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Especially one of them. She’d come into my room and I’d be lying on my bed not wanting to wake up. She’d sing right out loud. Just kept going till I gave up, till my eyes were wide open and I was awake.”
    “How does it go?” she asks. “Can you sing it?”
    Then, without thinking, I say, “Goes like this,” and I sing for her …
    Buckets of rain

Buckets of tears

Got all them buckets comin’ out of my ears

Buckets of moonbeams in my hand

I got all the love, honey baby
,
You can stand
.
    I been meek

And hard as an oak

I seen pretty people disappear like smoke

Friends will arrive, friends will disappear

If you want me, honey baby
,
I’ll be here
.
    She’s nodding her head approvingly, while we both sit there feeling the buzz of the lyrics and letting the melody linger inthe bright morning air. I don’t have much of a voice, but I can carry a tune, and even without the help of my guitar I can stay on pitch. Angela looks out across the grass and smiles; she seems pleased, her eyes opened wide.
    “So where’s she now?” she finally asks without looking over at me. “I mean, your mother.”
    “Oh,” I reply as though it’s no big deal and I’m totally over it, “she died years ago. When I was a kid. I hardly remember her. I’m only telling you that so you know why my name is Dylan.”
    “Dylan,” she says, and it sounds like something I could get used to. “But I can still call you Alex, right?”
    I fall back and lie there so that I can fully enjoy this new feeling.
This is great
, I think,
just great. Alex
. I pretend the grass isn’t killing Alex. I decide to forget that Dylan has a job, and I tell myself that his fellow workers aren’t wondering about him back at the clubhouse. But then slowly, very slowly, the guilt creeps in like poison into groundwater, and I start to feel Dylan choking Alex to death.
    “I’ve got to get to work,” I say as I get up and brush my pant leg. Even I’m surprised by the announcement, but it’s getting late, and the shadows on the grass are shortening at an alarming rate.
    Angela pulls her whole head back and gives me a sharp look. “Just like that?”
    “Got to. I’m late. And I can’t lose this job, or my dad will make my life miserable.”
    “Give me your number.”
    Is it possible that she likes me? I decide to believe it until further notice. I walk backward, calling out my digits. I’m totally cool and completely in control. Almost immediately, I trip on the sprinkler spigot embedded in the grass, go flying, and fall flat on my ass. Despite the fact that I’m back on my feet in a matter of seconds, the harm’s been done. She’ll never call me, I think, not in a million years. Two seconds later, my phone rings.
    “Hello?” I say to the person on the other end.
    “That was hilarious,” Angela says in between laughs. “Did you do that on purpose? Because if you did, that was genius.”
    “I did. I totally did that on purpose.”

The Speed of Light
    Marie disappeared earlier today, so Doug and I are driving around in his dented Explorer, looking for her.
    “She runs away one more time, I’m buying her one of those ankle bracelets,” Doug announces. His jaw is tight, and he’s wearing shorts, a button-down shirt, and a beat-up Dolphins cap.
    Marie lives in a continuing-care facility known as the Crestview Center for Continuing Care and Senior Living, but for some reason Doug and I never call it by its name. We call it
the place
. Marie has been living there for almost three years, and by now she has become an expert at “slipping the knot.” Early on she complained that the people who were assisting her were always telling her what
not
to do:
“You can
not
go beyond the gate.”
“You are
not
allowed to leave your clothes in the game room.”
“You may
not
have visitors in your room without signing them in at the reception desk.”
So “slipping the knot” is also known as “slipping the
not
.”
    “Is that her?” Doug