His old face wrinkles further as he frowns. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake. I wonder if things are supposed to always stay the same. I wonder if it’s too late to take it back. Then, in a quiet voice, he says, “No. She didn’t. It was just something she always said. She liked to talk big sometimes, you know. I think we all do.” He sighs as he looks out the front of the garage, sunlight dancing through the trees. The shadows sway along the ground. “But that was her talking, the old girl. Something she said when she was dreaming out loud. Do you ever dream out loud, Benji?”
Now he’s changing the script. I’m immediately on the defensive, attempting to resist the blinding, fiery urge to run into the shop, to check my backpack to make sure the feather is where I left it. It’s probably gone, I think. It’s probably gone because it was never there to begin with. It was just a dream. It was only real to me because I dreamed it out loud. I dreamed it real.
I stand up and close the hood of the Honda gently, pressing down until it latches. I grab an old rag off the workbench and wipe a smear of grease off my left hand. Some of the black is caught under my thumbnail.
And still he waits. He pulls out a pocketknife and starts twirling it deftly through his fingers. It’s an old thing, scuffed and tarnished. Estelle had given it to him on their first wedding anniversary he told me once, reverence in his voice. They didn’t have a lot of money, he said, but she knew they would only ever have one first anniversary. So she had taken some of her savings from her little jar on top of their old green fridge and marched out one pretty fall morning and had come back with the beautiful knife. Engraved in gold on the side were the words I love you, my husband. Forever, Este.
My heart is a little sore at the thought, but I can’t ignore his question. Not now.
Do you ever dream out loud?
“Sometimes,” I say. All the time, I really want to say.
Abe nods. “I thought you might. You and I are the same, you know.”
“How do you figure?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“We’ve lost,” he says simply, but what I hear in those two words is my half is gone, my everything is gone, and Big Eddie… wasn’t he almost the same to you? Wasn’t he just
almost the same? There’s a hole, isn’t there? Some hole in your chest or at the pit of your stomach that is not filled, that won’t ever be filled.
A bell dings overhead. Someone at the gas pump.
Abe glances out the windows. He narrows his eyes. “This can’t be good,” he mutters.
“What is it?” I follow his gaze out the window. A nondescript black sedan is sitting next to the gas pump, its engine ticking loudly as it cools. There’s no movement that I can see, but the tinted windows are just dark enough to block any views to the inside.
“Government,” Abe says.
I laugh. “What? Abe, you’ve watched too many movies. Let me go take care of them and we can finish up here. They’re probably just lost.”
“Not like us,” he says as I walk out the front of the garage. The driver’s door opens and a man climbs out of the car, maybe in his late thirties, early forties. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, his tie loosened around his neck. His black hair is short, his eyes hidden behind mirror shades.
“Help you?” I ask.
“You the owner?” he asks, his voice higher pitched than I would have thought. “Yes, sir.”
He sizes me up and down and glances up at the sign spinning overhead, and I
wait for it to come, as it does with all outsiders. “Big Eddie, huh?” he says, sounding amused.
I shrug. “My father.”
“Is he around?”
Sometimes I think so. “He’s dead.”
“My condolences.”
“Sure. Thanks. Did you need gas or….”
“When did he die?”
“I’m sorry?”
“When did he die?”
I pause. It seems outside has gotten brighter and I squint. “Who are you again?” A thin smile reaches his lips before he reaches back down into the car and then