I was buying a six foot one inch stuffed shark from FAO Schwartz. A hammerhead. It was quite charming.
“I need it,” I explained to the cashier as he struggled to find its price tag.
“Umph,” he answered me from somewhere under the shark’s belly. I couldn’t be quite sure where.
“You know. To help me sleep. I have nightmares,” I confided, sliding my credit card and signing my name. The cashier handed the shark to me gingerly. I could barely fit my arms around it.
“You have nightmares so you’re getting a shark?” he asked me. I peeked around from behind one of the hammerhead’s wide eyes.
“Well, yeah. Sharks are tough and ferocious, right? Don’t you think they’d keep a good eye on nightmares?”
The cashier battled the urge to roll his eyes, I could tell. “And what, pray tell, do you have nightmares about?”
“Pixies,” I said, and turned away just in time to miss the cashier throwing his hands into the air helplessly.
“I don’t think he believed you,” the pixie sang from my shoulder. His green eyes were dancing. I sighed.
“Most people don’t,” I said. Then, “I wish that you were bigger and could help me carry this shark to the car.”
“Me too,” the pixie said wistfully. He ran his tiny hand down the shark’s fur. “It’s a beautiful shark,” he said graciously.
“Thank you. I think so, too.”
Carrying the gigantic stuffed toy was no small feat. I dragged his tail on the floor and tripped over it. He got caught in the doorway twice, in the escalator once, and I nearly knocked a gangsta wannabe to the floor.
“Yo, yo, you disrespectin’ me?!” I heard him call. I could see some baggy pants dancing around, but I couldn’t see any more than that over the shark.
“Huh? What?” I spun around a couple of times, but when I failed to ever see the guy face to face, I just gave up and left.
“Whew,” I said, after stuffing the shark in the backseat of the car. “That was tougher that I thought it was going to be!” Of course it was. My car is a blue Geo Metro.
“I love you,” chimed the pixie. His green eyes were wide and sincere. He patted my cheek gently with his tiny hand.
“Well…thanks,” I told him, and hopped into the driver’s seat.
He flew from my shoulder to the top of the steering wheel. “No, I really, really love you. You don’t act like you believe me.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a pixie pout, but it’s hilarious. Their pointy ears droop, and their entire bodies sag like their bones have just dissolved. This particular pixie was practically oozing off of my steering wheel in distress. I managed to keep the smile off of my lips and I leaned in close to the suffering pixie.
“You know what?” I asked him. He tried to act uninterested, but he couldn’t hide the shine in his eyes. “I believe you,” I said, nodding to show my sincerity. “I do.”
Instantly he straightened up and zipped into the air. “It’s settled, then!” He shimmered his wings with joy. “Let us speak of our wedding!” The stuffed shark peered over the back seat with glassy eyes, but for the pixie, he was a fine audience. “First we shall have the most exquisite of foods,” he informed the shark, “and then, dancing!”
I backed the car into reverse and maneuvered carefully onto the street. “Watch out,” I warned the pixie, and then the little Geo shot onto the freeway. There was a tiny “woo-hoo!” and we were battling the traffic back home.
The thing about pixies is that they have an astronomically short life cycle. A day, actually. So this little pixie had been born at dawn, hit puberty by lunch, and now that it was twilight, he was more than a little past his prime. In short, his biological clock was ticking like crazy, and he knew it.
“Your hair would look lovely in braids,” he said, and grunted as I swerved out of the way of a drifting semi. He paused, his lovely green hair blowing in the breeze of my air conditioner. “Have you ever worn braids?”
“Yes, two days ago,” I said, and his face lit up.
“Two days ago! Was that the fashion back in those times?”
“Sure,” I said, concentrating more on my driving than his words. I caught a glimpse of his wings drooping out of the corner of my eye. Quickly I said, “So tell me more about what you’ll be wearing?”
“Oh, it shall be glorious!” he began, and zipped around eagerly in the car. Even the shark looked bored.
“Dirk,” I said aloud.
The pixie stopped in his tracks. “Beg pardon?”
“That’s what I think I’ll name the shark. Dirk. With…some sort of Russian last name, maybe. What do you think?’
The pixie eyed the shark. “Dirk the Hammerhead. With something Russian. Yes, it’s perfectly lovely! He can attend our wedding!”
Pixies can’t live without love, so they find it wherever they can. Usually that’s me. It’s seldom that two pixies will hatch out at my house on the same day, although it’s happened twice. The first time, they were a lovely couple who asked me to be Godmother to their child. The other two were women who sat around writing mopey poetry about beautiful men pixies.
“Why so sad?” I had asked one of them.
She had shaken her head in disbelief. “Imagine going your whole life without ever seeing a boy!”
She had me at that.
We were home. I pulled Dirk-Something-Russian the Hammerhead out of the backseat and clumsily carted him up to the house. The pixie was saying something.
“I’ll always love you,” he said, eyes shining. “Until the end of time. Until absolutely forever. I’ll never stop loving you, not until the end of my days.”
I smiled at him. That last bit was partly true: he would love me until the end of his day. And that would only be about half an hour more. My smile faltered a little.
“Come on,” I said to my jubilant pixie. “Let’s go throw Dirk on the bed and see how he likes it there.”
The pixie grinned and sat on the top of my right ear. This way I could hear him, but he didn’t have to fly around. He was getting tired.
I sloppily made the bed and set Dirk on top of it. He took up almost the entire thing.
“Quite imposing,” said the pixie. He sounded faintly out of breath. I took him from my ear and laid him gently by the shark.
“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” Really, he was perfect.
“I’m quite certain he’ll keep those nightmares away,” the pixie said, patting Dirk’s sharky head. This was especially sweet, considering that the pixie had no idea what a nightmare was. They never slept, not when they were just allotted one day. There was too much to do and see.
I lay down next to Dirk and the pixie. “So tell me,” I said, pushing his hair back with one finger. He seemed to enjoy this and leaned into it. “Are you happy with your life?”
He seemed surprised. “Why, of course! What a wonderful existence! I opened my eyes and there you were, and we never left each other’s side.” He smiled at me fondly. “I’m so very happy that I got to spend my entire life with you. How many people get to say…”
He never finished. His time had run out.
Disposing of pixies was never easy. I used to pick them up with a tissue or the dustpan and toss them in the outside garbage, just another routine added to my day. But lately, it’s been getting harder. I picked up the pixie and set him gently in a tiny cardboard ring box. I tied it with a cheery orange ribbon and set the entire thing in the garbage.
Tomorrow would be a new day and a new pixie. Already I could see the beginning of a blue and green pearly pixie egg forming in the corner of the window frame. I wondered what this pixie would look like, if she’d have long pink hair or if he’d be afraid of spiders. I wondered if I’d miss his entire formulative years when I went out to get the newspaper, or if she’d be fascinated with Dirk the Hammerhead, and whether he would develop a crush on Judge Judy while watching TV. I wondered if he would die peacefully like my little pixie tonight did, or if she would just drop to the ground mid-flight, like so many others.
I wondered what it would be like to have the same friend always be by your side, your whole life long.
I wrapped my arms around Dirk, turned my face into his gray fur, and waited for the nightmares.