Spoonbenders

He started the van and checked his rearview mirrors. The driver’s-side mirror was knocked askew, but the passenger’s side showed the shadow of a giant walking out of the alley. He turned, and his arm raised. If he didn’t have a gun, it was a very convincing mime.

Barney, Frankie thought. How the hell did Barney get here so fast? Why was he here, even?

Frankie peeled out, his head clanging with the same three syllables, all the way home:

No money.

No money.

No money.

SEPTEMBER 4

21

BUDDY

The World’s Most Powerful Psychic stands before the calendar with a crayon in his hand. Each numbered square, by convention, is a box to hold everything that will happen in those twenty-four hours. The boxes fill the page, but there’s no use looking back, or ahead. Not for him. The only square that means anything now is today’s.

A purplish pink circle already surrounds that square. He made the mark months ago, with this very crayon.

Zap.

He feels dizzy, as if he’s standing at the edge of a swimming pool, blindfolded. The endless chain of days past is jostling behind him, nudging him forward. Is the pool full, or empty? When he falls (and he will fall, he knows that much), will he smash into cement, or be cushioned by water? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know and the not-knowing fills him with dread. This must be what it’s like for everyone else, every day, and he doesn’t know how they stand it.

It’s 6:30 in the morning, and he has so much to do before the future ends at 12:06 p.m. Some of these things he’s been thinking about for years. Images of the day’s events he’s saved like snapshots in a wallet. Some he drew years ago, at the kitchen table, while his mother encouraged him. But there are other events that are in shadow. He hasn’t looked too closely at them, because by remembering them clearly he’ll turn them from possibilities into certainties, and he doesn’t want everything locked down.

But oh, those shadows are scary. The idea of ricochets haunts him.

He lifts his hand, and isn’t surprised that it’s shaking. He steadies himself by focusing on the crayon. It’s his favorite color, a particular shade of pink. When his hand is steady again, he draws an X through the box that holds the day.

“You’re up early,” Irene says.

He puts the crayon away. Irene is still sleepy, still tired. Probably didn’t sleep well up in the attic room. She had to share the bed with Mary Alice. Irene puts a filter into the Mr. Coffee and reaches for the canister.

“I was thinking we should have a picnic,” he says. “Right here. Hot dogs for the kids. Hamburgers and brats for the adults.”

She looks over at him, a curious smile on her face. “Look at you, talking and all.”

“I was thinking two packs of hot dogs,” he says. “Then three or four pounds of ground beef, but…I don’t know. I don’t know how much people will eat.” The picnic, if it happens at all, will occur on the other side of history.

“Could you make Mom’s lamb sausage?” Irene asks. “You know, the ones with the feta and the mint?”

“Oh.” He’d remembered making patties out of ground meat, but had assumed he’d been making hamburgers. Huh.

“You don’t have to, if you’ve got your heart set on burgers,” Irene says.

“No, that’s fine.” Mom had learned a few Greek recipes, mostly at Frankie’s urging, and Buddy had memorized them. It would be good to do this on the anniversary of her death. “Could you go to the grocery store for me?”

He writes out the ingredients, tripling the usual recipe for the number of people in the house. And then he starts writing out the instructions. “Just in case,” he says. “I might not be able to…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“You look so nervous,” Irene says. “Don’t worry. It’s all going to work out.”

“What did you say?” He looks up. His eyes are awash in tears. Unexpected, uncalled for. One of the first surprises of the day.

“Oh, Buddy.” She reaches up and puts a hand on his neck. “I’m sorry. I know having lots of people around stresses you out.”

He takes a breath. There are so many plates to keep spinning, and some of them are beginning to wobble. “It is a lot to manage,” he says.

MATTY

He was flying over water. The slate blue water stretched to the horizon, into a golden smear of the rising sun, and he moved toward it along the brilliant, rippling path of the dawn road. He could feel nothing, hear nothing. There was no speed. It could be that he was not moving at all, simply hovering in place while the planet rotated beneath him. And at the thought of the planet, there it was, a blue-green orb glowing beneath his feet. So pretty. He glanced up, into the black of space, and noticed a star winking at him. Or was that Mars? He moved closer—

—and woke with a yelp.

A dream. Or was it? Could his astral self slip away while he was sleeping? What if it couldn’t find its way back? Another thing to worry about.

God he needed to pee.