The day after her argument with her daughter, Delphine neglected her household chores. She did not sweep, did not battle with the cobwebs in high corners, and she let the dust remain.
Sledge continued to walk toward the next boredom expelling, no-consequence act of defiance – whatever he might find that to be.
He nodded his head, not in agreement but in confirmation that I was as serious as he had feared.
Everything he said was a story, very matter of fact, never bragging. The story told itself like it was something he had gotten from a novel or a particularly vivid dream.
The body had belonged to seventeen year old Sarah Bergstrom; the police ruled her death a homicide.
Just as she was starting to move back to the front of the class, she noticed that in the top right-hand corner, Will had neglected to write the date and time. Instead, he had drawn an analog clock that indicated 8:32.
She poured her history into me with ballpoint pen, her wrist churning.
I looked at John from the corner of my eye as I listened to the traffic swoosh by on the Pacific Coast Highway. “You have lipstick on your teeth,” John said.
He looks my way, closes his mouth, chews slower for a few seconds and then reverts to his original mode.
The dream ends with no sound and only the darkness and the vacuum feeling of being alone.