“Dad, what’s this song?” she asked. 

The girl sat in the front seat stroking her doll’s hair. She’d stop and then look out the window, then turn her attention back to playing with the doll. 

He was lost in the Santa Barbara hills and in his thoughts; he was as lost as the little girl was bored. His mind was drifting as he took turn after turn, and then steered the car up a road further into the hills. He kept turning, aimlessly, finally finding the road he was looking for.

“It’s a song by Sting,” he answered. “I used to listen to this tape all the time when I first met your mom.”

She leaned forward and picked up a cassette tape case from a pile. 

“It’s this?” she asked. 

“Yes, that’s the one.” he answered. “I’d drive around up here and think about your mom. I’d listen to this song over and over.”

He stopped the car at a pullout overlooking the Pacific. The town was below and the ribbon of highway unfurled between ocean and hills. The ground was charred from a wildfire the summer before. Then he turned back onto the road.

“It seems like a sad song,” she said.

Dark angels follow me, over a godless sea
Mountains of endless falling,
For all my days remaining

“I guess it is,” he said. “Sentimental, maybe. Sappy even.”

“Sappy?” she looked at him. 

“Yeah, you know,” he struggled. “Oh, fuck I don’t know: maudlin.”

“Mawdlin?” she repeated. 

He laughed and looked over at her. 

“You’re learning too many big bad words for your age,” he said. 

“Mawdlin,” she said to her doll. “My mawdlin baby.”

“Oh, here it is,” he said, “Finally. The Tea Garden.”

He steered the car through a metal gate and up a winding road.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here,” he said. “But fuck ‘em.”

“Fuck ‘em,” the little girl repeated and smiled.

“Jesus, honey,” he said shaking his head. “You can’t say that. I’m sorry. I need to watch my mouth; your mom will kill me. She might anyway.”

“She would not,” she said.

“Look at this honey,” he said. “You can see the ocean from up here.”

They looked out as they arrived at the top of a winding road passing an assortment of faux Greek ruins. The hill had cascading amphitheaters with little plaster channels. Here and there were concrete cisterns that caught the water flowing down the hill.

At the top of the hill was a brick structure with three arches looking out over the ocean.

“Let’s walk, honey,” he said.

He helped her out of the front seat and they walked toward the arches holding hands. He sat on a curved bench next to the arches looking out over the ocean. He sat her on his lap.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

She looked out at the water and put her arm around his neck. Then she looked back at him worriedly.

“Momma says you are knarkacisstics,” she said. “Is that something bad? Will you die from it?”

This made him laugh very hard. He held her and then looked at her face.

“Goddammit,” he said looking in her eyes. “She shouldn’t be telling you shit like that.”

He sighed. He turned and straddled the bench and sat her, cross-legged opposite himself. They looked at each other.

“You and momma aren’t going to get back together,” she said. 

He leaned close and held her face. 

“It’s too volatile, sweetie,” he said. 

“Vol tile,” she repeated. 

He now had tears in his eyes, not many, but a few.

“Yes,” he said. “You have your mama’s eyes for sure.” He leaned back marveling at them for a moment. 

“’Her eyes confess the flame her tongue denies,’” he said.

“What’s that from?” she’d gotten used him saying things like that. She’d always be curious. “What is that?”

“It’s from an opera,” he said. “It’s called Dido and Aeneas by a guy called Handel and it’s based on a story about a man and woman who fell in love but couldn’t be together.”

She was curious.

“Where were they from, daddy?” she asked.

“The girl, Dido, was from Lebanon,” he said. “Just like your mom. And I imagine that, maybe the place they met looked like this.” He looked down toward the ocean.

“What happened?”

“Well, one night, the boy, Aeneas, decided he had to go, to leave. So, he took his ships to sea, like those way down there.” He pointed down to the ocean.

“Is that what you’re going to do?” she asked. “Go out to sea?”

“Well, honey,” he said, “Not exactly. No. But your mom and I won’t live together.”

“What happened to the girl?” she asked.

“Oh, Dido,” he said feeling a bit panicked, “Well, she founded a great empire called Carthage. And Aeneas founded Rome. And many years later a man named Hannibal who was from Carthage climbed the Alps to fight Rome.”

As he explained Hannibal, he took his fingers and walked them up her left arm.

“He crossed a big mountain range called the Alps, covered with snow,” and he tousled her hair. She smiled and looked up at him.

“Alps?” she said.

Yes,” he said. “And he crossed it with a bunch of, can you guess what?” he asked.

She looked at him and twisted her face.

“Chickens!” she said.

He laughed and picked her up in his arms.

“No, silly, “he said, tickling her, “Elephants! Elephants! And he kicked their Roman asses good.”

They walked over to the arches and stood in one of them and watched the sun set.

“There it goes,” she said. “Goodbye sun!”

“Yes, goodbye Helios,” he said. “He’ll be back and we always know where to find him.”

They got back in the car as the sky turned a dark red in the west and an edgy purple in the east.