1.

He sat alone at his mother’s kitchen table and sprinkled brown sugar over a warm bowl of oats then doused it with milk and re-fisted his spoon. Elbows wide, Frank slumped forward and shoveled food in. He was 35, had heavy round cheeks, thinning hair, and gentle blue eyes. The kitchen was clean and quiet and his intention was to keep everything as tidy as she had, though sometimes he failed. The dish rag, for example, was not folded neatly into thirds nor draped over the silver faucet to dry. Instead it was in the bottom of the sink, wet, crumpled, moldering, accruing its particular stench. Later, when he used it to clean the table the smell stuck to his hands. He shook them wildly in the air and rubbed his hands into his black slacks trying to get rid of it, trying to wipe whatever was on them, away. When he looked at his palms he saw nothing. There was nothing to see but the short, fat chubby fingers that had always been his fingers. But when he moved his nose closer he had to turn his head away. ‘Gross,’ he said. ‘Disgusting,’ and he pinched his face up and shook his head. How did she do it, he wondered? Not just the rags, throwing them away before they went to rot, but everything, all of it? Even something as simple as oatmeal? His was dry, lumpy, tasteless, and hers was hers.

Finished eating Frank stood at the sink and rubbed soap into his bowl until it squeaked. Above the sink a small rectangular window looked out onto a neighborhood of orange-bricked ranch-style homes much like the one he was standing in. As he dried the bowl he kept looking out.

Absentmindedly and with a damp palm he tamped down his brown strands of hair. He was looking at the sugar maple in the front yard, the sunlight on its leaves. The morning light was so bright it was like needles in his eyes. But he kept looking at it. Every day he missed her more and more.

2.

In the center of the kitchen table there was a ceramic bowl mounded high with summer’s sweetest peaches. To Frank they looked like a bowl of sunsets.

Peaches were her favorite fruit and therefore his favorite too. He grabbed one and touched his cheek to it and laughed a little because of how fuzzy it was. Next he took a paring knife and turned the blade around the peach, unsealed its halves, and removed the heart-shaped stone.

On the stovetop a large pot of water simmered. To this he added brown sugar, vanilla, pectin, three sticks of cinnamon, and all the peaches he had sliced and peeled. He brought the mixture to a boil and used a mashing tool to mash them.

As he waited for the nectar to cool, he grabbed yesterday’s molds. He levered one of the wooden sticks upward and with a sticky click it came unstuck. He made them big on purpose, big and round and too large for people’s mouths. He’d never liked that word—sucker.

To him it sounded like someone was being mean to you—Sucker! To him, they were lollies.

Frank held the lolly in his hand and resisted licking its deep orange sweetness. Instead he touched his finger to his tongue and removed from a slippery stack of plastic a square of cellophane. He slipped the candy inside the wrapper and with a quick blast of heat from his mother’s hairdryer he sealed it.

3.

Finished with his work in the kitchen Frank walked down the hallway and stood in the doorway of her bedroom. Clear yellow light slanted into the room and facing him, on the far wall, was her bed—a queen. It had a white wicker headboard and an aqua colored quilt pulled taut over the mattress.

It was where she had died, where he had found her that morning several weeks ago, not breathing.

The bed had always been her first chore. She made it before leaving the room every day. She’d been a swimmer and with her strong lean arms she would raise the sheet high and tug at it making it roll and snap like a flag. Then she would walk around the front of the bed and pull the other side, flattening it and making it smooth.

The quilt was next. After it lay flat and centered on the bed she folded the top back and set the pillows along that edge and tuck them in and refold the quilt over their shape. Then she would slide a flat palm beneath the pillows to sharpen the seam.

Looking into the stillness of her room, her perfectly made bed, Frank tried to imagine her there. Not making the bed, but sitting on the edge of it.

‘Please,’ he said, addressing her room, the empty bed, ‘could you pat my back. Could you pat me a hundred times?’ His voice bounced off the walls and sunk unanswered into the mattress. ‘I need you to pat me,’ he said. ‘Please pat me.’ But nothing happened. He wasn’t sure if he’d expected anything to happen. If she was still there, though, if she’d never have left, he wouldn’t even had to ask. She would have known. It wasn’t just the house stuff, it was him too. Him especially. She always seemed to know what he needed even before he needed it.

4.

He worked at the University Art Museum. It was a large gray-slabbed structure on the edge of campus. Sometimes he heard people complain about the way it looked. They said it was dingy, squat, communist. Frank had never thought to criticize the way a building looked before. To him it looked just fine. To Frank it looked like a three-tiered birthday cake with cement colored icing.

The museum had a very different feel on the inside and he spent a lot of time inside of it since he was one of the security guards. He’d worked there for years, but didn’t know much if anything about the art. That didn’t matter though. His primary responsibility was to protect it, and he liked the way that sounded: Frank Appleton, Protector of Art.

The rules were simple: the art was not to be touched or photographed, and people were not allowed to have food or drinks inside the museum. Most people knew this, but some didn’t, some needed a gentle reminder.

So, for his five hour shift, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, black sneakers, and pleated black pants, Frank moved from gallery to gallery, and if someone stepped too close to a painting he would extend his arm and flex his hand in a way that told them to ‘step back,’ or he might simply shake his head and wag a finger. They were simple movements, easy to communicate and understand, and people listened to him and followed his directions.

His mother had liked museums. She always told him art was a present you opened with your eyes. ‘You look at it, and it looks at you,’ she said, ‘and either something happens or it doesn’t.’

Presents were good. Frank understood presents, but he didn’t understand how a painting could ‘look at you,’ especially if it didn’t have any eyes. Also he never understood what kinds of things were supposed to happen to you when you looked at it. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever know. As he walked through the museum that question, that problem, was always in the back of his mind. But first and foremost he was on the lookout. He was on the lookout for people strolling around with coffee cups or holding phones out in front of paint-slicked canvases. Sometimes there were problems. Sometimes there were people who didn’t listen or know the proper boundaries, and at any time there could be an emergency. And if there was, if there was ever an emergency, Frank was supposed to call it in on his walkie-talkie.

The walkie-talkie was the coolest part of his uniform. Clipped to the side of his black belt it had a squishy orange button and if he wanted to talk to someone all he had to do was press it in and send his voice into the machine and someone would be there, someone would answer him.

5.

More often than not it was Mick who answered. Mick was one of his co-workers. He was an art student at the University and Frank was afraid of him. Mick always seemed to be in a bad mood. He was tall and skinny, had a shaved head and cleanly shaven cheeks, but beneath his chin and on both sides of his neck was a wiry black beard that grew thick as moss.

Once, on break, Frank offered a lolly to Mick.

Mick ripped off the crinkly plastic and touched his tongue to the circle. ‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘Pretty damn good sucker.’

Frank didn’t correct him about that word. He was too happy for the praise.

Mick took another lick. He seemed to like it even more now.

‘Where’d you get this?’

‘I made it.’

‘No shit?’ Mick said.

‘Can I ask you something?’ said Frank.

Mick took a bite out of the lolly and chewed the hard candy between his molars. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Are you angry about something?’

‘Fuck yeah, I’m angry,’ Mick said, his black eyebrows slanting down on his face.

‘About what?’

‘Shit, man, about everything. Especially this job.’

‘You don’t like it here?’

‘Are you serious?’ Mick stepped back. He turned his head and looked around. ‘This place sucks, man. I’d rather suck dick sideways than work here.’

‘You’d rather do what?’

‘You heard me.’

Frank did hear, but he didn’t understand. ‘Aren’t you an artist?’ said Frank.

‘That doesn’t mean I like museums, dude.’

‘What does it mean then?’

‘It means when I’m in here, I’m not out there.’

‘Out there where?’

‘Out there in the world. Out in my studio. I come in here and it’s like I’m being taunted. It’s like all these geniuses, all these artists and their beautiful paintings are fucking laughing at me, poking me in the goddamn eyes and saying, “Na na na na na na na.” It makes me want to piss all over them sometimes, you know what I mean.’

Frank knew about bullies and getting pissed on, but he didn’t want to talk about that.

‘Can you teach me?’ Frank asked.

‘Teach you what?’

‘About the paintings.’

‘What about them?’

‘How they work. What they’re supposed to do.’

Mick turned the lolly on its side and took another bite. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘can’t do it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s un-teachable, dude.’

‘But I thought you were studying it. I thought you were a student here.’

‘I am,’ he said, his teeth crunching down on the candy. ‘I am a student, and I am studying it, but I’m not studying it so I can teach it.’

‘Then why?’

Mick stuck a finger into his mouth and picked at his teeth. ‘Because I’m trying to put it inside of me,’ he said.

‘Put what inside of you?’

‘Everything. Their histories, their stories, their techniques. How they went crazy making it.’

‘How who went crazy?’

‘The artists.’

‘What’s crazy, Mick?’ Frank asked.

‘It means they lose their minds.’

‘Why?’ Frank said. ‘How? Where do they go?’

Mick looked at the wooden stick. ‘You make good suckers,’ he said, biting at the last crystals of orange, ‘but you ask too many fucking questions.’

‘It’s because I’m weird,’ Frank said.

‘You got that right,’ said Mick, ‘Weird with a capital W.’

Mick turned and walked away. He left Frank standing all alone. Frank was confused about the art, and about people losing their minds, and about the word ‘weird’ too. He didn’t know what that one meant either, only that he’d heard people call him it several times.

6.

Once upon a time there was an accident. They were on vacation up north in Canada. It was Frank, his mother, and a man she was seeing. They were in a canoe, on a glacial lake. There were mountains all around: jagged, rocky, snowcapped, indestructible and glorious. Frank was just a boy, six years old. He was wearing a bright orange shirt, an orange life-preserver, and he sat in the canoe on his mother’s lap. The sky was endlessly blue and deep and the sun was ablaze, and Frank was crying. He was uncomfortable. He was hot. The life preserver was too tight. He’d been crying almost since they’d gotten into the canoe. The man was paddling, dipping the oar in the silk blue water over and over and the longer he paddled the more annoyed with Frank he became. Frank’s mother could see this. He was a good man mostly, but impatient and with a violent sort of temper. Frank kept tugging at the life jacket trying to pull off. ‘It’s too tight,’ he whined, ‘it’s too tight,’ and she loosened the vest a little, hoping this would make the crying stop, and for a minute or two it did. For a minute or two there was peace and quiet and his mother pointed into the blue sky and said, ‘Eagles,’ and when Frank looked up the sun was too bright. It hurt his eyes and he started crying again. The man began paddling faster and faster. The mother held Frank close, hoping he would melt, hoping he would just fall asleep in her arms. They were in the middle of the lake, a long way from shore, and Frank didn’t melt. He kept crying. He kept saying he was too hot, that it was too hot out, that the life-jacket was too tight, that the sun was burning his arms.

She didn’t see the man coming. She had heard the wooden oar clang against the hull of the canoe and then he was grabbing something, he was grabbing Frank, taking him right out of her arms. He grabbed his small body and threw him out of the boat and into the lake, and she saw him in the air, Frank, her six-year-old boy wearing a life vest and crying and reaching his hands towards her and falling away from her at the same time. When it had happened, it happened so quickly. He was in the air and then splashing into the water and then the orange life jacket was empty. It floated on top of the water without her son in it. His head had slipped through the loosened vest and he was sinking. She leapt headfirst out of the canoe and dove into the blue water and saw nothing. It was like the water had fog inside of it, and she just kept swimming downward, pulling her body deeper and deeper, her hands moving frantically. And then there he was in front of her in his orange shirt, eyes closed and sinking. She snatched his shirt and pulled him to the surface. She handed him over to the man who had thrown him in. She hung her arms over the edge of the canoe and watched the man clasp his hands together and press them down on her son’s chest until a splash of water came out of his mouth and he started coughing and taking breaths and living again.

7.

Frank liked working at the museum, but what he did not like was returning home. He hoped the feelings he was feeling would go away. He wasn’t sure when. By fall, he hoped. But when the weather changed he was still sad and confused. Some days were worse than others. Night came earlier and earlier and the sugar maple in the front yard was losing its leaves. Soon they had all disappeared and on the blackest nights the pale yellow moon riding low in the sky seemed to snag on the tree’s bare branches and never rise into the sky.

He wished he could talk to her again. He didn’t know what he’d say. Sometimes he’d sit in the La-z-boy and rock back and forth and look at the television, the couch, the coffee table, the potted plants and ask questions that went unanswered. ‘Where did you go?’ he’d say. ‘Will I ever see you again?’ ‘If so, when?’ ‘Please tell me when?’

The mail was confusing because every day it still came for her and if she was never coming back wouldn’t they have known? Wouldn’t they have known to stop delivering it? He collected the envelopes in a brown paper bag and after a couple months he had so much mail he didn’t know what to do with it. He knew he didn’t want to just throw it away so one day he decided to have a look at it, to spread the mail out.

He went to her bedroom and placed an envelope on her aqua bedspread. He set it in the center of her bed and liked the way it looked—a sharp white rectangle, a boat on water. He set another envelope beside it and touched her name with the tip of his finger: Dorthea F. Appleton. He hoped something would happen when he did that, he couldn’t say what he thought might happen, only that if something happened he would know it, he would feel it, but nothing did. Frank didn’t feel anything. Instead he kept taking out pieces of mail and setting them on her bed.

He fit the envelopes together horizontally and vertically. He turned them in his hand and fit them together wherever they seemed to fit. He made a quilt on top of the quilt, a quilt of envelopes and letters. Soon the whole be was covered with rectangles.

When all the mail was gone Frank realized he needed more. He wasn’t done. He decided he would do everything, her whole room. It became one of his daily chores, to place an envelope in her bedroom, to cover something with her name.

8.

One day Frank found Mick standing in front of a huge rectangular canvas. The canvas was taller than it was wide and Mick stood there staring at it and flicking the tips of his fingers across the wiry black hairs beneath his chin. Frank stood shoulder to shoulder with Mick and looked at the painting. It was deep orange in color with a blurry yellow patch smeared on top of the orange and another bright orange patch smeared beneath the yellow. Frank looked over at Mick, but Mick hadn’t moved. There was an intensity to Mick’s eyes that Frank hadn’t seen before, a glow almost.

‘So?’ Frank said finally.

Mick kept touching his beard. ‘So what?’ he said.

‘So what does it mean?’

‘It doesn’t work that way, dude.’

‘How does it work then?’

‘I don’t know, man. I don’t know how it works or what it means, but it does. Somehow it just does.’

Frank was frustrated. Why was it so hard to explain? Why couldn’t anyone use their words? He started to walk away but then Mick said something.

‘He sliced his wrists up.’

‘Who did?’ Frank said.

Mick pointed towards the painting with his chin. ‘This guy.’

‘His own wrists?’

‘Yeah.’

Frank grimaced. ‘Ouch,’ he said.

‘Fucking lost it. Went crazy.’

‘Why?’ Frank asked.

‘I don’t know. Nobody does. It gets too burdensome, I think.’

‘What’s burdensome?’ asked Frank.

‘Too heavy,’ Mick said. ‘Too much weight. Always trying to make something as perfect as you can make it, but always falling short.’

Mick hadn’t moved. He kept staring at the painting. Frank shook his head. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Why is it here then? Why is it in the museum?’

‘Because, dude.’

‘Because why?’

‘Because it’s a fucking masterpiece.’

9.

Ever since she’d left him Frank had trouble going to sleep. As he lay in bed, his twin mattress pushed against their shared wall, his thoughts often turned to her.

When he was a boy instead of reciting prayers before bed they said their magic words. He didn’t understand what they were at first, but he was excited. He pushed his small body up from the mattress.

‘What’s a magic word,’ he wanted to know.

‘Shhhhh,’ his mother said, smoothing a hand across his shoulders. But Frank wasn’t tired anymore. He was wide-awake. He could hardly wait to hear what these special words were. He imagined her whispering to them into her hands and then opening her palms and revealing to him a toy car. Then, after saying more special things, the cars would zip around his room with streams of color spinning from their wheels.

Unfortunately, magic words were not flying toy cars. Magic words, his mother explained, were words that had special meaning.

‘Like what?’ Frank asked.

‘Like Love,’ his mother said. ‘Love is a magic word. And so is Moon, and Stars. And Friendship is magic too.’

Frank was silent. He still wasn’t sure if he understood what a magic word was.

‘What about Quincey?’ he asked. ‘Is Quincey a magic word?’ Quincey was his stuffed dog.

‘Yes,’ his mother said. ‘Of course it is.’

Frank pressed his cheek deep into his pillow and said his dog’s name again. He said it the same way she had said the others, like he was whispering in someone’s ear, like he was sharing a secret. ‘Quincey,’ he said. And then he said it again, ‘Quincey.’ And the third time he said it he not only heard the magic in it, but believed in the magic and felt it too.

As he lay in bed trying to fall asleep Frank tried to think of a magic word.

‘Mom,’ he said.

‘Mother,’ he said.

‘Dorthea,’ he said, and he reached his hand out into the dark and pressed his palm against the cold hard wall.

10.

Every few months the museums had new exhibitions. That was one of the things that made it such an interesting place to work. While the outside structure was always the same, the inside was continually changing. Sometimes it was even completely reconfigured.

Often the reconfiguration was so elaborate a construction crew was brought in and for a few days at the beginning of his shift Frank felt disoriented. Other times, even though the physical space went unchanged, the rooms felt completely different because of the art.

One day in early December Frank was walking down the museum’s main hallway and as he passed one of the large exhibition rooms he happened to glance inside. He was thinking about other things, how cold it was outside, that Christmas was coming, and when he looked into the spacious room his eyes went where they always went—to the walls, the art—but the walls he noticed were empty. He did a double-take, saw only whiteness again, and panicked. He sprinted across the doorway and like a police officer leaned his shoulder into the wall for cover, then Frank ripped his walkie talkie from its clip and jammed his finger into the squishy orange button.

‘Mayday!’ he said into the black box. ‘Mayday! Mayday!’

He didn’t know what was happening. A robbery, he thought. Thieves. Burglars.

He heard static, then Mick’s voice. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Frank peeked his head around the doorway again and scanned the walls. ‘It’s the art,’ Frank said.

‘What about it?’

‘It’s gone.’

‘Where are you?’

Frank pressed a button. His lips were practically on the speaker. ‘I’m right here,’ he said.

‘Where?’ Mick said. ‘What gallery?’ But Frank didn’t answer. All he could think about was that he’d failed. He’d failed to protect the art. Slowly his black sneakers slid out in front of him and Frank’s body sunk to the floor.

Mick arrived moments later, running. He looked at Frank then standing in the doorway stared into the exhibition room.

‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Is this a joke?’

‘I wish,’ Frank said.

Mick pointed into the room. ‘It’s right there, dude.’

On his hands and knees Frank crawled into the opening.

Mick was shaking his head. ‘It’s a new show, man. It’s an installation. It’s right there, on the ground.’

Frank could see that now. How had he missed it? Why hadn’t anyone warned him? He turned to apologize, but Mick was already gone. A few feet in front of Frank there was a nearly life-sized body resting on the ground. It was painted reddish brown and sprayed with some kind of glaze that made it look wet, like clay. The body was resting on its side and still on his knees, Frank considered touching it, but didn’t. The body looked as if it had been badly burned and a thick tube extended from its stomach. The tube was long and winding and as he followed it with his eyes Frank rose to his feet. At the severed end of the tube was another body and for the first time Frank saw the entire gallery. The whole room was littered with bodies. There were eight of them scattered around the room, each one lying on their side. The bodies had been tucked into corners and placed close to walls as if they’d been seeking shelter, but hadn’t found it. At first Frank wanted to go and lay down next to one of them, but the longer he stood there looking at the figures the more nauseous he became.

Suddenly he felt sick to his stomach and Frank wanted to go home immediately. The problem was he’d just arrived and what was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to tell Mick? That the art had made him sick? No way. Besides, no one would ever believe him. Instead of leaving, Frank simply walked away, he retreated to another room, his hand covering his stomach.

11.

The holidays were difficult. On Christmas he tried to forget it was Christmas. ‘It’s not Christmas,’ he told himself, and whenever he remembered it was Christmas he kept repeating, ‘It’s not Christmas,’ until eventually, at 12:01 am, he said it for the last time and what he’d been telling himself all day was finally true.

New Year’s was just as hard. They’d always made a special meal together—ham, turkey, a roast. Frank wasn’t a good cook and he hadn’t planned the day very well. It wasn’t until six o’clock that he decided to check the freezer and see what they had.

He dug past tubs of ice cream, boxes of frozen waffles, bags of vegetable medley, and removed humps of food wrapped in foil. Unpeeling the corners he discovered brown slabs of hardened meat. He knew it would never defrost in time so he leaned in and kept digging.

By now he thought he’d touched everything twice, but in the back left corner behind trays of ice he found a plastic freezer bag. When he divided the seal he could hardly believe his luck. They were wrapped in plastic and unwrapping them was like opening the Christmas presents he hadn’t received. They were his favorite and her specialty. Some people called them meat pies, but in Iron Mountain, where she’d been raised, they were known as pasties.

He picked up the lump of cold dough and held it in his hands. The edges were scalloped with ridges formed by her own hands. It was one of her trademarks. She did the same thing with piecrusts. Frank traced the tiny bumps with his fingertips and rubbed away spurs of ice.

The pasties were stuffed with ground beef, onions, carrots, rutabaga, and seasoned with salt and pepper. He set them on a cookie sheet and his mouth watered thinking of all the flavors. In ten minutes the oven was ready and he set them inside.

Instead of eating at the kitchen table he decided to eat in the dining room. He set a placemat at the edge of the table and went to the buffet and removed some silverware. With a warm breath he embossed each piece and using the flap of his white shirt rubbed into them a sparkling shine.

After setting the table he checked the refrigerator for chili sauce. She made that too—stewed tomatoes with sugar and onions and green peppers. It was delicious and tangy-sweet and, but he couldn’t find any and had to settle for ketchup. To complete his preparations he added to the corner of his placemat a tall glass of cold milk.

As he waited for the oven timer to buzz he grabbed some mail that had been collecting on the kitchen counter and took it to her bedroom. Frank flicked on the light and her whole mattress was covered with envelopes, a thin layer of gray and white squares and rectangles. He’d even covered the sides of the quilt and the front of it too. He stared at his work and mixed into the blocks of white were a few colored envelopes—a square of light blue, one of yellow, another of neon orange—and he was always surprised how quickly his eyes would skim the whiteness to find those bright patches of color.

Finished with the bed he’d moved onto her chest of drawers. He’d already covered the top of it and one of its sides. Now he began taping the letters to the front of it. Most of them went flush to the wood, but on each drawer some envelopes stuck out from the knobs. As he worked Frank smelled a hint of smoke in the air and it smelled good, like someone was having a fire. He thought nothing of it and continued working. He lost himself in repetition, tearing a piece of tape and sticking it to the envelope and sticking the envelope onto the wood and smearing his thumb over the tape to fastening it to the wood. The smell of smoke grew heavier and Frank was curious where it was coming from, but he only had a few pieces of mail left. He finished his work and stepped back to have a look.

He liked the way some of letters popped out from the knobs. It seemed to Frank like they were floating there, hanging, suspended in midair like he’d performed some kind of magic.

The smoke smell grew heavier in the air. What is that, Frank thought? Where is that smell coming from? And as soon as he asked the question his body answered it. He ran to the kitchen, pulled open the oven door and a black cloud of smoke rose to the ceiling. Without thinking, Frank reached for the cookie sheet and pulled his burning hand back, screaming.

He ran through the house, ran straight to her room holding his hand and jumped onto her bed. He buried his face into the mattress and kicked his feet and the envelopes bearing his mother’s name scattered and spilled and tumbled off the bed like ash. Frank lay on his side, crying, holding his hand against his body and waiting for the pain go away.

12.

The cold, wet, and dreary winter didn’t leave for a long time. Even in late March the ground was still frozen and on the first day of April there was a terrible blizzard. Frank only had a few lollies left but needed something to lift his spirits so he grabbed one and took it to work. He saved it until after lunch and the sweet taste of peach brought a smile to his face. The flavor was so intense he thought he could taste the very sunlight it had taken to grow them.

After lunch, to pass the time, Frank decided to play detective. It was sort of like eye-spy, only he played it by himself. He was still trying to think of something to find when he saw Mick standing in a long corridor looking more bored than usual.

‘Hey,’ Frank said, ‘you want to play a game with me?’

Mick looked drowsy. The whites of eyes were red, bloodshot. ‘What game?’ he said.

‘Detective.’

Mick repeatedly pinched the skin on the side of his jaw. ‘You got any more of those suckers?’ he asked.

‘Sorry,’ Frank said.

‘I’m fucking starving,’ said Mick.

‘Play this game with me. It’s fun.’

Mick’s eyelids only seemed to open half way. ‘How do you play?’ he said.

‘You pick something and try to find it.’

‘How ‘bout you try and find me a pepperoni pizza.’

‘No,’ said Frank. ‘You have to find stuff in the museum.’

‘I know,’ said Mick, a wide grin on his face. ‘And if you could find me a pizza in here you’d be a genius.’

‘Are you ok?’ Frank asked. ‘Is something wrong? Why are you smiling like that.’

‘Because you’re funny.’

‘I’m funny?’

‘Yeah. Weird and funny.’

‘I drowned once,’ Frank said.

‘You what?’

‘I drowned, but came back to life.’

‘You were resurrected.’

‘Yeah,’ Frank said. ‘My mom rescued me. She’s my hero.’

‘That’s cool,’ said Mick. ‘That’s really cool.’

Frank waited for something else to happen, but Mick didn’t say anything, he didn’t move either. He just stood there slouched, arms crossed, his right knee bent and the sole of his shoe against the wall. Frank was going to say something about Mick’s shoe, but instead he started to walk away. He only took a few steps before Mick called to him.

‘Fine,’ Mick said, ‘Let’s play your game.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What do you want to look for?’

‘Let’s look for a piece of shit,’ Mick suggested.

Frank made an ugly face with his lips. ‘Why?’ Frank said. ‘Why would we want to look for that?’

‘Don’t ask any questions, Frank. Just listen to me. Just go to the bathroom on the second floor and go into the third stall on the left and look down. Look down in the toilet and when you see it lurking in that hole like a huge brown eel try not to be too grossed out. Just stand there and look at it, Frank. That’s what I want you to do. Look at it and say this. Say: “Life’s a crap shoot. Life’s a crap shoot.”’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Frank.

Mick and his sleepy looking eyes smiled at Frank. ‘There’s nothing to get, man. Nothing at all. That’s the point. It’s all there.’

‘What is? What’s all there?’

Mick leveled his chin and sneered. ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Everything you’ve ever wanted to know.’

13.

After the incident at the lake he was in a coma for several weeks. They kept saying they didn’t know, that they wouldn’t know, not until he woke up. And when he did, she knew immediately. She could see it in his eyes. They were his, only duller, not as bright. Gradually, she told him what happened. That they were in a boat, a canoe and a huge eagle had snatched him from her arms and dropped him into the cold blue lake and he kept sinking deeper and deeper into the freezing blue water and she dove in and swam down after him and the water was so cloudy she couldn’t even see, but she kept swimming, kept opening her eyes and pulling her body down deeper into the water and searching for him and searching, and she told him she would have kept swimming until she found him, would have never left the water, but then there you were, she said. Suddenly I saw you right before my eyes and I reached my hand down to you and grabbed you by the arm and pulled you back to the surface and the eagle saw us and swooped down and tried to take you from me again, but I grabbed its orange talons and it lifted us out of the water and carried us into the sky, and that’s it, she said, that’s how you were born.

14.

In spring, when new buds appeared on the sugar maple and the sun rose earlier and earlier every day, Frank continued to show up at the museum. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to work there anymore though. All his friends were leaving. Maybe all wasn’t the right word since there was only ever one.

On the first Friday of May, Mick came up to Frank and shook his hand.

‘Gonna miss you, dude.’

‘Why are you going to miss me?’ Frank asked.

‘Cause I’m outta here. School’s done. I’m gonna blow this popsicle stand.’

Still shaking hands, Mick said, ‘Elvis is gone, I’m gone.’

Gone where, Frank thought.

‘G’s up and Ho’s down. Peace in the Middle East. Sayonara bitches.’

‘Yeah,’ Frank said, trying to join in. ‘Whose your momma?’

Mick laughed. He gave Frank’s hand a final hard squeeze and started walking toward the double doors at the end of the long hallway.

Frank waved. ‘Bye,’ he said, but Mick didn’t turn around. He kept going and with a kick he smashed one of the doors open and strolled out into the world.

15.

When the heat of summer finally arrived Frank was excited. It meant peaches were back in season and he could make more lollies. He still worked at the museum. He figured he’d always work there. It wasn’t so bad. There were always new things to look at, and as a matter of fact, the museum was expanding. They’d purchased a piece by a famous artist that was becoming part of the permanent collection.

The new gallery was in the basement and a construction crew had reshaped a space that had been formerly used for storage. It was set to open to the public the following week, but Frank was allowed to see it before them. It seemed a sort of privilege and as he descended the stairs he was eager to see it.

For some reason the new space was still dark and Frank wondered if someone had forgotten to turn the lights on. He moved cautiously. No one else was around. Everything was quiet. He walked down a hallway that opened to a larger room and when he turned the corner the art was directly in front of him, huge and unavoidable.

As usual it left Frank scratching his head. In the center of the far wall and directly in front of him was a long rectangle of color. It was a huge flat plane glowing toothpaste blue. He wondered why it was so big. It looked nearly twenty feet wide and ten feet tall. Both the construction crew and the artist had worked for over a month on the project, and while Frank didn’t know what to expect, he expected more than this.

He stood in front of the piece for a long time, longer than usual. The color was shockingly bright, and pretty too, and though he was impressed by the scale of the project he couldn’t understand why it was art or what made it so great.

He looked toward the ceiling. He was trying to find a projector because that’s what it looked like. The color had a thinness to it that led him to believe it was being projected onto the wall. He searched for a machine, but couldn’t find one.

After several minutes of looking Frank thought he should get back to work, but he couldn’t quite make himself leave. There was something about the art, its almost blindingly blue brightness that made him linger. The darkness of the room also had a hazy, disorienting feel about it, which seemed to make the color field more hypnotizing.

Frank stepped closer to the artwork and saw something he hadn’t seen before. It was a small stack of stairs. They were the same shadowy gray color as the walls and nearly invisible. He wondered if they were only an illusion, but when he kicked them with the toe of his black sneaker he felt solid wood. The staircase was real. It had five steps and was flush to the wall. He knew better than to walk up the steps since his job required him to protect the art from everyone, including himself, but the longer he stood there the more it seemed the stairs had been placed there for a reason. Why else would they have been situated beneath the center of the rectangle, and why would they have been cut, measured, and assembled in such a way that the furthest edge of the top step and the bottom edge of the blue plane were perfectly aligned?

The reason, Frank decided, was to invite you in, to make you come closer. Suddenly, he was feeling bold and he set the sole of his shoe on the first step. Once he’d take the first step the others came even easier. Step by step he ascended and two things happened: the closer he got the more the field of color seemed to expand and at the same time pull him in.

When he climbed to the top of the stairs he was so close to the wall that the color surrounded his vision. Even in his periphery, all he could see, all he could feel was blue. Standing on the top step he almost felt weightless. And yet he still wanted to get closer. The color, he thought, was trying to capture him.

And Frank let it. Still thinking it was some sort of trick or illusion, he reached out toward the wall. What would he feel, he wondered? What would he touch? But what his hand touched was nothing, was air. Where his hand should have met the wall, the artwork, there was nothing but light, a powdery blue fluorescence. Stunned, but still curious, Frank kept reaching forward until his entire arm went through the blue wall. Then he lifted one foot, and as he stepped into the glowing blue rectangle he felt as if he were disappearing.

But Frank did not disappear. This was not science fiction, this was art, and Frank found himself enclosed in a new space—a room of exploded blue light. He turned around and around and wherever he turned he felt light touching him. He was dizzy with its brightness and started rubbing his hands and forearms, washing himself in it. He felt as if he’d stepped into the sky, or as if he were floating. He looked all around and wondered if this was what it felt like to be smart, all this light, brightness everywhere.

Frank looked around the room trying to figure out how this space had been made. Where was the light coming from and why couldn’t he find any plugs or light bulbs? It was a mystery and after a while he gave up trying to figure it out. All he knew was that he wanted to stay inside the light. He had forgotten it was a piece of art and thought it was a state of mind, a dream maybe. He sat down on the floor, then lay on his back. The light seemed to embrace him. He closed his eyes and opened them again. He felt as if he were levitating or falling, he wasn’t sure which, and without even thinking about it, without even knowing what he was doing he raised his right hand into the air. He lifted it into the blue. ‘Hello,’ he said. It wasn’t a question. And he didn’t wait for an answer. He felt close to something, closer than he had in a long time, and he said it again. ‘Hello, hello, hello.’ He felt something magical was happening and as he lay there reaching he waited for her to find him, he waited for her hand to come down out of the blue and lift him up and make him born again.

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David Lombardi has lived in Houston for 7 years. His favorite places are the Rice University tennis courts, museums, and any of the city’s great coffee houses. He earned his Ph.D from the University of Houston in 2012 and lives with his wife and daughters.