The retarded girl has a wide drooly grin and never cries. We hug her for luck. She's our rabbit's foot, our horseshoe, our secret talisman. We joke about it with each other and with her parents. We run our fingers through her hair even though we're afraid of lice. There, we say, what can be luckier than a happy, retarded girl?
Of course, we don't call her that. We call her Sara.
I stop by Sara's house on Saturdays after running on the beach.
I pushed myself up the steep wooden stairs to the gate that leads into her backyard, my lungs burning with a last burst of momentum.
My legs hurt from the difficulty of soft sand and I looked forward to dropping onto a deck chair, staring across the bank of lawn at the forever view of the Pacific. Sara's father sat next to me and we drank coffee from tall, thick ceramic mugs and talked about our week. He's a named partner at the firm where we are both lawyers.
When Sara saw me she ran out and jumped into my arms. "How's my goombah girl," I asked and stood, holding her, her feet dangling off the ground. I swayed side-to-side turning her legs into a pendulum. "Having a goombah day," I asked.
She laughed and pushed her face into my chest and made a noise I thought meant more and so I widened my stance and swayed until her feet swung higher than my waist. I put her down, hands still on her, keeping her steady. She used her forefinger to make a small circle next to her head and then pointed at me.
"I'm crazy," I said. "I'm not crazy. You're the crazy one. I'm just goombah."
She laughed and pushed into me again. "B-b-b-b," she said and that's close enough to my name for me. "I'm not crazy," I said again and sat back down. She pointed to the cup next to me and looked in. "Don't breathe on my coffee," I said. "I don't want your stinky armpit breath on my coffee."
"Yuck," Sara said. "Yuck, yuck, yuck."
I started to tell her something else but she lost interest in me and went into the house.
Usually, this is enough luck for me, this Saturday morning routine. But now I need more.
Sara's dad talked to me about his caseload, which was typically light. A 1978 154-car pile-up Arkansas put his name in the law books and gave him all the money he needs. He works to pay for his vacation house in Montana and to get the cash that slides through his fingers with a greater ease than anything I've ever seen.
When he asked about my work, I told him about the landslide south of Oxnard. I said, "In law school, no one told me I would have to become a geologist."
"If you're a lawyer," Sara's father said, "you have to be everything." And he started telling me, subject by subject, the things he's had to learn. "Anthropology. Really. For a case in Texas."
I closed my eyes and let his voice become a far away drone. I shifted, my skin sticking to and then pulling off the wooden slats of the chair.
He told me about the bones they found in the back of a house in a small quick built development in Houston. "No unit had more than two bathrooms," he said. "Can you imagine only two bathrooms?"
"That's all I have. Two bathrooms."
He looked at me and laughed, shaking his head like I was a corporate attorney who offered him more money than he asked for in a settlement.
"Can I take Sara out one day," I asked before he had a chance to start talking again.
"Sara?"
"Yeah, I don't know. I'm feeling fatherly. Something. I'd just like to borrow her." I winced but he didn't seem to notice that I made his daughter sound like a power saw.
"Maybe you and Beth should start thinking about having a family. Of course," and he shook his head again and laughed with enough force to have to repeat himself. "Of course, you'll have to get more bathrooms."
He said it again when I left. We stood in the drive and waited for the gate to slide open. "You know, you two really should start a family. You're doing well enough, right?" He meant money or maybe even Beth's and my marriage. Neither of which is what he should have meant.
I nodded and stretched until I felt my muscles ping against my skin. "We've thought of it," I said and walked onto the street, my back to the ocean, and headed home.
I spent the next morning at the slide site talking with an insurance company lawyer.
"Look," I said, "if it's true that preliminary geology indicated the area was unstable. I'm saying if here. I want that very clear. If that's what was indicated, why did your client write the policy? Accept the premium?"
The insurance guy paced, taking small, hesitant steps, trying to keep the mud from crowding over the toe of his loafers.
"This is dangerously close to fraud," he said.
I wore muck boots and stepped onto a small mound. Even after sinking a little, I was still taller.
"Are we going to have to get everyone at a table? Are we going to have to make this time consuming? Costly?" I walked to the edge of the slide. Next to me, a foundation tilted at an impossible angle, dirt had been bulldozed under it in an attempt to keep it off the highway below. "Right now," I said, "the only thing we're asking for is what's provided by the policy."
"There's the geology," he said. He walked away from me, past the graded lots to his car. Mud flipped off the back of his heels onto his pant legs.
"Your suit's dirty," I yelled after him.
I waited until I saw his car pass on the road below before I left to meet Beth at the ob/gyn.
The doctor said, "It looks good this time. Everything's going exactly the way it's supposed to." He sat on his stool, low enough to look in between my wife's legs, up into the part of her we hoped would sprout a baby. We had heard this before.
On the way home, Beth and I didn't talk about the thing that could become a baby. We talked instead about the slide. I said, "The thing is, it's fraud. We all know it but some idiot wrote the policy anyway."
"It's beautiful," Beth said. "The view is worth it."
I had taken her there when the case first started. Our feet stuck in the mud as we walked, making gentle sucking sounds. There was a mist so heavy it was almost rain. I don't think Beth was pregnant then.
In the car, I hit the seek button on the radio, beeping up the dial trying to escape commercials.
"Did I show you the plans? I don't know anything about building. I know it's ridiculous."
"I would want a house there."
"They're morons." I didn't know if I mean the development company, the insurance company, or the people, including my wife, who would be willing to live there.
"Do you call them that?" Beth asked. "Do you call your own clients morons?"
"Not to their faces. Not usually."
We were quiet pulling into our driveway and it was not until we were each in one of our two bathrooms that I remembered I'd arranged to take Sara to the zoo on Saturday.
"Why did you do that?" Beth asked after I told her. "You're always complaining about how much you have to do."
"I don't have to," I said. "This isn't a have-to; it's a want-to."
"Why do you want to?"
I looked at her closely and decided she was telling the truth: she really didn't understand why I wanted to be with Sara.
Later that night, after Beth had fallen asleep, she lay flat on her back and I ran my hand over her stomach, trying to find a bulge. I spread my fingers wide, covering as much of her as I could -- my thumb at her belly button, my pinkie touching a curl of pubic hair. I felt the throb of my own pulse in my palm and the pull and push of Beth's muscles as she breathed. This is all we need, I thought. This should be all we need.
Sara was outside before I turned off my car. She grabbed my hand and pointed. She tugged at my jeans and the hem of my polo shirt. W-w-w-w, she said and I thought she was asking me why I was dressed that way and not sweaty and in running clothes.
"We're going to the zoo," I said. I stabbed at her chest with my index finger and then at my own. "You and me, goombah. We're going to the zoo. "
I started to pick her up, to swing her the way I always did, but Sara stepped away from me and cut through the air with her hands. "No," she said. "No, no."
"What?" I held my hands wide.
Her father stood at the doorway and said, "We're working on appropriate social behavior. We're teaching her not to just hug everyone. To shake hands. To ask for a hug, if you really want one. Right, Sara?"
I stepped back and bent at the waist. "Mademoiselle," I said. "May I have this hug?" I looked at the ground until I heard the burp of Sara's giggle and then glanced up. Crazy, she's signaled, pointing at me. You're crazy.
When I reached for her the second time, she did not back away.
We had to go over Sulfur Mountain to get to the Santa Risa Zoo. The air was clogged with a rotten egg smell that made Sara pinch her nose shut and shake her head looking at me like, Why have you brought me here?
"It's the fastest way to the zoo," I said. "It's just the mountain that smells. It'll go away."
She crossed her arms in front of her face and moved her head from side-to-side and started to hum a single, low note pausing only for breath.
When I got home, my sister was there, sitting on the couch, beer in hand, watching TV. "Why is this in my house," I yelled standing in front of Ricky. "Why are you in my house?"
"I made instructor," she said.
"Why is she here?" I yelled again. "Beth, why did you let her in?"
"She's at the store. We're going to celebrate. I had to fight for five hours. That's how you pass. If you can stand at the end of five hours, you pass."
I sat next to her, took her beer and finished it in one drink. "Where have you been?" Ricky asked. "Beth said I had to ask you. She said I wouldn't believe. I already have a job. At the college: Universal Fighting 101."
"Do you want another beer?" I got up and went to the kitchen. "I took the retarded girl to the zoo."
"What another? You drank mine."
"One drink," I said and handed her the beer. "I took the retarded girl to the zoo." I thought maybe she didn't hear me and I also thought if she asked me the right question I would explain it all to her.
"Did you have fun?" Ricky asked which wasn't the right question and so I said, "How many ways can you kill somebody?"
Things Beth and I have not done:
1. Bought alphabet block wallpaper.
2. Made a list of names.
3. Wondered whether it will be a boy or a girl.
4. Talked to her stomach.
5. Told anyone we know she is pregnant.
"She loved the lion," I told Beth. We were in bed and I thought it was possible Beth was asleep. I rolled onto my side facing her. "You should see this lion."
"At that zoo? Why didn't you go to the Santa Barbara zoo? That zoo stinks. And the drive."
"There's almost nothing there. We walked around and there were all these empty cages. I thought about leaving. Making them give me my money back."
"But you didn't." She shifted her body closer to mine, her hip against my stomach.
"But I didn't." Sara didn't seem to notice. "She looked into all the empty enclosures just like something was there. I don't know what she was looking at. Sometimes she wouldn't let me leave. She was still looking."
"Does this have something to do with the lion?"
"We got to the lion's cage and I thought, Of course that'll be empty. They won't have a lion. But they had a lion."
"I guessed when you said Sara loved the lion."
Outside, the wind blew the Aleppo pine against the house and the creaks were familiar to me and seemed safe even though I knew I needed to trim the tree before something broke.
"I don't know if loved."
"It might not be the right word."
"It probably isn't the right word. You know Sara."
"I'm tired."
"Fascinated is better than loved. But here's the thing."
"You need to end this story. I want to go to sleep. Stage Two," she said and turned away from me. She pushed her back against my chest, tucked her head under my chin. "We're almost at Stage Three," she said. "No talking in Stage Three."
"The lion's almost dead. You should see this lion. His hair is falling out."
"Maybe he has cancer. Maybe he's getting chemo."
"Chunks of hair. There are places where you can see his skin. We stood in front of him for almost an hour."
"He's got prostrate cancer. At first they just thought it was enlarged."
"He didn't move the entire time. He was on a rock, drooped over as if he'd been thrown there."
"But then there was the biopsy. They gave him a brochure: There's Good News Regarding Feline Prostrate Cancer."
"I thought he was dead. That's how still he was." I tucked my hand in the salt-warm place under her breasts. "You're making fun," I said.
"I'm making fun." She put her hand on top of mine and pushed it harder into her body. "And we're at Stage Three."
Sara's father called me into his office. "She wants to go to the zoo again," he said. "She walks around the house all the time roaring like a lion. Yesterday, she tried to eat the hamburger before I cooked it. They have a lion?"
"I can't believe it. I mean, it's sad really. Has she seen one before?" I stood, unsure if I should sit or not. He hadn't motioned to one of the chairs behind me. On his desk was a baseball autographed by the 1965 LA Dodgers. I could just make out Sandy Koufax and only because I already knew that's what it said. I put my hands in my pockets so I wouldn't pick the ball up, start tossing it while we talked.
"So do you mind? Taking her to the zoo again? You don't have to feel obligated."
"She wants to see the lion?" I had the trappings of his office memorized. Behind me, I knew, hidden by the open door were his diplomas hung in $500 frames.
"The lion. I can't even believe they have a lion."
"They almost don't." My hands were still jammed into my pockets. There was no computer on his desk. No visible sign of work. "I'll take her," I said to my boss. "I don't feel obligated."
I met the owner of the development company in my office. Small and cramped, I always left the door open because I couldn't stand breathing other people's used air.
"You can afford new shirts," I said, touching the frayed end of his left cuff. "I've seen your bank statements."
"Have they settled?"
"They will."
"They haven't." He tipped the chair back, stretched his arms over his head, fingertips playing across the wall behind him. "You said it would be no problem. They'd settle."
I walked around him to shut the door, pushing his chair back down as I passed. "I said they'd settle. They'll settle. This is just a test. A stall."
"I wouldn't have bought the land if you hadn't said they'd settle. I don't want to lose any money on this."
"None of us will. We won't lose any money at all."
Our house, on a road that turned tight and sharp ocean-side of Pacific Coast Highway, was a duplex. Each half had two bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen. "It's ridiculous," Beth had said when I first showed it to her. "What kind of house is this?"
"It's a great address. How else could we afford this address?"
"I don't want an address," Beth told me. "I want a house. A regular house. This is two apartments. And no yard. We could live over the hill. We don't have to live here."
"We're at the beach. Who needs a yard at the beach?"
I took her for walks late at night holding hands the pound and foam of the surf next to us. I went to the Barnes and Noble picked out the Southern California Atlas of Stars and spent a week memorizing the constellations. I pointed them out to Beth on our walks.
We sat on the deck of the house I wanted to buy, long after midnight, and I said, "This is the life we can have. Look." I pointed up the coast to the lights of large, cliff-side houses. "That's where we can go next. I want to be local here," I said. "This is where all of the partners live. Our kids can go to school together."
The next day, I put an offer in on the house without telling her. I went almost all the way through escrow before I finally said, "Look Beth. It's going to be ours. It's for you," I said as if the house was a present, something she couldn't turn down.
That was before I knew about Sara, before Beth had gotten pregnant the first time.
Sara tugged at my hand, pulling me up the long hill to the lion's enclosure. "Here," I said putting my hands on the sides of her face and turning her to look at the wolves. "Don't you want to look at these?" The two animals were big and healthy and pacing and for a moment, it seemed we were in a real zoo.
"L-l-l-l-l," Sara said and turned her head out of my grasp.
"Just the lion, goombah? That's all you want to see?"
"L-l-l-l-l," she said and twisted her hand into my belt and started walking.
"Let go. Let go of me. Walk regular. We'll see the lion. Let's go see the lion."
We passed two bobcats on the long walk up and chickens followed us clucking and wanting to be fed. Sara looked straight ahead.
"You're focused," I said to her even though I knew she wasn't paying any attention to me.
At the lion's cage, Sara stopped. She stared so hard her body started to twitch.
"Are you happy now? Is this good?" But nothing I did registered, just the lion.
He was still draped over the same rock even though it had been more than a week since we'd been there last and I knew he had to have moved.
I leaned back against the rail, one hand on Sara's shoulder, my back to the lion. The chickens were still at our feet pecking, in vain, at the ground. I could hear the yips of coyotes and wondered if they were wild, roaming the edges of the zoo, or if they were in an enclosure somewhere. Native animals.
This is luck, I thought. This girl at the zoo. I touched Sara's hair.
Sara was still for hours, long enough for me to wonder off and spend a quarter on seed for the chickens.
"Prostate lion," I said to Sara. "Cancer lion."
I went off to try and find monkeys. "She'll stay there," I said even though no one else was there.
No monkeys but I found the coyotes and watched their manic, nervous pacing. The enclosure was all small rocks and the thorny stark plants that grew wild in the hills. It smelled too, not of shit, but of something else, something contained that shouldn't have been.
I didn't see Sara, at first, and felt a chill of fear. Boss' daughter.
"Sara," I yelled and ran to the rail. Sara."
The lion was still, bald patches of skin grayish and pale in the fading light.
"Sara," but I choked on the last half of her name as I saw her below me, in the moat that surrounded the cage.
"B-b-b-b," she said, laughing up at me.
"Fuck, Sara. What are doing? You can't be down there. I can't fucking." I hoisted myself over the rail and stood for a moment, perched on the edge, leaning forward but holding onto the bar. "Don't move," I called down trying to make my voice sound calm.
"B-b-b-b." She pointed at me, shaking her head. "B-b-b-b."
"I'm not the fucking crazy one. Retard," I said as I jumped.
I hit the bottom of the moat with a hard jolt that moved up my spine with dull thuds I knew would ache for days.
"What are you doing?" I grabbed Sara's arm hard and she didn't try to pull away just bent at the waist laughing. "Come on, Sara. We have to get out."
The side of the moat was above my reach but I jumped and could reach enough to hang on. I could almost pull myself out.
"I can't believe this, Sara." I thought for a moment about yelling for help but nobody came to the Santa Risa zoo in the middle of a weekday and besides I didn't want to have to answer anybody's questions.
I grabbed Sara around the waist and tried to hoist her up into the air.
"No," she yelled. "No, no, no. She squirmed out of my grasp, stepped away from me, her arms windmilling in front of her, keeping me away. "No, no, no." Her spittle dotted my palms.
"Okay. What, Sara? We've got to get out, right. I'll lift you. We've got to get out."
She bowed at me, arms spread in supplication. "B-b-b-b," she said, stood up and bowed again.
"Oh, shit. I forgot. I have to ask, right? Is that it, Sara? Can I pick you up, Sara? Is that okay?"
She nodded and stepped into my arms.
"Listen, Sara."
She turned away from me, pointed up at the lion. "L-l-l-l."
"I know. Listen." I wrapped around her holding her tight against me. "Listen. I'm going to lift you up and you grab the sides and then I'll push and you crawl over. Okay, Sara? Do you understand? We're going to get out of this. Do you get it, Sara?"
She covered her face with her hands. Mumbled without sense.
"We're going to do it now."
I hoisted Sara over my head, her body limp and awkward. "Grab the sides," I said. "Sara, grab the fucking side."
She giggled, kicking her feet in my face.
I brought her down. "When I pick you up, goombah, grab the side. I bet you can't. I bet you can't grab the side. I chanted, trying to taunt her into a challenge. Can you? I don't think so. I. Look." I jumped feeble, slapped my hands against the concrete side of the moat. "I can't. I don't think you can. Try okay? See."
A stale trickle of water ran down the center of the moat. The lion was out of sight.
"Then you can see the lion again. Right? If you grab the side and pull yourself up, you can see the lion."
I lifted her into the air. Even with nobody there someone would be coming by soon. The zoo would be closing.
I lifted her and she grabbed the side. I pushed her up further my hands on her thighs, her calves, until finally she was standing on my palms.
"L-l-l-l-l," Sara said and swayed to the lion-side of the moat.
"The fucking side," I grunted. Falling against the wall, keeping her in the air.
I tossed up hard and felt the transfer of strength as she pulled herself up. She hung on the side, legs still dangling over just above my reach.
"The rest of the way," I said and could hear the burble of her laugh. "The rest of the way."
She hung there though laughing louder and louder.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."
I jumped into the air and grabbed at the edge, scrapping my palms as I slid. I held on.
I pulled myself up, the muscles in my back contracting, my feet trying to find purchase on the rough concrete wall. Finally, I was up, even with Sara the edge cutting into my stomach. I stayed, like her, feet dangling off the side long enough to take two deep breaths, and then crawled the rest of the way up. I turned, grabbed Sara's hand, not caring if I hurt her and pulled her out.
"I can't believe you did that," I said as we stood up, leaning against the railing. She stared at the lion. I held onto the material of her shirt.
"L-l-l-l," she said and tried to climb over again.
"No." I pulled her away, both hands on her.
"L-l-l-l-l," she said hand moving through the air.
"We're leaving, Sara. Now. We're leaving. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to say to your dad." I looked at her body, clothes dirty but not torn. "Are you hurt? Does any part of you hurt?"
Hand moving through the air, Sara started keening, a loud wail that mixed in with the distant sounds of the caged coyotes.
"What do you want? We've got to go."
She began petting me. Her hand moving in deliberate strokes down my chest, my thighs.
"What?"
She kept petting me.
"Sara," I said realizing it. "You can't pet the lion. Is that why? It's a big dangerous animal." I looked over her head at the enclosure. "He'll kill you, Sara. He'll eat you." I put my face next to hers and roared. She laughed, signaling crazy, started petting me again.
We left the zoo, passing a zookeeper who was walking around with a broom and dustpan brushing up leaves and bits of seed.
I can't believe this. Goombah, I said to Sara. I can't believe this.
Ricky was at the house again for barbecue. "I don't even like barbecue," I told Beth.
"Eat it anyway," she said.
Ricky and I sat in the house together. She didn't set her beer down and so finally I got up and got one for myself.
"Aren't men supposed to BBQ," Ricky said. "I thought barbecue was a husband's job."
"You can kill people," I said. "You have a nose ring and I don't even know how many tattoos." I held up my hand. "I don't even want to know how many tattoos. Don't tell me okay. I can't stand to think of all that blood."
"You're just sitting here."
"All of that. And you're talking to me about gender specific roles. You are."
"I'm just watching TV with you."
We were quiet. I could hear Beth in the kitchen. The chink of plate on counter, metal utensils clanging together. The kitchen door slammed shut and I knew Beth was outside at the barbecue.
"What are you doing tonight," I asked Ricky. "Late tonight."
"Sleeping," Ricky said. "That's the only thing on my agenda. Possibly dreaming. Sleep with a possibility of dreams."
"I'll pick you up," I said. "At three, okay?"
Ricky looked at me, sat her beer down and I picked it up, finished it even though I had one of my own. "Three in the morning? Is that what you're talking about? Three in the morning?"
"I need you to watch my back," I said smiling at her as if it was a joke. The door again, Beth back in the house. "Don't tell her. Okay," I said. I held a beer can in each hand. "Just between us."
"You're joking, right. What are you going to do? You're kidding."
I finished my beer, held the two empty cans. "I'll pick you up, okay. I'll tell you then."
In bed that night, I kept my body separate from Beth. We had drifted away from each other after the close silence of Stage Three. I thought she was asleep.
"Do you want to talk about it," I asked. "I want to talk about it."
"What," Beth said. Her voice a mumble and I thought it possible she was answering me from inside her dreams. "What do you want to talk about?"
I was quiet. The choice between answering and letting my late night question fade away. "The baby," I said, my voice so low it was a prayer she wouldn't hear. "I want to talk about the baby. I want to be excited about the baby."
Beth rose up from the bed, held herself in a half-crunch position. Even in the dark, I could see her face redden. She jabbed a single forefinger into the muscle of my shoulder. I did not dare betray myself by moving. "You'll jinx it," she said. "You know that. No disappointment. I don't want that loss again." She rolled away.
I was still a while longer. The conversations I want to have slipping further and further from possibility.
I got out of bed, dressed and left to get Ricky.
Ricky was awake when I got there and nervous. "I set my alarm," she said. "But still. I didn't think you'd show up."
"Let's go," I said. "We don't have a lot of time."
She started humming the theme to Mission Impossible trying to make everything funny. "This is a joke isn't it," she said. "What are you doing?" More humming.
"We're going to the zoo. I have to pet the lion."
She stopped the theme song. "You're kidding?" But I could tell from the way she said it she believed in me and not the joke. We got in the car. Quick slam of doors. Engine cough and catch.
"I'm not." I started the drive up Sulfur Mountain.
We climbed the fence and dropped down into the zoo grounds. I walked straight to the lion enclosure. Ricky danced around me touching my arm while I walked, tugging at my clothes and she had no idea what I was doing.
At the enclosure, I vaulted over the guardrail, dropped into the moat.
"Someone's going to come," Ricky hoarse whispered down to me. Yellow, artificial light above and behind her.
"Where's the lion," I yelled up to her. My voice loud in the night. "There's no security here," I said. "This is probably the crappiest zoo in the world. You don't have to be quiet. Do you see the lion?"
Ricky was a silhouette. The shape of her moved back, and I waited leaning against the concrete side of the moat, smell of mold and slime strong, a thin, shallow line of dirty water under my feet.
"On a rock I think. I can't really see it."
"Him," I told Ricky. "He has a mane."
"It's dark. I can't see. It's too dark." Her voice cracked and she sounded the same like a little kid again. "What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why are we here?"
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the wall. "I need you to protect me. You've been trained." The rough edges hurt and pushed harder against the pain waiting for it to bring me back to my purpose.
Ricky landed on the ground beside me, almost knocking me over. "Protect you from what? I don't understand." She spoke gently, put her hand on my shoulder. The same spot Beth had jabbed.
"From the lion. You've been trained right? You always say it. You can kill anything."
"That's a lion. What are you talking about? I have no idea where the arterial nerve is on a lion. I can't protect you against a lion."
I swung myself away from the wall. Away from Ricky's touch. Felt a warmth just below my hairline. I touched the slick of my own forehead. Licked my fingers. The hot metal taste of blood. A low buzz in my ears. The close tight smell of the moat. A feeling of built in heat.
"You're nuts," Ricky said. "Do you know this is nuts?"
"You don't understand," I said. "It's for Sara. I'm doing this for Sara." What could be luckier than petting a lion for a retarded girl?
Ricky did not say anything but she took a deep breath as if getting ready for something. If she wanted to, she could stop me from jumping into the cage. If she wanted to, she could break both of my legs.
"We need the luck. Beth and I," I said. My fault, the lost children. The dreadful accounting of my job. I needed to do something to shift the balance. To bring the thing in Beth's stomach to a baby we could name. One act to make our world a safe and normal place again.
"What are you talking about," Ricky said. She was crying and I jumped. I caught the edge, pulled myself up, curled my legs out of her reach.
She yelled up at me. "Get down," she said. Then, "Help." Louder. "Help."
"I'm getting help," I said. The lion was drooped across the rock. I'd never seen him anyplace else.
I walked toward him. Ricky yelling help. Her voice made distant by the walls of the moat. By the buzzing, louder now, in my own ears.
The lion lifted his massive head. His skin glowed gray through patchy ginger fur.
I reached toward him. He lifted his head and looked at me. Blinked his slow eyes, and I laughed Sara's gurgling laugh.
Ricky, in the moat behind me. A faint and distant thought.
The lion opened his mouth and roared and I fought to keep my body still against the sound. I stepped closer, into the heat of his body, the heat of his roar. Arms outstretched. A supplicant. The roar raging all around me. I was cocooned by the sound.
"This is for Sara," I said. "This is for luck."
About the author:
© 2009 Word Riot
