is kneeling by Coy and she and Tiffany are suddenly there and he might be all right or not. Motherfucker, Coy says quietly, with blood coming out of his nose. Not much blood.
Keep still, Blackmore says.
Then June’s up and running back toward Higgins.
Where are you going? says Blackmore.
Find a cop, she says. I’ll call one if I don’t see one.
Hurry, Tiff says. Hurry!
Nobody needs to tell her and there’s a cop car riding up Higgins when she gets there and she puts herself square in the middle of his lane in front of him and puts her arms out wide at her sides and yells,
Stop
, and he stops. June runs to his window and there he is.
There is Taylor, the man she will marry.
* * *
This is his face at twenty-seven: round, a little soft, with a crawling caterpillar of a mustache across his upper lip, traces of baby fat that she finds endearing at first but later she will nag him, drag him to the gym, cook him skimpy meals and flatter him until he becomes most of the chiseled cowboy she wants him to be. This is him. June knows it in a second, in a tenth of a second, in the time it takes to see a face. This is it. He doesn’t even like her at first, drunk college chick, and then when he understands that this is
serious
, he’s all business and quick about it. Fuck you, let’s go. She points and he doesn’t wait for her, sprints off down Broadway with his lights on and his siren going for all of a block and a half. Two minutes later it looks like a cop convention, their faces bathed in twirling lights and Coy still out on the pavement but he’s OK—he’s moving and talking. Six, eight, ten police cars all around with their lights going and their radios barking. June tells her story to a uniformed cop and then ten minutes later to a cop in a suit, and all the while she’s looking for him but he’s always tied up talking to somebody or on the radio and then one minute she looks around and he’s just gone ….
All this in a moment, while she’s lying next to Howard—he’s sleeping, snoring sometimes. It’s November. It snowed hard last night and all through the day, and now her bedroom is full of snowy light, moonlight reflected off the low-hanging clouds and the white snow, it glows through the windows. She has to be at work in five hours, she ought to be asleep, she was sleeping a minute ago but then woke up with just the two words
flashing lights
in her brain and the whole thing in an instant. It’s not the whole memory, it’s just a point of memory, but then the whole thing unfolds in her mind to where she can taste the night air, the exhaust from all the cop cars. Things end and never end. Somewhere in her mind it’s still whole,the twenty-year-old never gone but still living, the same year over and over …. Who is she? All these selves, this patchwork of scar tissue and bright moments, sex and sleeping and that one dinner they had at that restaurant by the ocean in California, the fresh peas picked from the garden, steamed for a minute and then served with butter and salt, nothing else.
How did it come to this?
Outside the window, out in the soft light of the snow and dampened moonlight, the deer move down to the river to drink, breaking through the crust of snow to graze on last year’s grass, stick-thin, slow-moving, deathly. What was it like? to live in the present, always, or in the never? … Dogs remembered, she was almost sure of it. Dogs dreamed, she knew it. But it wasn’t this kind of half here, half anywhere that she was, part memory and part desire and never exactly
here
except when she was asleep—and even then, the dreaming …
Snow on the ground, and more on the way. A stranger sleeping beside her. She could feel it coming.
To be whole, to be present, to be on horseback over the white fields and deadfall limbs at full gallop, fast, no time but the now, just the gesture, the line between horse and rider and running all blurry and nothing outside the moment, no dreams no
Keep still, Blackmore says.
Then June’s up and running back toward Higgins.
Where are you going? says Blackmore.
Find a cop, she says. I’ll call one if I don’t see one.
Hurry, Tiff says. Hurry!
Nobody needs to tell her and there’s a cop car riding up Higgins when she gets there and she puts herself square in the middle of his lane in front of him and puts her arms out wide at her sides and yells,
Stop
, and he stops. June runs to his window and there he is.
There is Taylor, the man she will marry.
* * *
This is his face at twenty-seven: round, a little soft, with a crawling caterpillar of a mustache across his upper lip, traces of baby fat that she finds endearing at first but later she will nag him, drag him to the gym, cook him skimpy meals and flatter him until he becomes most of the chiseled cowboy she wants him to be. This is him. June knows it in a second, in a tenth of a second, in the time it takes to see a face. This is it. He doesn’t even like her at first, drunk college chick, and then when he understands that this is
serious
, he’s all business and quick about it. Fuck you, let’s go. She points and he doesn’t wait for her, sprints off down Broadway with his lights on and his siren going for all of a block and a half. Two minutes later it looks like a cop convention, their faces bathed in twirling lights and Coy still out on the pavement but he’s OK—he’s moving and talking. Six, eight, ten police cars all around with their lights going and their radios barking. June tells her story to a uniformed cop and then ten minutes later to a cop in a suit, and all the while she’s looking for him but he’s always tied up talking to somebody or on the radio and then one minute she looks around and he’s just gone ….
All this in a moment, while she’s lying next to Howard—he’s sleeping, snoring sometimes. It’s November. It snowed hard last night and all through the day, and now her bedroom is full of snowy light, moonlight reflected off the low-hanging clouds and the white snow, it glows through the windows. She has to be at work in five hours, she ought to be asleep, she was sleeping a minute ago but then woke up with just the two words
flashing lights
in her brain and the whole thing in an instant. It’s not the whole memory, it’s just a point of memory, but then the whole thing unfolds in her mind to where she can taste the night air, the exhaust from all the cop cars. Things end and never end. Somewhere in her mind it’s still whole,the twenty-year-old never gone but still living, the same year over and over …. Who is she? All these selves, this patchwork of scar tissue and bright moments, sex and sleeping and that one dinner they had at that restaurant by the ocean in California, the fresh peas picked from the garden, steamed for a minute and then served with butter and salt, nothing else.
How did it come to this?
Outside the window, out in the soft light of the snow and dampened moonlight, the deer move down to the river to drink, breaking through the crust of snow to graze on last year’s grass, stick-thin, slow-moving, deathly. What was it like? to live in the present, always, or in the never? … Dogs remembered, she was almost sure of it. Dogs dreamed, she knew it. But it wasn’t this kind of half here, half anywhere that she was, part memory and part desire and never exactly
here
except when she was asleep—and even then, the dreaming …
Snow on the ground, and more on the way. A stranger sleeping beside her. She could feel it coming.
To be whole, to be present, to be on horseback over the white fields and deadfall limbs at full gallop, fast, no time but the now, just the gesture, the line between horse and rider and running all blurry and nothing outside the moment, no dreams no
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