Mosquitoland(52)

“You ever see a guy with a really deformed face?” I ask. “I mean like, just grossly—”

“It was a serious question,” interrupts Beck.

I sit up and round on him. “Beckett? Chill. I’m going to tell a serious story, and that’s going to be my serious answer. Mmkay?”

Smiling, he nods. “Continue.”

I clear my throat, summoning my best Morgan Freeman narrator voice. It’s no March of the Penguins, but it’ll do. “When I was little, maybe four years old, I went with my mom to a bank. It could have been a pharmacy or a fish market, but I remember it as a bank. I held her hand in line while she talked to someone behind us. A man stood in front of us—he wore a trench coat, and was tall. Like a giant.”

“You were four,” says Beck.

I shake my head. “His tallness wasn’t contingent on my shortness. By any standard, this guy was tall. Anyway—God, this is weird—I remember he smelled exactly like a slice of Kraft Singles. Like milky and sweet and sticky or something.”

“Gross,” whispers Beck. “Also, specific.”

“I remember reaching up and touching the hem of his trench coat. When he turned around . . .” A shiver runs up my spine to my cortex, raising the hairs on my forearms and navel.

“What?” says Beck, sitting up.

I touch my left cheek. “This entire side of his face was just a mound of bubbling skin. Like foamy toothpaste, or a . . . pile of zeroes, or something. It was just all bubbly. I don’t know how else to describe it. I remember he smiled down at me, which just made his condition worse. Like his smile was a butter knife, cutting through all those—”

“Mim!”

“Sorry. Anyway, I tried to wrap my infantile brain around what I was seeing. I compared his bubbly face to what I knew of the world, but drew a blank. It just didn’t make sense. So with the tact of a four-year-old, I pointed right at his cheek and asked what happened. He smiled even bigger and said God made him that way.

“‘Did he mess up?’ I asked.

“‘Nope,’ he said, smiling like a fool. ‘He just got bored.’

“I have no idea what happened the rest of the day. Mom probably jumped in, considering the guy looked like a blistered caveman.”

Chuckling, Beck slides down on his back next to me.

I lower my voice to a whisper. “Ever since then I’ve wondered—if that’s what God makes when he’s bored, I’d hate to see what he makes when he’s angry.”

For a second, we just lie there, enjoying the specific silence of nature. The bubbly skinned constellation is gone. Hell, it probably never existed.

“So is that a yes?” asks Beck.

I consider the original question and answer the only way I know how. “Honestly, I don’t know. The prospect of there being a God scares me. Almost as much as the prospect of there not being one.”

The undertaker song climaxes into a final smooth chorus and draws to a close with that mystical power so many songs attempt, yet few achieve: it leaves me wanting more.

“What about you?” I ask.

“What about me?”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Oh, definitely.”

Considering my own spiritual wrestling, Beck’s conviction takes me off guard. I sit up on one elbow and stare him down. “How can you be so sure?”

“Did you know, at birth, our bodies have three hundred bones? Over time, they—”

“Hey,” I interrupt. “I asked you a question.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Mim? Chill. I’m going to tell a story, and that’s going to be my answer. Mmkay?”

I wave a hand in front of me. “Continue.”

“So. Over time, those three hundred bones fuse together into two hundred and six. Don’t even get me started on how weird this is. More than half of those are in the hands and feet, which are four of the smallest human features. And yet, if you add up all those bones, the entire skeleton is only responsible for fourteen percent of the total body weight.”

“You’re a science freak.”

“Possibly. Well. It’s been suggested.”

God, I could eat him. “So what’s your point?”

“My point is this: My heart must continue beating in order to pump a red liquid called blood through tiny tubes called veins throughout this unit called a body. All my organs, in communication with my heart, must work properly for this carbon-based life-form called Beckett Van Buren to exist on this tiny spinning sphere called Earth. So many little things have to be just so, it’s a wonder we don’t just fall down dead.”

“That happens, you know.”

Beck ha-has, then puffs a breath ring into the air. “I guess I just think life is more mysterious than death.”

“How very philosophical. You should write a book.”

Another ha-ha, and I’m suddenly aware of my own sarcastic mitigation. Possibly due to the late hour, though more likely owing to my borderline-drunken fascination with Beck, I’m acting like a freshman at prom; blasé, elbowy, incapable of original thought. In an effort to steer the conversation toward higher ground, I say what I should have said the first time. “So you believe in God because you’re alive?”