Funny, thinks Amy, how “scrubby” has come to mean “unscrubbed.” She really has no business among humans right now–no shower, no shave, IU sweatpants, hair yanked through a hat and feet in dusty thongs. Oh, and commando.
She holds it together, though, through the day’s two lectures. Leaving, she snags in a traffic jam near the gym’s entrance. Somebody’s holding a green towel, somebody else a peeled orange.
Memory. It’s 1995, dark outside, he’s a towel an orange and she feels dirty–wrong–excited–
Amy’s sweating, suddenly disconcerted; she hurries on, uncomfortably aware of the brush-brush of her secret thighs.
Connor can pick out gray in Angelique’s hair as she tugs on jeans: it’s the only clue to her age. He’s still intrigued by the receptivity of her conversation. He took it for youth or naïvete, once, but he’s since found layers of perception and emotional control in her that he can’t yet approach.
She’s eight years his senior. He tries that phrase out–it sounds strange, inapplicable. Eight years his señorita. His señor. Connor watches Angelique’s back by lamplight and remembers bilingual Mass with her, italic verses in the hymnal, his surprise at calling God the word that means Mister.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Rikki shucks out of the jumpsuit, which won’t help if things go badly. She pops an ampule and spills yellow silt into one hand. If Canard’s wrong, she’s dead. If he’s right, it’ll dice her pheromones into something resembling a spineback’s: a label saying Don’t Eat, Not Worth The Trouble. She starts smearing.
Up a tree, over a wall–easy, but Rakshasa’s got better defenses. One long limb bows and suddenly Rikki sees them. Orange. Black. Shimmer like heat haze.
The first one notices her, scents the air: here’s the test. Rikki holds her breath, a strange Daniel, naked among tigers.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
It’s 5:59 when Ronnie decides to close. Tess and her brothers are still arguing over the display games, but their tired mother will be here soon, apologizing and promising to be on time tomorrow. It’s a gentle little fiction, and the gratitude in her face warms him. It’s been a heavy January.
He crutches out to the door and sees first that the frost has melted, second that the sun is just barely still up. Ronnie flips the sign and remembers the picture of Solstice in his almanac: every day, from here on out, it’ll be bright a little bit longer.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Terry would really like to go to his room, but Aunt Val’s holding an icepack to his face. “I’ve always said!” Uncle Walter smacks a newspaper into one hand. “They underestimate your potential!”
Terry’s lied, said the coaches sent him home after a practice accident. He doesn’t want to say Sorry, Uncle, I got deadbeat Dad’s short thick body, sorry I actually ran into a doorknob. Sorry everyone calls me Squat (what’s a bear do in the woods?).
“What they call football!” raves Uncle Walter. “In my day they’d let you dust off, slap a steak on that shiner and roll!”
“Who was that one dude?” muses Rainer. “The British somebody? Prime Minister. Who said he had sex with all those women. All those illegitimate children or something. Did anybody ever, like, call him out on that?”
“Tony Blair?” says Ian blankly. “Uh, Margaret Thatcher?”
“No, William… Winston…”
“Winston Churchill? I think he had a mistress, but he wasn’t really–”
“No, that wasn’t it. The one guy who came before him!”
“You mean Nev–oh.” Ian pauses, then asks heavily, “You mean Wilt Chamberlain?”
“Yeah!” shouts Rainer. “Yeah! I told you, man, that British dude everybody says was such a pimp!”
“The impact,” Tarek says patiently, “blows all foreign objects at least one hundred microns away.”
“I can’t believe you’re explaining this,” says Ellen.
“We agree that the germs want to get it,” he reasons. “But germs are small, right? So their legs must be even smaller.”
“You’re disgusting!”
“Tiny, tiny legs! To cross that space, they’re going to need five and a half thousand milliseconds.”
“You eat food off–”
“So if you pick it up before that time expires, you’re golden.” He leans back, triumphant.
Ellen drops her head into her hands.
Later, she strangles him with a phone cord.
Thursday, January 8, 2004
There’s a pull on him, something that gently and insistently takes his shoulders and waist and moves him. It’s magnetic. Jesse surrenders.
Euphemia’s a collection of senses, something he could detach and hold out to watch. Sweet tea, strong as syrup, thick taffy taste that’s also her laugh. Ribbon and curls. The sun barring her skin: he thinks of rich soup on an afternoon table. She’s cayenned with freckles.
The gingham of her dress is softly rough, a jumble, a mess, a tarry. A wreck. Rucked. She makes his lips want to pour off words, and then she stops them up.
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
Revelation snaps his eyes open, shocks him solid. It clicks. The click is enormous, bigger than such a sound can be, huge and sure. It’s the slam-bang of a pistol’s slide action at three thousand frames a second.
The paper’s still in his hands. It doesn’t seem heavier, though it should. His eyes fasten on a meaningless typo: YOURE IMPORTANT TO US in fixed-width font.
My fault, thinks Corey.
All along. Such pride. I thought I was stopping it.
In the slow motion of his imaginary gunshot, the shells are hitting the floor. Their sound is resonant: the tinkle of brass.
Her mouth’s not dry, somehow. The drought in her body is creeping up her throat and out; it’s as if her brainstem’s saying “well, we’re fucked, might as well enjoy it, have some spit.”
Or maybe it’s just the thirst toying with her, a cat with its food. Mariel pictures it as a giant black mouser, herself under one paw: it’d be labeled THIRST on one side, like some ancient political woodcut. “Oh my,” says the caption, “what a fine mefs we’re in.”
Why’d we ever do that, she wonders, make first Ss look like Fs? And why did we stop?