I wait, masked as they wheel her out. Six feet away, also masked, a shrunken white thing. In clothes I've never seen before. I tell her my name. She repeats it, as a question.
I turned and held my salute, waiting for the limo to drive by. Instead, it stopped. Nixon got out and walked toward me.
I returned to the airport with my student after an instructional flight. The airfield had been VFR earlier; a cloud ceiling developed while airborne. A recall of solo students that were launched earlier had been initiated.
I saw it: a child's metal spring horse. My own had been bouncy but this, this was stiff with rust. Brown paint, shine gone, motionless in its gallop through the weeds.
I was at the Rewe checkout when a mom entered, pushing a cart piled with crates of recyclable glass bottles. Her son pressed on a bottom crate with his toddler legs. Crash! Smash! Silence.
I idolize Bob Dylan. When my son got a work-study assignment to prepare Bob’s dressing room for a campus concert, I drove six hours.
She’s sorry if she seems out of it, she just got back, she was gone. Gone to New York, her son passed away …
She said, “We need to talk.”
My heart leaped to my throat.