No Rest for the Wicked

Chapter 2

"So, do you think he knows anything?" BM's mom asked Luna on the long-distance call from L.A.

"No, he doesn't seem to remember me," Luna replied. "But I feel kind of bad not telling him who I am," she fretted.

"Look, if you tell him who you are, he's going to wonder how you found him, and that will lead him straight back to me. He's not going to take it well if he knows I sent you," the older woman reasoned. "No one likes a meddling mom."

"Maybe we shouldn't be meddling," Luna voiced her anxiety. "I mean, he honestly seems to be doing pretty well. Maybe he doesn't need me here at all," she reported to BM's mom.

"I know my son!" the older woman declared. "He's not sleeping. His diet is all off. He is just going through the motions of life. Norma, he's not himself," she said emphatically.

Hearing her first name caused Luna to feel a twinge of nostalgia. Ever since she was 18, she had been going by her middle name because she had never liked her name. Norma --- it was an old lady's name, and it was too close to a word she hated, "normal". "Normal" connoted conformity, which was a notion that Luna soundly rejected.

"Anyway," his mother continued, "you needed the break. So, just take it as a blessing that's fallen into your lap. You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours."

"And I appreciate it," Luna assured her. "I really do appreciate the chance to catch my breath and get re-centered," she continued. "I just wish it weren't at the expense of honesty."

"You have never lied," BM's mom assured her.

"But sometimes not telling the whole truth is a kind of lie," Luna replied, thinking of how she had pretended to not know about BM's band. She had never actually said aloud that she didn't know about his life, but she had implied it. She had already begun to regret this mission and suspected she might have been sent on a fool's errand.

"Well, just be there for him for now," the sad voice on the other line said. "He's my baby, and I just want him to be happy and healthy," she reasoned.

"I know," Luna assured her. Shortly after they had hung up, Luna looked up at the clock on the wall, faithfully marking out the beat of time. It was after midnight, but the conversation had stirred Luna up too much for her to be able to lie down and relax anyway. So, she got out her computer and put her ear buds in and went back to work on her transcriptions.

For months, she had been transcribing recordings of villagers speaking Mixtec. It was an arduous task because the sounds had to be captured precisely and because every variation in tone and every nasalization or stop had to be recorded in the written transcript. Luna sighed and hit play. As the recording played, she stopped it every few seconds to write down what she had heard. She would often have to rewind and repeat the sections over and over again to make sure she got it right. To her surprise, she heard her phone buzz several times in rapid succession.

U up?

Can't sleep...

Whole bottle of soju, and nothing

Ambien didn't do shit either...

Luna studied the texts. BM had taken to writing at all hours of the night. Just as his mother had suspected, he was suffering from a particularly treatment-resistant insomnia.

I'm up

Just doing transcriptions... AGAIN!

I'm tired but wired...

Take a break

There's no time for breaks

The slower I move, the fewer people will speak it

Soon it will be dead

How is that your problem?

Not my fault, but my responsibility

Just then, the phone began to ring. "Damn it! Don't you know no one makes phone calls anymore?" she griped aloud, but still answered the incoming call.

"Whatcha up to?" BM asked casually.

"I told you. I'm working," Luna replied dryly.

"Yeah. Hey, Luna, J. Seph and I want you to come by for dinner tomorrow," BM offered, ignoring her irritation with his late-night call.

"Okay, whatever," she replied as she watched the cursor blinking unceasingly. Every blink of the cursor was another second lost in a fight in which time was of the essence. "Well, I should get back to it," Luna said, hinting that it was time to get off the phone, but BM persisted like a child delaying his bedtime.

"Aren't you on vacation?" he asked. Luna had told him the truth about the fact that she had been experiencing extreme burnout and fatigue along with panic attacks. That much of the story was true, at least.

"Have you tried prayer for your anxiety?" BM asked.

"Excuse me?" Luna questioned. "I could ask you the same thing. Have you tried prayer for your insomnia?" she asked with a significant snarky edge to her tone. "Maybe that's what's wrong with you. My grandpa used to always say, 'There's no rest for the wicked'," she continued. "And you must be terribly wicked because you never sleep," she reasoned.

BM laughed, even though he wasn't sure if it was a joke or not. "I'm not wicked," he said with another soft chuckle.

"Well, the sleep chart you sent me from your Apple watch would suggest otherwise," Luna deadpanned. "Did you try the ashwagandha that I gave you?" she questioned.

"I did!" BM assured her. "It was useless. It didn't do a damn thing," he griped. "I'm still up, wandering around the house like every other night," he informed her.

Luna sighed. "What about the melatonin?" she persisted.

"Nada, zip, zero," BM replied. "The only thing that did was make me sweat through my clothes every night," he reported. "Anyway, why are you giving me advice on insomnia when you're up half the night yourself?"

"But that's different," Luna replied. "I'm up because I'm working. I'm tired enough to go to sleep any time now," she reasoned.

"Well, then just do it already," BM advised her. "But can you stay on the line even when you fall asleep?" he asked in a child-like tone.

"I guess," Luna conceded. "Just promise not to laugh if I talk in my sleep," she warned him.

"Well, with all the weird languages you speak, I'm not likely to understand you anyway," he joked as he lay down with his phone on the pillow beside him. Luna did the same, and soon, she was fast asleep. BM lay there for several minutes, just listening to her soft breathing. The sound of her breath reminded him of balmy L.A. nights when he used to fall asleep to the sound of cicadas outside his open window.