Ernest finds the five toy cars on the kitchen counter before breakfast, while I’m still in the shower, and swallows them all. He’s reading yesterday’s paper and looking innocent when I come out in my bathrobe.

“Where did they go?” I say, hands on my hips.

“You’re not getting them back until you tell me what you paid for them,” says Ernest.

“Ten damn years of my life,” I mutter.

Through the thin trailer walls we hear the clank of the ride operators testing the ferris wheel and the tilt-a-whirl and the merry-go-round, sounds we’ve heard almost every morning for the past several years and will keep hearing for twenty more, like it or not.

“Don’t steal toys for our kid,” he says.

“The metal is going to give you a stomachache,” I say. “Spit the cars back up.”

“Then you’re going to wash them off and I’m going to walk with you back to wherever you got them from.”

“Where’s all the extra money you’re bringing in to buy something for Bryce?” I say. Doing the county fair circuit with other food vendors was his idea, but people seem more tight-fisted here than when we’re traveling with a carnival and a bunch of sideshow acts like his.

“Kids have more fun with cardboard boxes anyway,” he says.

“You didn’t see Bryce last night,” I say. “I took him to the display with all the toy collections. Trains and plastic dinosaurs and stuffed animals and metal soldiers. They’re judged, you know. Kids win blue and red and white ribbons for all that junk. Bryce was drooling.”

“You shouldn’t have gone,” Ernest sighs.

“Why the fuck does any little kid need seventy-nine cars anyway? How do they ever play with them all?”

Ernest doesn’t say anything, just starts bringing the cars up one by one, spitting them into his cupped hands. He takes them to the sink and rinses them off.

“Become a hairstylist then,” he says. “Learn how to do medical transcription. Something useful.”

“And you’ll do what?” I say. “Be a door to door showman? Walk around and swallow coins for housewives?” He knows that we can’t leave the circuit, have to pay off the trailers, can’t go further into debt when we don’t even own what we have.

I hear Bryce singing, it’s what he does when he wakes up, so I leave my husband washing spit off toy cars to get my kid out of bed. Bryce is four. I think he’s kind of small for his age, but there aren’t many other vendors who have children, so I don’t have anyone to compare him to. Bryce grins at me when I walk into his room, holds out his arms.

“Hi Mama,” he says. “Up, please.”

When I touch his hands they feel a bit sticky, but little kids are usually a bit sticky, and I’m often a bit sticky since I’m coating apples and bananas and popcorn with caramel all day.

His room is a closet, just enough space for his cot. His clothes and a few books and toys I got at a flea market are on a shelf above the cot. I want him to have something nice. Something new. Dammit. Ernest and I love traveling, what stinks is the bare bones budget. We worry, too, about raising a kid on the road, but tell each other he’ll learn more and see more than if we bought a dinky little house and got domestic. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that we don’t have money for a house. Sometimes we like to pretend that we have options. Right now there’s only life on the circuit. Ernest has been practicing the art of regurgitation, strengthening the muscles in his throat and esophagus, for years. I bought my little confections trailer with money from my grandmother that was supposed to fund my first year of college.

I carry Bryce as far as the end of the hallway then set him down, let him toddle into the kitchen. Ernest has hidden the cars and put a napkin and a powdered sugar donut at Bryce’s place at the table. He tousles Bryce’s hair after he climbs up on the chair. I grab a donut from the box and bite in. Too dry.

After breakfast we walk fifty feet to the midway, the little trailer where I make caramel apples and caramel bananas and caramel corn. The other vendors are heating oil for French fries and corn dogs and funnel cakes, but after ten years of carnival life I don’t smell the odor of fried foods anymore, only notice it when it’s gone. My booth is a little way down from Ernest’s show tent. He sits in the back of my trailer and pours a little antibacterial mouthwash on a cloth, uses it to clean the coins and pocketwatch and large glass marbles he swallows and regurgitates in his act. He keeps each object down for thirty seconds before bringing it back up. For his finale he asks members of the audience if they have anything they want him to swallow for an extra charge. I can’t watch his show anymore because he won’t refuse anything smaller than a cue ball, and it makes me ill to see him.

“You didn’t hurt yourself this morning,” I say quietly while poking Popsicle sticks through the bottoms of apples and watching the pot of melted caramel on my little stove to make sure it doesn’t burn.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“The cars didn’t have sharp edges?” I say.

“I’m fine,” he says again.

“I worry,” I say.

“You shouldn’t,” he says, but I don’t trust his judgment. I know that sometimes he’s gotten little wounds inside his esophagus and had to take a few days off because of the resulting sore throat.

“You need to wash his hands,” Ernest says when he hugs Bryce before he leaves. “He’s sticky.”

I wipe off Bryce again and sit him at his little plastic table in the corner with some crayons and a coloring book. I stand at the counter beside him, peel bananas and poke wooden sticks in them. The caramel I use for the apples is thick, the stuff for the bananas and the popcorn is a bit thinner, but involves the same ingredients. My grandmother’s recipe. She’s the one who gave me the money for college, the one who was upset when Ernest suggested it would be better for me to have a mobile candy store in a carnival rather than own one in town, but I wasn’t that hard to convince.

When we graduated from high school we wanted to travel, get the hell out of rural Ohio, have our own businesses. He’d been performing at talent shows for a couple years. I’d taken prizes in 4-H for confections and was in advanced math classes in school, so I figured I was set to handle our finances. For six years we did okay with just the two of us, lived cheap and saw a lot more of the country than we’d expected, even though I didn’t always like the long hours and the flies and the heat. But then Bryce came and two months after that we needed a new Airstream, so we were up to our eyeballs in debt before we knew what hit us. We travel from one coast to the other, need to keep working, paying everything off. The resale value on the trailers is too low to consider selling them. Sometimes Ernest talks about us disappearing – from the circuit, the creditors, everything – but that scares me. It seems like you couldn’t go back after that.

Business in the morning is slow. People want sweets after lunch and in the evening, so I dip apples and bananas, pop corn and form it into balls. I like the process, laying out the neat rows of apples and bananas and plastic-wrapped popcorn balls. On a good day I’ll make a hundred or a hundred fifty dollars profit. On a bad day I’ll break even. On a really bad day I won’t even do that, and Bryce and Ernest and I will eat popcorn and bananas and apples for dinner. I can’t stomach the caramel anymore, have to scrape it off.

I give Bryce a banana when he’s hungry. His hands still feel sticky, but I’m too tired to wipe them off.

“Caramel, please,” he says, but I shake my head. He gets enough sweets from the ladies who run the funnel cake and cotton candy booths. They can’t tell him no.

Ernest takes a break around one in the afternoon for lunch. We sit in the back of my trailer and eat hot dogs rolled in bread. I have to stand up from time to time when a customer wants a popcorn ball or caramel apple.

“I’ll watch the booth for a little while and you can go return those cars,” Ernest says to me. He has to wait at least an hour after eating to resume his act, or else unwanted things come back up along with the objects he swallowed.

“How much did you make this morning?” I say.

“Fifty,” he says.

“We’re going to need a lot more to make the payment on the trailer this month,” I say. “Not to mention pay for gas. The price is going up. I don’t know how we’re going to afford to haul the booth and the trailer around.”

“So I’ll watch the booth while you give back the cars,” he says.

“Not until evening,” I say.

“Cars?” says Bryce. “Where?”

“Why not now?” says Ernest.

“I have to figure out what to say,” I say.

“How about ‘I stole these and it was wrong and I’m giving them back.’” says Ernest.

“Just give me the damn cars,” I say.

Ernest pulls the cars out of his pocket and drops them in my cupped hands. They’re little cars, as long as my ring finger, but nice ones with detailed paint jobs, racing stripes and flames along the sides. I’m pleased to see they weren’t damaged by being swallowed.

“Here,” I say, handing one to Bryce who takes it in his small fingers.

“Cars,” says Bryce.

“What are you doing?” says Ernest, trying to get the car back from Bryce who holds it tightly. He has the best grip of any little kid I’ve ever met.

“Letting him play with it for a moment,” I say. “What harm can that do?”

“I don’t believe you,” says Ernest, wresting the car away from Bryce.

“I want the car,” says Bryce. He starts crying like I hoped he would.

“It’s sticky now,” says Ernest.

“I’ll wipe it off,” I grumble.

“Just give them back,” sighs Ernest. “Please. Before whatever little kid who owns that collection starts crying, too.”

And I know he kind of has a point, so I rise the car off in my tiny sink, dry it on a hand towel, and walk back to the white barn with the toy collections display. There aren’t too many people milling around, so it’s not hard to open up the back of the display case like I did last night and slip the cars in. They really should lock those things. I look at the case again and shake my head, wonder if the kid who owns the collection would have realized those five cars were gone. Meanwhile my husband figures our kid should be fine with cardboard boxes.

“Have you been feeding him straight caramel?” says Ernest when I get back to my booth. “I can’t get his hands clean.”

“I’m sticky,” says Bryce.

“I’ll wipe him off again,” I say, grabbing Bryce’s hands and scrubbing them with a damp cloth until he starts whining to get back to his coloring book. He really likes coloring and he’s good for a four-year-old, usually manages to stay in the lines. I keep one eye on him and one on the counter, wish there were a few more kids around for him to play with.

The afternoon is busy, which makes me pleased, but it’s a Saturday and they’re usually profitable. I give Bryce macaroni and cheese for dinner, only have time for a few bites myself until I close the booth at nine. Ernest and I eat cold macaroni while Bryce keeps coloring.

“Sticky again,” says Bryce when I try to take the crayons out of his hand. His palms feel like they’ve been smeared with honey, but the paper around the crayon is perfectly smooth.

“You need a bath,” I say, carrying him to the trailer while Ernest locks my booth for the night.

I draw the water in the tub while Bryce tries to undress himself, but he has a problem getting his shirt off and I have to pull it over his head.

“What did you do?” I say to him.

“Too sticky,” says Bryce.

His shirt doesn’t feel sticky, though, so I toss it on the floor, soap Bryce up with a sponge, wash his arms and legs and stomach, then rinse him off. When he gets out of the tub and I dry him off, the towel still wants to stick, so I plop him back in the water and start washing again. This time I scrub harder, until his skin shines pink and he starts to wince.

“You’re hurting me,” he says.

“I’m sorry, honey,” I say, lifting him out of the tub again, but the second washing doesn’t seem to have done any good. It’s like his skin is made of glue or tape. I call Ernest to the bathroom and show him how the towel clings to Bryce and I have to pull it off.

“Not clean enough,” says Ernest.

“I washed him twice,” I say.

“It hurt,” says Bryce, rubbing his arms.

Ernest bends down, touches Bryce’s hand.

“Let’s go to bed,” he says, “then we’ll take another bath in the morning.”

When I tuck Bryce in, he hugs me around my neck. Pulling him off requires effort.

“He’s been like that all day,” I tell Ernest when I walk back to the living room.

“Not much we can do at ten at night,” he says. “Maybe it’ll have worn off by morning.”

When I wake Bryce at nine, he’s cocooned tightly in his sheets and I can barely get his pajamas off.

“He’s still sticking to things,” I yell to Ernest. In a minute he appears in Bryce’s door, helps me wrestle Bryce into shorts and a t-shirt. I’m afraid to touch Bryce for the rest of the morning. He doesn’t seem to have a hard time eating breakfast, walks beside me to the caramel apple booth, but I have to pry the crayons out of his hand when it’s time to eat lunch. The tugging doesn’t seem to hurt his skin, makes me think more of magnets than glue.

Ernest and I don’t talk at lunch, just watch Bryce eat. I give him a caramel covered banana, which makes him happy.

In the evening when it’s time to walk back to the trailer, I think Bryce has problems standing up, like his rear is stuck to his little plastic chair. I pick him up and carry him out of the food booth, but once we’re in the kitchen I can barely get him out of my arms. I give him another bath. The washcloth doesn’t stick, but the towel tries to mummify him.

“We have to take him to a doctor or something,” says Ernest once Bryce is in bed.

“What can a doctor tell us?” I say. “That our kid is sweating sugar? We’d get to see him once a week from behind a pane of glass.”

We can’t think of anything to do, go to bed rubbing our fingers together and wondering if somehow they’ll start sticking together too.

The next day with Bryce is even more of a trial, wrangling him from bed and out of his pajamas. He walks to the kitchen easy enough, but starts crying when he can’t get up off his chair. Ernest grabs the chair and I grab Bryce’s hands and we pull him free.

It’s a Monday and business is awful and I mope around my booth because we owe too much money to the bank and to my parents back home. The latter is worse since I’m more afraid of my mother than any accountant. She says I could have done better than Ernest. Sometimes I think we should have let my folks take care of Bryce for a while, but I didn’t want to. Still don’t want to. Instead we’ll be at this fairgrounds with the rest of the vendors through the middle of the week before we pack up and head to Georgia. I hate traveling in the south. Too humid.

Bryce is teary all day. Cries when he can’t get crayons out of his hand, so I have to help him switch colors. Cries after lunch when he can’t get the spoon out of his hand to start crayoning again. Cries when he can’t get out of his chair because he has to pee. I sell the occasional popcorn ball and try to comfort him, but when I smooth his hair my hand sticks to his head. I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing, burn two batches of caramel.

My poor son is crying so hard that Ruby from the cotton candy booth and Erma from funnel cake booth leave their husbands in charge and walk over to see what’s the matter. Both of them have grandkids in far-away states, work the fair circuit during the summer so they can travel during their retirement years. They love doting over Bryce. I let them in through the back door and try to keep one eye on the caramel I have on the stove.

Bryce whimpers at his table and holds his arms up to Ruby, who picks him up but is surprised when the chair stays on his rear. Erma pulls it off. Both of the ladies wrinkle their noses at him and then at me.

“He’s really sticky,” says Ruby. “Didn’t he get a bath last night?”

“I almost got two again,” says Bryce.

“He spilled some sugar earlier today,” I say, “and it mixed with the orange juice he dripped on his chair. I haven’t had time to go home, but when Ernest comes back I’m sure he can clean Bryce up.”

“I wouldn’t mind giving him a bath, honey,” says Ruby. “Since you’re so busy.”

“No, no,” I say perhaps too quickly. “Bryce is already a bit modest, even around me. He’s just a little sticky. Happens quite a bit.”

The ladies tilt their heads at me.

“And he was fussy last night and didn’t want to go to bed,” I say, “so of course he’s cranky today. Didn’t get enough sleep.”

“Too sticky,” says Bryce.

“Okay, hon,” says Ruby, bouncing Bryce on her hip. “We’re just across the way, so call if you need help.”

“Thanks,” I say, trying to extract Bryce from her arms without tugging too hard. He touched a curl of Ruby’s hair and it comes with his hand so I have to give an extra yank to wrench the curl free. The ladies tell me to have a pleasant afternoon, but even when they’ve returned to their booths I see them talking over their shoulders to their husbands, looking across the way at me every once in a while. I know they will return tomorrow to see if Bryce is clean and cheery.

Dammit. I like those ladies, don’t want them to think Ernest and I are bad parents, don’t want anyone to try and take him to the hospital. By the time Ernest has finished performing for the day I’m about ready to cry myself. He’s not in a good mood, didn’t sell very many tickets, and jokes ruefully about making Bryce into an attraction as the Incredible Glue Boy.

“We’re not going to put our kid on display,” I say.

“I’m not serious,” says Ernest. He takes a little toy car out of his pocket and give it to Bryce to play with. It’s cheap and plastic and I think he got it from one of the guys who runs the rigged games, the ones where you have to toss a ring around the neck of a bottle or knock down a bottle pyramid with a baseball. Bryce is happy, starts playing with the car, running it back and forth across his little plastic table, but then he can’t put it down. We haul him back home and I sit him on my lap, but I’m too tired to try and pull him off when it’s time to go to bed.

“We have to take him to someone,” says Ernest. “A medical professional. There must be some biological reason for this.” But all I can picture is my poor kid wrapped in sterile white sheets that I won’t be able to pry off.

“Let me help you,” says Ernest. He tries to remove my arms from around Bryce who whines and clutches at my shirt.

“Stop,” I say. “Just let us sit here a bit longer.”

Around eleven Ernest goes to bed, leaving me and Bryce in the chair. Outside I hear the clanking and yelling of the vendors and the ride operators closing for the night, the warbling calls of those who are already tipsy with booze. Bryce’s fist full of my hair. My legs losing sensation because of his weight. We’re both too weak and tired to move. He curls his body into mine. For a couple moments I can forget we’re stuck together. Relax. Tell myself in the morning we can give him mittens. Something to put over his sticky hands. In the morning we can deal with it.

This story first appeared in Danse Macabre,

Cassandra

The migration from Greece started because the gods were bored and watching more TV.  Everyone who's anyone is on TV, and half of them live in New York or Hollywood, so the gods figured they had to move to America to be in the spotlight again.  It worked for the most part. 

Demeter has a chain of upscale restaurants in New York and California, two cooking shows, and jets from one coast to the other.  Eros and Aphrodite are frequent network TV talk show guests, have written fifteen books, and are relationship therapists to the biggest Hollywood names.  Zeus always has some director calling him for a TV or movie cameo, and there's a stream of blond chicks waiting to hang on his arm and be the latest tabloid scandal.

But my neighborhood is full of regular people, nymphs and satyrs and a couple of sphinxes and the cyclops family and Leda who used to be queen of Sparta but works with me in the bakery.  We were tired of spectacle following centuries of monsters and heroes and blood, wanted a sitcom life and Midwestern normalcy.  But I've always had a problem being normal. 

It started when I was still Cassandra the princess, daughter of Queen Hecuba and King Priam of Troy, and pretty enough for Apollo to notice me.  At first I thought this was great—he was cute and it's hard not to feel like hot stuff when a god wants to be your boyfriend.  He visited every other day and we made out in my bedroom and I didn't tell anybody because he said not to, but my parents would've freaked out if I'd mentioned it.

Because he loved me so much, Apollo gave me the ability to see the future.

The images were scary but thrilling.  I saw the gardener fall off his ladder, my mother turn pale from a bad cold, and my father lead a charge into disastrous battle.  I told the gardener to be careful trimming high bushes and my mother stay out of chills and my father to be careful on his next march. 

“Fun, isn't it?” said Apollo when he visited.

I said, “I have to get used to it.”

“There's time to do that,” he said, putting his arms around my waist.  “Just be true to me forever.  No other guys.”

But Apollo had other girlfriends, and was only around for a few hours every other day.  That's why it was easy for me to start talking with one of our mealtime servers.  He told good jokes and played the lyre well.  We met in the garden after lunch and kissed a few times, never anything serious, but when Apollo found out he was pissed. 

“You promised,” he said, crossing his arms as he sat on my bed.

“Sorry,” I said, rolling my eyes.  It was the eye-rolling that got to him.

“You'll keep your prophecy gift,” he said, “but even though you know the future, nobody will believe what you say.”

“Fine,” I said.  “I'll just shut up.”

He gave me a mean smile and disappeared.

That night the worst visions careened through my head: 

My father and many other soldiers being killed in a war. 

My mother grieving and wasting away. 

The gardener teetering on the edge of a wall, losing his balance, and breaking his neck. 

The serving guy I liked going off to another war and...

I warned my too-confident father about battles ahead, warned my cheery mother about servants that could be injured, and sent a note to the server boy that he should learn how to be a chef and wield paring knives instead of spears.  I talked and talked, hoping to warn everyone, but my parents got tired of lunchtime recitations.

“You're paying too much attention to these dreams and not enough to your studies,” said my father.  “If you concentrated more on your lessons, the visions would go away.”

After months of being ignored I grew tired of my knowledge and kept quiet, but that's what Apollo wanted me to do.  Live alone with my prophecies.  The “gift” also came with immortality.  That asshole made sure I had plenty of time to remember I'd blown him off.  I'll be seventeen for eternity.  My parents and friends and everyone I knew in my old life have been gone for centuries, but I'm still around.  And still mad.

After I moved from Greece to the states, I found an apartment and worked as a phone psychic.  I didn't have to make anything up, but what I told people wasn't what they wanted to hear.  Who cares to know their grandma will get dementia and their dog will be hit by a car and the garbage disposal will break?  They wanted good stuff, fake stuff, but I had to tell the truth.   

I quit that job after six months and started working at the bakery a block from my apartment.  I get free cookies and cupcakes, flirt with guys, and see who's going to run a red light and get into a fender-bender, who's going to find out that his uncle died and left him a stereo, and who's going to visit the dentist and have three cavities. 

Usually I don't say anything to my customers about the future, but when I box a dozen cream-filled donuts for a thirty-something guy, I see his mother slipping and falling on the kitchen floor and fracturing her hip.  Her face wrinkles in pain.  I feel her ache, take a deep breath, and tell the donut guy to phone his mom and ask her to be careful when she's walking around her kitchen.

“Huh?” he says as he takes the donut box from me.

“Well,” I say, wishing this made sense, “floors can be slippery after mopping and people fall and hurt themselves.  I tell my mom and aunt and grandma the same thing all the time.”

“Um, sure,” he says, frowning before he leaves.

Sometimes I go into the bathroom and repeat prophecies to myself so I don't blow up from all the knowledge.  The worst is when little kids come into the bakery with their parents or babysitters, and I have visions of them falling off their bikes into the street, skinning their knees and banging their heads and crying.

“Remember to wear helmets and knee and elbow pads,” I say.  The kids grab their cookies and their parents give me odd smiles.  I smile back and cross my fingers. 

Leda, who works the counter with me from eight to five, pats my shoulder and says it's good advice.  I like Leda—she's practical for a former queen, and a very sweet lady.  When her daughter Helen isn't around we have a good time chatting, but I try to avoid Leda during Helen's visits. 

Like now.

Helen is a model in New York and hates the Midwest, but Leda drapes herself over Helen, tells her she's gorgeous and begs her to stay one more day.  Helen is pretty, I don't disagree, but she treats her mother like shit and rolls her eyes at everything Leda says.  She visits the bakery once a day and peers at the cookies in the glass display case, but I know she's examining her reflection.  The satyrs line up to buy brownies and drool over Helen and her perfectly shaped ass. 

People fought one measly war over Helen, and it turned her into a snot for all eternity.  We're both princesses by birth, but Mom said modesty would get you farther than looks.  Helen hasn't learned that, though she hasn't needed to. 

As she flounces out the door with a bag of chocolate chip cookies and Leda yammers about a benefit fashion show Helen will do in New York next month, I have a vision of Helen breaking a heel, probably on the runway.

I don't tell Leda because she'd laugh and say Helen has perfect poise. 

And if Helen's pride stumbles, that's not bad.

After work I walk around the block to clear my head.  I make the mistake of strolling past the satyrs' house, never a good thing to do when I'm in a bad mood.

“Hey babe,” says one of the satyr brothers.  He's standing out front, bare-chested as he waters the lawn.  “We're having a party tonight.  Want to come?”

“No, thanks,” I say.

“Come on,” he says, walking in step with me.  “You could have a real good time.”

“No,” I tell him again and quicken my pace.  When he tries to grab my rear I get mad, sock him in the stomach and tell him the truth.

“Tonight you'll have too much to drink and get on the roof to retrieve the frisbee that's been there for two years.  You'll lose your balance and fall off, and the doctors will say you're lucky you only broke your leg because you could have broken your neck.”

“Good one,” the satyr wheezes, laughing.

I march away.  The last time I went to a satyr party I had one beer too many and told everyone their futures.  I got teased about that for weeks, even though everything I said must have come true.  I was too drunk to remember the prophecies.   

I'm not a superwoman or a saint.  Either of those would make this too easy.  I can't save everyone, and I don't feel bad about it.  Case in point is a sour-faced girl who's twenty years old and comes to the bakery every week but complains constantly.  Her brownies are doughy or the cookies too dark on the bottom or there isn't enough frosting on the cake.

I say I'll tell the bakers about the problem, but she looks at me like I gave her crappy stuff on purpose.  I wasn't disappointed when I had a vision of her sideswiping a tree in a skiing accident, flipping head over heels on the mountain slope.  At least I didn't smirk when she came into the bakery with arm in a cast.   

No, I'm not a saint.

Tonight I clamp a pillow over my head to drown out the sound of the satyrs' party and the eventual ambulance sirens.  I want to enjoy a blank sleep, but Apollo invades my dreams.  He does that every so often to piss me off.  We sit in my old bedroom, where he visited me when we were still going out. 

“Your mother would have loved me as a son-in-law,” he says, examining his fingernails.

“You never would have married me,” I say.  “And Mom loved all my boyfriends.”

“Even that stupid server?  I don't know what you saw in those mortals.”

“They weren't as jealous as you,” I say.

“Of course they were,” he says.  “It's just harder for them to do anything about it.  If mortals could curse each other, they'd do it left and right.  It'd be awful.”

“And you wouldn't have cursed me if I'd loved you and only you forever? I ask.

“No,” he says.  “You would have been fine then.”

“While you dated a bunch of other girls,” I say.  In dreams it's easier to speak my mind to him, though it's probably stupid to be so bold.

“Details,” he says, waving his hand.  “You need to lighten up.”

That's when the laurel branches start growing through my window.  They twist around my legs so I can't move.  When I wake up the vines have turned into sheets, but I'm still furious. 

In the kitchen I make coffee and pour cereal and wonder what my parents would think of me working in a bakery.  I like living alone and doing things for myself, though sometimes I think it would be nice to have a boyfriend.  Apollo knew relationships would be hell for me, since on the first date I see the whole sordid history--marriage and kids and unhappy divorce.  What's the point of having a second date if we'll end up hating each other?

On my walk to work I see that stupid satyr crutching around his front yard.

“Hey babe,” he says, giving me a strained smile.  I hope they didn't prescribe enough pain medication for him at the hospital. 

At work I'm grinning until Helen walks in.

“Honey-muffin!” Leda says.  “What can I get for my lovely daughter today?”

“Three brownies, Mom,” says Helen, brushing her hair back from her face.  “And quit with the pet names while we're in public.  It's embarrassing.”

“Of course,” says Leda as she gets the brownies and the satyrs drool and Helen examines herself in the glass display case.  She never looks at me.

“Hi,” I say.

“Oh, hello,” she says, smiling too bright before returning to her more interesting reflected self.  How kind of her to allow me a glance.  Why some princesses get away with being models and other end up working in bakeries is beyond me, but it's totally unfair.  I cross my arms as Leda hands Helen the brownies and begs her to be in a charity fashion show at the local mall.

“You'd add such a touch of class,” says Leda. 

Touch of class my ass. 

I'm relieved when Helen high-steps outside, but then I'm hit with a vision like a movie
preview.  Helen wearing a white dress and covered in white linens, even her face.  Leda crying hard.  I shake the image from my mind because it doesn't make sense.  Helen is Zeus's kid.  I didn't think she could die. 

“Sugar,” says Leda, touching my shoulder.  “What is it?”

Because I can't hold my vision inside in good conscience, I murmur it to Leda.

She laughs.  “Helen will be fine.  She's in perfect health.”

I nod weakly.  It couldn't have been Helen's funeral.  I shouldn't concern myself with the mess.  I don't even like her.  Better to avoid trouble and shut up.

But the next morning while Leda mopes because Helen took off for New York in her little red sportscar, I have the vision again.  Helen covered in white.  Leda crying.  I blink a few times and wait on the next customer who wants six molasses cookies and six peanut butter ones. 

The next day I have the vision a third time while boxing a cherry pie.  It forces me to ask the usual question: How much do I want to get involved in this drama?  How much do I want to piss people off?  No one believes me until I'm right...

I have the vision once more as we're leaving work.  Leda's pained face reflected in my mind is too much.  I grab her arm and direct her to my car and say we're going to dinner.

“Sure,” says Leda as I stuff her in the passenger side of my hatchback.  She knows I live alone and don't have a boyfriend, must think I'm lonely for a supper companion.  I get on the highway and head east.  It takes Leda a whole hour before she asks where we'll be eating.  I tell her somewhere in New York.

“What?” she says.

“We have to save Helen,” I say.

“Turn the car around,” Leda yells, grabbing my elbow, but I'm steadfast.  That damn vision will haunt me until I do something about it.  Leda pouts in the passenger seat, muttering this is silly, but by the time we cross into Pennsylvania, she's resigned herself to the visit.

“I want to see her new apartment,” says Leda.  “A gorgeous penthouse suite.  I'm sure you'll love it.”

“I'm sure,” I mutter, reminding myself I'm doing this more for Leda than Helen.  When the vision hits again I pull into a gas station for a pop.  Caffeine and sugar help me shove those images to one side of my mind when the future is too much to bear.  Leda asks if I'll get her a pop, too. 

I walk to the drink coolers and see a guy standing with his hands in his pockets.  Another vision: In five minutes he'll go to the cashier and pull a toy gun from his jacket pocket and demand money.  He doesn't know the cashier has a brown belt in karate and will twist the gun out of his fingers and break a couple of digits, then call the police while the world-be robber lies on the dirty tile floor writhing in pain.

I take a deep breath and tap the guy on the shoulder.

“Have you ever thought of starting your own business?” I say.

“What?” He's so nervous he almost pulls the toy gun on me.

“You should start your own business,” I say.  “Dog walking would be good for you.  It'd get you out of your mom's house and into the sunshine, and give you something to do.”

“Who the hell are you?” he says.

“I have connections,” I say, putting my hand on my hip so I look like I have authority.  “I'm here to give you advice.”

“I don't want advice,” he says as he fidgets the gun in his pocket.

“I don't want you to make any bad decisions.”

“You're fucked up,” he mutters.

“Not as much as you,” I say as I grab two bottles of pop.  All I can do is give people a chance to make a different decision.  I pay for the pop, check my watch, then glance at the guy.  Thirty seconds to impact. 

I walk out the door and stand on the sidewalk for the countdown. 

Five, four, three, two, one...

A yelp of pain, then the cashier's calm voice saying, “Nobody fucks with me, kid.”

As I get into the car and give Leda her pop, I hear police sirens.

It takes us two hours to weave through New York City traffic and find Helen's new apartment.  We arrive at eight in the morning and I worry Helen will have already left, but she's getting ready for a breakfast date with some clothing company executive.

“Really, Mother,” she says as she applies mascara, “I don't mind you coming for a visit and bringing friends to sightsee, but you need to give me more notice.”

“We're not here for sightseeing,” I say.

Then what is it?” she says without looking at me.

“You can't leave right now,” I say. “It's dangerous.”

“Why?” she says.

“I don't quite know,” I say.  The only sign I'll have that the future has been avoided is when I stop having that stupid vision...  I'm ready to tackle Helen so she doesn't walk out the door, but Leda grabs my hand. 

“She has to go to this meeting,” Leda hisses.  “It could be very important for her career.”

I haul Leda toward the door, but Helen breezes out.  It takes me another three minutes to wrest free of Leda and run to the elevator.  I'm a good fifty feet behind Helen on the ground floor and not sure what I'm supposed to do as I watch her high-step outside.  Then she disappears.

I sprint to the building entrance and see what happened:

The heel I thought would break on the runway went earlier, sent Helen tumbling down seven steps to the concrete sidewalk.  I speed to her side with the doorman, and roll Helen on her back.  I didn't know anyone could literally fall on their face, but she managed to do that.  Her forehead has a nasty bump, and there's blood splattering the sidewalk from her nose and mouth.  I bet she knocked a couple teeth out while whacking herself unconscious.

Half an hour later, after careening to the hospital with Leda in the back of an ambulance, we sit in the white waiting room reserved for family.  Leda wrings a tissue in her hands.  The white sheets and gown were in a hospital, not a funeral home.

“She'll need facial reconstruction surgery to fix her teeth and nose,” Leda weeps.  “What will happen to her modeling career?”

In my new vision, Helen touches her new nose and frowns.  After the plastic surgery, she thinks her skin is stretched unnaturally across her face.  Following a brief period of depression due to the fact that her nostrils are a bit wider than before, she's “discovered” by the owner of a shoe company.  Soon Helen's toes shine on the covers of catalogs across the United States.

I want to go home and eat a half-dozen brownies.

Leda blows her nose.  “What do you see now?” she says.

“Will you believe me?” I say.

“I need a triple shot of espresso,” she says. 

“There's a good shop down the street,” I say.

I make sure we get the girl barista because the guy wipes his nose on his arm when he thinks no one is looking.  I get a decaf, then sleep in the hospital waiting room for six hours.  When I come to, Apollo lounges in the chair across from me next to the forty-gallon fish tank.  He's studying his nails but smiles when he sees I'm awake. 

“She's not dead.”  I frown.

“Did you want her to be?” he says.

“She'll get a freaking nose job.”

“It'll end her current career and result in a six-month depression and a near-suicide before her feet are famed,” he says.

“And everyone in her corner of the world will live happily ever after while I'm at the stupid bakery stuffing my face with chocolate chip cookies,” I say.  “Big fucking deal.  If I'm going to freak out about the future, I want it to be something important.”

“Picky, picky,” he says.  “You cared about the old lady who fell in the kitchen and the guy who got arrested for holding up the gas station.  Those events didn't end of their lives.”

“But they're not snots,” I say.

“So you only want to know the futures of people you like,” he says.  “Then you can tell them to avoid disaster, and feel like shit when they ignore you.”

“Just leave.”  I grimace.  His snide smile pisses me off.

“I wondered if you'd like to get dinner,” he says.

“What the hell?”  I cross my arms.

“Dinner,” he says, offering his hand.  “I can be nice when I want.”

“When you want,” I say, my arms still crossed.  “You came all the way here for dinner?”

Apollo sighs and puts his arms behind his back.  “I thought I'd make an offer.  If you want, I'll take your gift away.  The future-telling ability and the fact no one believes you.  Two thousand years of frustration on your part is enough.”

“That's an understatement,” I say.  “What about the immortality?”

“You can keep that,” he says.  “A door prize.  So what do you say?”

I pause.  “I don't know.”

He rolls his eyes.  “You've been pissed at me over this for centuries and you don't know?”

“No,” I say quietly. 

I can't be selective about which images I allow into my head and which ones I don't let in, but I've gotten used to the little movies...  That's Apollo's fault, though every gift has good and bad points.  Leda is weeping over Helen because she doesn't know what's going to happen.  But I do.  There's an odd power in that knowledge, even if I could give a rat's ass about Helen. 

Nobody knows or cares that I'm a former princess, and honestly that's not a big deal to me, but I'd like something that sets me apart.  Don't we all need a small special talent, even if it's a secret?  Secrets have power, whether or not anyone believes them.  Like everyone else I have that disgusting human need to feel special... 

I know I'll refuse Apollo's offer to take the prophecies away.  I'll take his hand and let him pull me to my feet and we'll go out for Chinese and order good wine and have a reasonably nice time, but for the moment I sit with a grimace, holding my anger for as long as the future will allow.