Hey, I said.
Yeah? said Logan.
You know Cherkis tried so hard to stay.
Yeah? said Logan.
I tried hard to stay too, I said.
He didn’t say anything.
You might not understand, I said. Or, do you?
I don’t know, said Logan.
I gave Logan an awkward hug and nearly knocked him into the sink. He told me I was stronger than I looked. He said he was going to have a shower.
I went into the other room and saw Thebes running like crazy, breathing hard, purple hair bobbing up and down as she tried to keep up with Lola. She saw me and bounded over and put her hands on my hips and locked her laser eyes on mine.
How did it go? she whispered.
Good, good, shhh, I said. You can stop running now.
No, she said. She was going to go all the way with Lola and save that guy’s life.
eight
WE GOT UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, ate some fruit from the cooler and loaded up the van. I stared at the pool of something that was seeping out from underneath it. Logan had started playing Frisbee with Thebes in the parking lot. He threw the Frisbee hard every time against the pavement so it would deflect and fly up straight into Thebes’s hands. Or face. She didn’t like it. She kept yelling, Throw it normally, throw it normally! I looked around to make sure nobody was watching and then I got down on my hands and knees and stuck my finger in the mystery liquid and tasted it. I’d seen my father do this once or twice. Except I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be tasting or how to differentiate it from any other automotive flavour. I decided it was water and not oil. It was water from the air conditioner, probably. I thought hey, excellent, we’ll have to stop using the AC and open all the windows and the wind and the racket will drown out Thebes and muffle Logan’s music. I didn’t mind listening to Thebes’s chatter or Logan’s music most of the time, but I was trying to solve problems and formulate solutions in my mind and I needed to concentrate for a while. We were headed for Denver, and then we’d blast our way like amyl nitrate west through the Rocky Mountains.
I had this dream last night, said Logan. About a poet who finds out that his new book has no words, only thick blue ceramic-tile pages.
Was the poet Cherkis? I asked.
It wasn’t clear, he said.
Logan complained about the birds waking him up. He said it wasn’t even real singing, just crawk, crawk, crawk. I told him that male birds have to send warnings to other birds to stay off their turf and away from their mates, and Logan said he wasn’t interested in their mates, all he wanted was to sleep. He yawned and wiped away a tear.
And this is fucked up, he said, but I also dreamt that I’d had a baby.
So did I! I said. The other night.
Logan rubbed his face and moaned and stared out the window. He didn’t want to be having the same dreams and dark desires as his flabby-armed aunt.
How did you feel being pregnant? I asked him.
I don’t know, he said. Distorted and inhabited.
Oh, okay, so you do know, I said.
I’d prefer to be the father in that type of scenario, he said.
All it means, I think, I said, is that we’re expecting something.
Whatever, he said.
Min had told me a story about when Logan was a newborn baby. The guy in the apartment right next to hers, a Lithuanian philosophy professor, electrocuted himself in his bathtub and his body wasn’t found for days and on the day that they discovered it Min had come in from a walk with Logan and she had cried and cried, thinking of the poor guy next door, and also how it was a terrible thing to come home with a newborn baby to an old guy having killed himself right next door. This old guy’s mom had Alzheimer’s and lived just down the hall in a different apartment and when he was alive she’d go banging on Min’s door calling out for her son and thinking Min’s apartment was his and then he or Min would patiently take her back to her own apartment. Somebody came and moved her away shortly after her son killed himself, but for a while there she’d still come banging on Min’s door looking for him, calling out his name.
Soon after that there was a massive blizzard, the storm of the century they called it, when Cherkis was trapped in a restaurant and Min was alone with Logan and he was twelve days old and all the apartment windows were completely iced up so that it seemed like they were living inside a crystal, or a Christmas ornament, and there was nothing for Min to do but nurse Logan and hold him and take pictures of him and stare at him and listen to True Stories by the Talking Heads and teach herself how to juggle with the tiny Pampers diapers she’d roll up real tightly into balls after Logan had peed in them.
I thought about telling all that to Logan. Maybe Min already had. Or maybe you don’t want to hear that right after being born you came home to a dead guy next door. I didn’t know if that was the sort of thing Logan would think was mildly interesting, colourful, or just a really bad omen. Conversing with children is a fine art, I realized. An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word. Or a gradual release of information like time-controlled vitamins. Either way, my own befuddled attempts were pathetic and I really wanted to have more than odd, cryptic conversations with Logan and Thebes.
My mother and I were at Min and Cherkis’s apartment before they brought Logan home from the hospital. Min and Cherkis were young, barely twenty years old, and their apartment was a mess. My mom made Swedish meatballs and washed all of their dishes and cleaned the bathroom. I set up the baby mobile above Logan’s crib and ran up and down four flights of stairs to do their laundry. When they got in, we all crowded around Logan and stared at him and whispered our compliments and beautiful wishes for their fantastic future together. Cherkis held Logan close to his chest — he’d taken his shirt off so Logan could feel his beating heart — and carried him from room to room telling Logan this is the living room, and this is the kitchen, and, buddy, this is the bedroom where you’ll sleep. He took down a photograph he’d taken of a bleeding, screaming punk band because he thought it would disturb Logan and mess up his chi.
We all had some champagne, except for Min, who didn’t want Logan getting drunk on her breast milk, and then Min and Cherkis lay down with Logan between them and my mom put out the incense they’d left burning in the living room and I bent over and kissed them all good night and then my mom came back into the bedroom and also kissed them all good night and then we left.
Did you know, said Thebes, that there’s a shrine in Tokyo, in this park, Yoyogi Park, where you can buy a charm against all evil. All evil!
No, I didn’t, I said.
And did you know that there’s this really tiny building somewhere in Colombia, or maybe Ecuador, that is the official world headquarters of the Department of Unanswered Letters. To work there it’s mandatory that you have a history of killer depression, but I don’t think—
Is that supposed to be a joke or what? said Logan.
Why, do you think depression is funny? said Thebes.
No, but I’m just saying…the way you delivered it sounded like a joke.
Depression’s not a joke, yo, said Thebes.
I know it’s not a joke, said Logan. I said the way you told that anecdote sounded like you were…like it was supposed to be a joke. Forget it.