rst time both of them break down or crack up together like they’re sure, at least the first one, to do, first time sleeping with her and so forth, no more good sleeps, no more sex, pleasure, amusement of any kind and so on, first time he sweeps the kitchen floor, does the family wash, on his knees cleaning the toilet pedestal, first time he squashes an ant with his thumb, gets enraged at seeing another one on the kitchen counter and smashes it with the side of his fist. Margo’s birthday and their anniversary and so on. Days Julie’s come up. Shouldn’t they get away, maybe leave the country, take Margo with them but go if only for those times, but where can they? In a hole, on a transoceanic ship, but he’d probably feel like jumping off. First time he sharpens a pencil or fills a pen. And what if he comes across the safe scissors she told him yesterday she lost at home and needs tomorrow for school? School, what does he do, simply call or drop in and say she’s not coming in anymore, she’s dead? Same with her after-school ceramics class and what if the teacher wants to give him the things Julie made that were baked in a kiln last week and were supposed to be distributed this? But when will he stop thinking about it and let the subject rest? First things first but he thinks never. He’ll look at Margo; they looked something alike. He’ll look at his wife; Julie resembled her much more than she did him. Photos of his wife and her at four and five and six and you can’t tell one from the other except for the setting and certain clothes. He’ll look in the mirror and perhaps see the little there was of her in him, the narrow eyes, big lobes, somewhat pointed chin. First little girl tossing up a ball the way Julie did or learning to rollerskate, which he’d been helping her do with Margo. Piano. She just started to learn, so first kid’s lesson-playing he’ll hear out of someone’s window or if he goes to a friend’s house where there’s a girl or even a boy around that age who plays that way or just uses the same series of lesson books. First time he sees their piano, even. First time after that time and every time after that and so on. Will he move the piano out? Then every time he sees a piano or space where the piano was in their house or hears one played even by a pro and even on radio, record or tape. It’s possible. It could happen. Fathers who cross the street holding their kids’ hands, every single one. Any kid, any age, either sex, mothers and nannies too. It’s what he always liked but she didn’t always like to do. “You’re too young to cross the street by yourself,” and what would she say? He forgets. “I know what to do. I’ve watched how. I’m old enough. I’m five. I’m six.” “Okay, now that you’re almost seven, and maybe I have been too protective, look both ways, then look again, then make sure nobody’s in the parked cars and just about to pull out, and even if you hear a car coming but don’t see it”—this just last week—“don’t go, wait till it passes or till you don’t hear it, even if that takes a few minutes, then look both ways again and at the parked cars, and only the not-too-traveled street in front of our house and when Mommy or I am looking, or the one by the school with the crossing guard.” Home, her room, all the rooms, bathroom where she washed up and brushed her teeth before going to sleep. He was thinking about firsts before but now he’s talking about everything. His clothes which she’s seen, every plate and cup and such in the house, all the furniture, carpeted floors, woodpile on the porch, streets she’s been on with him and so forth. Jungle Jim he erected and put in with hundreds of pounds of cement, how’s he going to take that out? Neighborhood trees they’ve passed and huge one in the backyard she’s run around. Sky where he’s often pointed out to her a cloud. What’s he talking about? Wash your face, put soap in your mouth. Bang your head against the mirror till it breaks or you’re knocked out. “By the way — excuse me, sir, Mr. Frey,” the policeman says. “But by the way, I never said it so far but I couldn’t be sorrier over what happened to you and your family and I know I’m talking for every law officer in the county and state.” “Yeah, yeah,” looking in the sink. Somebody else’s black hair there, he hates it, why didn’t the guy pick it up and get rid of it or wash it away before he left? “If there was anything we could do, but what possibly could we? But we’d do it in a flash, without question, but even apprehending the rotten fuckers and executing them by injection, what’s it in the end mean as help? Damn, it’s the pits. There’s no comeback from it. I put myself in your position each time.” “You mean,” not looking at him; turning the cold water on and with his finger pressed to the spout spraying the hair to the drain and then down it. “You’re saying, killing a kid like this, it’s happened with others and maybe in the same way?” Turns off the water, looks down the drain, doesn’t see the hair but lets the water run some more to get it all the way to the sewer, or to the river and then the ocean or wherever it winds up but away from here. “Jesus,” to the man’s reflection in the mirror, “just saying it I feel like I’m being killed myself right here. But I suppose I shouldn’t think we’re the first. She is. I am. We all are. Ah, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.” There are other hairs in the sink; just noticed them. How corne he didn’t before and how’d they escape the spray? Gray, that’s why, two of them, and one white, so they blended in, plus five or six little black nappy ones which probably have a way of sticking to the porcelain more than what might be the lighter straight ones, but he’s not going to do anything about them. To get all the hairs in all the sinks he sees into the ocean or wherever they go from here, something he never thought of before, and all the sinks he sees into the seas he could see, the shining sinks and shrinking stinks and seas he could mean, though he doesn’t know how, well — well what? He’s lost his train. He’s lost it all. Oh, don’t get so self-pitying, please. And why not get that? And the objective, not the correlative — for he doesn’t know what’s a correlative, it’s just a word he’s heard in attachment to that — would be absurd, wouldn’t it? sinking all the hairs in all the sinks, sort of like going around flushing all the toilets in the world that need to be flushed. Slobs don’t. Absolute slobs. Who let their shit and stuff stay there to swim and stink so the next stiff can see it and wonder about seas and shifting sinks, though they don’t do it for that reason he doesn’t think. They do it because they’re egotists. “I’ve actually seen only one child killed,” the policeman says, who’s actually been talking about that or its correlative for a minute perhaps but he hasn’t heard him till now or not words or not exact. “Oh yeah?” still to the mirror but the policeman to him. I want to get out of here, he thinks. I want to get home with my kids. That’s absolutely what I want, out of this pool of siss, no small thing. “By a bullet, crossfire, druggies shooting up each other over some territory dispute from across a street.” “Druggies, that’s what they were or could have been. Of course,” slapping his head. “What are you saying, something essential you only now remembered about them?” taking out a pen and pad. “No, I don’t know. But who else could kill kids like that but them? They’re out of it. Mind a freaking forest. They’ve lost consciousness or conscience or both or something like that. They’re egotists, aren’t they? — people who kill people like that. And kids, imagine. Even if you’re aiming at me, to know kids are behind. Their lives over them. Meaning, that they think they can, it might even be their right, that someone else’s life is so much shit to them and that they can go on, laughing, even joking about it. ‘Hey,’” nudging the policeman’s arm with his elbow and looking directly at him, “‘we just blew those two halfpints away, what a gas.’ ‘Halfpints.’ That’s from Wilder, once the older girl’s favorite, never hers though she tried, always wanting to catch up. Or they’re just not thinking of it anymore, those men. Imagine. Who else but egotists, drugged out or straight, that’s who killed her.” “You’d be able to recognize them?” “I don’t know. Men, around my age or younger. My dead kid — shouldn’t I go to her?” “You’ve time. I don’t think they’re ready for you yet.” “What’re they doing?” “Still examining, cleaning, other things, probably — I’m not a doc.” “What’re they, pulling out pieces from her, putting them back? I didn’t give permission.” “Nothing like that. That’s for the medical examiner’s office across the ridge.” “How could they, not the examiners, but those men? And the alive one, Margo — she must miss me now too.” “She’ll be okay. We’re taking real especial care of her, treating her royally. We’re always prepared for something like this, if usually it’s normal car accidents. But those men — around your age, you say?” “You got me. All I can see of their faces is laughing, and the only thing of that is wide grins.” “Laughing, huh — when they drove away? I got to hear this. This really makes me burn.” “Well, they could have, but I didn’t see them do that when the guy in the passenger seat shot at us, for by then they were hundreds of feet ahead. But they laughed when they were alongside us. Druggies, who else but them — like the ones who killed the kid you saw. Maybe even the same ones. You should check on that. Did you catch those guys? You’ve pictures and a file on them?” “If we did you’d be able to identify them?” “Right now I can’t even remember what color they were. Of course I’m not really trying. But white, black, a mix, maybe, but definitely not Oriental, but I shouldn’t be so sure on that.” The policeman’s writing this down. “See? it’s a blur. Or maybe I’m all wrong and one was one and the other one of the others. But druggies I’m almost sure of, just by the crazy wildness in their eyes, or the one who aimed the gun, and the driver going on hysterically as if this, this scaring the shit out of me and my kids, was the funniest thing there ever was.” “Actually, by calling my men druggies I’m possibly giving them a better name than they deserve. Sellers, who ought to have their eyes gouged through. Monsters, when one of them shot her, or maybe two of them did — right, two different-caliber bullets in her from both sides of the street. Though that they shoot up each other, great, for lowers all our tax rates.” “How do you mean?” “From execution, incarceration, hundreds of thousands of dollars per prisoner for the last one — it’s the public that pays. But this poor kid got caught in, is how. Same age as yours around, though actually it was a boy. Yours was what, eight?” “Six.” “Six, my goodness. But the same, correct? Six, sixteen, twenty-six, even thirty-six — who cares, to the parents, if they’re good kids and they’re yours. If they’re the sellers and gunmen though, you want them dead and I’m sure the parents do too, for they’re just a plain nuisance, often stealing you blind, shaming your home. And I didn’t see this other kid get hit, just after, which was bad enough. What a nice-looking boy. I don’t have kids myself but what it must do to you. I’m, as you see, a police officer, no problem with that. I like my job and I’ve been doing it well for almost ten years. But I know what I’d do to the monsters who did it to my kid if I had one and one ever did. If we caught them. And I’d work my ass off at catching them. I’d, well, they wouldn’t live long if it was up to me. Worst beasts there are. And I wouldn’t care — I shouldn’t be saying this and I’m not trying to give you ideas, but I’d ruin everything I’ve worked for, in fact ruin my whole life and throw away any chances of getting married soon, which in time I want to do — well, I’d be married, if I had a kid, I’m not one of that set, so that doesn’t figure — but to get even and one above with them. I’d probably gun them down — both of them — that’s getting ‘one above’: two for one, the hyena who drove, as well as the actual killer. Though in something like this you can never get even, never — but right in the station house I’d even do it if they were, and I knew it down to my teeth, the killers of my kid and I felt this was the last or best chance I’d have of getting them anywhere. And in the head, both of them, smack in the gray matter — I’d see to that so they wouldn’t live and if they did it’d be as all-out cripples. But with me — I target-shoot twice a week at our armory — there’d be slim chance they’d be anything but dead.” “I understand. I’d probably do that too, for my little one, if I had a gun and knew how to use it and had the chance to. But tell me. This has nothing to do with what you were saying, but you’ve been straight with me so maybe you know something about this. How would you phone your wife, if you had one, that your kid’s just been killed? I haven’t done it yet and it’s killing me to know how and when and even what words to use and just what’s the right thing.” “I’d have to think about it.” “It’s okay, I shouldn’t have asked.” “No, let me. We’ve been instructed on this so maybe I’ll have for you some guidelines or an even better idea.” The man shuts his eyes, puts his head back and his hand on his forehead, seems to be thinking hard. “Really, it’s okay, forget it, I said. I’ll find a way how.” “No, it’s coming to me. All right, I know,” opening his eyes. “They tell us”—Nat covers his eyes, doesn’t want to hear—“to advise you one thing, which is to wait till morning if the murder or car accident where someone’s killed is in the nighttime, and not to do it anytime when you’re overcome. If you have to do it then, for some reason — like you got to reach her at the airport right away before she flies to Germany or France, and you’re way too overcome — then to get someone to do it for you, but no total stranger. A police officer who’s a stranger would be okay, but one who identifies himself to her as such. Or if there’s a doctor around to do it, and again the identity—‘Hello, I’m Dr. So-and-So at such and such hospital’—this one — even better, because he can explain all the medical things involved in it and also why you’re too overcome to tell her the news yourself, for you know she’s going to ask why you’re not there. Now if it’s by phone you’re telling her and you’re reasonably together with your self and calm, to make sure, by calling close friends and relatives before, that she has a barrage of support like that around her when you call — and this is to mothers and fathers and husbands and wives, if let’s say the husband dies, and the like. Well, I don’t know what else there could be. Children, about their moms and dads getting killed. Or their sisters and brothers and so on. Fiancés. But I’ll tell you also what I’d personally do. Of course my wife, the one I hope to get and will when I get her, might not be like yours. She might be stronger for something like this, maybe even a police officer herself, but then again, maybe yours is a rock.” Takes his hands from his face. “She isn’t. She’s normal, not hardened. Even if she was, it’s her kid, so she’ll suffer, just as I’m sure a police officer woman whose kid died and she suddenly learned of it, would suffer, whether she loves it or not.” “Maybe. No matter what, unless she falls apart at everything, which you’re not saying she does, and by shaking your head now I don’t think you’re saying. So I’d say to call, and when she answers, and since she doesn’t know how things are she’s saying how are things and such with you and the kids, I’d say ‘Honey, hold on to yourself. I’m about to tell you the worst news you’ll ever hear. Our daughter’s been killed.’ What’s her name?” “No, that can’t be the way.” “What’s her name though?” “Who?” “Your daughter.” “Julie, I don’t want to say it, but that.” “‘Julie’s been shot, killed, murdered, it’s a nightmare to me. I’m half insane over it, absolutely out of m