nagging that I was a terrible husband. I was neverhome. But would Sandra be disappointed in me if I quit? Would I be able to walk away from this personal hell, this obligation I’d imposed upon myself, partially as punishment and partially to rectify a past and grave error?
Down into the belly of the loop we sauntered. Tall buildings on each side of Madison Street made parts of our stretch as dark as twilight. When we came to the jewelry merchants on Lower Wacker, the raised train roared over our heads. In this part of town, the pigeons outnumber the office workers, who populate the area two streets back. We continued on, passing over Michigan Avenue to enter Grant Park. It was here that Lola and I sat upon a green bench. I crossed my legs in contemplation. She spread her own, jabbing her elbows on her thighs and hanging her head between her knees.
My phone rang. It was Boyd again. I was expecting him. I stood and walked in circles, listening to him out of Lola’s straining ear.
I returned to the bench and mimicked Lola, our heads hanging between slumped shoulders. After a solitary minute, I exhaled loudly to call our two-person team to attention. I had something to report.
In my line of work, I’ve heard many crazy, insane fact patterns, combinations of reality that while real in individual parts seem incredulous when smashed together. Take for example the case in which a Romanian-run circus abandoned its old dancing bear in a densely wooded forest in Pennsylvania, the same place we thought a kidnapper had taken a ten-year-old girl the month before.
Tracking human scents, for this is how the declawed bear associated food, for three miles of concentric loops, she literally fell upon our kidnapper, suffocating him with a mama-bear paw on his windpipe. The ten-year-old girl, too horrified, tired, and beaten to respond, simply rolled to the bear’s feet, sobbing. She later told us that in her delirium, the bear appeared to her to be Mary the Mother of God, with sunrays shining off her divine face and all around her pink cape. The bear lowered her head and withher snout nudged the girl to climb aboard. A motorist found the girl half-conscious on the bear’s back, the bear whine-growling down the center of an old logging road. The girl wore a pink leotard; the dancing bear wore a pink tutu.
Thinking on Boyd’s fresh story while I sat on that Chicago park bench, I heaved a sigh of disbelief, as though filtering all the air in the city through my lungs could compress his words to a truth I could believe.
In our slouched state, Lola twisted to me, and I did the same to her. “You ready to tell me what Boyd said,” she asked.
“Get the car. We’re going back to Indiana. We need to leave an hour ago.”
“Damn, Liu, I knew that shit-stinking farmer knew more.”
“You have no idea. You’re never going to believe this one. Get the car.”
“Pink bear?”
“Pink bear.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
D AY 25 IN C APTIVITY
There are days in your life that are horribly eerie but in hindsight are fabulously comic. Darkly comic, but comic nonetheless. There are people in your life who seem wildly strange, and they too in hindsight are actually darkly comic—they also remind you of your advantages, because they set the bar so low, breathing in your atmosphere, as if entitled to do so.
On Day 25, I had a visitor who I, even as I write these words, snicker in the memory of—this man. Maybe God and his black butterfly felt I needed a break from misery, so they sent me a good laugh, in hindsight. In hindsight. During the ordeal, I spent my energy fighting back fear, constantly flipping a stubborn switch in my brain to off.
There I was late afternoon, the dusk beginning to unfold over the house. My dinner delivery would be coming any minute. As I did every day, I gathered my tools of practice, even the ones I conjured out of air, and placed the physical and invisible implements in their rightful places. I sat on the bed, a palm to
Down into the belly of the loop we sauntered. Tall buildings on each side of Madison Street made parts of our stretch as dark as twilight. When we came to the jewelry merchants on Lower Wacker, the raised train roared over our heads. In this part of town, the pigeons outnumber the office workers, who populate the area two streets back. We continued on, passing over Michigan Avenue to enter Grant Park. It was here that Lola and I sat upon a green bench. I crossed my legs in contemplation. She spread her own, jabbing her elbows on her thighs and hanging her head between her knees.
My phone rang. It was Boyd again. I was expecting him. I stood and walked in circles, listening to him out of Lola’s straining ear.
I returned to the bench and mimicked Lola, our heads hanging between slumped shoulders. After a solitary minute, I exhaled loudly to call our two-person team to attention. I had something to report.
In my line of work, I’ve heard many crazy, insane fact patterns, combinations of reality that while real in individual parts seem incredulous when smashed together. Take for example the case in which a Romanian-run circus abandoned its old dancing bear in a densely wooded forest in Pennsylvania, the same place we thought a kidnapper had taken a ten-year-old girl the month before.
Tracking human scents, for this is how the declawed bear associated food, for three miles of concentric loops, she literally fell upon our kidnapper, suffocating him with a mama-bear paw on his windpipe. The ten-year-old girl, too horrified, tired, and beaten to respond, simply rolled to the bear’s feet, sobbing. She later told us that in her delirium, the bear appeared to her to be Mary the Mother of God, with sunrays shining off her divine face and all around her pink cape. The bear lowered her head and withher snout nudged the girl to climb aboard. A motorist found the girl half-conscious on the bear’s back, the bear whine-growling down the center of an old logging road. The girl wore a pink leotard; the dancing bear wore a pink tutu.
Thinking on Boyd’s fresh story while I sat on that Chicago park bench, I heaved a sigh of disbelief, as though filtering all the air in the city through my lungs could compress his words to a truth I could believe.
In our slouched state, Lola twisted to me, and I did the same to her. “You ready to tell me what Boyd said,” she asked.
“Get the car. We’re going back to Indiana. We need to leave an hour ago.”
“Damn, Liu, I knew that shit-stinking farmer knew more.”
“You have no idea. You’re never going to believe this one. Get the car.”
“Pink bear?”
“Pink bear.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
D AY 25 IN C APTIVITY
There are days in your life that are horribly eerie but in hindsight are fabulously comic. Darkly comic, but comic nonetheless. There are people in your life who seem wildly strange, and they too in hindsight are actually darkly comic—they also remind you of your advantages, because they set the bar so low, breathing in your atmosphere, as if entitled to do so.
On Day 25, I had a visitor who I, even as I write these words, snicker in the memory of—this man. Maybe God and his black butterfly felt I needed a break from misery, so they sent me a good laugh, in hindsight. In hindsight. During the ordeal, I spent my energy fighting back fear, constantly flipping a stubborn switch in my brain to off.
There I was late afternoon, the dusk beginning to unfold over the house. My dinner delivery would be coming any minute. As I did every day, I gathered my tools of practice, even the ones I conjured out of air, and placed the physical and invisible implements in their rightful places. I sat on the bed, a palm to
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