“Mom. There’s a cop in the street outside. And nobody cares about grass anymore.”

Mom smiles.

“Where’d you get a word like that? Is that what kids are calling it today? Has it come full circle like that?”

Melanie rolls her eyes, untwists new braids.

“And talking to a cop is different than them outside watching the house.”

“I know, Mom.”

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, you always do well.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Let me know.”

“Let you know what?”

“Let me know how things turn out with all of this.”

“I don’t know what there is to tell.”

“You know what I mean.”

But she doesn’t. Or doesn’t care. Mom leaves and Melanie works at her hair. She hears an owl-like screech outside, a shriek that ripens into a tire on the street. Comb in hand, she goes to the window.

A dark Samhattan night. The police are parked somewhere down the block out front. Out of view. From Melanie’s window: a man takes his trash out even though trash day is tomorrow. A teen younger than Melanie sits on the stone steps of her brick home.

There’s that figure on the bike again. Many blocks up. From this distance, it’s hard to make out the details.

Melanie heads back to the mirror.

She thinks of the seven-footer asleep in her car. Thinks of the fumes rising from the pipe, gas snaking in the garage, fumes slinking up into the car, up the length of her face, up her nose, to her brain that’s taking in the sound of a purring engine and hard music.

Her ghost doesn’t know if this is a dream or not…

“Quit it,” Melanie says.

But wow if that phrase of Aunt Paula’s isn’t crystal clear in her head. After so long of not having thought of it at all.

“Ugh…”

She’s glad there’s nobody to talk to in her bedroom. It’s so much better when you don’t have to. So much better. Natasha, she’s at the opposite end of the spectrum. She talks like it’s a city ordinance. Shit, did you see her telling the policewoman who she should be going after?

She sets the comb on her dresser, heads back to the window.

Outside, the biker again. Under a lamp. Back into the dark. The wheels spin slow by a pair of men talking on the sidewalk. The men don’t acknowledge the rider. This bothers Melanie.

Maybe it’s the hair, the jacket, the fact that it feels like the biker is pedaling in slow motion even as the men gesture at a regular speed. Like something impossible in a dream.

Why didn’t the men look at her?

“Her?” Melanie asks.

She steps from the window, crosses her bedroom, hesitates at the bedroom door. Calls out:

“Mom?”

Mom’s downstairs. Melanie can see the bottom of the curved staircase. Can see the front door. Can hear the TV is on in the kitchen.

“Mom?”

“What’s up, Mel?”

Melanie doesn’t know what’s up. She hurries back to the window.