Context: K and R are paired up in a lab (They sort. What do they sort? Something). They don’t get to leave the lab until they’ve met their quota. K has a crush on the boss, who’s Earthstar. She and R are Common (not supposed to look at Earthstar). R (the narrator) told the boss “We be needing foxes” and got punched in the face for his impudence. That’s why K keeps offering him remedies. But he rebuffs her.
Self wrote this in Dublin. You can tell.
“Here,” she says finally, pulling something yellow, bell-shaped, out of her pocket.
I shake my head.
“You sure?” she says. “I got these fresh.”
Hours go by. Then K says, “He’s a stump, that one. Jesus.”
Me standing up straight, trying to forget the pain in my right cheek. “I don’t think we’re at liberty to discuss,” I say.
K’s eyes well up. Copious.
“Shut it,” I say. I don’t want to hear another word. Sighs and pity, I don’t need. Especially her sighs and pity. “I won’t ever look as good as I do now.”
K begins to laugh. Then she sees my face. Her right hand claps over her mouth. “Oh.” I want to cuff her.
“You might be wanting a piss soon,” she says. “Then, if blood comes out of you…”
“You’ll be wanting to feel my fist,” I say.
“Oh,” she says again. But this time, she looks sad. She says, strange-voiced, “I’ll bring oak milk tomorrow. Might help.”
When my friend Summer lay under the beechwood seems a lifetime ago, puking insides, puking until her stomach was a strange convex shape, what happened was, I heard a whooshing noise, and then from the other side of the trees came a Sand Spirit. Drum-beat Ta-ra! It came down from the sky, propellers whirring, dredging hay and thistles. Then snapped her right up.
As they used to say in Marble Arch, when some play was on: The Lady Exits.
For a long time after, I stayed under the beech, whispering Summer, whatya reckon to all this and watching two yella bitterns wing from branch to branch to branch. Until the shadows chased me home.
In P-1, the teachers tell, Heaven is up a winding stair. Hell is like falling off the Whitecliffs—down and down and down and down. Limbo is—somewhere between. Those lessons always gave me the frights.
Part 3 posted here.
