“She could hire someone else or tell the truth.”
Rosita shakes her head. “You know it’s too late for that. People would tear them apart for keeping it a secret this long.”
“I have to hand it to her, a woman with a project on disabled bodies is a perfect cover,” I say. “Do you even really write for Strange Sounds?”
Rosita nods. “I’ve published some articles with them.”
“How did she convince you to take the risk? Aren’t you afraid I’ll call the police?”
Rosita smirks, but it’s not meant as mockery. “That never crossed my mind once I met you. Besides, Angela told me you didn’t write because you loved it. She said it was just something you had to purge. That’s how she knew you’d have extra tracks laying around.”
A squirrel in a nearby tree barks, angry to have intruders so close to the nest. I watch tremors of rage twitch through the animal’s tail.
Rosita sighs. “You don’t need to hide songs like that away.”
“I wasn’t going to. Or I wasn’t until you stole them for Angela.”
The squirrel keeps barking, so I toss a piece of the broken twig into the branches. The animal flees to a higher bough as the limb shakes. For some reason, my stomach is sick at the idea of Angela listening to my voice. I’ve sent written lyrics with my music sheets but haven’t sung to her since the days we shared on the road.
“What did she say about the tracks?” I ask.
“You can ask her yourself. She’s coming to Coopersville.”
I snap the twig into thirds, fourths, so many pieces the nubs are too hard to continue fracturing.
“When?”
“Be here by tomorrow night. She and the band want to organize a benefit concert. I think she’ll probably come see you.”
Angela arrives in my mind again. This time, she sits in first class as young mothers carry their children past toward coach. Her ears are plugged with white earbuds as she waits for the plane to take off. The interior is the familiar cacophony of noise: giant turbines turning as the wheels begin to taxi on the runway, seat belts snapping, luggage in the overhead compartments colliding as the attendant announces rules to prepare for the miracle of flight. Only Angela won’t be listening. In her ears, my gruff voice is singing about an endless world of sand. A scorched earth where only a man and boy remain and all lessons are taught by song. It isn’t exactly a premonition. It’s more a dream. She told me once that every dream is a private wish.
“She’s gonna pay you then?” I ask. “Cash in person?”
“Yeah, she doesn’t want a paper trail.”
In person makes things more difficult. My palate is dry, but there’s no remedy. Water would be a blessing, but all I want is a guitar. The chance to play a few chords and take my mind away from reality.
“What the fuck happened between you two?” Rosita asks.
It wasn’t all bad. Our perplexing match was held together by something indefinable that normal people wouldn’t understand. There is nothing more sacred than a gorgeous body coupling with a broken one. It looks like sexual charity to anyone observing the act, a sacrifice of perfection to the altar of the malformed. It probably seems pitiful unless you’ve ever lusted for what others thought repulsive. The truth is I depended on Angela’s love to work as some sort of assurance there was decency in the world. Our relationship became more than two people trying to stay in love. Her continued acceptance of me meant broken bodies had a place, that the cruelty and indifference I feared wasn’t all-consuming. I realize now how unfair a burden that was to place on a young girl, but I won’t tell Rosita this. She doesn’t deserve that truth anymore.
“We fucked each other up,” I say. “Bled each other dry with a thousand tiny cuts.”
The squirrel returns to her sentry duty, again sounding an alarm.
“Do you think we’re safe?” Rosita asks. “Victor’s still out there.”
“We’re armed at least. We can sleep in shifts if it makes you feel better.”
Night comes quickly, but I don’t mind much. Rosita sits in the cab with the computer on her lap, doing some work on the pictures. This new man has some of the worst facial scars I’ve ever seen. Under all the raised folds of tissue, his eyes look as if he’s been duped, talked into believing that something extraordinary would occur if he consented to the portrait.
Rosita cycles through more pictures. Cripples in the heartland and men without lower limbs. A woman with her nose removed by what appears to be syphilis, but she was mauled by a bear. Before the next picture, Rosita warns me about the claw marks on the woman’s breasts that makes it appear as if she took the beast into her bed. Some of this takes my mind off Victor, and Rosita’s theft, but whenever my eyelids grow heavy and snap open there is a hazy moment when I imagine someone outside the window. I put the gun in my pocket to avoid some sleep-deprived mishap.
“My brother was a musician,” Rosita says. “Did I tell you that? Not the same as you. Classical piano. He was obsessed with Schubert. He used to play things with a kind of gothic flair in the end. ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ and such.”
The phrase “in the end” hangs in the air until I know she’s about to offer up a sad story. Maybe this is the way she gets people to bare themselves for the camera. The flesh she exposes is only a ruse. The real undressing is this vulnerability. It’s easy to show off ruined bodies next to a broken heart.
“So, he died?” I ask, but I already know the answer from that “in the end” of hers. Died isn’t even the right word. The dead haunt us because they stay dead. The only present-tense state that’s unchanging.
“He drowned on vacation, but that wasn’t what stopped his music. He lost a hand in a car wreck a few years before that. He’s the first entry in The Body Book.”
“Then you should feel even worse about what you’ve done,” I say.
The words hit harder than I anticipate. For a moment, I think she’ll camp alone in the woods, but Rosita just turns to the window and drapes her jacket over herself like a blanket. I keep watch while she sleeps.
THE EMANCIPATION
The morning after I received my father’s lashing, I woke to find Lady Crawford gone. I wasn’t worried by her absence. The ache in my face had awoken me, and its steady spread from the margin of my eye down my neck dominated all my attention. There were no mirrors inside the church, so I couldn’t view the damage without braving the camper. It would be dangerous seeing my father so soon after our fight, but I decided Lady Crawford would probably be there making amends. She’d protect me if things went bad.