I can picture the maps of a dozen cities that all hang together now. Over the Brooklyn Bridge to emerge in South Boston. Down the Hollywood Hills to land in Boulder Valley. The straight lines are all illusions, the average of a collective point of view. Are the roads in Rome still straight? Would the strangers be too strange? Will I be too strange for the strangers that I meet out there when I have to go back to the Bad Place?

Do you know the story of the top and the ball? It was one of the short ones in the tattered book of bedtime stories that my dad had somehow smuggled from his own childhood. After “The Ugly Duckling” and before “The Little Match Girl.” It was strange and never my favorite, about two toys who are in love until the ball gets lost and ends up warped by weather and neglect. How long will it be until me or my folks have weathered into a shape where we can’t even recognize each other anymore? Or until we’ve changed so much we can’t love each other again, like jigsaw puzzle pieces that have gotten wet and distorted and can’t fit together, like they should, and the picture will never be right? I wonder if what I’ve lost is the possibility of fitting anywhere. An extraneous piece, the wrong blue for the sky or the sea, the wrong green for the leaves or the grass or the café awnings or the leather of the little boy’s lederhosen.

My parents lost all the photos from my childhood in some move or other. I don’t have the straw to spin into gold, the way I do it up here in Mrs. Tyburn’s attic. My magic will work on her but not on me. I’ll have to start from scratch, on my own, the old-fashioned way. Except they’ll come back for me tomorrow. I know they will.

Chapter Four

Putting your phone on silent is supposed to be subtle, but that only works if you have it in your pocket or your bag or something. My phone is on the table, where it has a kind of seizure, knocking its back against the surface over and over, making so much noise you wish you’d just left it on. I’m too clumsy and fumble with it, and by the time I press the green button I’ve missed his call again. Jason’s usual First Friday call. He can leave a message.