These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

The two return to the room in sullen silence. The boy climbs into the exposed bathtub and sits there, glaring. He’s being dramatic but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t genuinely feel dramatic. “But is that unusual,” Zan gamely tries to resume the conversation, “for the photo to have been there and now it’s not?”

“I don’t know,” the boy says — still glaring at nothing — in a way that means, I don’t care.

Zan is beside himself. “But why,” he flails for some sense of it, “did you say, Where are you?”

“Why wouldn’t I say that?” Parker finally turns to him.

“I don’t know,” the father shrugs. “Why not, We’re coming to get you, or. . ”

“First of all,” the boy leaps from the bathtub, “you didn’t tell me what to say. If you wanted me to say that, why didn’t you tell me? Second, when you told me, I didn’t know we were coming to get her. I didn’t know we were going to take this über, über, über-stupid trip to this stupid place!”

“Don’t shout.”

“I hate this! I hate this place! How are we supposed to find Mom?”

“We both saw the photo, right?” Zan says, and he’s not being rhetorical. I mean, we didn’t imagine it, did we?