The first rays of the sun reached Zoë’s backyard shrine. They bathed the structure in slanted, golden stripes, as light filtered through the branches of the maples. Zoë knelt in front of the assembled stones and the small, smiling Buddha. She didn’t claim any religion, but she liked the way the Buddha looked, the way he seemed to know her thoughts, even if he was just an eight-inch-high statue from a local curiosity shop.
The rubber garden kneeling pad made the knees of her leggings damp, and she could feel the slight breeze from the south, from the foothills, as it lifted her bangs. Shivering slightly, Zoë placed her hands on the broad granite that formed the base of the shrine. The coolness of the rough stone added to her chill. By midday, she would walk through the yard in only shorts and a lightweight tee, but at this early hour, the temperature hovered in the forties.
Still, it was important to be there, as the sun rose, to let Daniel know that she remembered.
“Happy birthday, Danny,” she said. She stared at the smiling Buddha as though he were a stand-in for her friend, who had been neither short nor fat, nor a god. Daniel’s smile had buoyed her more times than she could count, though, and she missed him for that and for other reasons.
He was buried four hundred and twenty-three miles away, and because that was an inconvenient distance to visit his grave often, she had erected the shrine.
“It’s been four years, and I miss you still.”
The small things matter in friendships as much as the cosmic ones. He knew her preference for horror films (always and ever after The Shining); he brought her Ecuadoran coffee by the half-pound and ground it precisely for her French press pot; he was the only person who held her confession that she regularly cheated at poker. He might have been her lover—she held that truth deep in her heart.
Zoë dipped her fingers into the font next to the Buddha and kissed her fingertips before massaging the statue’s round belly. “This is for you, Danny. My luck is holding, but I’m sure you could use more wherever you are.”
In addition to the Buddha, the font, and the stones, the shrine had room for a ceramic vase filled with several red roses. The sun, now full above the horizon, made the moisture on the rose petals glisten and sparkle. The day would be a fine one, and Zoë would not left herself be dragged down into dark memories: his frail hand as it lay in hers, she waiting there beside his bed as his body shut down.
“Happy thoughts, Danny,” she said, her voice catching in her throat.
And then, as she watched, her mouth open in astonishment, the rose petals released one by one from their sepals, drifting down toward the granite. Instinctively, she turned her palms up, letting the back of her hands rest on the shrine, and felt petals settle there.
She brought her cupped hands to her face and inhaled the scent. Except that it wasn’t the lush aroma of roses but the nuttiness of coffee—Ecuadoran coffee. When she opened her palms to look, her hands were filled with coffee beans.
The Buddha smiled at her. Or maybe it was really Daniel’s smile.
Laughing, Zoë carried the handful of beans inside and made a pot of coffee.
-
Most of the seats at the DMV were filled when Charla arrived, license renewal form in hand, and she ended up taking an unoccupied plastic chair against the far wall. She had an hour and maybe a smidge more to get her new license before Sam started docking her pay for being late from her lunch break.
-
This is your last chance, people, to find the perfect gift! My perfect gift would be a medical miracle for my dad. He’s been unconscious for two weeks, since the car wreck on I-80. The doctors say he should recover—if he wakes up. But he’s pushing eighty. It may not happen.
That would make a good card theme, right? A get-well wish made for people whose loved one is in a coma. May they snap out of it. Or, how about: Wake up, sleepy Jean. But that’s my dark humor bubbling up. Damn it, now my eyes are blurry.
-
Thanksgiving was three days ago, and I’m still reeling at what I witnessed. My sister hosted, as she has for the last twenty years. That was the only thing predictable about the holiday, though. I was there, of course.
-
At the chiming of eleven bells, the retreat’s evening session began. Squeezed around the table, six people scooted chairs until no one brushed up against anyone else. The room’s reddish glow came from a candelabra on a nearby shelf, and the air hung thick with cedar incense.
-
A crab shell on the riverbank marked the end of day. No crab inside, just the empty carapace and claws, bright objects against the darker sandy grit along the water. Jyr laid thin branches of hemlock around the shell, then watched the river current flickering where the setting sun touched the ripples.
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