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friendly. And she was definitely realer than the women in that catalog thing because there was no way I would ever tear this girl up. There was no way I would dare to hurt her or curse her or hide her under my bed.
    Eyes. Alive eyes. Light hair falling down her back. A pimple at the side of her face, near her hairline. Nice neck, shoulders. Not a beauty queen. Not one of those. You know the ones.
    She was real.
    She played music later on and it wasn’t anything much that I liked, but that made her realer still. The whole situation even made me smile at Dad when he told me off for digging something in the wrong place.
    “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said.
    “Dig over there.”
    I wonder if he knew. I doubt it. He didn’t seem to catch on when I asked if we’d be back here next week.
    “Yeah, we’ll be back,” he’d answered bluntly.
    “Good,” but I said it only to me.
    A bit later, I asked, “What’s these people’s last name?”
    “Conlon.”

    The thing that hit me most was that I suddenly started praying. I started saying these prayers for Rebecca Conlon and her family. I couldn’t stop myself.
    “Please bless Rebecca Conlon,” I kept saying to God. “Just let her be okay, okay? Let her and her family be okay tonight. That’s all I ask. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and I crossed myself like the Catholics do and I’m not even a Catholic. I don’t know what I am.
    During the next week, I kept praying, and I kept making sure to remember her face, and her voice.
    “I’d be good to her,” I kept telling God. “I would.”
    I was actually torn between the love I had for her face and her body and the love I had for her voice. Her face had character all right. Strength. I loved it. I definitely loved her neck and her throat and her shoulders and her arms and legs. All of it — and then there was the voice.
    The voice came from somewhere in her. It came from somewhere that didn’t show itself, I hoped, to just anyone.
    The question was,
Which part of her was I interested in most?
Was it the look of her, or the inner realness I could sense slipping out?
    I started taking walks, just to think of her — just to imagine what she was doing and if by any chance she was thinking of me.
    It became torture.
    “God, is she thinking of me?” I asked God.
    God didn’t answer so I just didn’t know. All I knew was that I walked parallel to urban traffic that laughed as it went past me. Crowds of people dropped out of buses and trains and ignored me as they went past. I didn’t care. I had Rebecca Conlon. Nothing else meant a whole lot. Even back home when I bickered with Rube I didn’t worry. I just kept not worrying, because she was somewhere near it all in my thoughts.
    Joy.
    Is that what I felt?
    Sometimes.
    At other times I was shouldered by thoughts of doubt and a kind of truth that told me she hadn’t thought of me at all. It was possible, because things never work out how they should. It was most likely that a sweet girl like that could do a whole lot better than me. She could do better than a fella who plotted ridiculous robberies with his brother, got thrown out of newsagencies, and humiliated his mother.
    Sometimes I thought about her naked, but never for long. I didn’t want her only like that. Honestly.
    I wanted to find the place where her voice came from. That was what I wanted. I wanted to be nice to her. I wanted to please her, and I begged for it to happen. Begging gets you nowhere, though. I knew that was true, but I did it inside me anyway as I counted the hours till I was going back to her.
    Things happened during the that will follow in the next chapters, but now I should tell you at the end of this one here what happened when Dad and I showed up at the Conlons’ the next Saturday.
    This is what happened.
    My heart beat big.
    One of them’s back.
    Can you believe it?
    The nerve of her.
    Do you know who I mean? It’s one of the women from that swimwear catalog,