These Dreams of You

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Zan has no idea if anyone actually listens to him. The station has about a megawatt to its name. Viv catches the broadcasts on her car radio for the thirty seconds she’s in range while driving the canyon boulevard; when she drops off Parker at school, the boy turns the radio down because the possibility some of his homies might hear it is too appalling. He furiously denies that it’s his father’s voice.

The four-year-old Ethiopian glam-rocker is the only one in the family not thrilled by the election result. Sheba has been the household’s sole supporter of the opposing candidate, a man the age of grandfathers and the color of snow, neither of which the small girl has known.

Zan has three theories about Sheba’s enthusiasm for this candidate. The first and most comfortable is that in fact he does remind her of Viv’s father, who died two years before she was born and whom she sees in all the family photos. The second theory, more vexing if not too unsettling, is that she’s just messing with everyone’s heads.