Redeeming Polly taxed Trevor’s patience, even though he could see it was going to work. The plan required him not only to stretch the truth, but to hurry all the while. Which wasn’t how he worked, especially since the light showed him what lay ahead. If anything, Trevor moved a beat behind real-time.
[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]
Before kissing Kaya and Angelina till later, he invited them to a party for when he and Ya-Ya moved into the vacated cabin.
“Come by this afternoon. Ya-Ya and I travel light. And if everybody smokes good herb and dances like one-love, the cabin will turn into vex-free gates.”
Hearing the women’s glad approval, Trevor hurried away, relieved. Because in truth, he and Ya-Ya had moved in last night, after Awake’s Avalon set.
The angry cabin needed cleaning as did theirs once emptied. And little things took rearranging. Further, Ya-Ya believed, thanks to Trevor’s stupid insinuation, that Angelina had not only already approved the move, but practically requested it.
At noon Hailey and Brian, Jacob and his new woman, Royce and his family, Earle, Jazmine, Destiny, Marvin and Leon, Lauren Clay and her reunited parents, and various art students and teachers arrived for the loving-kindness party, catered by Carla.
With Marvin and Leon toastin’ reggae, everybody dancing, eating, and smoking Jacob’s ganja available from heaping platters, Trevor and Crescent slipped away.
Crescent, who owned a new car after working for two semesters at the Eden Café, wandered off to the parking lot first. Trevor kissed all his women, saying, “Soon.”
At the trail marker, Crescent kept the car warm while Trevor ran through the woods. At the hollow tree, he coaxed weak, filthy, fragile Polly to jump onto his back. The Spa Hotel in Hot Springs closed at four on Sundays but its owners were fervent Trevor followers and would wait straight through till Monday afternoon if he asked. Yet Trevor, who couldn’t remember worrying like this before, succumbed to a terrible urgency. Rescuing Polly bothered him beyond reason. He raced carrying her, and twice she clamped her raggedy hands over his eyes.
Trevor could see other peoples’ future; but not through rocks or trees. So he toppled. A ledge cut his jaw. Branches scratched his neck and his ankle kept wobbling until he stomped the ground, forcing it right. Polly slapped his head and whooped, “Gotcha, Mr. Music! Gotcha!”
He set her in the seat behind Crescent and strapped her in. Crescent, the girl who couldn’t smoke ganja or drink alcohol, because she never knew when to stop, recognized Polly as the woman who had nursed her after her hangovers. “Hey, Polly! Where have ya been?”
“Camping.”
“All right. Looks like you been sleeping under the stars for a month.” Crescent punched Trevor’s throbbing shoulder. “Why didn’t you say we were getting Polly?”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know why he felt so anxious or why his little injuries hurt so much. He had forgotten that Crescent knew Polly.
Pulling into the spa parking lot, Crescent said, “If you get your hair cut short, I will, too.”
“How short?”
“Short,” Crescent said. “And bleached pure white.”
Inside, Trevor ran on the treadmill and watched basketball on television. He swam a mile and dozed in the sauna.
Hours later, the girls met him in the lobby; their fingernails lacquered with sunbursts; their faces painted dramatically, and their caps of platinum hair trimmed sleek.
From the gift shop, he bought them matching shimmering yoga clothes and little black shoes.
Arriving back at the cabin finally, the party still in full swing, Trevor flicked the lights—Crescent and Polly calling out, “Surprise, surprise!”
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