Three words. Made it holy.
Are you crepuscular?
Sent.
And two more words in my follow-up email: I am.
That night, Abe’s show was a rerun. He was discussing coywolves and he used words like coyote and bones and feast and young. I sat there on my bed in my long-sleeved Forrest Ranger shirt and flowery underwear, watching him. He was wearing the army-green pocket T-shirt he always wore, the same chunky black watch. No wedding ring.
I loved his hands and his fingers. I loved his short fingernails, each with their own little pale crescent moon. I watched his arms, his hands as he lifted the tranquilized coywolf pup, as he gently tagged its ear and placed it back into the little dirt hole he’d pulled it out of. “This way we’ll be able to track its growth,” he said quietly, as if he didn’t want to wake a sleeping baby. He was on one knee saying the word hybrid when my phone buzzed with his email reply.
Ha! Yes, I am crepuscular too.
Abe was talking and talking, his voice coming from my television as I typed out: We should be crepuscular together sometime. Love, Lacey.
I wondered if he’d notice the Love. It was true. I loved his compass, his Leatherman, his Swiss Army knife, his headlamp and folding saw. His brown cargo pants, how careful he was around the sleeping baby animals. How wide-eyed he got when he stumbled upon something unexpected. Abe Forrest was my magnetic north. Once he was tagging a tiny fawn and he said look at how small and beautiful she is, she has the prettiest markings. He bent down and said hey there girl in his scratchy, sleepy morning voice. And I wished his voice and those words were crackers so I could eat them. I attached my favorite picture of me to the email, the picture where I’m wearing a white triangle bikini and sunglasses and my hair is all wild and wavy with weather. I was on my brother’s boat, eating a peach. It was taken last summer and I wanted Abe to know what I looked like, that I wasn’t a dude or a kid. I wanted him to think I was pretty, but, even if he didn’t, he’d still like the picture. Maybe it would remind him of a fun summer he’d had on a boat once or a happy, sexy beer commercial or something.
Is this really you? he wrote back.
Yes.
Where do you live, Lacey?
About forty-five minutes from you.
How do you know where I live, Lacey?
I know because I Googled it.
And I had. I’d even written down his address on a torn piece of paper and slipped it into my wallet where I kept the cash. I drew a little heart next to Abraham and a little tree next to Forrest. I kissed it and left a sticky-cherry lipstick mark. He lived on a street called Halcyon and it felt like a sign. Halcyons were a kind of bird, and his new bird episode was coming on the next week.
It was time for bed, so I turned the TV off and waited for his reply. It wasn’t as quick as the others, but it came. Finally.
Well, you certainly are easy on the eyes, he wrote.
I heard his voice in my head saying it, and this too: Look at how small and beautiful she is, she has the prettiest markings. I pictured him gently lifting me from my bed, tagging my ear, tracking me all month. A year, maybe.
* * *
Abe Forrest came to my house at dusk, two weeks later. He apologized for not being able to make it sooner, but he was traveling, working. When he showed up, he wasn’t wearing his work clothes. He was wearing a thin blue-gray plaid shirt rolled up at the sleeves and dark jeans, brown boots. I was wearing a dress and he said maybe he should’ve worn a tie. I told him no. I told him ties were just penis arrows.
“These men are walking around everywhere with arrows pointing straight down to their penises and they know exactly what they’re doing. They do it on purpose, but…they act like we don’t know…,” I said, rambling. Abe laughed. I’d never heard his laugh before. He never laughed on his show. His laugh was husky and if it were a color it would be melon-orange. I loved how his forty-something-year-old eyes crinkled at the corners.
My dress had a belt. I never wore dresses. I got that dress for Abe