FORTY-ONE
TWO THINGS
Miriam lights a cigarette. It feels like a cannonball just punched its way through her middle. She tries not to show it. Tries not to think about how she lost something she didn’t even want— a child unborn, a life she misses only in retrospect. What this woman lost is so much worse. Sugar wanted that little girl. All her life. To fix what had been broken in her—to bind a broken wheel, to make it all whole again.
She lost what she thought she would never lose.
Sugar reaches over, plucks the cigarette from Miriam’s lips.
Miriam scowls as the woman flicks it out of sight.
“No smoking,” Sugar says. “You should really quit. It’s bad for you.”
“Everything’s bad for you. Life is bad for you.”
“That attitude is bad for you.”
Miriam licks her lips. “Thank you, Mystical Life Coach. I’m sure you think it’s cynicism, but I think it’s realism.”
“A saying that has long been the shelter of the cynic.”
“Well, what the fuck? How are you not a cynic? What you’ve lost . . . it’s horrifying. You’re no optimist.”
“I’m only an optimist. Because even in dying, life finds a way. An insignificant light is still a light, after all.”
“You’re sick in the head.”
Sugar smiles a soft smile. “Maybe I am.”
“Fine. So tell me my two things, then.”
“I’ll tell you about the thing you don’t know you need first—”
“No, tell me about the—”
“Because if I do otherwise you’ll run off.”
Miriam stares.
Sugar winks. “The thing you’re not looking for is a metal box about this big—” She holds out her hands about a foot apart lengthwise, six inches from top to bottom. “Like a safety deposit box. It is beneath the water, as so many things around here are. Long Point Key is like a finger—its peninsula points the way. Somewhere out there, beneath the tides, this metal box awaits.”
“Great. Metal box.” Worthless. “And the next thing?”
“So impatient.”
“You have no idea.”
“The person you’re looking for is on Summerland Key. South of it, actually, on the far side of a small island. He’s camping there. You’ll know the island because of the two wild tamarind trees that look like a pair of hands beseeching the heavens for favor.”
“Poetic.”
“I thought so.”
“I’m going to go now.”
“I figured as much.”
“What do you want for . . . this?”
“For what?”
Miriam rolls her eyes. “For the whole . . . psychic thing. You gave me a vision. What do I give you in return? This was an exchange.”
“I don’t do this for gain.”
“So why do you do it?”
“I don’t really know. Why do you?”
Miriam narrows her eyes. “Do you see them? The visions? Every time, I mean. Do you know what everyone needs to find?”
“If they look into my eyes, I know.”
“Do you tell them?”
“Almost never. Not unless they want to know.”
“Is it hard? Seeing all that?”
“Not as hard as it must be for you.” She brings the lantern close, bathing one side of her face in the artificial glow. “But it’s still pretty strange. Oh— don’t forget to buy some suntan lotion.”