Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 (7 page)

To be fair, the toaster wasn't the only friend to feel this way about the camera's romance. He just happened to be the one who believed the least in minding one's own business and letting his friends live in quiet privacy. Besides, it was just this type of situation that most easily allowed the toaster to segue into yet another recounting of the myriad ways in which the heart can be shattered.

"Do you understand that even in the best of situations, it is impossible to completely protect yourself from the destructive nature of your love? It's inevitable! You open yourself up to her, telling yourself that this time it will be different. You forget that, in every relationship, one of you has to be destroyed, so that you can be remade in the relationship. Love always demands a blood sacrifice.

"Look at my relationship with toast! Dear, sweet toast ... who will rot in hell one day, mark my words. I gave him everything! I made toast what he is today! Before I took him in he was nothing but a lousy foreigner piece of bread, fresh off the boat!"

This being the toaster's most recent bit of personal tragedy, everything in everybody's life seemed to correspond to some aspect of the failed relationship. Synchronicity was suddenly hiding around every corner.

Of course, some aspects seemed to correspond more directly than others.

"I know all about this ... octopus and those like her. For example, a cousin of toast had a run-in with one a couple years ago, on his boat-trip from Italy. It seems that on the way over, a curlicued hussy wrapped herself around the hull of the ship. Almost took the entire thing down to the bottom of the ocean ... passengers and all! I tell you, all those salt-water sluts are the same!"

The camera certainly hoped so.

"I'm certainly not one to tell anyone how to live their life,” the toaster said, his message becoming hushed with the weight of itsinsistence, “but these types have no future. They only drag others down with them. I'm sure that there's some cheap thrill to be had in slumming like this, but don't go doing something you'll regret. This is going to end with you in pieces. Get out now, before things get too messy!"

But the toaster didn't get it; he was already talking to a ghost.

It was nighttime on that scabrous outcropping, when the camera watched his lover emerge from those choppy, darkly flashing waters. The octopus silently revealed herself to him, frankly, wantonly. The seafell away from her like a sheerslip as she reached for him. She pulled him into her embrace and they tumbled backwards, into the depths. In the wavy, fading, underwater light the camera admired his beloved. Her inscrutable, alien stare, from which no intentions could be gleaned. Her sleek and delicate head, whose colors now looked like dark, anemic marble. She seemed impenetrable, unforgiving. He thought of the rocks that now lay above them, resting at high tide. They offered no invitation to warmth, only obliteration. “Dash yourselves upon us, all you without abandon."

They descended to murkier depths, the octopus's coiling grip only matched by the mounting pressuresurrounding them. The camera could feel a tension building within him: a panic, or the prelude to an oncoming release.

A sudden rock-shelf. They collided against it, and tumbled further down. The camera's glass eye cracked, shattered with the jolt of it. His unblinking gaze, his even, ceaseless stare gone blind. That was fine with him. He had seen enough. He was finally ready to let go.

The near-absolute black was suddenly thrown into a second's worth ofstark daylight as the camera's flash began to stutter. The octopus jumped in startlement. Jarred, it almost seemed, for a second, as if she would let him slip away. She also began to shudder. Then, her all-consuming grip increased ten-fold. The flash popped rapid fire. Everything was a string of hard-edged and frozen white images. But the corners of those still lifes beganto fill with a smudged India ink as the camera's lover spasmed silent, clouded curtains around them.

It seemed that he had never truly known her.

A spiralling, restless knot inside a blooming flower of jet, gently floating towards the bottom of the ocean. The camera could feel a single, mute dot of oblivion tugging at him from his very center. He serenely folded in towards it, his thoughts quiet and empty.

—

Quiet, quiet, hush my child. All flash andno sound is that thick and heavy cloud of a summer storm, shot through with continuous and unceasing bolts of light. See as it slips away, slips across that ever-darkening, vertical horizon.

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Cara Spindler

Later reports:
strolling in downtown St. Paul; once at a winter logging camp up by St. Croix; three years ago on a Sunday afternoon on the arm of a girl who looked like May Jenkins's niece, do you remember her, from over by Duluth; heard tell that he was caught up in a mine explosion out Mohawk way, but really no one, no one could confirm that wavy brown hair, the half-dimple was ever seen again, that whoop of a laugh was really his, that the singed gilt fan in my Great-Aunt Vivian's attic really was the one that had been found in the cannon barrel.

The end:
The crowd stares upward, shocked. Popcorn and roasted peanuts forgotten in palms, mouths slightly open like front doors of abandoned farm houses. Archie has taken flight. Through the star-shaped puncture in the canvas, night's candles glitter in the inky black.

Five minutes before:
A red flash, the ringleader. “Any volunteers?"

And Archie, who everyone knows is drunk, although not everyone, not yet, thinks
just like his dad, just like his uncles, just like his kid brother
, because he is a nice kid, Archie stumbles from his third row bench, stomping accidentally and firmly on the parson's new wife's delicate white boot. How would you expect a young man to act when his fiancée had recently and publicly broken their engagement; everyone in town had seen or at least claimed to have seen Philomena throwing his sapphire ring into the road from a moving carriage. These are the thoughts rippling through the crowd, that and their own little thoughts:
is she really going to the outhouse or is she sneaking off again with that Judas?;
mothers wiping sticky hands and worrying about tomorrow's wash; children fingering the coins left in their pocket and counting off how many more cotton candies, how many throws into the goldfish bowl; while the old men figure next week's grocery money and wonder how much it would take to get into that side show tent with the pretty dancing girl with the Egyptian make-up on her eyes, and Archie pushes his way into the sawdust and lights.

"I don't believe man can fly!” Archie proclaims, his eyes bright under the gaslights, and crawls into the cannon.

Ten minutes before:
The animals are returned to their menageries, their metal-barred crates, where for a nickel the crowds have been filing past the dozen cages for three days and nights. The families, city-clothed or barefoot, hold hands and peer into the boxes, shading their eyes from the hard sunlight, mostly quiet but for occasional outbursts, like at the size of the elephant's dung pile. At night, drunken groups of men and boys clump in front of the crates and dare each other to dangle soup bones. Reverent silence is found only in the first moments of the Persian girl's tent, or someone's first sip from a flask behind canvas walls. Tonight, the animals crouch in their corners, waiting for the loud laughter that does not come, tonight, blinking in the yellow lights that do not go off. The Asian elephant, unloved by her trainer who she will ultimately stomp to death in front of a screaming and terrified crowd, years from now, is leaning her forehead against the bars; an Amazonian jaguar crouches, still petrified by the wet eyes, wishing only for green; two camels from the Bible-lands contentedly munch oats; a sad fat bear who is not dancing, too old, hears the familiar sound and salivates for day-old pastries; green and red parrots, to the delight of no one, swear clearly and sing incomprehensible sea chanteys in French, Caribe, and Spanish patois; the alligator half-hangs out of a metal washtub and sighs. There are empty cages, pushed to the back with less flash. Their inhabitants don't pull in money by oddity, but by skill: a pack of well-trained poodles and a herd of poorly-trained ponies; two pigs, one that rides in the cart and the other that pulls it; geese who dance in formation and honk the William Tell Overture. On the other side is a boring llama, which is intractable and bites anything or anyone who gets within five feet, but was purchased for a song; and behind the chicken wire, a boa that seems more and more intent on constricting the Middle Eastern dancing girl, who is actually from Wisconsin, who wonders about adding a scene to the night show where two muscled men pry the snake from her body, carelessly revealing bits of leg and torso while she thinks,
godammit I bet every last one of you wishes you were this here goddamned snake
, and dreams alternately of opening a millinery or acquiring tattoos.

Thirty minutes before:
The spangled acrobats are climbing the ladder to begin their show. They have been married for thirty years tomorrow. This is trust: flying. Only on two hands. They have both slipped, but never at the same time.

An hour before:
Archie sees Philomena Butler, her brown braids and their curled ends, on Tom O'Fallahan's arm. His smile is forced.

"Good evening, Mena, Thomas."

Tom acknowledges the greeting with a tip of cotton candy.

Mena looks straight ahead.

Archie spends two dollars at the tin shooting-range, and wins a prize. There are stuffed animals and gilt-fans. He chooses a fan and puts it in his pocket.

Six days before:
Although everyone has scoured the roadside for an hour, none have found the ring, or admitted that they have. And five years later, nobody will say anything when Justin Cooper gives a similar ring to his fiancée, Octavia McGill, telling people it was bought for a song in St. Paul. No one will say anything, but they will all wonder how a farmer got the money for that, especially because he only courted Octavia for three months, winter months at that. Surely not enough time to save for a sapphire. But by then Mena Butler will have been married to a black-haired druggist in White Pine for four years, with three children, two blonde and one with a shock of red hair, and a fourth on the way, and, as Archie will never show up again, no one could fault Justin too much. Archie was always hot-headed after a sound public beating, historically and figuratively speaking, and it's pretty likely that, if Justin had had the ring and had returned it, Archie would have tossed it back into the night, never to be found again.

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William Alexander

Herman came home after seven years away. Home had moved three times while he was gone, and he only found it by the familiar smell of the old corduroy couch. His wife Harriet kissed him on the cheek, said “Welcome home,” and went off to work. Their three sons sat around the kitchen table, eating cereal. They were each seven years older. The youngest was only seven years old, and Herman had never seen him before.

"Hi,” Herman said.

"Hi,” the oldest one said. The middle one didn't pay any attention. The youngest glared at Herman with a fixed and furious glare.

"Do you have school today?” Herman asked.

The oldest nodded. “Bus stop's on the corner,” he said. “We know the way.” He rinsed out his cereal bowl, picked up his lunch bag and left. The other two took their lunches and followed. The youngest glared at Herman as he shut the kitchen door.

Herman poured himself some cereal.

The cats found him, and sniffed at the tips of his fingers. Seven years ago they were kittens. Now they were round indoor cats, long-haired and imperial.

"Where have you been?” the orange cat asked. Its name was Orange.

"Away,” Herman said. He wasn't surprised to hear cats speak to him. He sighed. He wished he'd been surprised. “I struggled for years to get home again. I danced with giants and wrestled glass statues and crossed wide lakes of frozen bile. I spent several months shackled to a narcoleptic gryphon, and survived its somnambulant plunge into the sea."

The cats were not impressed, and walked away. This was not necessarily rude; cats understand “hello” but none of them understand “goodbye.” When it is time to go, a cat simply leaves.

Herman finished his cereal and wondered what to do now that he was home. He found a newspaper on the porch and checked Help Wanted ads.

At dinner Herman folded his napkin into an origami dragon to amuse his youngest son. His youngest son was not amused, not even when he made the wings flap, not even when the dragon breathed fire and immolated itself by accident.

"I have a job interview tomorrow,” he said to the table at large.

No one answered him.

The oldest son had brought his girlfriend to dinner. She neither smiled nor spoke, and gave out the unsettling impression that she knew more about the nature of the universe than anyone else around her. She was not fey. Herman was sure of this. He tossed salt at her when she wasn't looking, just to be doubly sure. She didn't flinch. She wasn't fey.

The second son looked down at his plate and said nothing, and no one said anything to him.

The third glared at Herman.

Herman began to make up words to see if anyone would notice.

"Valareg,” he said. “Nishmashnee fleen."

No one answered him.

Orange jumped onto his lap, and stuck its head up to sniff at the dinner plate.

"It takes practice to be part of the world,” Orange said. “You'll remember how. Are you done with the fish?"

He slept on the old corduroy couch. The bedroom door was a door he did not know how to open. The doorknob was made out of iron. It wasn't locked. His wife had not locked him out or slammed the door shut. He wasn't forbidden. He just didn't know how to turn the doorknob.

The next morning he walked downtown for the job interview. It did not go well. He tried inventing new words again, testing the man in the suit to see if he was actually paying attention. “Vlocknik,” he said, smiling, when his would-be boss asked after Herman's familiarity with
The Chicago Manual of Style
. The man in the suit passed this test; he
had
been paying attention. Herman, however, did not pass the interview.