When the truck was empty, Moon told me to sit down in the kitchen, rubbed the seat of a chair with a rag. I sat down.
“You must be tired,” she said. “Let me find my coffee pot.”
“I should get going,” I said.
“No, you shouldn’t,” said Moon. Her voice was strange, pushy. When she spoke it was like a drum beating. “Be our guest,” she said. “Want saltines?” That third eye seemed to wink at me when she smiled. She found a plate and laid out the crackers. “Thank you for your help,” she said.
I looked around at the walls, which were mottled and scratched and dirty.
“You can paint the place, you know,” I told Moon. “My boyfriend was supposed to have painted already. Of course he didn’t.”
“The manager guy?” the husband called out from the brown velour sofa they’d set in the middle of the living room.
“How long have you two been a couple?” Moon asked. She laid her hands down flat on the kitchen table. They were like two brown lizards blinking in the sun.
“Not long,” I said. “I’m leaving him,” I added. “Tonight.”
“Let me ask you one thing,” Moon said. “Is he good to you?”
“He beats me,” I lied. “And he’s really dumb. I should have left him a long time ago.”
Moon got up, looked over at her husband.
“I’ve got something for you,” she said. She disappeared into the bedroom, where we’d piled all the garbage bags full of stuff. She came out with a black feather.
“Is that from the crows?” I asked.
“Sleep with this under your pillow,” she said, rubbing her third eye. “And as you drift off, think of everyone you know. Start off easy, like with your parents, your brothers and sisters, your best friends, and picture each person in your mind. Really try to picture them. Try to think of all your classmates, your neighbors, people you met on the street, on the bus, the girl from the coffee shop, your dentist, everybody from over the years. And then I want you to imagine your boyfriend. When you imagine him, imagine he’s on one side and everybody else is on the other side.”
“Then what?” I asked her.
“Then see which side you like better.”
“You need anything,” said her husband, “you know where to find us.”
I went home and put on the yellow sports jacket. It didn’t fit me any better than it fit my boyfriend. I put the feather under the pillow.
? ? ?
That night I had a dream there was a monkey in the tree outside my window. The monkey was so sad, all he could do was cover his face and weep. I tried handing him a banana but he just shook his head. I tried singing him a song. Nothing cheered him. “Hey,” I said softly, “come here, let me hold you.” But he turned his back to me. It broke my heart to see him crying. I would have done anything for him. Just to give that little monkey one happy moment, I would have died.
? ? ?
My boyfriend came home the next morning with a black eye.
“I can’t talk to you,” he said to me, rubbing the skull in his small, rough hands. I sat on the bed and watched him. His brow was furrowed like an old man’s. “I can’t even look at you,” he said. “They’re saying you’re a scourge. A bad scourge.”
“They?” I asked. “Do you know what a scourge is?”
He cocked his head. I watched his wheels grind. “Um,” he said.
“You love me, remember?” I said.
“‘Scourge’ means you’re going to ruin everything,” he answered after a long pause.
“What happened to your eye?” I asked him, reaching a hand out. He blocked my arm with a swift karate chop. It didn’t hurt. But I could see his heart beating through his shirt, sweat leaking down his arm.
“It’s not good for me to talk to you,” he said. He went into the bathroom. I heard the door slam, the shower run, and, after a moment, the nervous tapping of the razor against the tile. I sat on the bed for a while. The sun flickered harmlessly through the swaying palms.
I got my suitcase and lugged it up the two flights to the roof. I’d been there only once before, one night soon after I’d moved in, when I couldn’t sleep. My boyfriend had come up and found me sitting on the ledge. We had talked for a while and kissed. “If you get torches and wave them up to the sky, it’s like a signal to the aliens,” he had said. He’d gotten up and twirled his arms around like propellers. “It’s the light that calls them.” He’d looked deep into my eyes. “I love you,” he’d said. “More than anyone else on Earth. More than my own mother. More than God.”
“Okay,” I’d told him. “Thanks.”
Up on the roof I unzipped my suitcase, pulled out the shotgun. It was easy enough to slide the round into the magazine tube, as they called it, pull the action back. That’s what the instructions said to do. But there were no birds around. I tried firing off a round, hoping it would startle the Egyptian crows, hoping something, anything, would leap up in front of me, but my hand shook. I got scared. I couldn’t do it. So I sat for a while and stared down at all the concrete, the palms flapping to and fro between the electric wires, then lugged the suitcase back down to our apartment.
? ? ?
After that he’d disappear a lot, call me from some windy alleyway, talk fast, explaining his regret, ask me to marry him, then call back to tell me to go to hell, that I was trash, that I wasn’t worth his time on Earth. Eventually he’d knock on the door with huge scabs all over his arms and face, body thrumming with methamphetamine, head bent like a naughty child’s, asking to be forgiven. He always hid his shame and self-loathing under an expression of shame and self-loathing, swinging his fist back and forth, “Shucks,” always acting, even then. I don’t think he ever experienced any real joy or humor. Deep down he probably thought I was crazy not to love him. And maybe I was. Maybe he was the man of my dreams.
A DARK AND WINDING ROAD