 |
Two Fictions |
|
Psychic He was telling her about his psychic powers. He was brushing his teeth as he spoke, standing about six feet from the bed where she lay, and he mentioned a time when he'd gone to Mexico and then come back and had a vivid dream about a girlfriend he hadn't seen in years -- Nicola Wyldeboare-Smith -- and the next day, Nicola Wyldeboare-Smith called. "Isn't that strange?" he said, his mouth foaming with toothpaste, "and there have been other incidents, too." But she wasn't considering his psychic powers; she was feeling the alien reach of his past, the places he'd been, the girlfriends he'd fucked, the girlfriends she would never unthorn by meeting them at a party, on the street, at the store. Who were these women? she thought and became a fleshy bulb buried deep in the earth whose tubers unfurled and crawled but could never reach him where he stood on the top of the soil. He walked into the bathroom and spat. My lungs are good. I made three sandwiches -- hope they don't mind, I used the last slice of Earth -- filled one thermos with spring water and the other with venom, bile, and heartbreak, which I hope neither of us will ever need (I like to be on the safe side though). You have the socks, I have the shoes. Just behind my frontal lobe I added a three-gig processor to sharpen my hearing. I left a note for Danny, but the others will just figure it out. We don't need to wait for cues from anybody. The thing to remember is that our love makes us strong, even though sometimes it also makes us weak and annoying and needy. Knowing how you feel about lint, I'm not going to count calories. Let's just go. We could lock the door, but I'm inclined to leave it open in case anyone wants to come in behind us. |
1996 © 2010 |