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1. It was sweet, yeasty warm bread fresh out of the oven in the kitchen just behind the swinging door and it filled the entire house with its moist perfume late on a wintry Saturday afternoon just after sunset. The dog, Spot, had settled into his tartan ceder doggie bed near the fire that crackled in the stone fireplace, Vivaldi whispered out of speakers up on tall stuffed cherry bookshelves and Jackson, stretched in the black leather lounge chair, struggled to keep his eyes open. The comfort of a perfect existence lulled him deeper and deeper into a contented doze, and his eyes fluttered, the book dropped gently from his hands to his lap and he began to drift…But no. Forget it. It was just before noon on a hot spring Wednesday and Jackson was dozing and dreaming and stuck in gridlock on his way home from the post office and behind him a Toyota pickup with giant tires and a chrome roll bar and fog lights loomed over his creaking old Datsun B-210 and the pickup honked and Jackson’s eyes shot open and without thinking he shouted fuck you asshole and it was a stupid mistake, a really stupid groggy mistake, because the good old pioneer boys are armed, really armed and ready like hell for that papa elk that wanders down the wrong path, and the guy in the pickup had a Skoal baseball cap and sunglasses and good lord, he probably had snake skin cowboy boots poised over the clutch and he was shouting something, mouthing something and waving his hands and oh lord he was reaching for his Glock semiautomatic, the good old boys love the German semiautomatics, and the cops love them, seems everybody loves the German semiautomatics, and everybody out West wants to shoot, and ya shoot ta kill, ain’t no such thing as shoot to wound, and Jackson was stuck, stuck at a red light in front of a killer Toyota next to a city-block-sized commercial bakery that churned out hundreds upon thousands of loaves of sawdust white bread for the soldiers in the war in the desert, day and night it filled the neighborhood with the humid scent of white bread lighter than air.

The light turned green and Jackson pulled forward and the pickup changed lanes and sped by and Jackson let his left arm hang out the open window to feel the bugs frolicking in the heat. Spring had arrived and the cherry and apple blossoms and robin red breasts were resplendent in life so radiant and sweet with red convertibles polished brighter than the western sun and the ground nearly dry after months of rain, rain that should have driven normal human beings away. But some stayed. They built a city on two rivers and the rivers flooded the docks and streets and homes and normal families should have packed and gone south, but these families, these pioneer families stayed and they rebuilt and the government built dams to stop the floods and to power the trolleys and the factories that spread out from the rivers and some women baked bread and tried to keep their men and their children warm and dry, others worked in chain gang brothels and were sold as concubines to passing cargo ships, and some of the folk moved south to California but some held on, and still more came and ignored the rain, ignored the mildew and the frost, they stayed and they killed the fish and the trees and the Indians, and they had children, and the children stayed, and still more came, and they killed the fish and the trees and dismantled the tribes, and the newcomers still arrive, in airplanes, in U-Haul vans and sun-baked moving vans in the summer when it makes sense to stay because the air is hot and dry and the snow-capped mountains are lush with Douglas fir and Western Hemlock and red cedar and Pacific yew and ferns and mushrooms, and who could guess what the winter holds? And when the soil finally begins to dry, not only the birds and the trees are thankful. The people who stayed behind are thankful, because like the plants and animals, they too have survived a dark winter.

And they dry out, and they stay. They buy guns and pickups and baseball caps and chewing tobacco and they chop down trees and fish for salmon and bake bread for the soldiers in the desert and they pull their pickups right up to your bumper and sometimes you wonder, has something gone wrong, genetically speaking, is something messed up here, are these people messed up, or is it me?

Shirley Barrett seemed original stock, genes that went way back to the wagon trains of desperate failures and their progeny, and that cold almost stupid sincerity as she explained, “We’re very impressed with your resume, Albert, but I’m afraid we just don’t have a place for you at this time. We just don’t mesh.”

As if mesh ever had anything to do with it, as if all of a sudden getting a job is like being a peg in an IQ test and Shirley Barrett can’t fit the plugs in the holes, and the personnel script says, they just don’t mesh.

Jackson drove slowly and tried to stay out of the way of all the impatient drivers who just had to get where they were going faster, before the light changed, before it was too late. The Datsun could go faster, not too much faster, but faster, and he could have made the next light, sped up to hit the intersection at the yellow light and clear the other side as the light turned red. A Cadillac that started out several car lengths back had made it through the light and was now stopped at the next intersection.

Jackson didn’t bother. He rolled to a halt at the red light next to the McDonald’s and on a whim he turned right.

Not really a whim, because it was just an alternate route back to the apartment. It just wasn’t the planned route. But at the light, sitting in the right lane in front of a long line of cars, Jackson wanted to turn and get out of the way because he felt like he was holding up the traffic, that he was the cause of this enormous impatience behind him, building quickly in anticipation of the green light, and he didn’t want to be there when the light turned green and the engines behind him roared and everyone cocked their Glocks. So he made the right on red.

It was all a preoccupation with safety and a distrust of fellow human beings, who after all had caused all the misery in the world and were constantly scheming new means of waste and destruction. And they were unreliable. That was the trouble. If a smile and a handshake meant something, if a friendly face was truly friendly, then perhaps it all wouldn’t be so dangerous, so utterly unpredictable and nerve-wracking. If you aren’t making money and the car has got to last, how on earth can you trust anyone in a $50,000 car that doesn’t have a speck of dirt anywhere, even in the wheel wells?

At the third intersection Jackson came to, at the corner with the 24 hour gas station and convenience store on one side and the pasta pizza pistachio bar next door, a midnight blue Mercedes convertible sped through a stop sign and hit Jackson’s Datsun broadside. The impact pushed his car into the oncoming lane, which thank god was empty.

As the two lines of cars on either side of the accident began to build, and as she approached, her loose silk skirt blowing in the gentle wind, and as the first horns began to honk, Jackson remained speechless, his hands frozen to the wheel of his beloved dearest Datsun that had served so valiantly and selflessly in times of bitter cold and sweltering drought, and now, to take this blow, a random shot from nowhere, it was all too much to process, just a swirl of crunching metal on metal and screeching brakes and the Datsun’s feeble little horn, oh shit…

“Are you all right?”

She leaned against his open window and placed her hand on his shoulder. Her hand squeezed his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she asked again, now rubbing his shoulder and bending down to see his face.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s all my fault. I don’t know what I was thinking. I saw the stop sign, I saw it staring at me saying stop, hey Jean, stop your car, and I understood, but I couldn’t stop, I just went straight through. I’m so sorry.”

Jackson released the steering wheel and looked up at this woman stroking his shoulder and the first thing he noticed was the loose expensive fabric of her dress and then he saw the long bleached blond hair falling below the scoop of her open-necked dress front, which plunged down onto a tan flat breast, no cleavage, just brown smooth skin far below her neck, and purple and pink blowing gently around it and round shoulders and blond hair that must have been bleached because its blondness was so unreal, like her blue eyes and her pearl earrings and her smell, like a rose, as close as a rose, as delicate, and like a rose, you want to kiss it.

“Your brakes failed?” Jackson asked.

“No, they’re fine. I didn’t use them.”

“You said you couldn’t stop.”

“I know. I couldn’t. I couldn’t put my foot on the brake.”

She was rambling on and it was difficult to follow.

“… I don’t know what it was, but something forced me to roll through that stop sign, and I knew I was going to hit something, the first car I saw, I knew I was going to hit it, and there was nothing I could do and you know what I thought?”

“What?”

“I thought, I hope I don’t go through the window. I never thought about that before, but now I realize that the thought of going through a windshield terrifies me. Have you ever thought about it? I mean, I use my seat belt…”

Her hand was still squeezing his shoulder.

“…and Mercedes makes pretty tough cars…”

Gently she brushed his shoulder, as if she knew it and knew that it wanted to be squeezed, to be told that this, like the Shirley Barretts and the killer Toyota pickups of the world, is okay, it is all okay…

“…and I figured well, if I ever get a new one I’ll make sure it has air bags, because you might as well get them, but I never really thought about sailing through glass. I could see it happen, right before we hit…”

…it is all just funny and beautiful and above it all, beneath it all, illusions of something greater, feel it, something greater…

“…I saw my body fly through my windshield and the windshield shattered into tiny square pieces and it was like popping out of a giant birthday cake in a bathing suit, it was absurd, and terrifying, and terribly embarrassing, but until I hit the ground, it was painless, almost fun, like a roller coaster. And then I hit the ground and I was dead.”

Her voice fell silent just as it had exploded out of nowhere and now she stood there, caressing his shoulder gently, cars all around them honking. Jackson put his hands back on the wheel.

“I think we better move our cars,” he said.

“You’re right,” she said, and she pulled her hand from his shoulder and walked back to her car, the skirt floating around her ankles like mist.

Jackson pressed his left foot on the clutch and turned the ignition key and the Datsun started up without a pause.

“Yes,” he whispered to himself. He made sure he was in first gear and rolled forward and up to the cross street that the Mercedes had been on. The two spaces nearest to the intersection were empty and he pulled into the first. The Mercedes rolled in behind him.

As he turned off the engine Jackson realized that he hadn’t even bothered to inspect his car and that he shouldn’t have driven without inspecting for damage. If the axle was broken he could have caused even more damage and he knew he should have inspected the car, but he didn’t, and it felt fine, it rolled forward as it always had and the tires weren’t flat and the hand brake worked, so maybe he got lucky, but he knew he should have checked.

The traffic had resumed its normal hurried pace and they were now just two people chatting on the sidewalk as life resumed where it had stopped briefly for a small traffic jam and a brief moment of magic that began and ended with her touch. Jackson walked around his car and she followed, looking where he looked and touching the spots he touched.

“Just that scratch,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

He circled the car again, looking for the broken pieces that must have been hanging somewhere. She hit him solidly. Her own car had only a scratch, but that was to be expected because her car weighed at least twice as much as his, and hers was steel while his was thin filmy sheet metal that a small man could dent with a fist.

“That’s it,” he said. “Incredible.”

“Should we exchange insurance information?” she asked.

“Yes, I guess so. Just in case I missed something.”

“What about the cops?”

“I’m surprised they’re not here,” Jackson said. “They always show up. Keeps them away from crime.”

“Should we call them?”

“I guess not.”

“Good,” she said. “Then we can forget about insurance information. You need a police report to file a claim. How about I give you my number, and if there’s a problem with your car, I’ll pay for it.”

There was no problem with the car. Jackson knew his car, and it was fine but for a new scratch that blended in with the old, so he agreed.

“Come have something to eat and I’ll give you my number,” she said. “My treat.”

Jackson never actually agreed but she walked away from him to lock her car and he locked his and they walked across the street to the piazza pasta pistachio bar. They sat in a booth by a window.

“Let’s share a pizza,” she said. “I’m starved. How about pepperoni pistachio?”

She closed her menu and laid it down on the table and waved for the waiter. Pepperoni pistachio. She ordered a large, with two large glasses of seltzer with lime. She did not ask if he liked seltzer, or lime, or pepperoni, or pistachios, all of which he did like very much.

“So anyway,” she continued, “my name is Jean LeGene and my number is two-two-eighty, six-six-oh-four.

“Wait a minute,” Jackson said. “Let me find a pencil.”

She pulled a pen form her pocket book lying next to her chair and wrote the number on a paper napkin.

“Now what’s yours?” she asked.

“Here, I’ll write it,” he said. He took the pen and scribbled his name and number on the bottom half of the napkin and tore it in half, handing the half with his name and number across the table and folding the other half neatly and placing it in his shirt pocket.

“You don’t talk very much do you?” she said.

“Actually, I talk quite a bit.”

“Oh really.”

“No, really. I just can’t keep up.”

“I know, you can’t keep up with me. My ex-husband said the same thing. Are you married?”

The waiter arrived with the seltzers and they both squeezed the lime into the carbonated water.

“Well?” she peppered.

“No,” he answered. “But I’m living with someone.”

“Good for you,” she said. “I should never have gotten married. I mean, when you’re 22 and in love, it seems like a natural. But when you’re 25 and he’s metamorphosed into this, well, this complete asshole. What is it with men Albert? I mean, you’re like insects. And I don’t just mean completely disgusting. You’ve got this mating program and you can’t think about anything else, and then you get married and curl up in a cocoon, and two years later you’re completely different. And believe me, you don’t come out butterflies. More like cockroaches, or giant carpenter ants. Am I wrong?”

She put her glass down and leaned forward and stared into his eyes, smiling, waiting for an answer, and all Jackson could muster was “Yes.”

“Uh huh,” she said. “So anyway, how’s your car?” She sat back in her chair and stretched her legs beneath the table.

“Fine,” he said. “Perfectly fine.”

“Mine too. Isn’t that strange. It’s like, maybe it was supposed to happen. Maybe we were supposed to meet and that was the only way it could happen. I don’t know, but there should have been more damage. Are you blessed? I’m not. I don’t now. Maybe we are together.”

She was blessed, there was no doubt about it, her genes were not of wagon train stock, they were perfect, improved, not of this planet, she moved slowly before him to show every angle, all her unearthly smiles, frowns, giggles and sniffles as she explained the cost of repairs is what kills with a Mercedes, the mechanics eat you alive, and damn it Jean LeGene in the blue Mercedes, don’t talk like that, don’t.

“So Jean LeGene,” he said.

“I know, isn’t it awful. My mother was a real nut. She said she almost named me Le. Is that sick or what?”

“Right. Look, Gene LeJene. What do you do for a living?”

“My my, Mr. Jackson, aren’t we getting a little personal? I mean, we hardly know each other”

“I know you’re divorced and you drive a beautiful very expensive Mercedes and whatever you do you don’t have to be at work this afternoon.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it’s been about an hour since you smacked into me and you haven’t once glanced at your watch. And you just don’t seem to be thinking about work.”

“So maybe I work at night.”

“Do you?”

“No. Since you must know, Albert Jackson, I don’t have to work. He was very rich. He gave me a lot of money. I’m lucky.”

The pizza arrived and it was far too much for two people. It filled most of the table and left barely enough room for their two small plates and the glasses of seltzer.

“Yum,” she said. “Pepperoni pistachio. Do you like pepperoni pistachio?”

“I’ve never had it,” he said.

“Really? Me neither.”

“You haven’t?”

“No.”

“Then why did you order it?”

“Excuse me, but have you ever seen pepperoni pistachio on any other menu? No, I don’t think so. Albert, you have to take some chances in life.”

She smiled and bit into the end of her slice and a small droplet of orange grease rolled down her manicured pointer finger to her wrist.

“Not bad,” she said as she chewed and rubbed her wrist on the napkin in her lap.

It was better than not bad. It was sublime. Maybe it was the pistachios. It had been so long since he had sifted through a bag hunting for that one last uneaten green nut hiding inside a shell. That sweet, tropical flavor, combined with the salt and pepper of the red sausage, with cheese and tomato sauce, dripping down her hand toward her wrist, smiling, staring, chewing, licking her fingers and her lips and brushing away the crumbs from her upper lip. Pizza had never tasted more perfect.

Jackson slipped a second slice onto his plate and he was just about to take a bite when she said, “Well listen, I’m afraid I’ve got to run.”

He put the slice back down on his plate.

“Really, but you hardly ate.”

“Oh no, I had enough. I never eat more than a slice. Take the extra home.”

The waiter placed most of the large pepperoni pistachio pizza in a white pizza box and Jean LeGene paid the bill and the tip and drank a final mouthful of seltzer and they walked back to their cars and she said, “Well, it was nice to meet you Albert, and I’m sorry about the car, and if you need anything fixed or you want to sue me or whatever, call me,” and she hopped into her Mercedes and drove away.

_____________
2. Jackson drove straight home. It was barely four and Lucy wouldn’t be home until after five, but he felt the need to get home immediately, to be certain he was there before her.

He carried the pizza up to the door. In the mailbox he found a letter from his brother and a telephone bill. He opened the bill, which was for $27.62, and he scanned the typically short note from Jeffrey.

Dear Albert: It was good to talk with you on the phone after so long. We really should do better. Mom seems very worried about your plans, and she seems to want you to moved back to the city. I told her it takes you less time to get home than me, but that didn’t seem to calm her. She doesn’t like her son living on the West Coast. I told her not to worry. Work here is progressing. I’m hoping to graduate this year. I’ve finished the first four chapters and have four more to go. The writing is speeding up now because I have a pretty good idea of what I want to say. The first chapter was the slowest-it took me nearly a year to write. Don’t tell mom or dad that. I’ve also written an article for a small philosophy magazine, so that took up more of my time, and I’ve been teaching night classes, which pays the bills. I’m not sure if I’m ready to face the world any how. Life here has suited me just fine so far, although I am dirt poor and living in a closet.
Will you be getting home at all this summer? I’m hoping to be home in August. It would be nice to see you then. Well, we’ll talk. Good luck finding work, and say hi to Lucy, Love, Jeff.”

Jackson stepped into the apartment and tossed the bill and the letter onto his desk, with the other bills and his typewriter and Lucy’s paints and calligraphy pens. She would have to pay the bill.

Then he walked to the kitchen to put the pizza into the refrigerator. He opened the door and pushed the ketchup and mustard out of the way and he was about to slide the box into the fridge when something changed his mind and he closed the refrigerator and walked out back behind the building. He tossed the pizza in the dumpster.

He came back inside and took off his shoes and scanned the classifieds, in case he had missed something good. But there was nothing. Waiters. Nurse practitioners. Dental assistants, electricians, car salesmen. If nothing good came up by the end of the month, then he would get a grunt job, maybe a waiter in a brew pub or a job in an espresso bar.

So much beer and coffee. It wouldn’t be bad, but the money would stink. Lucy had said wait a year before taking something like that, but the money was running out and six months seemed long enough. When the job came along, Jackson would see it and apply and wait. She had said make job hunting your job. You’ll get a good one. Knock on doors. Call people. I can support us for now. Don’t worry.

Lucy moved for a job with her bank. Jackson moved for Lucy.

There was a knock at the door. Jackson ran to the door and peered through the spy hole. He hoped it was Jean LeGene, but through the tiny glass he saw a tiny old woman clutching a book.

“Yes,” Jackson shouted through the door.

“I’m here to offer a prayer for the Lord,” the squeaky voice said. “Have you prayed for the Lord today?”

“No, not today. Sorry.”

“It’s not too late.”

“Sorry. I’ve decided not to pray today.”

There was silence on the other side of the door and Jackson saw he had confused her.

“Well how about tomorrow?” she asked.

“Tomorrow’s Wednesday,” Jackson said.

“Yes?”

“No prayers on Wednesday. Sorry, it’s a rule.”

“Thursday?”

“Sorry, same rule. I think you’d better try somebody else.”

This she recognized. Just another sinner trying to get rid of her.

“You know the Lord has done some wonderful things lately. He deserves our prayers.”

“What’s he done?” Jackson asked.

“The flood in Bangladesh…”

“That’s impressive.”

“No, no. Listen. One of the little islands in the middle of the sea. All the others got swept away. But he saved one island, because a saint once visited the island and the islanders prayed at the shrine of the saint, and they were saved. The Lord saves.”

“Which Saint,” Jackson asked.

“Saint Ignatious, I think,” she answered.

“Yes, well, sell that in Bangladesh. Good bye m’am.”

He watched her turn calmly and walk down the sidewalk and out onto the street. From a window in the living room he saw her join a small army of little old ladies that had fanned out across the neighborhood. Beneath the cherry and apple trees they looked like an Easter parade without the children. Smartly dressed, proud, God-fearing ladies, at least for a day, their mission made for a perfect promenade and constitutional. They seemed so happy, busy little beavers looking for believers, out in the warm city air clutching each other’s arms, pointing to houses and apartments that showed promise, studying the flowers in the gardens. Jackson’s old lady was at the house across the street ringing the doorbell. No one was home.
He turned on the television and watched the local news of shootings and factory closings.

“Well those bathing suits came out in force today,” the weatherman said. “I think we’ll see more of the same tomorrow, but change is on the way. Look for clouds by the end of the week.”

Lucy arrived home shortly before six.

“Hello darling,” he said as he opened the door for her and planted a kiss on her lips. She lowered her head and walked into the apartment. He closed the door and asked,” So how was your day?”

“Not bad,” she answered as she pulled off her high heels. “Jack Halliday is a real prig. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stand working for him.”

“You better,” Jackson said. “What did he do?”

“Oh nothing. He’s just a sexist jerk and I don’t like him. How was your day?”

“Okay. Nothing good in the paper. I sent out some resumes, took a walk in the park. An old lady tried to get me to pray.”

“Me too, just a minute ago.”

“I told mine to shove it.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, but she didn’t get a prayer out of me. How about you?”

“I told her I prayed this morning. She was very pleased.”

“Did you?”

“Of course not. Anything to eat? I’m starved.”

Lucy tossed off her shoes and walked barefoot into the kitchen, where she found a piece of a chocolate bar and a glass of milk.

“I may get a trip to Tokyo next month,” Lucy shouted from the kitchen.

“Tokyo?”

“Yeah, I may go with Jack to meet a big client.”

“No expense too great for the great bank?”

“I guess not.”

“I thought Jack was a prig.”

“He is. He’s also my boss.”

“Uh huh.”

Lucy sat down at the dining table and leafed through the catalogs that arrived in the mail the day before. Jackson watched the national news.

“Trouble in Kenya,” he shouted to her.

“Oh yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I know. I hope things don’t get too bad. Something is going to have to change there. I hope it doesn’t get bloody.”

“Can we go for a walk?” she asked. “To the park? I’ve been inside all day.”

“Sure.”

Lucy changed out of her navy blue business suit and into blue jeans and a white t-shirt and sneakers and she was again Lucy, the real Lucy, not the bank Lucy, and together, hand in hand, they walked out past the small park around the corner to the forest half a mile away. It was much cooler and wetter in the woods, dank with decay. The trail followed a small brook that was running high with runoff from the rain earlier in the week. They stopped at a small wooden bridge that crossed the brook and they looked for fish, but didn’t see any. The water had a slightly foul smell.

“I bet the piss and crap from all the houses around here flows in there,” Jackson said.

“It does not,” Lucy said. “They’ve got sewers.”

“So why does it stink?”

“I don’t know.”

They walked on and turned to climb another trail that reached above the tops of some Douglas fir and big leaf maple, and this trail was still partially lit by the sun low in the western sky but still an hour away from setting.

Jackson slowed but Lucy pushed ahead at full speed.

“Come on slowpoke,” she said. “You don’t get enough exercise.”

Jackson didn’t answer but he tried to keep up with her. Again he slowed, and this time she slowed too. They stopped, panting, sweating, at the top of the hill in a patch of sun.

“I got into an accident today,” he said out of breath.

“You mean with the car?”

“Yes.”

“What happpened?”

“I was driving down Twenty-first and at Flanders a Mercedes went right through the stop sign and hit me in the side.”

“A Mercedes?”

“Yes.”

“Is your car okay?”

“Yes, it’s fine.”

“What did you do?”

“We exchanged phone numbers, just in case something turns up.”

“Did the police come?”

“No, they never showed up.”

“God, a Mercedes. Was it damaged?”

“No, just a scratch.”

“I bet that’s an expensive scratch.”

“Maybe.”

Lucy stretched her arms and then bent to retie her shoe laces. Her dark brown hair fell over her head so that for a few moments there was no head, just a mop of chocolate hair flopping at the end of her neck.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

They walked on listening to the crunch of twigs and leaves. The walk home was mostly down hill.

Jackson cooked hamburgers and string beans and salad and they drank red wine with dinner in front of the television. Jackson finished his first hamburger before Lucy had eaten half of hers. She was transfixed by the color television screen and she only picked at her food.

“Don’t you like it?” Jackson asked.

“It’s good,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

After dinner they watched more television and read magazines and Jackson reread the letter from his brother.

He folded the letter and put it back into the envelope and tossed it on the floor and he sighed.

“What’s the matter?” Lucy asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

“How is your brother?”

“He’s fine. He said to say hello.”

“That’s nice. Is he finished yet?”

“No.”

“God.”

Lucy turned off the television before the eleven o’clock news and they brushed their teeth and crawled into the futon on the bedroom floor and Jackson turned out the lamp on the floor and Lucy squeezed next to him and they kissed.

“How long will you be in Japan?” Jackson asked.

“A week.”

“Maybe I’ll have a job by then.”

“Maybe. You’ll get one.”

“I wish I could go with you,” he said.

“Me too. We’ll take a nice trip for our honeymoon.”

“Maybe Egypt, or Greece.”

“Yes,” she said. “Egypt of Greece.”

They rolled onto their stomachs and tried to sleep in the soft blue glow of the clock radio and the dancing shadows cast by the young maple outside the window and as Lucy’s breath slowed and steadied cool evening air saturated with the scent of fresh baked bread sifted into the bedroom through the screen window behind Jackson’s head and he breathed the sweet air in deeply and listened to the crickets and the leaves that rustled in the wind, he heard the honk of cars, the crash of metal, the click of heels, a gun shot, and he tasted salt, and pistachios. He pulled a long hair from his head and it smelled like a rose, delicate, sweet, close enough to kiss on its soft round loving brown shoulder. He did not know whose head the hair came from.

“How about Italy?” Jackson whispered.

Lucy didn’t answer.

“Good night,” Jackson said, to himself. He held the mysterious hair to his nose.