“Parker?” Henry said. “Charlie Parker, come inside at once,” and it struck me, because the bird I’d always imagined Charlie Parker to be was something sleek and soaring like his music, not a fluffed-up, crapped-out old parakeet in a cage. I wondered if this Charlie Parker was even a tiny bit tempted to risk it, take its chances with the big world, and just fly. But birds like that don’t survive in the wild. Not here anyway. Maybe it traveled like Henry Lake did, not for real, just in its own head. Henry’s hand came out then and the bird hopped straight onto the bowl of his crumpled, ancient palm, and there was my answer. The window rumbled shut and I thought, Oh well, we’re here now, let’s see what happens. I bet it’s nothing at all.

Just how wrong can a person be?

Novo

You are the place I return to, in between times. My fulcrum, the point at my center, around which all of me turns. You are my chance at stillness. The rock in my water. I know you.

I wait for you to see me. I hope for it, that pin drop in my infinities. I know to hope, but not to be certain. It is never guaranteed.

I would show you all the magic there is if you asked me. I would bring you the universe on a plate, take you out from under the rules that apply, so that anything was possible. You could slip between layers of sky and count the atoms. You could reflect light like the moon. You could hear all the languages of the world, all their words and all the wordless ones too, and you would know them. You could fly in water and swim in air. You could spend a whole life’s worth of time in the moments it takes you to blink.

I would give you anything you asked for, in exchange for one of your looks.

EIGHT

Jude

I remember everything about the next day clear as glass, because it’s when Novo showed up. Nine thirty-four A.M. on the first of July is a page-corner, red-letter, highlighter-pen kind of Now. After it, nothing was, or is, or could ever possibly be the same. Nine thirty-three I was out front, reading in a sunlit patch of grass, medicating my sad situation with something made-up and far more dramatic, with better characters and sharper dialogue than my little life could ever muster, up until then. This thing happening, his car arriving, made me stop. Nine thirty-three was the quiet before the storm, the lull before the penny dropped, the last in-breath of life, as I knew it anyway. And then the miracle. Then Novo. I remember.