s voice speaks behind me.

I spin around on one leg and the stink wallops my face. I retch at the stench of stale

sweat. A briny, brackish funk that clouds the air.

The room is dimly lit, the edges are soft with shadows. As my eyes adjust the first

thing I notice is receding, concentric circles in the floorboards. They’re left behind from a

dried-up, dead ocean. Bundles of knotted clothes left behind in the wake are aged

seaweed. Food-encrusted dishes strewn topsy-turvy. The last casualties are discarded rag

dolls. They disturb a neglected memory bottled up deep within me.

A wave of déjà vu sploshes over me.

Water-rings orbit an overstuffed throne that fills most of the room. A filthy

wingback that stretches all the way up to the ceiling. A canopy hangs sleepily from the

top. Nestled on the throne’s cushion as if it were a mattress, stirring from sleep, an

alabaster creature rubs her eyes. A spindly woman a few years my senior. Her skin so

thin, I notice the netting of her blue arteries covering her neck and arms.


381

“What do they call you?”

“Francesca,” I say. “But everyone calls me Franny.”

A flash of lightning flickers from behind the chair casting wicked shadows through

the room. A rumble follows soon after. I squint one eye, trying to make heads or tails of

the spectacle. Every hair lifts from its follicle, sprung up with electricity and fright. My

knees turn to jelly when I hear her reply.

“Keep down your bellows,” she whispers. Her words come out more like a dreamy

sing-song. Dreaming without sleeping. “Don’t wake up Master Goodfellow. If he wakes,

he can make your insides pang like you were bitten by a snake fang.”

A sob coughs from behind a pair of oaken doors, it’s the only proper exit. The

sniveling is from a young child, it could be Drew’s voice. Is he hurt? I circumnavigate the

perimeter of the room to head towards the doors, testing their doorknobs. They spin

continuously in place, without hitching a tumbler.

“We’re locked in,” I say. I whisper it through the door.

“Athair did not love me anymore — that’s my dad, you know — he locked us up,”

the girl sang. Her words full of reverie, blanketed in a musical trance. “So he shoved off

to a far off shore. Come closer now so I can see you. Don’t look so shocked but beware

Francesca, when I sing Ceòl Mór, those from whom I care abandon me. Or like my

useless brothers, they keep their distance and cry futilely beyond the door. Come closer.”

The girl sits up. Her head so dizzy with sleep it could float away like a mylar


382

balloon. She’s a wisp of flesh, thinning and frail. The oversized throne seems to

overcome her, she’s a stain upon it. Sobs behind the door elevate, they come from more

than just one person. I should mind what the tears outside this room tell me, but I’m

drawn to her. I’m compelled helplessly, dragged along by an imaginary cord.

“I don’t know your name,” I say.

“Don’t you recognize me? I’m your sister Shelby,” she says. “Have you forgotten or

have I been so wrong about you? For a second I saw it in your eyes, are you not my

sister? I’ve waited for you for so long.”

“I’m not your sis—” She sets her sights upon me, more like she’s looking through

me. I stare back into her eyes. Her irises are as clear as the arctic-blue, they are a hallway

of mirrors which burrow so deep inside when I look at the bottom of her gaze I swear I

see myself standing there, reflecting back. I’m holding a heart beating in a straw nest.

“Do I know you?”

The lightning crackles behind the throne. Bare wires dancing in the walls, ready to

dig into me with their vibrating claw. Randomness of a lightning strike is one thing but to

face bad wiring in this damp space is too close a reminder of Rita’s death. My body

tenses up, my flesh is a flock of geese. The electric flickering sputters and I leap into the

chair next to Shelby. The thunder rumbles chasing it, grumbling low. I feel the bass

vibrate through the chair cushions.

“Sister, you know that I have a bone to pick with you. Tut tut,” Shelby says. She


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sings in my ear. Memories sneak around the periphery of my mind. They’re birds flitting

just out of reach. I revert to that scared, little girl fearing that somehow I’m in trouble.

Shelby's dreaminess affects me, imbuing me with its magic spell. Never a science book to

explain it, the practical parts of me dissolving in it. “I’ve been so lonely without you. I

am the Nightingal stuck in this cage. Franny, you turned your back on me so quick I

should be in a rage. Tut tut. But you came back, didn’t you? You’ve come back to rescue

me lickety-split.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “But I think you have me mixed up.”

I’ve never met Shelby so there’s no way I could’ve abandoned her. Yet, I can’t

shake the notion that we are long-last reunited.

The chair keels to one side, begins to rotate, its dwarfish feet moving us around,

limping. Shelby’s eyes remain catatonic, they watch unmoving as the walls glide past.

Nothing is adding up, nothing is real any more. The fantasy of what is happening is

simple to accept because when I look into her irises again, I still see myself waiting there.

A younger version of me, dirt-stained and hovering disembodied.

When Shelby speaks, my reflection speaks through her.

“No, it is you,” my reflection says. “Who has me mixed up.”

Shelby puts her index finger to her mouth, it’s crooked as a witch’s wand. The bags

under her eyes make her look weary, her skin is loose around her bones like she has been

whittled away by despair. I wonder if I misjudged her age for she looks like an ancient


384

woman sitting next to me.

I slipped into this room without Alison’s help or figured out how to get the boys

inside first. Inside the tick of a nanosecond, I’m alarmed that I’ve put myself in grave

danger. The wingback has eclipsed the oaken doors. The exit is behind us, someone is

beating on it with a fist. The weeping has turned into wailing. Their cries increase

whenever Shelby sings.

I’m immune to the effects of the Slothmouth song. Instead, I’m entranced by it.

Lulled in to dulcet dreams, cloudthings, that form when she speaks.

“You don’t remember but I called you here,” she sings. Her words are the soft wings

of a dove, fluttering, flapping on my cheek. My reflection chiming in duet. “When Master

Goodfellow slept, I reeled you in, inch by inch, day by day, age by age. It’s taken me

years to pull you in. Wild how years run much longer when you’re just a child.

Unmoored you were, perhaps thinking you came on your own accord. But it’s alright,

you’re here with me now. I prayed for magic when you came. Magic is the only way to

cut me out of this cage. Are these not your gifts?”

“You’re not making any sense,” I say.

“Listen now,” Shelby says, her pronouncements a misty fog. She puts that decrepit

finger back on her lips. “You will understand once you remember.”

The beating on the door is made by someone using their shoulder to force their way.

The wailing has turned into many voices yelling outside the throne room.


385

“Demon,” one says. “End your bloody Canntaireachd song.”

“Shelby you’re killing us like you killed Máthair.”

“Make it stop,” it’s Mr. Owain shouting. “The wee bouy is convulsing on the floor.

Blood coming oot from his ears. Oh good lord, God in heaven, make it stop.”

I ignore the clamor. Turn my back on the double doors crunching beneath a

determined, yet muted, pounding. It must be Mikey trying to get in, he must be trying to

save me. They can’t help, they solely provide a knock to the head, a punch to the heart.

But I don’t bother with them. No one’s my savior now.

“Regard the jars. Aren’t those your gifts?”

The men are behind us now, a distant concern on the other side of the doors. They

are a suppressed memory compared to the vessels that have sailed before us. They are

dazzle ships — they are crystalline jars. The chair rotates to the back wall where the

lightning comes into view. Soon after the thunder. Before me are my lost treasures. I had

forgotten them — hadn’t I? — for Shelby told me so. How long have I been walking

around without them? The many years have I been hallowed out, a façade of a human

being. No wonder I’ve felt empty.

“They are my gifts,” I say. “I’d forgotten I lost them.”

I slide down off of the chair and onto my tiptoes. The chair begins to buck around

the room, too large to be able to steer anywhere but in circles and it continues to spin, a

confused merry-go-round, looking for an exit.


386

The two glass vessels instills within me so much soaring joy. To rediscover my

abandoned playthings. The whisper and the thunder. I twirl, tap, pirouette, and step.

When I bounce into the air, my mind is lightheaded, I squeal in delight.

“My mom,” I say. I open the giant Planter’s peanut jar — the very same one that

held pesetas by the front door of my Benalmádena apartment — and put my hand directly

inside it. The static that comes off the wire tickles my hand. Nothing to be afraid of after

all. I retrieve the viola wire.

“Your spark of creativity,” Shelby confirms. I take the cord and whip the chair’s

behind. It raises up, a plush steed, and Shelby slides out of the cushions and glides onto

the floor. She’s not hurt, she’s clapping her hands, delighting in our sisterhood, bent over

giggling. The chair tumbles off and knocks into a corner. I wrap the string around neck.

The humming in the wires remind me I’m at home again.

The yelling and the pounding continue, feverish in its desperation.

“What is that other jar,” I ask. “I don’t recognize it?”

The other vessel is a glass cake platter. There used to be rows of them on the

counter of Doña Dolce. I lift the dome and the contents rumble like the thunder grumbles.

I lay the dome down so it won’t crack and break. Inside are two strange little parchments.

I submit to Shelby for direction because I cannot connect the pieces. She spurs me on.

“You have forgotten yourself, poor sister.” I take the two parchments, one for myself and

offer Shelby the other. Because they are better enjoyed in pairs. And it starts to come


387

back.

“It’s Kettledrum candy,” I say. “Kettledrum candy can’t be real.”

Recall how Tomás and I spent our last time in Doña Dolce…left him behind in that

shop at the slightest embarrassment and took flight. Shelby accuses me of the same, that I

turned my back on her. Is she the part of me I abandoned in that shop? Yes, the reflection

caught within her eyes is my lost spirit.

“That’s your voice,” Shelby says.

“Who are you,” I ask. “How did you get these?”

Shelby crawls up close next to me and takes my arm. Our elbows locked in a chain.

She begins to hum a tune I cannot instantly place. A melodious piece broken by spats of

syncopation. Everything instantly familiar. I let it rush over me. I hum the missing parts,

drawing them up from a deep well inside myself. Together we make a song together.

There was a time the Diplomat forbade me from humming near him, this too I had

forgotten. Sometimes nostalgia evokes the bad breaks.

“Won’t you sing with me,” she says.

She lifts the Kettledrum candy up. Shelby unwraps the parchment and links her arm

back within mine. We sit like best friends do. Ignoring the massive chair running

incompetently into the corner, ignoring the helpless pounding at the door and the yelling

outside. I unpack the chewy wedge from the tight parchment. I stuff the whole copper-

rind into my mouth and revel in a flavor long-ago forgotten.


388

“BOOM-bah-BOOM,” I sing.

“BOOM-bah-BOOM,” we both sing.

“BOOM-bah-BOOM!”

The thunder of a soft bass rumbles from our lungs. They tympani drum rattles,

increasing until it reaches crescendo. When it bursts, when it leaves our mouths, out flies

a symphony of percussion. The drums increase with each BOOM-bah-BOOM, folding

back on itself like a perpetual-motion machine winding ever upwards, ever louder, until

the cacophony reaches an ear scratching levels.

The percussion rips off the back of 4 Abbot house.

The timber on the back of the room tears right off the walls, floor to ceiling. As if

God’s hand picked us up and dropped us on the lot without any care. The seam ripped

down the middle of the room, splitting Shelby’s prison in two. Destroying the glass jars.

The doors come undone behind us. The windows shatter outward.

The Kettledrum echoes roll thunderous over the townhouses, to the little downtown

square and out to the Firth. Thunder rumbles heavy in the distance, as if a mountain-cliffs

scrape against the sky. Do sleepy Grangemouth residents awake or roll over? We climb

down on the edge of the seam and sit on the edge, we’re only silhouettes now, watching

the arches of water spring from the ruptured plumbing, the horsehair plaster sifting down

through the outside air, and listen to the echoes from the explosion fill the basin of the

firth.


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If this is a strange dream, I could lay asleep like this for days. I snap to when Mikey

touches my shoulder, his hand a mere feather upon my skin. It’s difficult to hear him

through my stupor. To recognize he’s been trying to slam down the doors to get inside, to

get to us. To stop Shelby from singing.

“Are you okay,” he asks.

“I’m not sure.” I look at my arms. “I’m not injured at all.”

“Drew’s in terrible danger,” he says. “Can you help us?”

“We were just playing is all,” I say. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

“You alright up dere,” Alison says from the lot. She’s pacing in the debris, plucking

kernels of plaster from the ground. Rainbows flicker off the mist showering down from

the plumbing. “I swear I saw the house jumped up all by itself. I saw it I did. It tore itself

in two.”

“My brother, Drew, is injured badly,” Mikey yells down to Alison. “Can you help

us? Go to the front and find Mr. Owain?” When I stand up and turn around, Mr. Owain is

holding Drew’s limp body in his arms. Through the broken doors, the hipster secures

steps over the broken landing which has fallen over, catawampus. All I can see is the

back of Drew’s head, his small arms spilling out of Mr. Owain’s arms.

I realize the betrayal I’ve caused.

“Don’t just sit there,” Mr. Owain cries. “Dae something.”

My little friend, the boy who first held my hand. He threw out a line out to me,


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believed in me unconditionally, and I’ve repaid him by putting his life in peril. Any relief

I had reconnecting the parts of me I forgotten are pushed aside. The sore spot I have for

Mikey snaps me awake. I may have already killed him.

“He’s a poor boy,” Shelby says. “Such a poor, poor boy.”

As we make our way towards the door, the chair turns around on us. I hadn’t

considered it more than a oddity — a strange gear-driven behemoth automated with

unseen mechanics — but it’s a creature breathing with life. The chair lifts it’s canopy

head, cobra-like, bewildered and woken from a dream. Its quivering eyes frightened,

backed into the corner. When the chair recognizes we are leaving, he charges into the

room and blocks our exit with desperate hands.

“Stand back Master Goodfellow,” Shelby says.

“What is that thing,” Mikey says.

“You woke him up.”

“Don’t leave me behind,” the chair says. “I’m tied to you, remember.”

“Are you seeing this,” Mikey asks me.

The chair cannot get away, but neither can we.

“How do we get past him,” I ask.

“He’s been overeating,” Shelby says matter-of-factly.

“I consume just as you do,” the chair says. One of his massive hands, once the arm

of the chair, reaches out and plucks Shelby off the ground like she was one of her rag


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dolls. He nestles her arm up into his blubbery face. He speaks, mouth full, a phrase I

recognize. “I muft furfive af you do.”

“Tomás?” I ask. “Is that you?”

The drowsy, far-away look in Shelby’s eyes sharpens, looking between me and the

chair, eyes ping-ponging back and forth. The wrinkles in her face fold back upon

themselves. “Wait a minute,” she says. Her sing-song has been turned down. “This is no

chance meeting between you two, is it?”

“He’s grown so large,” I say.

The chair is not a chair but is Tomás. I see it in his eyes. The boy with my

grandfather’s eyes. He’s been stuffing himself until he’s the size of a house. Well, at least

the size of this room.

“What’re yeh kids waiting fer,” Mr. Owain shouts beyond the wooden doors. He

may appear solid to us but the hipster doesn’t see Tomás. I hear other voices beyond this

room, Alison is one of them. “Hurry, we’ve goat tae get him tae the hospital.”

Before he negotiates the tumble of the stairs, I recognize the lines in his brow

outline the expectation of me. His grimace wants for disappointment. The thought of him

as a parent ejects me out of my dream. I rush over to Tomás, trying to move him out from

the door. Mikey joins me in the struggles against his behemoth weight.

“We have to get out there,” he says.

“If his brother Drew needs our help,” I say to Shelby, imploring her to help push


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Tomás out of the way. “Then we need to hurry up to save him.”

“Why would you do this,” Shelby says. She cries when Tomás suckles on one of her

arms, eyes twitching in hedonistic delight. She struggles out of his grip and drops on up-

ended floorboards. “Why would you unleash him on me?”

I consider her accusation.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He’s my Fine Friend.” I slip down Tomás’s side. “I

made him up.”

Her eyes go slick with betrayal.

“How could you let him feed on me like this,” Shelby says. “For all these years?

Look what he’s done to me. I used to be a fair, skin so smooth, face so young. Look what

he did to Athair and Máthair. He’s wrecked my brother’s lives. When I tried to speak to

my family, none of them could understand me. Even when I plead for them to listen, I

spoke in tongues.”

“Nobody can understand her,” Tomás says, voice growing cruel. “You just think you

know what she says but I’m the only one who truly listens. A singular beast of beauty.

Look at the despair she’s caused. All for me, I eat it up, all for me.”

“If I’m your soul sister,” Shelby says. “Then why would you do this to me?”

“It’s a game I let go on for far too long,” I say, working my thoughts out loud.

It’s like an answer to the question: how are we all reunited if we never met? The

opposite of homesick is still a sickness. All of the destruction around me is the product of


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my own making. Ergo, I am the missing piece of the puzzle.

“Tomás was the product of my mother’s death. My refusal to see it is blindness.

Even if I’ve chosen to withdraw — to float upon life’s current without a care — I’ve

made that decision, haven’t I?” The damage around me affecting both strangers and those

I’ve recently called family. Everyone of us stuck inside 4 Abbot. I could study it and

overanalyze it, figuring out which vectors all these forces came together to bring me here.

I could rationalize how my afflicted fantasies have entered into this world to become this

fearful menace, this Fine Friend. “There is a time and place for patience but it’s not now.

Time is short, it’s my turn to try to stop it.”

“You’re hanging on just by a thread, girlie,” Tomás says.

He rears up, leans into the corner, ready to pounce. I reach for the Viola string

around my neck and snap it like a whip. I walk up to him, knocking Shelby out of the

way. I center my sights on Tomás.

“How do you get rid of an imaginary friend?” I ask. “You simply hafta grow up.”


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Chapter 12.

EXCHANGE OF THE HEART

Franny must come back to me.

’Twas bound to be a time Franny came back to me and she returned swinging. The

last time I saw her — my final day in Benalmádena — I feared my death. Just because

she gave me life, doesn’t mean she will put an end to it. Today I struggle to extinguish the

fire Franny inflicted upon my skin. Sparks from the electrical wire catch after she

whipped me. The fire is a hydra-head, with every panicked pat another burning tendril

grows upon my skin to lick and singe. I can’t put it out.

The three little monsters confer in a huddle — the stranger, my keeper, and my creator

— they argue and spat amongst themselves, ignoring my plight.

“But how else can we get him to move,” Franny asks. “He’s blocking our way —”

“— but you cannot use your mother’s Viola string as a weapon. It’s not right!” the last

thing I hear Shelby say to Franny before I holler out from the pain of of the blaze. The

fire taking root. The three monsters turn around to examine me.

“I burn just as you do,” I say. Can’t you see I’ll die just as you do?

Shelby grabs one of her discarded rag dolls off the floor and uses it to smother out the


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flames. I sink down, tipping into the corner. Shelby has the sustenance I need to heal. I

reflexively tug and stuff her left arm into my sniveling mouth. She yanks herself from my

grip, staring back with a frown while cradling her limb. She moves as far as she can go,

away from me and the other two.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Mikey says.

“You cannot set the Nightingal free, she’s mine,” I say. They gawk at me without an

answer. I’m not invisible to them, they understand me.

Franny looks so much older now, a young woman.

I scan the rift of the room where the bedroom wall used to be, her jars are gone. They

shattered while I slept comatose, under Stormkeeper’s spell. I did not hear them POP-

POP away into icedust like the long-ago jars inside Franny’s head. Destroyed along with

the thunder and lightning. They went with my plans to use them as ransom.

“She’s all I have left,” I say. I’ve wasted all my opportunities, I’m resigned to their

loss. I’m pathetic, apathetic. Only my words are left to convince them. “Don’t take her

away from me.”

Shelby responds to my pleas, singing with her inner-voice, Stormkeeper’s voice. I can

no longer distinguish where the wind ends and Shelby begins. Out comes the cornucopia

of woe that makes my head swivel in its socket, saliva puddle on my tongue, and fills my

belly bursting with despair. Many have come to listen, but they never get this close. She

drowns me in the deepest sleep. Metaphorical tryptophan: it’s one of Stormkeeper’s


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tricks. The God song, the doctors diagnosed her with glossolalia, the Scots call it a puirt à

beul, but I know Shelby’s singing is a malevolent piping lulling me into helpless sleep.

“Remember, you will do right by us,” Shelby sings. “Or you will never be satiated.”

Stormkeeper’s old curse hasn’t worn away, she warned me this day would come. She

won’t let me forget: No matter how much I feed from her I can never fill myself up. I’m

starving and her song is full of empty calories. If my ending is true, I fear it will be

quietly underrated.

“This is us doing nothing,” Mikey says. “For all I know my brother’s already dead.”

“Tomás has us trapped,” Franny says. “No way to get past him.”

“I can be of no help,” Shelby says. “Your brother suffers because I sing.”

Three little monsters stand at the gates of past, future and present.

I pluck the heartstring to test my tether to see if I’m free from them, but I know I’m

not. I’m stuck in my own trap. The cord spans across the room, taut between my heart

and the stolen one buried within Shelby’s chest. Josefine’s heart. The golden thread

vibrates between us, of course it spins up a chord in C-major, always C-major, before

moving along the filament. The sound chimes along, becoming a telegraph’s message, to

Stormkeeper’s nest of string.

I pluck it to hear it ring.

The wind cries out divine words, (as Shelby) Stormkeeper sings “HARK! I BRING

THE RAIN TO YOUR WINDOWPANES.” The notes travel back, way back, leaping


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over the dried waterfalls that brought us to Scotland. They cut through the open plains of

the dream Serengeti and into the woods. Retracing the forks in the road until it travels

behind the viridescent door. Something peculiar happens, a song leaps onto the air.

Josefine’s song. It rings out from Mikey’s head, “SHUT IT OUT OF YOUR MIND,” and

jumps off again. I swear I hear a needle rip across the wax followed by a distant tinkle of

glass. The vibration continues through the darkest parts of the massive forest, over the

vines curled on the soil, sneaking past the predators living in the Yewland. C-major enters

a tunnel where the notes twist along the gears of a loose screw and way, way back, back

to the beginning until it reaches Franny’s mind. It leaps off her tongue and she sings

“BOOM-bah-BOOM.”

The three little monsters are meant for each other, each one a part of the same song.

“What was that?”

“I think, I think, I think I have an idea,” Franny says. She’s rubbing her scalp beneath

her curls. “I almost can put it together but, but I might be missing something. Tomás

would you help me?”

“Help you?”

Franny extends her hand towards me. Open, reaching out, she waits for me to grasp it.

She waits unconditionally, the way a best friend must. I stare at her, astonished she’d

offer me any generosity. I’ve harbored so much hate for her. I look to Mikey, he paces the

length of the room, biting his nails. I look to Shelby, maybe she can explain it. She


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watches from the precipice, detached from the scene.

“Take my hand.”

Franny lifts me up onto my feet for a second, my ankles twist beneath the weight of

my blubber, my knee giving way, until I collapse again. I’m the one who brought the

three monsters together. I threaded the eye of the needle. It’s me who collected them all in

my skien. We are all tied together because of me. Now, the tangle is damn near

impossible to unravel.

“What will I get out of it?”

“What do you want,” Franny asks me. Her hand’s on my shoulder.

“I want to be free,” I say. “I want to live.”

“I don’t know how to do that, Tomás,” Franny says. “I let you go all those years ago. I

shouldn’t’ve but I did. I’ve left you behind in Doña Dolce, I won't to do it again.”

“You can make a deal with me,” Mikey says. He stops pacing and spits out a

fingernail. “I’ve got no heart, I’ve got no future, after all is done, I’ve got no family. Take

me over, it won’t matter if I die. If it starts up again, I can’t listen to the song playing in

my head anymore. Nobody can live like this. The ohrwurm’s won and I’ve got too many

blights against me to deserve a decent life.”

“Mikey, you can’t,” Franny says. “You just can’t.”

“I can do it. It’s my choice to make. Thomas. Tomás Goodfellow —” Mikey holds out

both hands to steeple and prays, correcting my name. Franny gave my my first, Shelby


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my last. “— I will let you take over my mind. You can take charge of my body. They’re

yours to do what you will but you promise me something before you do. I only have one

request. It’s the most important thing I will ever ask. You must save my brother Drew.

Can you do that for me?”

Franny pries one of his hands into her own, tugging him away from me. As if I’d

consume his soul intact right before her eyes.

“Tomás don’t do it,” she says. “I’m telling you, there must be another way. There has

to be.” The treble of her voice climbs from her throat, Franny cries out. “Wait, wait, wait

until have it figured out,” she begs me, standing between us. “I don’t want you leave, I

don’t want to lose you again. How can I let you go?”

I let out a moan of comfort. Her despair is perfumed with notes of loneliness. My first

real meal, sustenance, the fast is broken. Franny’s misery is a childhood treat, the

memory of it tastes so much sweeter. A bit of nourishment is all it takes for my thoughts

to surface, they shine clear to me now in the Scottish morning.

“Franny, you must let me go,” I say. “If I cannot move forward how else am I to

relieve my offenses against you?”

“What offenses? You always stood by me,” Franny says. “I’m the one who abandoned

my best friend. You were always good to me.”

“Good? Good? He’s never been any good,” Shelby speaks up from the precipice. She

begins softly, a mouse watching from the farthest distance. When she charges up to us,


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she’s roaring, spatting, clawing to be heard. A ghostly lioness. “Don’t you see what he did

to you? Look what he did to me! How he’s withered me to dust, I used to be beautiful.

He’s not good, he’s no good at all. Don’t just stand there, Tomás. What do you have to

say for yourself? Tell her what your kind does to us.”

“I never said I was any good,” I reply. “I said I was fine.”

“That’s no answer,” Shelby says. “Tell the truth, now. The boy should find out what

he’s getting himself into. Tell it to the boy.”

Mikey tries to look around me, his focus is on his brother in the antechamber, he

cranes his head and clutches his chest. I block the door so he cannot see. Mikey

scrutinizes me with so much worry, it ratchets up into his face, the color underneath runs

from pink-orange-red to a bloody plum.

“I heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds,” I say. “I’m a Fine Friend.”

“YERAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH —,” Shelby screams. Her sing-song

raises pitch until it transforms into an alarm, a shattering tone piercing the skin of my

eardrums. She pounces on top of me, leaping from her wry fields of complete betrayal.

“— YYYYYEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH —” I stand limp, I take the pummels.

She batters my face, scratches my eyes, and assaults me with flailing arms about the

shoulders and ears. I deserve every bruise and I take every scrape, I destroyed her long

ago. “— YYYYYAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR — “ Shelby’s feet kick me in the gut,

gaining traction within the folds, pushes her head up and smashes her forehead against


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my cheekbone. When she screams the Stormkeeper screams inside her,

“YYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWW!”

The three little monsters have me cornered.

Their gentle hands remove Shelby from my body, she sits indian-style on the wet

planks and lays in a pond of tears. Franny backs away. She stands behind her, chews her

lip and strokes the scraggle of Shelby’s hair, calming her down. Mikey regards me

pensively, his praying hands back over his lips. He considers what he just witnessed.

“What will you do?”

The girls wait for my answer, they are silent. The boy does not retreat, he’s as

desperate as I am. At the end of the line there’s nowhere else to run.

“I will help your brother,” I say. “The deal is struck. You cannot go back on it.”

“I won’t,” he says. “But how will I know you won’t go back on yours?”

I don’t have an answer, after all how am I to accomplish Mikey’s task?

Franny and Shelby sit still upon the floor, statuesque, they are twins entwined in a

Roman pose. Both of them breathed the life into me, they nourished me over many years,

surely they know the way I should take.

If Shelby knows the answer she will not give it up. Not for me. Franny swears she has

the answer but it’s just out of reach. A simple nudge will put it in her grasp. Then I can

receive it as a babe on her teat, draw the answer like milk into my mouth. To get them to

remember what they already know, all it takes is a simple nudge.


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I implore to them, in prayer, writ from the secret tongue of imaginary friends.

“O Harkener, Francesca, creator goddess, broken circuit childe, there’s a sorrow

trapped within you,” I say. “A void I kept there to grow. Her name is Rita, the loss of

your mother. See inside yourself to set it free. Sing on, Franny, sing on.”

Franny’s glassy-eyed and vacant, like she’s retreated within herself. She hunts for

answers, the equations that will set things straight. She won’t find it that way, those

answers do not serve her now. She has to dig deeper, look past the mathematics of and

stare into the abyss of her soul.

“C’mon Franny, you must know what to do,” Mikey says. “You know, don’t you? My

brother is dying for Godsakes. You must know what to do to help him.”

Franny looks at the wire in her hand, curls it up, and extends her hand towards me.

Open, reaching out, she waits for me to grasp it. Her mother’s spark, a gift of music.

“After all he’s done?” Shelby asks.

“I don’t need it after all,” Franny says to me. “It’s yours.”

I receive her mom’s Viola sting, she places it on my head as a crown.

“O Nightingal, Shelby, keeper goddess, double-trilled beauty, there’s a storm trapped

inside you,” I say. “I left it there to rot. Her name is Stormkeeper. She has a heart that is

not yours to give. Look within yourself and let her out. Sing on, Shelby, sing on.”

“I don’t understand,” Shelby says.

“A heart, Drew needs a heart to live.” Franny’s footing is unsure, the drop is rocky,


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any misstep and the fall will be death. She may have given me her power of invention,

but her analytical side is still sharp. “It is like a puzzle, I have all the pieces. Like, like,

like you. Shelby, you have a heart to spare?” She scans around the room and targets

Mikey. “It can’t be coincidence that Mikey lost his heart when Finah arrived at the

German church.”

“Why is it not mine to give?”

“It was Josefine’s heart,” I say.

“Yes, it must be Finah’s,” Franny’s voice hitches with excitement. Her authority

booming with more thunder. She begins to rattle off the way she used to in Doña Dolce.

“Tomás, you’ve seen her? Has she not melted away? Oh, I see now, I see what she did.

How she stole —” she twists her arms around herself. “Oh, Mikey, I’m so sorry.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Tomás, you’ve crossed paths with her,” Franny asks. “She had his heart?”

“Yes,” I say. “She stole it from Mikey.”

“What? How can that be? Is still in one piece?”

“Shelby, you know what you have to do,” Franny says. She caresses her cheek with

the back of her fingers, eyes peering deep within Shelby’s. “You have to return it.”

“Aye,” Shelby sings.

Maybe it was Stormkeeper.

“Then, he must take it to my brother,” Mikey says. “So that Drew may live.”


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“What becomes of Finah,” Franny asks.

“I must defeat her,” I say. “One of my own kind.”

⁂

Before I enter Mikey’s mind, the complication of exchanges must occur. A pound of

flesh, eye for eye and life for life, heavy-duty, real-world, impossibly deep magic. It

would be better told like those high-seas tales involving cannonfire and stormwinds, but

my version’s the best that we’ve got. These exchanges are not played on a board, nor are

they games of paper. They do not trade as easily as Monopoly money. There are

thresholds that must be crossed, Rubicons that cannot be untraversed. Rules are of no use

here. They cannot be followed during these times — how can they? — throw them out

because all stakes may be lost.

Certainly, everyone in this room has something to lose.

I’m a fool to think I’m not a part of these transactions. Amongst the three monsters, it

may look like I’m the currency being dealt but I assure you it’s not the case.

I’m a creature of the heart because I am bound to it. Perhaps I come into being when

yours is broken. When you’re young it happens often. It’s so fragile, it’s a hollow muscle

after all. I’m the stand-in during these traumas. Tragedy’s switch hitter. When you cannot

explain the pain away, conjure me up for a distraction and lets spin a good yarn. I fight

back the randomness because I set the rules. I bring order to the chaotic heart. It’s easier

to cope when you can store your worst fears within me. It’s not so crazy that you see me


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— I’m like one of those jars stored upon Franny’s shelves — I hold your mad thoughts

for you so you can stay sane.

Do you blame me for who I’ve become?

Imagine you discovered how important a piece you were in your chosen Deities’

chessboard. One that all other pawns, including the rooks and bishops, were sacrificed to

protect. Would you be proud you held so much importance in their affairs? Wearing your

crown lightly upon your skull? I could step upon the higher plane of the Gods, of my

three monsters, and look down upon the world as one of them. Standing tall as Perseus in

the affairs of Mt. Olympus.

But this is a providence that won’t be afforded to me. Are you disheartened to know

I’m stuck within the borders of their childhood game? Soon enough it won’t matter, for

all toys are discarded in the end. Maybe you can find solace by calling it fate, secure in

your familiarity of a well worn path. Remember that even in the garden of delights,

destiny’s travels may not be fully mapped from flowerbed to deathbed, the destination is

always the same.

So when it’s time to pay their debts, trust me when I say I’m essential in these

exchanges. All we have are grand trades, gifts given to one another — whether passed

from mother to child or given when strangers’ paths cross down treacherous forest roads.

Does it matter what the gifts are? Only our benefactors who we remember fondly as we

dawdle into old age.


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Remember me before I go.

Red is the color of martyr’s blood. Not my blood, it’s the heart that Stormkeeper kept

safe for Mikey. Shelby puts it in his hands when she steps into the light.

Gold is the color of fairest spun treasure, the Viola wire Franny thought she lost.

Crowned upon my head, her imagination is mine to command.

Green is the color of forest vegetation, the land behind the viridescent door. A

beautiful kingdom Mikey cedes to my rule. His mind opens up to me.

Treasures, every single one.

“You come and go,” Stormkeeper and Shelby sing to me. “You come and go.”

They perform a duet, so inextricable Franny dare not allow them to be riven. She

gives up that part of her soul that is the wind. With it she lets go of the hope she will see

her mom again. Not all loose-ends are tied up, not all exchanges are balanced. She kisses

the Stormkeeper goodbye and the wind dries the tear from her cheek. The last I see of

Franny, she gives me an approving nod. How strange to see her face in the morning light,

she’s grown up to look so much like her mother.

Stormkeeper, the deity who was my companion and then my betrayer, my greatest

lover and then my rival, once a child and always my teacher, both the stillness and the

wind, whichever names you choose to call her, she gave me the gift of life. She bows to

me when she steps back inside Shelby and releases me from my curse.

It’s my turn, a roll of the dice, the outcome of the game depends on how I make my


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move. Shouldn’t I be happy that I’ve been the life of the party? I confess, I don’t know

how to go it alone. I’ve never been on my own.

“Careful.” Mikey puts his reclaimed heart into my care. Rhythmic beats, filled with

steady, pomegranate syrup. “Deliver this to Drew as quickly as you can. I know you can

save him. That we can save him. And be careful, there’s a part of me that always wants

him to suffer,” he says. A moment’s regret. Within the heart, I can feel his brotherly

persecution which fires its chambers. “You are about fight that part of me.”

“Are you ready for a change of heart?” I don’t bother with the answer, the exchange is

finished. I push myself out from the corner of the room and into his mind.

You come and go, you come and go.

⁂

The room is not unlike Franny’s.

It’s a basement and an attic, depending on the time of day. It changes based on the

weather brewing outside the leadlights, it looks different based on my position inside the

room, or my mood — well, Mikey’s mood — today I’m hopeful.

Any trepidation coming here is held at bay. I’m my true self again, skinny and spry

and Chuck’s All-Stars laced back on my feet. I’ve shed the weight of the real-world. In

your mind, do you imagine yourself as you were during your younger years?

“This will do,” I say.

I notice differences from Franny. For there should be differences when strolling


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around someone else’s mind.

First, the heat, the temperature in the room is burning. I swear if I adjusted my eyes

just right I’d see kerosine fumes waver in front of my face. Next, the walls are lined with

American Tourister hard-shelled suitcases. Every wall, N, W, S and E are covered in

stacks of red-vinyl luggage. I’m surrounded in them. They glint with shiny latches and

silver racing stripes. There must be nine-, twelve-, maybe even fifteen-hundred suitcases.

Rows upon rows, floors to rafters.

There are no visible doors, they are blocked behind the bags.

I’m far outside of my territory, not used to these conceits. I can’t easily reference his

inner language. The best comparison I can make is to Franny’s jars. If that’s so, how does

this kid have so many fears and ideas locked up in each American Tourister?

“Something’s gone awfy wrong,” Shelby’s brother would say.

Last, there’s no bookshelf. No varieties of treeplanks or perforated ironwork. Instead

in its place, radiant in the middle of the room, a spotlight cast upon it, a golden

phonograph. Through the heat waves the golden box appears molten, near melting, a

blazing inferno.

Beside it a tall woman scrunches down, picking up black shards off the floor. The

broken glass I heard earlier with the plucking of the heartstring. I’m ready for the attack

but surprised to find she’s not Josefine.

“Five-hundred and seventy-six thousand, eight-hundred and seventy-eight for, one


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against,” she says. “I’ve never broken a single record until now.”

For a moment, I’m displaced and wonder if I arrived into Mikey’s mind at all. But I

remember the suitcases, recalling years ago when they sat inside the viridescent door.

Back when it was just a few, when I fought Josefine over the heartstring, there was a

woman singing beyond the door. This must be her. Of course I’m in the right place, I

introduce myself.

“Hello,” I say. “I’m Tomás”

“I know who you are,” she says. She turns around when she hears me. “I know why

you’re here.”

“Have we’ve met before?”

“I’m Boy George.”

I suffer a moment’s gender confusion before I place his/her voice. I decide he’s a boy

based on his name. He’s wearing a white kimono and his braids are bundled up in his

scarf. Boy George stands, 6 feet-tall at least, and beckons me to come closer with curled

finger.

“Come here,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for you, I’ve been waiting to talk to

someone. I could have chosen anyone but I picked you.”

“I didn’t know boys wore make-up,” I say.

“Make-up is complete armor,” Boy George says. He caresses his jawbones with his

hands, crossing his breasts until his palms rest on his hips. “It protects you from the


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world.”

“Yes, I know a thing or two about that,” I say. “And those?”

“Capezios? They were strapped to my feet after I came here.” Boy George shows off

his pink ballet slippers. “When you’re on tour for over three years, it’s better if you dance

once in awhile.”

“Looks like you’ve hurt your foot. Disco accident?”

“It’s not my blood,” he shows the caked scabs on the right slipper. The last time I saw

those shoes they were on Josefine’s feet. “I don’t dance as much as I hop.”

“You said you were on tour.” I’m unsure what to make of Boy George, not

understanding his message. I scan the attic, the suitcases make the room look like a

crimson prison. Heat burns the sky outside. “Where else can you go?”

“We’ve played gigs all over Britain,” Boy George says. “London, Islington,

Mildenhall, Alconbury. My manager calls it a tour of duty. Once we flew all the way to

Germany for an extended performance. That’s the furthest we’ve been.”

I’m still not picking up his meaning. What’s the conceit at play? Josefine was from

Germany, but somehow I don’t think Boy George is Josefine in disguise. Her accent

would come through, right? I walk a perimeter around Boy George, scrutinizing the

luggage to find where Josefine’s hiding. I don’t know if he’s in cahoots. He moves out of

my way, his large hands move to the box edges of the golden phonograph.

“You have a manager?”


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“Tony, sometimes we call him Staff Sergeant…of the Aggressors. He’s like a father to

us. A little fat, balding guy who dragged us all over the map,” he says. “We haven’t seen

him for awhile, been on our own these past several years. When he showed up a few

weeks back, he surprised us all. Told us he didn’t trust us anymore. Said I broke his heart.

I didn’t think he’d get through the door. You know,” Boy George indicates to the wall of

suitcases. “Too much baggage.”

Conceits, allegories, and symbols. These elements make up a language I’m fluent in

but it’s a different dialect. Door’s on the east wall. Staff Sergeant Tony is the manager the

way The Diplomat is, well, a diplomat. Father figurers, wearing their costumes,

performing their roles.

“And the mother’s door?”

“It doesn’t open.”

“You prefer to keep her locked out?”

“As well it should be.”

“And Josefine,” I ask standing face-to-face, examining his reaction. “We got into a

mad row the last time we crossed paths. To be honest, I expected to see her guarding the

room.”

“Ssssh.” Boy George bends forward so when he speaks his lipstick smacks

umptiously in my ear. His skin is perfumed. Gardenia or jasmine, I can’t tell the

difference. “Honeybabe, you ask too many questions.”


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Boy George leans on the golden phonograph and stares at me sideways. I notice the

elaborate horn that is the device’s speaker mashed and bent. It points squarely towards

the rafters. His fingers walk seductively along the record platter.

“I’m more interested in finding a way out into the Yewland.”

“There’s no way out,” he says. “I’ve tried.”

I step to where the viridescent door must be, it’s somewhere on the back wall, blocked

by the bags. Luggage tags hang off ball chains, every one red-white-blue striped, shaped

like they’ve been scalped from a baseball. Written in ballpoint-pen Karma Chameleon, on

the back That’s the Way. No other explanation. Boy George watches me yank one of the

handles but they stay put. I put my ear on the gaps between the suitcases, listening for a

draft whistle between them. The air is stale. This place is a jail cell. I succumbed another

trap and can’t get out.

The bags mark my gravestone.

“We’re stuck here, aren’t we?” An apology smears across Boy George’s face. “I

promise you I’ll do anything to get out of here. Trust me.”

“I have faith, I just need someone to believe in. Is that you? I don’t know yet because

others have failed me before. It’s nice that you show interest in a girl but we need

warmth, we need religion, we need color. Prove it with a good deed, you hear me?”

I hold up Mikey’s heart with both my hands.

“I have his heart, it’s back safe.” I hold it above my head as if it were a sacrificial


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offering. “It’s no longer missing, it’s back from being stolen. Isn’t this what Mikey

wanted? Isn’t that enough to fulfill my promise? I don’t have much time and maybe I’ve

already lost my chance. It’s wrong to neglect Mikey’s brother but these bags are blocking

my way. Can’t you see that? I promised, I know I promised, but maybe he’s not mine to

save. You’ll have to do it. Will you help me?”

I collapse on the floor, staring through the lenses of tears at the rows of suitcases,

stacked in a perfect grid. Prison cinderblocks. I’ve been such a fool.

“Take his heart back,” I say.

“I can’t help you, honeybabe,” Boy George says. The defeat flattens me. The heat

expands, it becomes unbearable. His edges waver when he walks through kerosine fumes.

“We hear everything over the waves and airwaves. We heard everything that happened

out there,” he points to the leadlights. “Trying isn’t good enough, it’s you who must help

me.”

“How?” I whisper. “What can I do?”

The leadlights darken with thunderclouds and the heart shines into the corners of his

mind. A bright, lime-green glow. I offer it to him freely and see it glimmer in his eyes.

Boy George takes the beating organ from me. He cradles the heart like a newborn child.

Blood streaks over his kimono, reflecting its neon Day-Glo.

“It’s very difficult for me to talk about,” Boy George says. “Because I sewed it up

years ago — the scar where my heart was taken — but everybody wants to be loved.


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Don’t they?”

“I don’t need love,” I admit. “And I don’t need to love.”

“Then why did you bring back my heart?”

“So I could be set free,” I say.

“Wishes are curious things.”

If Boy George isn’t Josefine, then who is he?

I catch an epiphany. Isn’t Boy George the same as Franny’s inner-self? Like Mikey’s

obsession became all encompassing one. He fantasizes himself living the life of another

person. A celebrity, a pop-singer, someone safe and unobtainable, with whom he can

hopelessly fall in love. Banking on the hopes of getting it in return. But in this conceit,

Mikey is Boy George. They are one and the same.

“Listen, Tomás, take it from me, if you aren’t true to your word, someone’s going to

get hurt. If you don’t protect the Gotham child, who else will save him? I’ve been down

that road, dead-ends every time. If you aren’t true to yourself, then you get Karma-

justice.” His eyes contemplate the rafters. I haven’t decided if Boy George talking to me

or himself. “Haven’t you learned already? That’s nature’s way of paying you back.”

He switches on the golden phonograph, the stylus drops on the vinyl, kicking up

static. The music blares out a jangly guitar, then drums, a lone harmonica straddles the

song. The volume is deafening, played through the broken horn. It plays louder than any

sound I’ve ever heard and I’ve listened to Shelby sing for years.


415

I cover my ears but inside Mikey’s mind every part of me listens. My hands, my eyes,

my skin, toes, hair, fingernails, and skin. My nose, my penis, my anus. Past my teeth,

esophagus, duodenum, stomach and colon. My muscles, every tendon, my bones, every

digit. My veins and my grey matter. All my blood, my fluids, my cells down to the

mitochondria. They all listen. Even my heart.

“Please turn it off, I can’t bear it,” I say. “It’s torture.”

Boy George picks up a brass microphone resting on the phonograph. He doesn’t

respond but looks at me sideways, indicating something with his head. It’s a curious pose.

He rocks with the beat, but his head has been pointing to something all along.

Then, he steps into the spotlight and begins to sing:

Is there loving in your eyes all the way?If I listened to your lies would you say

I'm a man without conviction,I'm a man who doesn't knowHow to sell a contradiction

“Josefine,” Boy George mouths the words. Sideways pose, head pointing at the

phonograph machine. The last time I heard Boy George sing, there were hints. Like he

was singing to me, directly to me. Hidden meanings in the song I could gleam and act

upon them. Like: “Shut it out of your mind.” The exasperation on his face, frustrated I

won’t unlock the clue. Josefine once said the song also tortures her. That she could not

get away. Does she force Boy George to sing this song, day after day, night after night,


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belting the same tune and blasting it out so no other thought could take hold.

Not very different in how Shelby sang to lull me to sleep.

Doesn’t the phonograph’s broken horn remind me of a torn braid upon Josefine’s

broken scalp? She once said she was the ohrwurm. She’s the bug in Mikey’s ear playing

the song forever. I point to the phonograph and mouth out slow, deliberate words.

“Is that Josefine,” I ask.

The relief that slumps through Boy George’s body is a dramatic, whole-hearted,

trumpet-out the fanfare, undeniable YES.

It’s all a matter of perspective, ladies and gentlemen. Haven’t I always said it?

When I look back down, a girl is on the floor, sitting next to Boy George. She was once a

phonograph machine but now she’s just Josefine. Her pink feet exposed, one a clump of

meat. She spins a record above her head. With a free hand she holds bloody laces tied

about her waist, tied to a shackle clasping around Boy George’s ankle.

“That’s a poor substitute for a heartstring,” I say.

She doesn’t answer me, all her attention on playing the record.

“You see,” he says. “I also want to be set free.”

He’s just a boy lost inside Boy George’s clothes. The last transformation I see.

I launch myself up, up high into the sub-floor rafters. I steer myself like a swimmer.

It reminds when I attacked Franny years ago. I may not be able to erase those past

actions, I cannot take them back. As I fly through the air, I can do right by her. And fulfill


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my promise to Mikey. When my body connects with Josefine’s, we tumble violently

together into the luggage. Boy George crumples and is dragged across the floor, still

tethered to us. The record is broken and the song goes silent. It’s black shards slide across

the room.

They crumble and turn to dust.

“You,” she says. “I thought I got rid of you.”

“How do you get rid of a Fine Friend?”

“Sie benötigen ein Herz zu leben,” she says.

Her words spoken in German, her motto. The translation holds the answer. You need

a heart to live. Not our maker’s hearts. Like how mine lit up when Boy George sang the

song. Josefine had another heart all along, her own. I roll her over and unleash the laces

around her waist. Boy George scrambles up and hops away on one foot. He protects

Mikey’s heart by stuffing it inside his kimono.

Finah and I tumble and fight and wail and beat on each other, toe to toe, we slam

into each wall, knocking down the towers of baggage. Our fight is obscene, ripping into

each other, tearing out swathes of skin and bone, punctured eyes and lungs. It’s a race to

break into each other’s chest and steal the other’s heart beating inside.

Mikey’s mind is in an uproar.

The stacks of luggage topple over, crumbling buildings falling inside a crimson city,

they slide every way across the floor. When the hard-shells spring open, cardboard


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squares fly out, portraits of Boy George printed on each one, each one the same, over and

over, one after another, mass-produced copies. Reminding me of Franny’s memoryboard

photos. They’re larger, the size of yearbook pictures, eight-by-eights, the ones slipped

under glass tabletops in grandparent’s houses. American Touristers fall over like

dominoes, bouncing over each other, pouring open a deluge, freeing more and more

pictures of Boy George.

As if every thought and every memory is an obsession.

The heat should burn up the photos, instead they lift into the air. Loose squares stir

around the room and spin into a plasma of fire. The firestorm lifts up the half-opened

suitcases, pouring out their guts, until every bag is emptied. Josefine and I are also

dragged up into the surge. The torrent spins around, Boy George within the storm’s eye.

The viridescent door is revealed.

“Take the exit,” I shout at him. “Get out of here.”

“I’m not going to just bunk off.”

“You were always a stupid child,” Josefine says to Boy George.

“Shut the fuck up,” he replies.

I do not let go of Josefine and I don’t let her near Boy George. I’ve ripped off one of

her arms, several fingers on her good hand, her nose and cheek, and I nearly have her leg

dislodged. She twists in my grasp, protecting her core. She is feral: she scratches my

chest and face with her three good fingers, digging into me, excavating organs, nothing I


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can’t do without. We spin in the storm, stuck in it like embers in a blocked flue, pieces

tearing off orbiting around as furious as burnt steam.

“Break the windows,” Boy George shouts.

“I’ve got my hands full,” I say. It’d be funny if it weren’t true. I throw one of

Josefine’s legs his way. Her claws are in my face, three fingers scratching my eyes until I

see flows of blood, then nothing at all. “You have to save yourself.”

The room’s dark when I’m blind. I may not come out of this alive. That’s when I

break off her hand, my eye still pierced by one of her fingers. There’s still some hope.

Josefine is a tiny stump in my arms, her extremities a disgusting pulp I’ve created. Do I

deserve to live after all this? She bites into my chest, the last action available to her,

eating me up. I claw into her ribcage and tear her heart out.

Josefine heart stops beating. I kick her torso off of me.

“Is she dead?”

“You’ve ended her,” Boy George says. He sounds like Mikey. “We’re free.”

I float blindly in the storm. Two things happen in the darkness.

First, the heat is extinguished. There’s a breaking of glass, the leadlight windows are

breached. Boy George figured a way to smash them open, expunging the storm, the

square photos, the luggage, and the storm raging inside of Mikey sweeps out of the attic.

The oven burning inside tempered. I shall never know what may be happening on the

outside, I fear the worst because Mikey is a mess.


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I drop to the attic floorboards, I can feel the creases of the wood seams against my

face. Why was I not ejected with the rest of the junk? Boy George picks my broken body

off the floor. I breathe in the jasmine / gardenia on his skin.

“Did I do alright? Is everything fine now? How bad do I look?”

There’s silence on his end before he musters up a response.

“A close friend of mine once said, ‘People don’t want to know about getting pissed

and falling to the floor. They want a reason. They want to believe in something. They

want faith.’ Let’s say I believe in you, I have faith in you because you really put your

heart out there. You are not just a Fine Friend.— ,” coughing sounds emanate from Boy

George, as if he’s choking up. “— you are a great friend.”

“You still have it,” I ask. “Mikey’s heart?”

“Yes,” he says. “It’s right here.”

He lays my hand upon it, it beats in rapid clenches.

“We have to give it to Drew,” I say. “It may be too late.”

⁂

We stand at the threshold of the viridescent door.

Boy George cannot step through it, something’s holding us back. The way it tugs at

the sore part of my heart, I know what it is. And what I must do in order to fulfill my

promise. I never was released from my bonds, the gold thread came here with me as it

always does. Heartstring. I’m caught inside Mikey’s mind, it’s why I did not fly out the


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leadlights. Before we can leave and pass into the Yewland forest, I ask Boy George to

remove my heart, to unhook us from its thread. I was wrong when I stepped into Mikey’s

mind: the exchange of hearts is never finished.

“Given two hearts in one day,” I say. “You must feel very special.”

“Won’t you die,” he asks. “We still have Mikey’s heart.” My hand still upon it.

“Maybe you can last for a bit.”

“You know, I’ve lost everything that matters to me,” I say. “I guess I had to lose

myself in order to be free.”

“As well it should be.”

To watch him cut through the sinew and sternum and exact himself upon my own

heart would be too much to bear. It’s a blessing to be blind. Boy George leaves it behind

when we walk through the door.

“Will you know how to get back,” I say. “Will you be safe?”

“We’re only going next door,” he says. “Drew is very close to me.”

We walk into the forest, I hear the geese honk overhead, returning for the spring. We

don’t say much to each other, when you are at your end, there’s not much left to say. The

cicadas serenade us instead.

“Why do you call him the Gotham child,” I ask. “Drew.”

“You misheard me,” Boy George replies. “He’s a God-found child. Josefine used to

call him that.” I feel the jostle of a shrug. “I guess it’s the way he looks into your soul —


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a little reverse-raccoon in the Martinskirche garden — loving eyes all the way.”

“Oh, I see,” but I don’t. His voice becoming distant, joining the far off whoops of

apes in the Yewland and the growls of tigers on the prowl. I can feel myself fade, but

before I do Boy George speaks the phrase I’ve been waiting for since I’ve been born.

“This is your door.”

THE ORIGIN OF TEARS

A single tear grows upon his nose.

Water collects on that single droplet, swirling, twirling around the water’s skin until

it becomes bulbous as a ripened fruit. It hangs in sugary pearlescence, sticky like a

dewdrop, unable to fall upon its subject.

Mikey hovers over his brother. We crowd around Drew’s body waiting for the

ambulance to arrive. Robin and Billy called them when we were stuck in the throne

room. Shelby’s cage. Terrible in this moment that the three of them stand together

reunited as a family, once and for all, as Drew’s pulse is scarcely beating.

My surrogates stand on either side of me.

Father Owain to the east. Mother Alison to the west.

I step away from them, stop halfway towards Mikey, caught in the space between

the circle of friends who have arrived to bear witness to the heart connection.


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I take the sleeve of my coat to wipe away the tear. Mikey pushes my arm away from

his sweaty face. But he keeps pumping both clasped hands on the boy’s sternum. When

he turns towards me, I see the network of veins and corpuscles lace the whites of his

eyes. Sea anemones. Tears well up, rising up into a tidal wave, ready to break upon the

shores of this world.

“His heart’s barely beating,” he cries out. “I think he’s dying.”

When has the time for CPR has expired? Mikey works to keep the blood flowing

though Drew’s veins. None of us can get close to him. None of us dare get in the way.

“How did I let this happen again?”

“You didn’t,” I say. “None of us did.”

I want to believe it. If he dies, you can walk the cause back to Shelby. If you do then

you must keep walking until you reach back to me instead.

“When will help get here,” Mikey says. “Is he still breathing?”

I take my place across from Mikey, I sit on my knees and put my ear up to Drew’s

nose and mouth. His breath is almost too shallow to be felt, maybe too shallow to wade

back into the living. As long as there’s hope, there’s life.

“Yes,” I say. I take Drew’s hand and imagine, wish, whisper in my mind for him to

come back to us. Beat, dammit, beat and come back.

Mikey sighs and settles into the rhythm of CPR. “One, two, three. One, two, three”

Mikey’s own hand is clasps over his second, placing them back over Drew’s heart.


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Compressions keeps Drew’s blood flowing until his heart remembers how to beat on its

own. Mikey doesn’t stop until Drew is brought back to life. Drew gasps and coughs,

drawing in another screeching breath.

He expels whatever damage that had arrested him.

“Bloody hell,” Mr. Owain says.

“The little one’s alive,” Alison says.

“Mikey, you saved him,” I say.

“Aye,” the Bizarte family says.

Drew continues to wheeze, he puts his hand over his chest when he does. Mikey sits

next to him, wobbling, stunned that he did something right. We’re all surprised.

“Aces,” he scrapes out when he’s able to speak.

“I —,” Mikey says. Unable to further explain himself. Who knows the thoughts

running through his mind. The sweat runs rivulets down the side of his temples and the

single tear grows to a size too great, it severs its weight from his nose.

“I can’t believe it,” I say.

I’m not sure if I’m finishing Mikey’s words or my own.

The logic within me will always need to modulate to allow for the unreal. Imaginary

friends, fairy-tales and childhood fantasies, myths long-ago lost and dreams yet to come.

But on that winter day in 1983, sitting on my knees inside 4 Abbot, Grangemouth,

Scotland, I will witness my last artifact of magic. The final enchantment given to the


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Earth, the origin of tears.

Mikey begins to cry.

One tear.

A second.

And then the flood.

Dashed against the breakers, they overcome his eyelids, and rain down in hard

droplets. They fall like scales from his eyes, like crusty, hard shells. All the gunk and ire

that clogged his guts, blocked from coming up and from being set free. He resists,

holding them back in a failed attempt at bravery.

“Let it come up,” I say, repeating Alison’s advice.

“You can’t cry unless you have a heart,” Mr. Owain says to Alison.

“That’s right.”

When the tears fall from his eyes and drips off his face, they transform into tiny

flowers. Stargazer lilies spin down to the floor. Spinning with 6 points, then 5, then they

are a square. And when they rest, they’ve grown to a size about a half-foot on each side.

On the fronts, ivory, on the back navy-blue.

One slides across the flagstone floor to my feet. I look at the picture, of a man with

long braids wrapped in white cloth, a hat on his head decorated with a golden mask. He

wears make-up: Egyptian eyes, Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark, lipstick drawn within the

lines of his thin lips.


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He wears make-up because he’s Boy George.

I pick up the square, and a black-wax disc slides out the side. It’s a record, it’s a 45.

Drew’s tramp marks written on the side. I cannot translate them, but along the bottom,

within a frame, it’s decorated in English:

CULTURE ♠ CLUB ⦿ Karma = Chameleon ⦿

We all watch Mikey weep, we are silent to his ritual, he wraps himself carefully

around Drew’s body, gently addresses his ripped cape around his embrace, and cries

against the boy’s tiny shoulder. And his eyes convulse tens, hundreds, thousands of tears.

Each one a 45. Every single play of the earwig, the song he heard 500 times a day, two

songs on each side, wrought his ears for 200,000 times a year. Each one a maddening

slink along its grooves. Each record proof he hid his heart away, stuffed down all the

fears for his brother’s life for these past three years.

The body will heal any wound.

Thousands. Ten thousand.

One-hundred and ten thousand.

Five-hundred and seventy-six thousand, eight-hundred and seventy-eight tears.

⁂

They say Drew’s eardrums were perforated. Sometimes this happens with loud

explosions. The EMTs explain it will take a few weeks, maybe months before they are


427

healed. No-one can say why his heart was arrested or why he came back to life. I think

there’s a part of me, maybe I imagined it when I held his hand within mine, that helped

restore his heart.

Nobody knows why the house split in two. They say it was frozen furnace lines on

that frigid morn. The Bizartes move into Grangemouth House, Alison takes them in. Her

husband agrees faithfully, there’s no discussion.

Who can say where all the records came from. They’re strewn about in piles on the

flagstones of 4 Abbot. Mr. Owain collects them. He knows a buyer he can contact. Mikey

and Drew could never find the song during Operation Earwig, they’d never existed

outside Mikey’s head until that morning.

“Karma Chameleon’s the A-side,” Drew shouts. He’s looking on the back of the

Culture Club single. “You always get these things backwards, Mikey.”

“Call me Michael.”

“Okay, man.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“I know,” Drew says.

I will continue experience moments but will never compare to my weekend in

Grangemouth. They will be both scientific and spiritual, some creative and other

uneventful: seeing my father the first time I disembark from the plane in Benalmádena;

my first paper published in the journal of Science, my name sitting beside it; meeting my


428

husband walking through Castlegate amongst the Edinburgh tourists; when I teach our

son to play C-major on the piano like my Grandpa Tom taught me. Surly I grow older

with each remarkable revolution around the sun.

Who can say what will become of us.

⁂

“What did the Mr. Owain whisper to you? When we were in Unknown Pleasures?

What did he say when he held you in a headlock?”

We sit on the jumble of rocks along the Firth. Shelby and Michael and myself.

“I heard the shopkeep’s voice close to my ear,” he explains. “My lids were closed

and there were stars in my eyes. The hipster said, ‘The wound from where yer heart is

now a closed abscess,’” Michael picks at his earlobe. “‘You must open it back up, tear

open the stitches, and speak yer pain. Then and only then will the emptiness be filled. I

promise everything’s going to be alright,’ he said. Then he told me: ‘Yeh’ll find courage

grows strong at the wound.’”

Sometimes we rely on family mottos, sometimes we forge our own crest. There are

days I spy the corners of my eye, searching for signs of Tomás but he never arrives. On

the coldest of nights I clutch my breast, guarding my heart against the advances of

Sionnach who I’m certain does.

When I packed up at Grangeburn House, I traced the edge of Concerto Málaga. I

took a final look at mom playing her viola, blissed out and sweet, and kissed her on the


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cheek. I placed the record on the dresser, leaving it behind for another traveler and hoping

she’ll bless their lives with music.

“Drew,” Michael says. “It’s time for me to go.”

He calls his brother over. Drew and I no longer hold hands, our relationship a

fleeting thing like a dream or a passing thought. They talk for several minutes and

Michael kisses him on the forehead. Drew doesn’t follow his brother down the path, he

stands defeated as he watches him move over the sea-grape hill.

“Alison knows the way,” I say. “She’ll drive you home.”

“Will I ever see you again,” Drew asks me.

When you’re older, you don’t always get an answer. His face is wet. His cape, sewn

back together, whips in the wind. Alison collects Drew and walks him off onto cold

beach-sands. He splashes around in the surf with feet like fins, exploring icy seashells of

the firth until I can see them no more. Shelby’s close behind, wrinkles already fading. I

wave goodbye to her.

I’m all alone, now. The cliffside inside myself I feared was never so steep as when

looking from this side of it. Simply a castle in the sand. I turn my back, make my way to

the road, to the nearest bus stop, and head back home.

I feel myself grow old and distant from the world again.

<<<<>>>>

Documents

The Tangle of It - Mixmaster Massey · McFarland / The Tangle of It 6 She hums Chopin’s Minute Waltz. She serenades me by picking up Chupa Chups lollipops for a microphone. “FRANNY’S