Page 123 of Night Songs

Another mass headed my way, this one so large they were forcing other people into the street, and I ducked down a narrow alleyway to the right.

I followed the alleys for a while, enjoying the silence. Sewage smells mixed with the odors spilling from the backs of the restaurants I passed—fried dough, stewed shrimp, Cajun spice. I passed a building vibrating with the chaotic rhythms of jazz, and I put my hand up to the brick to feel the pulse.

If only it was possible to live this way, to creep along the backside of the world and be able to experience its pleasures, protected and unseen.

The alley spit me out into a small park surrounded by a black iron fence with thickets of bald cypress and a great, hulking live oak at its center. It looked like it’d been there for centuries, posed and waiting as the city rose up around it. Dark shapes huddled in the shadows of the park, but I found an open space at the base of the tree.

I sat down in the swampy heat, feeling the sweat trickle from beneath my wig, and I flung it off into the dirt. I wouldn’t be needing that anymore.

A figure a few feet away pulled back their hood and studied me. Their eyes were wild and familiar, and I peered through the dim light to get a better look.

“What you starin’ at?” the figure asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I answered. At least I no longer had to pretend.

“You don’t look like you belong here, angel. Maybe you should move along.”

I hadn’t felt this comfortable in months. I was exactly where I should be. “You’d be surprised.”

“Suit yourself,” the figure scoffed, and it turned into a husky cough. “You got a family, angel?”

“I used to.”

“What happened to ’em?”

I imagined Micah right then, standing in the kitchen. Looking out the window and wondering where I was. The pain he must be in.

I shook my head, attempting to clear the image.

“I used to have a family, too,” the figure said in response to my silence.

“What happened to yours?”

“I left ’em. It was better that way. I would have hurt ’em if I’d stayed.”

“I know what you mean.”

The figure threw off their first layer to reveal a woman draped in a surprisingly clean shawl with tarnished bangles on her wrists. Her hair was a silver cloud that in another context might have looked chic and bohemian. “Would you like me to tell your fortune?”

I laughed at this notion, and then quieted, afraid the woman would think I was laughing at her. “How much?”

The woman smiled and said, “For you, angel? No charge.”

I nodded, and the woman closed her eyes and held her hands up. She sat frozen like that for a few minutes, and I started to regret this decision. These were precious moments I was sacrificing for meaningless whimsy. Then, the woman spoke.

“I see you in the mountains. There is a man with bright eyes, and a few women, but I can’t make them out.”

She paused for a moment, squinting into the future. “Ah, yes, and a child. A beautiful baby girl with the man’s sparkling eyes, and your tall, strong frame.”

Tears collected in my eyes, and I whispered for the woman to please stop.

But she kept rambling on about this cheap fantasy of a life, and I shouted for her to shut up. The woman quieted abruptly, stunned by my rudeness. She cursed and spat on the ground near my leg, then gathered up her various bags and waddled toward another part of the park.

I looked at my phone. Only one hour left.

Where did the time go? Did the woman bewitch me?

I opened my backpack and took out the sleeping pills I’d been prescribed by a psychiatrist my therapist had referred me to. Then I took out a glass bottle of Coca-Cola I’d bought at a gas station. I used the burner to pop off the cap like Micah had taught me on the trail fifteen years ago, and I remembered us drinking them when we stopped in a little town in Virginia.