Manx- Direct Call for Vic

  She stared at the receiver. It was too early for the phone to be ringing, and she already knew who it was, because she had not painted anything in almost a month.

  Vic touched the receiver. It was cold.

  “Wayne,” she said.

  The boy looked up, finger in his mouth, drool down the front of his X-Men T-shirt.

  “Do you hear the phone ringing, Wayne?” she asked.

  He stared at her blankly, uncomprehendingly for a moment, then shook his head.

  It rang again.

  “There,” she said. “There, did you hear it? Don’t you hear it ringing?”

  “No, Em,” he said, and wagged his head heavily from side to side.

  He turned his attention back to the television.

  Vic picked up the receiver.

  A child—not Brad McCauley, a different child, a girl this time—said, “When is Daddy coming back to Christmasland? What did you do with Daddy?”

  “You aren’t real,” Vic said.

  In the background she could hear the children caroling.

- The Spirit of Ecstasy: Gunbarrel, Colorado