Fifty Mice: A Novel by Daniel Pyne Page B

leaned toward the windshield, looked out and up, between the curling fat ribbons of elevated concrete freeway, squinting against the gauzy glare of light—
    “What?”
    “I said the play’s a virtual cloud convention,” Ginger says. “You’re not listening to me.”
    “No, I am. It’s just . . . with Magonis, he gets me in these memory spirals, and . . .”
    Clouds.
    “. . . there was this girl.”
    Ginger: “There’s always a girl.”
    Jay shakes his head. “I thought I had dreamed her.”
    Ribbons of darkness looped across awkward groping, the girl had her blouse open, red snake, lacy black bra—Jay’s lips skated across the sweep of her shoulder, her fingers curled through the latticework of the rising elevator cage and the girl’s eyes fluttered and her breath sweet, hot, thick with Kentucky bourbon.
    “Tell me.” Her voice is too soft, all the edges rounded off. He doesn’t trust it.
    “I mean, I really can’t be sure if she was . . . I might have been dreaming. It’s all a mash-up.”
    “Of what?”
    Of Jay, in the car, empty parking lot, hungover, dead yellow sun spliced through the dirty windshield making his eyes hurt, wondering where the hell he was.
    He says, “And then I . . . you know—”
    Jay and Ginger, staring at each other. Aware that Helen’s eyes are on them from where she’s playing on the floor.
    “—woke up,” Jay says.
    Jay leaned toward the windshield. Looked out. Up. Squinting against the glare of the light at the—
    “And then what?”
    —Clouds.
    Jay smiles at her, sheepish. “Clouds,” he says. “Everywhere.”
    Raindrops on noses
    and whispers on kittens . . .
    “Isn’t it whiskers?
Whiskers.
”
    So here is Jay in the Catalina Elementary School cafeteria, carving a huge fluffy cloud from corrugated cardboard, while Helen, close enough to be his shadow, uses pale blue paint to outline a cut cloud she’s already slathered with white.
    One of her classmates is crooning her audition piece, high, slightly flat:
    . . . 
Pink salmon cabbages melt into string
    these are two-oo of my FA-VOR-IT thingz!
    Night, it’s cold, a stiff sea wind rattles the windows. In the far corner, near a freshly built plywood platform stage, boys and mostly girls audition nervously for a couple of sleepy teachers. A chunky woman with hair splayed by a scrunchie plays accompaniment on an upright piano, eyes closed, mouthing the proper lyrics. Three brawny dads with power tools study the new stage and murmur gravely.Verse mangling continues unabated, as Jay, all casual, makes conversation with his pretend daughter, the selective mute:
    “How come you aren’t trying out for a part in the play?”
    Helen just paints.
    Jay is determined that he will hold conversation with her whether she responds or not; in his admittedly limited experience, kids don’t say much that’s interesting, anyway, and this one, with her sharp looks and droll expressions, seems like she’s carrying on one long continuous monologue—or tuneless aria—for her own entertainment, without the complication of words. Jay wants in on that.
    “Is it the talking thing?” Jay asks her.
    Helen looks up at him deadpan.
    Against the far wall, a couple of Spanish-speaking women and Ginger, on ladders, are trying to hang a curtain from a cable on one end of the room, for the temporary stage. It sags, big-time. Ginger keeps glancing over at Jay and Helen with a look that tells Jay she still doesn’t completely trust him with her daughter.
    “Because, don’t get me wrong,” Jay continues, “I like a good musical as much as the next fool—well, maybe not—but—I think you could get up there and be, like, really really quiet and not say anything, and that could be, you know, pretty effective. Which is to say good. Dramatically. With the piano and everything.”
    Helen stares at him.
    “I carve a lousy cloud. I know. I know.”
    She goes back to her painting.
    “Helen is a pretty serious