Page 46 of The Sun and the Moon
“We can pull off in about half a mile,” she says, pinching to zoom out on the map so she can see locations. We’re going through the hills around Malibu right now in an area called Calabasas, one of the wealthiest cities in the United States, with more celebrities per square mile than Beverly Hills. “There’s a little park not too far from the road. Yelp reviews are decent. Lots of grass.” She looks directly into Chicken’s eyes. “Plenty of lush grass to do your business.”
Her care that Chicken has a plush place to pee is giving me the warm fuzzies. Most of the people I have dated have thought my interest in nature, both flora and fauna, was quirky at best. Even dating people within my field didn’t mean we would immediately have a connection on that topic. And if we did, the stress of that close proximity to my work made getting close outside it a lot harder.
My vigilance is something I’m proud of, even if I know it comes from growing up with a mother who made herself the main character and expected me to perfectly act out the supporting role in her life.
Sydney programs directions to the park, and I follow them, winding through a few neighborhood roads—beside some fancy big-ass mansions—toward the mountains. We have to detour about five minutes, but when we pull up, it’s clear the extra time was worth it. The area is framed at the back by the mountains in the Topanga State Park. Quiet, with a small playground and a walking path. I turn into the parking lot, which is only populated by a couple of other cars. Sydney hooks Chicken’s leash to the metal toggle on his blue collar and opens her door to climb out.
I shut the driver’s-side door and take in the view.
Sydney wore a pair of skintight yoga pants and a lightweight Burberry sweatshirt. Her hair is in a messy high bun, making it look even more like spun straw, and her face is mostly free of makeup, with the exception of mascara and a nude gloss. Her shape really is an hourglass, a full, swooping, curvy hourglass. She bounces around the green with Chicken, trying to convince him to go ahead and do his business.
“I think he wants to stroll,” she says, looking my way. I’m glad I have sunglasses on so she can’t see how my eyes are fixed on her.I meet up with her on the grass, and we walk in a diagonal toward the park, slow and plodding so Chicken gets his fill of sniffs in.
“You never told me what happened with Moira and your reading?” I ask, nervous. I sound it, too. She takes the corner of her lower lip between her teeth and nibbles. “Yikes, that bad, huh?” I brace for something bonkers, some tale that’s authentically and dementedlymy mother.
“No, it really wasn’t,” she says. Her eyes aren’t hidden behind shades; she doesn’t look right at me when she says it.
“You don’t have to try to spare me—nothing could possibly surprise me.”
“Oh, really? Would you be surprised to learn she had a photo of you in her Reading Room?”
“She has a photo of me?” This does give me pause.
“You didn’t know?” she asks.
“Where was it? Her desk or the altar?”
“What the hell is an altar?”
“The shelf with the crystals and candles. She used to keep a photo of a villa in Tuscany there,” I reply, shoving my hands in my pockets. I feel suddenly chilly even though the temp hasn’t changed.
“So it’s, like, for manifestation?” Sydney asks.
“I’m surprised Ms. Left Brain Pilot knows about manifestation,” I goad her.
“I’m from LA. It’s like the bible of the West Coast.” She grins, and I laugh, which startles Chicken out of his pee stance. “That’s where it was, yes. Surrounded by crystals and candles.”
“Great, good to know she’s crossed yet another boundary I set for her.”
“You set a boundary that she wouldn’t manifest for you?” Her nose scrunches up with confusion, but the smile on her face lets me know just how silly she thinks that is.
“I told her not to do any spells to try and bring me back to LA.”
The wordspellsdoes seem to throw her a bit, but not so much that she dwells on it.
“I don’t know if it wasthat, but you were younger in the picture, and you were holding a hummingbird in your hand. You looked…happy.” She pauses, blinking, as if trying to conjure it from memory. “Happy and free.”
My mind is flooded immediately with the memory of the day I took that photo—or, I guess, the day Moira took that photo of me. Without prompting from Sydney, I realize I want to tell the story, and somehow, I know she wants to hear it.
“My bedroom window was right next to that tree branch,” I begin, glancing to her face, looking for a reaction. Her eyes settle on me. “There had been a young female hummingbird building a nest outside of the window. Right where I could see it, and she didn’t seem to mind when I watched.”
Chicken stops at a patch of dandelion, and Sydney doesn’t prod him to move along too quickly.
“I can’t believe that she let you watch her,” she says, urging me on. Interested in a story just about me.
“I couldn’t, either, and I gotreallyinvested. Like,didn’t want to go to school for fear I’d miss somethinginvested,” I continue. “But, of course, I did go to school, and one of those days she vanished. I watched all night, the next morning, but she didn’t come back. I was sure something horrible had happened to her—I got obsessed and started trying to, like,solve the mystery. Looked up everythingI could about hummingbirds’ mating habits and nest-making habits—they can be really vicious, especially during mating season.”
“Fair. It’s probably pretty brutal out there.”
