“What do you call your freckles?”
Saff pauses. “I don’t think anybody’s ever asked,” she says, a little bemused. “I’m not sure I call them anything.”
“It’s just that they’re not technically freckles,” says Eileen. “Or not the melaton–I mean, melanin irregularity that people call freckles.”
Saff touches her cheek, where the spray of tiny dark spots spreads from her eyes. Her skin is baker’s chocolate; the spots are nearly black. “But they must be. They weren’t there when I was younger… Oh, I remember!” She smiles. “My mom had them. She called them ‘sunspots.'”
Eileen laughs. “I’m stealing that!”
Joanna rinses, spits, and settles her squashy old badger on her head. It’s still asleep, lucky thing.
In the hall, Hoban’s securing little Madison’s new chipmunk for her–it’s her first day of school. Joanna squats to chuck her chin. “Look at you! So big! You’re going to need a raccoon in a month.”
Madison giggles, and Joanna rises to kiss her husband with the tiniest hesitation. She wishes Hoban hadn’t bought the Facelift Sables. The color’s pretty, sure, and his skin stays taut, but vanity! Vanity! And anyway, the spots where their claws grip his face are starting to show.
“I’m telling you, listen, he’s useless. He’s inert,” hisses Annabeth. “You’re not going to make him into a real actor with a few lightbulbs!”
“One of the things you’ll learn about this town is it’s all appearances.” Mo grins. She’s playing cat’s cradle while her assistants scuttle like ants in a skillet. “Lighting is all. That and makeup. Okay, guys, wanna hit it?”
There’s an audible whump as the spots power up. Annabeth drops her clipboard.
Standing there lit like a beacon in the focus of their stares, Terence is pretty bored. He idly thinks about dope, and about doing it.
Jake stabs blindly, uncovers his eyes and finds the finger-grease print over a “thus.” Can he cut that? He’s not sure. He could replace it with a “so,” but no, this isn’t about letters. He has to trim it somewhere, and random selection isn’t working.
It had seemed so easy, in theory. He’d written whole stories in fifty before, in twenty-five; you just traced lightly and trusted your reader. But the rules here are harder, and he can’t just wait for inspiration anymore. There’s a demand. Every day.
Jake sighs. One hundred and one words is too many, and not enough.
It catches him across the jaw and the world’s a blinking, spinning mess, as he tumbles on the long axis of his body to spit blood on the stubblegrass of Fort Wayne, Indiana. What the fuck’s in Fort Wayne anyway? A credit union, two Comfort Inns, herds of engineers and all her childhood. She grew those doe-brown eyes here, and those legs and those white teeth: learned to count, drank beer, stole candy, killed a rabbit in her mother’s van. He came to meet Fort Wayne, and it met him back, with the sharp clean ring of copper pipe on bone.
The words are barred to him now, but as Darlene said once, it’s all in the hands.
The men he pickpockets never know. A low fluttering gesture and they stop seeing him; a twist of invisible threads, and they forget they’re carrying anything at all. Rob collects from them like a quiet, shuffling raccoon.
In his apartment, a figure is beginning to resolve itself: reading glasses, gloves, pocketwatch and fob. From one man at the YMCA he got black dress pants, and from another, patent leather shoes. The pockets are filling with coins, charms and handkerchiefs.
Rob calls the figure Boulevard.
Dishes. They’re a constant, an endless stream: unload, set, dirty, rinse, load again. When the washer breaks down it’s chaos.
The cabinet where most of them go is right above the counter, so her kids stand on it to put them away. When they’re in a good mood they make up mottoes for themselves, cheerfully, shamelessly.
It’s adorable and it’s heartbreaking. Even her oldest, standing on the counter, is still two feet short of the ceiling. Why are they so small? Why does she have to have a job? How can they be unable to reach the cabinets, when he’s gone?
Holly plops down and idly traces something in the hot black gravel with one finger. She’s almost sixteen and her calves are bare, the hems of her ragged pants bound with purple tape. Roger’s still not entirely sure how they got up on the roof of the athletic building, but he’s in love with her calves; he stares, and fumbles a rolling paper.
Later, high, Roger laughs to see the ants three stories up. Because they’re black on black, though, he doesn’t notice their long complicated line. It’s like they’re following a sweet trail of spilled Kool-Aid: long cursive loops, H-O-L-L-Y.
“Worthless,” spits Conrad. “Kitchen oregano in a cheap capsule!”
“Cilantro, actually,” says Williams. Her voice is rich, mild and faintly mocking.
“And you claim they perform miracles. How can you possibly justify–”
“The contention that the pills’ contents cause no direct chemical change doesn’t mean they’re ineffective.” Williams is smiling. One of her teeth is gold. “There are older and more basic forces at work. We are legitimately changing people’s lives. We’re–” She leans forward, thumbing an intercom. “What did I call us, Van?”
“‘Consorts and enablers of the placebo effect,'” says a tinny voice.
“Yes,” she says. “That.”
“Pardon. Sorry,” says Bo. “Excuse me. My–pardon me.” He’s squeezing his way through everyone, provoking many a glare, trying to keep track of the big tree on what was once the city park. Tall landmarks are like gold these days.
When he arrives, Linda’s already there, sandwiched between two obese women and trying uncomfortably not to touch either. She manages a smile.
“Hi,” he says, and smiles back, knowing they’d both like a little more privacy. That’s even more precious than tall landmarks, though. It’s a tight fit, with all 293 million of them, but nobody’s ever leaving Delaware again.