You’re going to want to spy on that baby.

She says she wants to give us something now that we’re alone, and she opens a small cloth bag and hands me a set of white and blue plastic baby monitors. “I swiped them from the church donation room. I mean, you guys are in need aren’t you? You’re going to want to spy on that baby.”

WATCHING YOU BY JESSICA HOLLANDER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 07

I tell Oliver I can’t do it. “Turn around,” I say. He rolls to a stop behind a small black car, the body sleek and shiny from our headlights and the streetlights and the moonlight, and I think how our ’91 Ford pickup, lime green and rusty, isn’t sleek and shiny no matter what kind of light’s on it; if God parted the clouds of Heaven with his big spotlight looking for us there’s no way he’d find it. There’s something comforting about that.

The truck idles rough; we vibrate next to each other. Heavy, acrid exhaust accumulates in the cab, hovers stagnant around us, and the train rattles by, car after car after car.

“That’s enough,” I tell Oliver.

“Wi…