the lip of the sink in front of the stall. Bowing its featherless match-tip head. Beak clacking as it speaks.
“You’re the key,” the bird says, “but what’s the lock?”
“What?”
“Or are you the lock and someone else is the key?”
Miriam’s hands are shaking. “Speak sense, bird.”
“Are you going to see Mommy while you’re here?”
Miriam flings her keys at the big black scavenger.
The keyring rebounds off the sink, then the mirror, then lands in the well of a different sink. The bird is gone. One black feather remains, stuck to the grimy porcelain with a waxy bead of blood.
Miriam finishes peeing, rescues the keys, then hurries out.
ELEVEN
RINGY-RINGY
Outside in the parking lot Miriam gasses up the Red Rocket with the last of her cash, then parks off to the side, plants her butt on the hood, and smokes.
She lifts her ass off the car and plucks three pieces of paper – small, not quite fortune cookie fortune size, but close – from her back pocket.
Three phone numbers.
One: Louis. She hasn’t seen him in over a year. Hasn’t spoken to him, either – she ditched her last phone in the river when she got the hell out of town with old man Albert. Albert, who was supposed to take her south. All the way to Florida if she could manage it. To see her mother.
Which leads her to the next number.
Two: her mother. Back in Pennsylvania, during the Mockingbird murders, she decided – or perhaps was compelled – to visit the house where she grew up. Her mother’s house, or so she thought. Instead, that fuck-up Uncle Jack was living there. She found out her mother was living in Florida now, doing – what was it? Missionary work? And after all of it was done, after the Caldecotts were dead and Wren was saved, she really thought that she’d go to Florida, see her mother. But she always found a reason to point Albert in a new direction – train museum, amusement park, crayon factory, sex emporium. He knew she was avoiding something. But old Albert was good enough not to go picking scabs.
Albert’s dead now. He must be. That’s what the visions told her, and they haven’t been wrong yet. Dropped dead in the tall, misty woods. Looking at a picture of his wife. And loving her.
Him and Darnell, the car salesman. Men who died with love in their hearts. Is that even a thing she’s capable of? What does her heart contain? Vinegar and venom? Grave dirt and formaldehyde? Nicotine and dirty snow?
And she thinks, These two phone numbers are heavy . Pregnant with the potential for love, for connection, for re connection, even resurrection – but here she worries that these relationships are already dead and buried, and if there’s one thing she knows all too well, it’s that once you’ve killed something it stays in the ground where you put it.
Still, she thinks, Call one of them.
Call Louis. Just to see how he’s doing.
Call her mother. To ask if they can see each other.
But then: that flare of anger. Louis doesn’t understand her. Her mother understood her even less. These are not my people , she thinks.
She shoves both those numbers back into her pocket.
Then she grabs the third number.
The man from the Craigslist ad.
She calls him. Tells him she’s here. In Florida.
He speaks slow. Not stupid-slow, just laid-back-slow. Peach Bellinis and sun-baked lounge-music slow. He asks her where she is. She tells him: Daytona. “Well, damn. Still got about a seven-hour trip till you get here.”
She asks him, “Where’s ‘here?’”
“Big Torch Key.”
She hears that gravel-and-grit in his voice, a Springsteen growl tempered by a Neil Diamond smarm. When he says Big Torch Key he sings it as much as he speaks it.
He tells her the address. Gives her directions.
“This isn’t about sex,” she says. “I’m not a hooker.”
“It’s all good,” he says, though she’s not sure that answer means anything at all.
Miriam tells him she’ll see him at eight.
He says he’s
“You’re the key,” the bird says, “but what’s the lock?”
“What?”
“Or are you the lock and someone else is the key?”
Miriam’s hands are shaking. “Speak sense, bird.”
“Are you going to see Mommy while you’re here?”
Miriam flings her keys at the big black scavenger.
The keyring rebounds off the sink, then the mirror, then lands in the well of a different sink. The bird is gone. One black feather remains, stuck to the grimy porcelain with a waxy bead of blood.
Miriam finishes peeing, rescues the keys, then hurries out.
ELEVEN
RINGY-RINGY
Outside in the parking lot Miriam gasses up the Red Rocket with the last of her cash, then parks off to the side, plants her butt on the hood, and smokes.
She lifts her ass off the car and plucks three pieces of paper – small, not quite fortune cookie fortune size, but close – from her back pocket.
Three phone numbers.
One: Louis. She hasn’t seen him in over a year. Hasn’t spoken to him, either – she ditched her last phone in the river when she got the hell out of town with old man Albert. Albert, who was supposed to take her south. All the way to Florida if she could manage it. To see her mother.
Which leads her to the next number.
Two: her mother. Back in Pennsylvania, during the Mockingbird murders, she decided – or perhaps was compelled – to visit the house where she grew up. Her mother’s house, or so she thought. Instead, that fuck-up Uncle Jack was living there. She found out her mother was living in Florida now, doing – what was it? Missionary work? And after all of it was done, after the Caldecotts were dead and Wren was saved, she really thought that she’d go to Florida, see her mother. But she always found a reason to point Albert in a new direction – train museum, amusement park, crayon factory, sex emporium. He knew she was avoiding something. But old Albert was good enough not to go picking scabs.
Albert’s dead now. He must be. That’s what the visions told her, and they haven’t been wrong yet. Dropped dead in the tall, misty woods. Looking at a picture of his wife. And loving her.
Him and Darnell, the car salesman. Men who died with love in their hearts. Is that even a thing she’s capable of? What does her heart contain? Vinegar and venom? Grave dirt and formaldehyde? Nicotine and dirty snow?
And she thinks, These two phone numbers are heavy . Pregnant with the potential for love, for connection, for re connection, even resurrection – but here she worries that these relationships are already dead and buried, and if there’s one thing she knows all too well, it’s that once you’ve killed something it stays in the ground where you put it.
Still, she thinks, Call one of them.
Call Louis. Just to see how he’s doing.
Call her mother. To ask if they can see each other.
But then: that flare of anger. Louis doesn’t understand her. Her mother understood her even less. These are not my people , she thinks.
She shoves both those numbers back into her pocket.
Then she grabs the third number.
The man from the Craigslist ad.
She calls him. Tells him she’s here. In Florida.
He speaks slow. Not stupid-slow, just laid-back-slow. Peach Bellinis and sun-baked lounge-music slow. He asks her where she is. She tells him: Daytona. “Well, damn. Still got about a seven-hour trip till you get here.”
She asks him, “Where’s ‘here?’”
“Big Torch Key.”
She hears that gravel-and-grit in his voice, a Springsteen growl tempered by a Neil Diamond smarm. When he says Big Torch Key he sings it as much as he speaks it.
He tells her the address. Gives her directions.
“This isn’t about sex,” she says. “I’m not a hooker.”
“It’s all good,” he says, though she’s not sure that answer means anything at all.
Miriam tells him she’ll see him at eight.
He says he’s
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