MonkeyPants

Rio

“Someone left some books here.”
She looks at me with spacey blue eyes.

“What are they?” I look over, a little alarmed. I’m not used to holding conversations with strangers at bus stops. That’s why I have a book: So I don’t have to.

We figure that if someone wants them, they’ll come back for them. Gradually I relax as I realize that Rio, that’s her name, is either squeetering high or just an island kid. Maybe both. There’s a particular kind of open trust I associate with both types.

“I bet Jeff Buckley and Janis Joplin are in Heaven, fucking like crazy,” she offers.

I agree, and offer that they may be recording together. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

She hoots with laughter. “But they already recorded down here!”

“Yeah, but who’s to say they can’t put out new stuff in Heaven? It’s what Heaven’s for!”

She nods and smiles, “I bet. We’ll have to wait til we’re there to hear them. Hey, you remind me of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese Lady.”

“I get that a lot. It’s the hair.” I remember my mom telling me my hair looked like the angel in the ad. I remember thinking that my mom was blind.

“Not just the hair,” Rio counters. It’s YOU. You know, like, what’s all in Heaven. Jeff Buckley and Janis Joplin and cream cheese!”

A little later she says she’s from Gibsons.

“Cool. Closer to Grantham’s or Hopkins?”

“Granthams. You know the Sunshine Coast?”

I nodded. “I spent time every summer at Halfmoon Bay.”

“Halfmoon Bay is…”

“Heaven,” we say together. My throat closes up as I think about my mother’s ashes, floating around there in the bay. It’s late. I’m tired. I breathe through it.

She says her mother is helping her move in a few days. She hopes it won’t be difficult. “It’s like she has all these duties, everything is duty and I want her to be in love, to know that I love her, for her to love me,” she says.

I think for a moment. “Do you think you could tell her those things?”

She looks at me, luminous blue eyes unblinking. “Do you have a pen?”

I produce a pencil and as she’s writing down what she said, I ask if I can snap a picture. For Photo-a-day. And because it was a conversation I needed to have.