Ride Around Shining by Chris Leslie-Hynan

more. There was Calyph.
    â€œJust a second,” I said, and I went out into the hall, to the kitchen. From among my work things I took up the Realtor’s flyer, the one I’d planted and then taken back again after he’d been hurt. The little thing had seemed so dangerous once, and it was time to be rid of it. I picked it up and unfolded it with wide, disbelieving eyes. A picture of Joseph Jones stared back at me; his dapper staff stood handsomely arrayed. It was a leaflet for Lost Boys. I’d grabbed the wrong thing. I stood there a long time, thinking what it meant.
    When I came back, she looked asleep. Softly I unbound her; her limbs sank down inert. The blindfold had slipped down, but still her eyes were closed. I smoothed the spread as I moved my hands away, and then her eyes were open and she was looking at me curiously, and I felt all through my limbs the pleasure of declining, the depthlessness of my own heart, and then a prickle of excitement, for whatever was in store for him and me, and then I turned away before I could get sorry, and walked from room to room, to turn out all the yearning lights and find somewhere to sleep.

5
    In the fall after the estrangement , I had him all to myself, crippled and more and more in need of me. The team had a lot invested in him, of course—there was always someone lurking, watching over his regimen. He had his mother and brother for the cooking and the housework. In interviews he’d give them credit for the emotional side of his recovery, for keeping him upbeat and on the right path. But really I think I did as much as anyone. What was he going to say? This white dude I hired to drive my car is really giving me a lot of support? They always credit their mothers, you can look anywhere.
    Still, I was there. I was the one heating up the soup with the sandwiches his brother made three or four at a time and left to chill. I had so much business with crutches and pill bottles I was halfway an orderly. I even made his bed for him some days. The corners were so tight he couldn’t tell it wasn’t his mother. Late some nights, when he got tired of rolling toward another championship with his alma mater on the Xbox, we’d play Chinese poker, or just sit up talking. Sometimes he’d press me for details about my past, and it was almost embarrassing to see him devour tales of my grandmother, the famous Milwaukee socialite, and our family home on the bluffs over Lake Michigan. But he was a surprising listener for someone who’d been treated like junior royalty half his life, and it was hard to deflect his interest. He’d nod sagely at the description of the wrought-iron phaeton on our driveway gate, and these impossible details seemed to give him satisfaction, as though seeing our fall materialized reassured him of his own ascent.
    It was hard to take more than a little pleasure from it, though. They were difficult times for him, and there was a grim feeling to everything. The days were full of gray light and rooms with drawn curtains. Still, I was happy. I’d worked my way into the center of things. I was dug in, I could watch and watch—and I was needed.
    As for Antonia, I can’t say I thought about her much. It was strange; she was gone so suddenly. I remember seeing her again for the first time a few days after I tied her to the bed, fleeting in the front doorway while I sat in the car, a fragment of a private smile hanging off her. Afterward she was always pushing her husband around in a wheelchair. But that phase didn’t last, either—Calyph soon got well enough to find her out.
    He found the flyer for her house on Alberta, which I could never manage to recover, in early August. He called the number and they told him everything. Then he just sent her away, and all for cheating on him with a little real estate. I thought for sure I’d be preoccupied a little, that she’d come to me in a daydream now and then. I