The boy named Elmer was behind the counter. He was holding an oversize book with wings on the cover of it.

The wings were a bright, impossible, glorious blue.

“What are you reading?” said Beverly.

Elmer slowly lowered the book and looked at her. His face was still red. Acne. Lots of it. His eyes were a brownish gold.

“It’s a book,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Beverly. “I thought so. What’s it about?”

“Italian Renaissance art,” he said. “Any more questions?”

“Yeah. Is your name really Elmer?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know, maybe because Elmer is an old man’s name. Or the name of somebody who hunts rabbits and doesn’t ever catch them.”

“Maybe I am an old man,” said Elmer. “Maybe I’m ten thousand years old. Maybe I’ve been living in this convenience store for the last thousand of those years. In addition, maybe I hunt rabbits. Maybe I catch them and strangle them with my bare hands.” His acne-covered face was getting redder. “But if I’m a ten-thousand-year-old rabbit hunter, I’m not going to tell you about it, am I? I would be a myth, a superhero. I would be a scientific marvel. And I wouldn’t waste my time talking to you, would I?

“If you’re here to buy something, you should buy it. If you’re in here to ask questions, then the question-and-answer session is over. Because I’m not participating anymore. Got it?” He gave her a long look. And then he raised the book so that it covered his face.

“Wow,” said Beverly. “Okay.”

She turned away from the counter. She walked down the aisle. Her heart was beating fast. She felt like she had been running.

She looked around her. Toilet paper. Beef jerky. Corn chips. Windshield-wiper fluid. A baseball cap that said Alligator Meat.

What did that even mean?

Outside Zoom City, Beverly could see that Vera was still on the horse. At least you got a lot of time for your dime, even if you did end up in exactly the same place you started.

Beverly stood and studied the candy section: Red Hots, licorice whips, gum. She grabbed two pairs of wax lips and took them up to the counter.

“You’re buying wax lips?” said Elmer. He slammed his book shut. “Nobody buys wax lips.”

Beverly studied the blue wings on the cover of the book. They belonged to an angel who was hovering over a woman with her hands on her cheeks. The woman didn’t look all that happy.

But then, neither did the angel.

“Well?” said Elmer.

“They’re a gift,” said Beverly.

“Some lucky person’s going to be overjoyed.”

“I saw what you did with the girl and the horse.”

“Yeah?” he said. “What did I do?”

“You gave her a dime.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that you’re sitting here reading a book about art and angels, and you give dimes to little kids who want horse rides. You pretend like you’re tough, but you’re not tough.”

Elmer’s face was getting redder.

Beverly handed him a dollar. “The other thing your name makes me think of is glue,” she said. “We used Elmer’s glue all the time in grade school. I got in trouble for eating it. I think that’s why I ate it. I ate Elmer’s glue even though I didn’t really like how it tasted. It was just a way to piss the teachers off. Anyway, it occurred to me that maybe you were telling the truth. Maybe you are a ten-thousand-year-old man who hunts rabbits and kills them with his bare hands, but then maybe what you do is glue the rabbits back together with Elmer’s glue, because, like I said, you aren’t tough at all. And you feel remorseful about what you did to the rabbits. Maybe that’s who you are.”

Elmer stared at her.

He was smiling, but also trying not to smile.

His face was very, very red.

Beverly picked up the wax lips and said, “You can keep the change.” And then she walked out of Zoom City without looking behind her.

Those were the most words she had said to anybody in a long time. It could be that they were the most words she had ever said to anybody at one time in her whole life.

It was possible.

She looked down at the wax lips in her hand.

Something inside of her was fluttering, turning. She felt like there was a bird trapped in her stomach, flapping its wings.

She walked down to the ocean and threw Jerome’s graduation tassel into the water. It floated there for a minute, looking like some exotic sea creature, and then it disappeared, borne out to sea on a retreating wave.

“Good-bye and good luck,” said Beverly.

She stood and stared at the water for a long time.

Finally, she turned and headed back to the Seahorse Court.