Fiction

After my collection, the retrieval. There were no viable eggs. Nothing for the deep freeze. Would you believe it? The doctor’s face as she told me. She must have practised this face, but still, she had it all wrong. They should give those doctors acting lessons. It should be mandatory to spend a couple of semesters learning how to feel. Good acting isn’t acting at all, it requires something real, from the heart.

He’ll stare like it’s the last caviar on earth. He’ll get sweaty, scratch his neck. The President knows he can’t keep any of the Presidential Gifts – that ancient samurai sword from Japan; the latest PlayStation, also from Japan – but that doesn’t mean he has to be thrilled about it. It would have been cool to keep that sword. Try to assassinate him then! And the PlayStation… Well, he prefers the Xbox anyway – proper American gaming. But the President loves food like he loves democracy. Like he loves the flag.

I wonder what is happening beyond these walls and how the people beyond have transformed the All. I wonder what stuff they pull from the ground, what dreams are made on it. I wonder if they still make things to last or only things to burn.

The first misfortune in Huy’s life was being born into his family. His father was an incurable gambler who was quick to an anger that expressed itself in cruel ways to the people he loved, compounded by the fact that he was also luckless. I’ve learned that my uncle was missing his two index fingers, the result of drastic actions he took to avoid fighting in the war.

There was something ahead, dimly visible. A change in the light. She trod carefully on the soft dust, compressing underfoot like sand. A kind of structure jutted out. Shreds of orange against the grey. She thought it was her own life craft at first, that she must have got turned around, but this one had been here much longer, was already half buried. Empty, of course. Too late to look for footprints.

He sees them again the next day. And the next day. They look at him and he looks at them and sometimes it’s like they’re looking through each other but, of course, that’s not possible.

A body suffering in sleep
or sleepless, dreams that do not wake you
but remain in daytime, steel feathers
stippling your skin, the prick of vinegar
or roses, a cloud that blurs the rooftops
and meets you with dread or the edge
of beauty or something less
definable, a future you can’t process
that is your own no matter

Someone calls me from the deep twilight across the hallway. It’s Shannon, one of the new graduate nurses who helps monitor the neonatal intensive care unit. She rushes up and pulls me in close, squeezing my arms. I can smell the tuna salad on her breath, see the desperation in her eyes. She tells me the ventilators in the NICU have lost power.

As the cormorants clasped fish, tossed and swallowed, the pelicans were serene and unhurriedly scooped up any mullet that escaped the cordon. The egret minced carefully in high heels snapping up any sprat that leapt too obliquely and landed on the beach.

It was still light outside, just a little, when the children’s mother lay down in the spare bed with the younger child to help him sleep, their usual kind of tucking-in ritual, just without the sheets. Except that she too was enervated by the heat and when I looked in, half an hour later, she was curled up on her side and snoring gently. The dog, never one to let the barest hint of an opportunity pass her by, snaked around my legs and up onto the mattress in one swift movement, turned her habitual three circles and settled in too. I let them be and returned to my book on the couch downstairs.