He nodded, pointing to the moon and stars with three of his hands.
“What happened to the day?” she asked.
“You’ll get it back later,” he said.
“Got my report card today,” she said, and took a drag.
“A triumph, no doubt,” he said.
“When my father saw it, he checked my pulse. My mother was in tears. I can’t help it, though; their frustration is comical to me. A report card. What does it really mean?”
“An excellent question,” said Ganesha.
“Should I care?”
“Do you feel as if you should?”
“No,” she said, and flicked the glowing butt away onto the dirt.
“You’ve outwitted that conundrum, then,” he said.
She leaned over slightly and began petting the sleeping Kroncha.
“When I saw you in the time of the red leaves, you told me you were in love,” said Ganesha.
She smiled. “An elephant never forgets,” she said. “I hate that part.”
“The young gentleman with the tattoo of Porky Pig on his calf?”
She nodded and smiled. “You know Porky Pig?” she said.
Ganesha waved with all four hands. “Th-th-that’s all, folks.”
“Simon,” she said. “He was okay for a while. We used to bike out to the forest, and he helped me build a little shrine to you out of cinder blocks from the abandoned sand factory. I brought out your picture, and we’d go there at night, drink beer and light incense. He was really cute, but under the cute there was too much stupid. He was always either grabbing my tits or punching me in the shoulder. He laughed like a clown. After I dumped him, I rode out to the forest to the shrine one day and found that he’d wrecked it, torn your picture to scraps, and kicked over the thing we’d built, which, now that I think about it, looked a lot like a barbecue pit. Then he told everyone I was weird.”
“Aren’t you?” asked Ganesha.
“I guess I am,” she said. “Poe’s my favorite writer, and I like to be alone a lot. I like the sound of the wind in the trees out by the abandoned factory. I like it when my parents are asleep at night and aren’t worrying about me. I can feel their worry in my back. I have a lot of daydreams — being in a war, being married, making animated movies about a porcupine named Florence, running away, getting really good at poetry, having sex, getting really smart and telling people what to do, getting a car and driving all over.”
“Sounds like you’ll need to get busy,” said Ganesha.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “My specialty is napping.”
“A noble pursuit,” he said.
“The other day,” she said, “when I took a walk in the afternoon, I went all the way out to the factory. I sat on that big rock next to it and watched the leaves blowing in the wind. In a certain configuration of sky and leaves, I saw this really detailed image of a mermaid. It was like she was there flying through the air.”
He closed his eyes and tried to picture it.
“A rabbit hopped out from behind a tree then, and I looked away for a second. When I looked back to the leaves, she was gone. No matter how I squinted or moved my head, I couldn’t find her there anymore.”
“Nevermore,” whispered Kroncha from sleep.
“I thought it might have been a sign from you.”
“No,” said Ganesha, “that was yours.”
“I’ve wanted to write a poem about it,” she said. “I can feel it inside me, there’s energy there to do it, but when I sit down and concentrate — no words. All that happens is I start thinking about other stuff. I’m afraid I’ll look away from her one day, and she’ll be gone, as well, from my memory.”
“Well,” he said, sitting forward, “am I the destroyer of obstacles or am I not?” As he spoke, the color drained from him and he became gleaming white. Out of thin air appeared four more arms to make eight, and in his various hands he held: a noose, a goad, a green parrot, a sprig of the kalpavriksha tree, a prayer vessel, a sword, and a pomegranate. His eighth hand, empty, he turned palm up, as if offering something invisible to her.
“You are definitely the Lakshmi Ganapathi,” she said, laughing.
The seven items suddenly disappeared from his hands, but he remained the color of the moon. “Show me the things you think about instead of the mermaid,” he said.
“How?”
“Just think about them,” he said. “Close your eyes.”
She did, but after quite a while, she said, “I can’t even picture. Oh, wait. Here’s something.” Her eyes squinted more tightly closed. She felt the image in her thoughts gather itself into a bubble and exit her head. It tickled the lobe of her left ear like a secret kiss as it bobbed away on the breeze. She opened her eyes to see it. There it floated, five feet from them, a clear bubble with a scene inside.
“Who’s that?” asked Ganesha.
“My mother,” she said.
“She’s preparing something.”
“Meat loaf.”
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Gross,” she said.
“Not exactly a modaka,” he said. “Let’s see more.”
She closed her eyes and thought, and eventually the bubbles came in clusters, exiting from both ears. Each held a tiny scene from her life. They bobbed in midair and sailed on the breeze, glowing pale blue. Some had risen to the tallest branches of the trees and some lit snaking paths through the thicket toward the lake or field.
“There goes Simon,” she said as the last few bubbles exited her right ear.
“Call them back,” said Ganesha.
“How?”
“Whistle,” he said.
She did, and no sooner had she made a sound than all of the glowing bubbles halted in their leisurely flights and slowly reversed course. She whistled again, and they came faster and faster, flying from all directions, each emitting a musical note that made their return a song that filled the surrounding thicket. Their speed became dizzying, and then, at once, they all collided, exploding in a wave of blue that swamped the picnic table. The blue blindness quickly evaporated to reveal a man-shaped creature composed of the bubbles. Now, instead of scenes, each globe held an eye at its center. The thing danced wildly before Chloe and Ganesha, sticking out its long, undulating tongue of eyes.
She reared back against the table. “What is it?”
“A demon. We must destroy it,” said Ganesha, and leaped off the bench. The ground vibrated with his landing, and this startled the demon, which turned and fled, its form wavering, turning momentarily to pure static, like the picture on the old television in her parents’ den.
“Kroncha, to the hunt,” said Ganesha, his color changing again, blue and red swirling through moon-white and mixing.
The rat rubbed its eyes, stood up, and jumped down to the ground. As Ganesha squatted upon Kroncha’s back, the rat asked, “A demon?”
Ganesha now brandished the point of his broken tusk as a weapon. “Correct,” he said. Kroncha inched forward, building speed.
Chloe was stunned by what she’d seen. She wanted to follow but was unable to move.
“I suspected as much from the moment she refused the modaka,” said the rat.
Ganesha nodded, and they were off.
It wasn’t until god and vehicle were just a faint smudge of brightness weaving away through the trees that Chloe overcame the static in her head and woke from amazement. The thought that called her back was that the demon could easily return and she would have to battle it alone. She tasted adrenaline as she bolted from the bench. Across the clearing and into the trees she sprinted, afraid to call out for what might be watching.
At one point, early on, she thought she would catch them, but Kroncha moved deceptively fast, and suddenly the path had disappeared. The ground was uneven and riddled with protruding roots. She hurried as best she could, still driven by fear. “Where’s my day?” she whispered. The night was getting cold. She passed through a forest she’d not known existed, waiting for the demon to pounce at any moment and thankful for the moonlight.