Mockingbird Read Free Page A

foam-capped waves.
      The gunman shrugs. "Guess we won't count the baby, then."
      "You need a name," she says to change in conversation. "You may not have a face but I want you to have a name."
      "Will I be Ben? Louis? Mommy?"
      "I'm not calling you Mommy. Fucking sicko."
      "When was the last time you saw her, by the way?"
      She doesn't bother saying anything. He – or she, or it – already knows the answer.
      "I should call you the Intruder," she says finally. "Because that's what you do. You intrude. Here I should be drifting through the darkness before my death, all peaceful and shit, and then you come along. Trespassing on my mental property. Actually, I like that. Trespasser. There we go."
      "Don't pretend like you don't invite me in."
      "I do no such thing."
      The gunman smiles. A blackbird lands on the neckstuck BBQ fork.
      "Besides," the Trespasser continues, except now it's not the gunman who's speaking but the blackbird perched on the fork's handle. Still with Ben's voice. "You're not dead. You're just in shock."
      "I'm not dead?"
      "Not yet. Soon, maybe. You have work to do first. We can't let you off the hook that easy, little fishy. This meeting is just our little way of saying we're glad to have you back."
      "You should've brought cake," she says.
      "Next time, maybe."

THREE
    Just a Flesh Wound
     
    She has to give her statement to three different cops and each of them urge her to get in the goddamn ambulance already.
      As she sits on the curb, smoking like a cancer factory, the cops tell her that she might have a concussion. And that the bullet graze along the side of her head – that's what it is, a line of parted flesh and lost hair where the bullet dug a burning furrow through her scalp – might get infected.
      Miriam tells them she's not getting in the ambulance.
      She's not going to the hospital.
      She's fine.
      She doesn't have health insurance, and she doesn't have the money to compensate for not having health insurance. The last time she was in the hospital, she got walloped with a bill that had so many zeroes she thought she was at Pearl Harbor. (That bill – and all the others that followed – ended up in the trash).
      The statement she gives isn't all that far from the truth. In fact, she tells them everything – even the part where she backhanded Peggy – except for that mess about psychic visions. It's not that Miriam is averse to sharing that with people. But she's tried it in the past, and it turns out the cops don't care much for the "I had a psychic vision" defense.
      No reason to go kicking over hornet's nests.
      Instead she tells them that she saw the bulge of the gun and saw the man start to pull it out. Nothing that happened contradicts the story.
      Peggy doesn't want to press charges. Peggy doesn't even want to see her or talk to her, which is fine by Miriam.
      She tries to find out more about the gunman. But nobody knows anything. Or they're not talking. Either way, it's Ignorant City, population: Miriam.
      And so hours later, Miriam is free. They give her the old warning: "Don't leave the state just in case we need to talk to you again."
      She hears them. But she doesn't really hear them.
      She needs another cigarette.
      She needs to go home.
      If only she knew what that really meant.

FOUR
    Home Again, Home Again, Fuckity-Fuck
     
    The LBI causeway is a nightmare because it's always a nightmare, the island constantly binging and purging vacationers. During the summer, the causeway – a white bowing bridge over the gray-and-brown froth that is the Manahawkin Bay – is blocked like a plaqueclogged artery.
      It's the one way on and off the island.
      But Miriam doesn't drive. And that means she can move. The Schwinn 10-speed, the frame pockmarked with syphilitic sea-born rust, carries her past the cars – a swish of colors, a Dopplerian effect of radio stations and