I Am the Messenger

It's a beautiful day.

Not a cloud in the sky.

For the record, Ed, I tell myself later, eating cornflakes, it's Tuesday. You're working tonight.

I dismiss the Ace of Clubs to the same top drawer as the Ace of Diamonds. For a moment, I imagine a full hand of aces in that drawer, fanned out as a player would hold them in a game. I never thought I wouldn't want four aces. In a card game, you pray for a hand like that. My life is not a card game.

I'm pretty sure Marv'll be at me again soon, wanting me to run with him in preparation for the Annual Sledge Game. For a while, I even manage a few laughs thinking of it--seeing us running barefoot through the dew and the frightening nettles of people's front lawns. There's no point running in shoes if the game's played barefoot.

Audrey arrives at about ten, all washed up and smelling like clean. Her hair is tied back except for a few gorgeous strands that fall over her eyes. She wears jeans, tan-colored boots, and a blue shirt with the Vacant Taxis badge embroidered on the pocket.

"Ed."

"Audrey."

We sit on the front porch with our legs dangling over the edge. A few clouds have formed now.

"So what does this one say?"

I clear my throat and speak quietly. "'Say a prayer at the stones of home.'"

Silence.

"Any idea?" she eventually asks. Her eyes have settled on me. I feel them. I feel their softness.

"None."

"And what about your head and"--she looks at me now with a kind of concerned disgust--"the rest of you." She says it. "Ed, you're a complete mess."

"I know." My words land on my feet and slip off to the grass.

"What did you do at the addresses of the first card, anyway?"

"You really want to hear it?"

"I do."

I say it and see it.

"Well, I had to read to an old woman, let a sweet girl run barefoot till she was all trodden on and bloody and glorious, and"--I still speak calmly--"I had to kill a man who was pretty much raping his wife every night."

The sun emerges from a small cloud.

"Are you serious?"

"Would I say it otherwise?" I try to get some hostility in my voice, but none arrives. I don't have the energy.

Audrey doesn't dare to look at me now, scared she'll know the answer by the look on my face. "Did you do it?"

I feel guilty now, getting short with her like that and even telling her all this. There's nothing she can do to help. She can't even try to understand. She'll never know. Audrey will never feel the arms of that kid, Angelina, wrapped around her neck or see the pieces of the mother all over the supe

rmarket floor. She'll never know how cold that gun was or how desperate Milla was to hear that she'd done right by Jimmy--that she'd never let him down. She'll never understand the shyness of Sophie's words or the silence of her beauty.

For a second or two I'm lost.

Inside those thoughts.

Inside those people.