The helicopter blades overwhelm everything. Saverio tucks his wrist against a handlebar. With every bob of the helicopter over the hard ocean, Homer would open his eyes across to Saverio and then close them once more, drunk as a child. Mitchell leans her head outside the hull, her eyelashes flapping with the torrent. She brought her friend to come with them to the Rosesea Isles. Mitchell, with that, reduced the crew to tourism.
Saverio stares at the guest. Her dress is impossible to ignore; her seat pools petals from a kebab of flowers tied to her hips. Sometimes these petals hitch onto a breeze from the heavy blades of the helicopter and fly off, sometime later disintegrating in the ocean water. Saverio's wife died a long time ago, but she left beside her hospital bed a garland with pink and yellow flowers like these for her husband and their daughter Abigail. And later Saverio held those flowers with Abigail in the master bedroom.
Abigail would often join Saverio in the master bedroom, then. Their sweet daughter would fold and cut gifts out of office paper for Saverio after she returned from Faymont Elementary. Saverio would pinch the end of the paper crane's beak, smack his lips, and say, "Alright—one admission for the spectacular Miss Whitman. Enjoy." They watched home rentals, international or Hollywood. Sometimes Saverio would pause and turn off the TV if the movie made them cry.
Once, holding a paper crane, Saverio dialed a call number left to his voicemail during Blanche's funeral. The person on the line was a woman with a hoarse breath who sold hallucinogen. She gave it a name. Saverio hung up, and he cursed for he crumpled the paper crane.
Abigail then was in her first year of middle school, and Saverio watched some rentals alone. He lifted his pillow and revealed the crumpled paper under his pillow. He researched the hallucinogen later at a library computer, and he bowed his head closer to the figures on the webpage. It was synthetic and fresh on the market, and verdict was loose on legality.
Some cardboard boxes of the stuff were in the corner of the master bedroom. Saverio would distribute it to an address scribbled on the stabled paper. Abigail asked him about the cardboard boxes, to which Saverio dismissed. He then wrapped his arms around her back and kissed her forehead. She nodded. This was the last moment he experienced with his daughter before the drug trafficking.
Saverio keeps lowering his head against the handle bar and then pulling it off. Blanche, his wife, died a blameless death in a pristine home, and it was easier and easier now.
END