What I Remember Most by Cathy Lamb Page A

that would be irritating.”
    “I wanted you to be interested in who you were before—”
    “Come on, Divinity. I don’t have paint for brains, and neither do you. Cut it with the fairy dust.” I took out a handful of colored pencils and tapped them on the table. “I have twenty-six people who have already paid me for a collage and would like to take your place or the place of anyone else, including the Russian and the Frenchman, in your previous lives, today. Do you want to talk about your collage or not?” Like all my other clients she had to write me a check—that cleared—before I even started.
    “Oh, no no no! We all want to be here. I mean”—she coughed—
    “I want to be here.” Her shoulders slumped, and she stared at her red heels with the sparkly bows. Right then I knew she didn’t believe in her past lives either, but it was part of her identity. How she reached out to others . . . and how she felt superior to them.
    “Glad to hear it. So let’s talk about your collage like two people in this decade.”
    “Perfect. Let’s,” she gushed, her tone suddenly normal, not light and wispy. “I can’t wait. Thank you, Dina. I’ve been on your waitlist a long time.”
    Divinity wanted a carousel, complete with bears and lions and fancy horses. “It’s what I loved to do in my childhood,” she said. “Ride the carousel and dream, dream, dream!”
    As in, I thought, you dreamed about who you wished to be, past and future.
    On a six-by-four-foot canvas I had painted a grand carousel with gold, shiny paint. I cut up fabric to make the animals, gold satin for the lions, gray and black and white felt for the horses, and brown felt for the bears, so the animals all had texture. The bridles were made from brown yarn that I painted with a touch of gold. The saddles were pieces of cut leather with glitter on the saddle horns.
    I found tiny mirrors and attached them, too, along with gold braid, which I used to outline the entire carousel. I glued on shiny, glittery beads and shook on a liberal amount of glitter.
    I was almost done.
    I was completing the finishing touches, gluing blue beads along a mermaid’s tail, adding fake hair for the horses’ manes, and placing rows of sequins along the bottom of the carousel. As I glued on each sequin, I finalized my plans to leave Covey. As soon as Divinity picked this up, I would pack up and go. Last night was it. What he’d done was inexcusable. I was done.
    When I was in the middle of braiding the fake hair for the brown horse, I turned on the TV. Now and then I’ll watch a talk show to prove to myself that there are people crazier than me out there.
    The news came on and I hardly listened until I heard Covey’s name. I watched, through a fizzy, fuzzy fog of shock as my husband, in one of his six expensive gray suits, hands cuffed behind his back, was put into the back of a police car and driven off.
    I dropped the braided tail.
    When the police came for me, I was still sitting, the braided tail under my foot.

    That night a man named Moose Williams came in again to The Spirited Owl. I met him the first week I was here. When Tildy introduced us he shook my hand, smiled and blushed.
    He’s come in many times since then. He sits in the same chair, near my workstation, and talks to me. He is quite . . . pleasant.
    Moose Williams has red hair and is probably three or four years older than me. His grandfather’s father was born here. He has a million cousins. His family owns property in town, and a ranch, according to Tildy.
    “He’s an honest man, Grenady,” she told me. “Gentle. Smart. Wife left him ten years ago because she couldn’t tolerate small-town living. I always thought of her as The Princess. He doesn’t mess around like a horny tomcat, he’s respectful no matter who ya are, and he’s employed. Handles his family’s business. Most of the time he’s on the restaurant side with his family. He only started coming to the bar like a lovesick cow