Four Times Blessed, page 9
“Can it really do that?”
“I don’t know. It might be nice, though, if it did. We could have corn-trees instead of corn-stalks. They wouldn’t get flat and soggy after a rainstorm, and you could grow more corn in less space because it would stand up better on its own, you know? Do you think if the stalks were huge, then the ears would be too? Then you could eat the kernels like apples or nectarines or something, if the ears didn’t fall on your head like coconuts. I bet they would make a nice pie. I don’t know if they’d be sweet, though. Being so huge and all.”
I shrug and draw in a mutant ear of corn by the house.
“That’s why I love you, Crusy. You always have such good ideas.”
“Thanks.”
Later that night, I lay in bed with my cousin and listen to the kgowa-kgowa-kgowa-kgowa of the peep frogs. My day unlaces through my brain. I hit a few knots, definitely. One bad one even makes me positively squirm. My only solace is that it’s made up of thoughts I never spoke out loud. Thank goodness. Because when I first saw that obnoxious man Lium? After the whole thing with the little boys. I have to admit that my first instinct was to be rather suspicious that he was an angel. An angel sent to watch over Benito and Gino, obviously. He even brought something to wipe up Benito’s blood. Yes, I really thought he might be one.
Then he smiled and called me beautiful.
Andrew is here for ten more days. Ten more days to set myself up for marriage and the rest of my life.
I tell myself it’s good it’s only ten days because once it’s done that’s it. Then the next time I see him we’ll have the wedding and it’ll be done.
In fact, if I had it my way, we’d get married right this instant. I imagine him tugging me away from the breakfast table now, and the priest would magically be here, and we’d smile and kiss, people would clap and then because it was such a surprise the party would be small and we’d stay only long enough to make people happy, and then he’d carry me off to our new house, whichever one that’s available, I don’t need a new one, and I could finally relax.
That’s what I really want. But that’s a silly girl’s fantasy, so I say yes when he comes in and asks me to dinner down by the water. I feel better after that. Then I run down to the docks to pick up a bucket of American anchovy, as my zizi calls them, sections three dash seven stockfish as everyone else does, for everyone else’s supper.
I wave and smile at Gino and Benito the entire way along the shore until they decide they would rather give me their three fish bladders instead of storing them inside of our Uncle Stonington’s lunch pail, and then I go to the main dock to pick up the fish.
Lium and Hale are in the bait shop nearby, and I swear I hear them snickering at my back while one of my grandfather’s goes through his entire basket and tries to show me every single one of the clear eyeballs, and I keep on having to compliment floppy dead fish whose tiny backbones his stuttering big hands keep crunching.
When I’m finally in possession of them, resettling the wide basket against my side, I happen to look up and notice the brothers still watching us. I say good morning, and they say hi and we start talking about the weather, which we all agree is very dry for this time of year.
When I say “we” I mean that I say it, Lium says if you say so baby, and Hale winds some heavy duty line that apparently has no end. We also remark on the lovely fish I just got, the early hour, and the shape of a certain cloud.
“I hear you scared the boys last night,” is the next topic we happen to land on.
Lium laughs low in his throat and puts a thing with a tiny feather onto an even tinier hook.
“You’d better be careful, just so you know,” I add. “They all think you’re amazing now.”
Honestly, they couldn’t stop agreeing over and over again that those two are really great guys. As far as I can tell, their assessments are based solely on the fact that the brothers could have squashed them into American anchovy paste and didn’t. Scientific method-wise, it’s not too solid, but I think it’s good anyways because it balances out what my aunts have been saying.
Lium keeps putting together the teeny lures and I watch him, back and forth, following his hands. Plucking something from a box that has lots of smaller boxes inside it, holding the piece up, putting it back, or stringing it in.
“How’d you end up there, anyways? You weren’t out back when it happened, right?”
Hale shrugs and I guess it’s my fault, having caused that extra upward movement, when he plops a heavy barrel on the floor, causing it to make a jangle that can’t be good.
Lium looks up from his work, but I think it’s less because of Hale and more because of me, because I’m the one he waits for to settle back down.
“We heard yelling,” he says and shrugs.
“Huh,” I say to that. I reach into the box for an impossibly small speckled feather and twirl it between my fingertips.
“So, how’s the husband?”
It’s my turn to shrug, “Good, we’re having dinner tonight, down here, actually.”
Lium gets up and starts dropping pieces of old metal parts into the blackened barrel.
“Well, have fun with that.”
“Thanks, I will.”
He grunts. He’s stopped chucking metal around, and now he’s just standing in the middle of the shop with the barrel hitched on his side.
“You going anywhere in particular with that, Lium?” I’ve fished my necklace out of my uniform’s collar and I’m working the little feather into it.
When I’m done, he’s got his sharp gaze on me, and I feel like explaining why I’d never get in trouble for taking one little feather from my own uncle’s shop, until like last night I get distracted by the two copper rings.
“Yes,” he says. I have to replay the last few seconds of my life on audio so I can remember what I’d asked him. Oh, yes.
“Are you going there any time soon?”
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know, I was just wondering.”
“Don’t you have better things to wonder about? Go wonder about your boyfriend or something.”
“My goodness, somebody’s cranky this morning. I’d tell you where my uncle usually puts his scrap metal except I don’t know where that is. I wish you the best of luck in figuring it out, though. Hopefully it’s before your arms fall off. Goodbye, Lium.” And I march out of the shop, taking my fish and my new feather.
The boy makes an unnecessary amount of noise putting the barrel down.
“Hey, wait,” he calls.
“Yes?”
He comes around and holds something up between his fingers. It’s another feather, a little bigger than the one I took, and perfectly white.
“Here,” he says.
I’m touched, “Thank you, it’s so pretty.” I take it from his pinched fingers, and run a crisp edge over the thumb that’s clutching my basket. Then I tuck it into my bun and pat it a few times.
“How’s that? Is it staying?”
He touches it, “Yeah, you’re good.”
“Great! I’ll see you later maybe, but I’ve really got to get back so I’m not late to the base.” I take a few steps backwards and tuck a spiral behind my ear.
“You’re a soldier?” he sputters.
I frown. “Oh, no. I could never do that. No, I’m trained to support the soldiers. You know, run around after them with a bunch of equipment, translate the PRTs, do gps sets, code switching, field analysis, hack other people’s stuff. You know.”
“No.”
My first reaction is to sigh. But he is our guest, after all.
“In the M.S.A., we have specialized people who assist the military people,” I shrug. “Basically? I just go around sticking whatever the guys want into analysis programs, and then I just read back whatever comes out. I generally use an aural modality setup with visual backup,” I shrug again. Tell it to me in human, specialist, as one boy liked to tease.
Fun kid. I felt bad for him. Got the TAG team command. Talented and gifted, as it were. Offering advanced students advanced challenges. I got stuck there after one particularly interesting Problem Solving Tuesday where I found a use for a small aircraft that was just sitting there in the hangar, all lonely. Sad, really. I just took my partner and we flew, over all the other kids who were swimming through the sound, which had been set on fire. It was February and there was no way I was getting in there.
The other kids said it was cheating after they joined us at the rendezvous, dripping, exhausted, singed, and they found out we’d already won the problem set. The instructors made them do push-ups for complaining. Looking back, it’s no surprise people gave me cold looks, after that. I think they were relieved when I got moved to the TAG team.
So that’s how I ended up there. Another kid got in after he hit a target between the eyes across state lines. And another finished some obstacle course in record time, while carrying his partner who’d broken his leg. That’s how most of us got there. Flashes of impressiveness, I guess they were.
But this commander kid, he was brilliant all the time. Naturally brilliant, and he knew it. I’d say ninety percent of the words he ever spoke to me were those orders, to speak something in human, specialist. And make it something I can use. I remember during one final exam, in Field Studies, the enemy team gas-attacked our position and he wanted to know why I let them break through our chatter bubble and find us. And tell it to him in human, specialist.
They tore it down, hard, sir. Well fix it. I am, sir. Great, tell me when you did, specialist. Yes, sir. Private Hosea, don’t just leave him laying there, pick up Private Dennison and stick a mask on him, will you? There’s vomit. And Specialist High-Land wants you to scoop the fucking barf out of his Goddamn mouth, I don’t wanna tell his mommy her baby hero died on his sandwich, if that happens, bitch is yours, Hosea. Sir? What! Not fixed but I did find their position. Really? Yes. Ok, hit them with something good and old-school, I want to hear them screaming from here. Yes, sir. Next time specialist, I’m buying you some steel to make that bubble-shit with. That would be nice, sir, but diamonds would be better, I think, hard plus they’ll play with the light. Diamonds then. Thanks, sir, oh! got it. A whole truckload of fucking diamonds, specialist. Thank you, sir. Goddamnit specialist, what’d you do to them, fucking Hadley’s out there trying to take his pants off. Oh, yeah, that’d be the grove of double-poison oak I just sent them into, sir. Oh, huh, I was thinking napalm or something but this works too, I guess, fuckit specialist, what’m I gonna do with you, alright, let’s move out people, eyes on me, Hosea, get the specialist and make sure she doesn’t trip on a daisy, on my signal in….
“You don’t look like someone I’d want to drag out onto a battlefield.” Rude boy. But fair enough.
“Yes, well, let’s hope you never do,” is what I say to him. And then I really do go. With fish and two new feathers.
At exactly five o’clock, I poke my head out the stairwell, don’t see the man with the ill-fitting uniform and skating run, and sprint.
A split second later, I wash up, throw on a dress Andrew hasn’t seen me in yet we don’t think, and put powder on my sweaty face while Eleni and my zizi try to fan me with their aprons.
They speed-walk with me back down the hill and I worry about my zizi who I think will chug along right off this island. Thankfully, we all make it. I tell her I feel like I was just here five seconds ago, like the whole day didn’t just happen.
She tells me to try to relax, kisses me, and pats my hair down. Then she starts the journey home doing a much better impression of an old lady, and I do relax a little bit. Eleni says she’s going back too, but I watch her slip into the undergrowth. Then I hear Cassie’s squeal. Eleni’s hush.
Andrew has set up a little dot of a table by his boat. I smile when he pokes a head over the railing and slides down the steps. I kiss him on the cheek, rather relieved he didn’t just tumble to his death, and ask how his meeting at the base went today.
The sun is still high enough that I might feel it burning but there’s a good breeze, and the shade of the boat is nice, too. He pulls out my chair.
“Very productive. I should be all set for a transfer to the Comm. division by January first.”
“That’s good news.”
He nods.
“How was it sailing here?”
“We didn’t sail here, dear. This isn’t a sailboat.”
“Of course. I just meant how was it…motoring…” I guess, “here, on your boat?”
“It’s actually a yacht.”
“Right…we usually just call everything a boat.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t been on this old girl,” he smiles and leans in. I raise my eyebrows in a go on, then, I’m ready to be impressed. Honestly I’ll listen to anything he says. I feel more at ease with him when he’s talking.
He takes me on a one hour and thirty-seven minute long tour of the thing. We make it back to the table, finally, as he’s still teaching me about yachts. Really, it’s impressive. Boring, but impressive. I get the feeling God could’ve put anyone on the planet across the table from this boy and he could go on just as seamlessly as he is now.
My zizi would tell me to thank my lucky stars that it’s me He’s put here, and in fact I’m sure that’s what she’ll come in my room to tell me tonight after Eleni and Cassie report back to her.
I can hear them playing cards.
I want to go into the bushes and play cards.
“How do you find the food?”
“Oh, it’s good, thank you. I haven’t had something like this in a long time.” And that was on purpose. But I won’t say that. That would be ungracious.
“They have a new kiosk in the mess. Have you been there?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Oh, well you should go. It’s great. This was their daily special. Russian?”
“It looks like it could be, doesn’t it.”
“Yes, I believe that’s it.”
The ethnicity of our food thus established, Andrew proceeds to make the appropriate toast. Then he proceeds to try to convince me I really must go to this new kiosk. He tells me how to get there from every building on base. I just keep telling him it sounds lovely.
Meanwhile, I poke at my animal-free meat and the ghostly vegetable medley. As to what the medley is made of, I cannot say, but given the cellulose I believe it is vegetable, and it would be greatly improved by some lemon. And strong hard cheese.
I’m sure my zizi would agree wholeheartedly with me. If she were here, she’d say it right out loud, I bet. Thank the grandmothers she isn’t here. Andrew would be repulsed.
I can’t seem to explain to her well enough that outside of here, people think milk and especially cheese are vulgar. Only barbarians eat them. But of course she’d say, Crusa, cheese is delicious. Then she’d go on and on, trying to convince my betrothed that he should eat the congealed and fermented mammary discharge of a big stinky animal.
I sigh. Andrew is busy explaining something or other so he doesn’t notice. I pet the feather Lium gave me this morning.
“And then one time during my internship in the city, have you been to the city? I know you went to school nearby. I love the city, it’s the greatest place on earth.”
He takes a forkful of bloodless meat and puts it in his mouth.
Thank the grandmothers.
“Only for field trips,” I remark.
“Half the people are government, always in uniform. Did you know that? Odd, being away from it. I think I must have just gotten used to it because I still put mine on every morning, and then I step off the boat and see all those guys in fishing gear and you girls and I’m like, wow, I didn’t even realize I did that. I feel like the city is where I’m supposed to be. I’ll always be a New Yorker at heart. But I like it here, too. It’s like vacation.”
I sit back and wait for him to decide I’m boring and that he wants to bring me home.
Fifty-four more minutes later, not that I’m counting or anything, he pushes his plate away. Hallelujah and amen.
I watch him with my chin on my fist, fascinated at how long he can go without breathing. His record over the past hour is fifteen Mississippi’s. Super impressive. I wonder if the lack of oxygen causes brain damage, which in turn compromises his social inhibition thereby both perpetuating and increasing the nonstop talking behavior.
“So, at Comm. HQ in the city, I’m the youngest one there by three months and twelve days. Nobody else usually gets apprenticeships at HQ. You usually have to work at a local outlet for at least two years. My instructors wrote me some great recommendations, though, and made some special calls for me.
“And plus I was the valedictorian of my class. You were too, right? Why you chose this measly outpost I do not know, but I guess you wanted to be with your family, huh? You’re so sweet. You should have come to the city, though.
“Anyways, at HQ I work with the two five-o’clock news anchors. That’s the feed your island gets, right? Since your mother. I think it’s better this place just covers weather and almanac. It makes more sense, being what it is. But being a news anchor, that’s what I want to do. Not just anybody can do it. You have to be a real leader, which I am. I did my sophomore thesis on the quantifiable qualities of great leaders throughout history, and then I compared myself to them. You read it, right? I have a lot of the most influential traits that they had. I actually scored higher than them on some measures. Of course, some were easy to beat. Like height. Most voted-in leaders are tall, but with the nutrition program I’m easily taller than 98% of the men I studied. The nutrition program is perfect for everybody. You, too. Who was your chaperone? She did an amazing job finishing you. I saw that picture on the stairs from before. Of course, anything is an improvement over those jumpsuits. But now you’re just as attractive as your cousin there, you know, the angry one. I don’t know why people say any different.”
I really hope Eleni’s not still in the bushes. Probably not, because she’s not stupid.
“And intellectually and discipline-wise you’re much more preferable over her. You’re pretty enough where anything extra like those two things can cancel out a multitude of sins of beauty. Some men just look at the beauty, but not me. I look at other stuff too. And you’ve got plenty of other stuff, even without considering the influence of the academy. In fact, you know you’re not really like most people from the academies. I was expecting something really different. But it’s ok. I actually like this better. It’s like you were only half there, kind of. You’re sort of soft.
“I don’t know. It might be nice, though, if it did. We could have corn-trees instead of corn-stalks. They wouldn’t get flat and soggy after a rainstorm, and you could grow more corn in less space because it would stand up better on its own, you know? Do you think if the stalks were huge, then the ears would be too? Then you could eat the kernels like apples or nectarines or something, if the ears didn’t fall on your head like coconuts. I bet they would make a nice pie. I don’t know if they’d be sweet, though. Being so huge and all.”
I shrug and draw in a mutant ear of corn by the house.
“That’s why I love you, Crusy. You always have such good ideas.”
“Thanks.”
Later that night, I lay in bed with my cousin and listen to the kgowa-kgowa-kgowa-kgowa of the peep frogs. My day unlaces through my brain. I hit a few knots, definitely. One bad one even makes me positively squirm. My only solace is that it’s made up of thoughts I never spoke out loud. Thank goodness. Because when I first saw that obnoxious man Lium? After the whole thing with the little boys. I have to admit that my first instinct was to be rather suspicious that he was an angel. An angel sent to watch over Benito and Gino, obviously. He even brought something to wipe up Benito’s blood. Yes, I really thought he might be one.
Then he smiled and called me beautiful.
Andrew is here for ten more days. Ten more days to set myself up for marriage and the rest of my life.
I tell myself it’s good it’s only ten days because once it’s done that’s it. Then the next time I see him we’ll have the wedding and it’ll be done.
In fact, if I had it my way, we’d get married right this instant. I imagine him tugging me away from the breakfast table now, and the priest would magically be here, and we’d smile and kiss, people would clap and then because it was such a surprise the party would be small and we’d stay only long enough to make people happy, and then he’d carry me off to our new house, whichever one that’s available, I don’t need a new one, and I could finally relax.
That’s what I really want. But that’s a silly girl’s fantasy, so I say yes when he comes in and asks me to dinner down by the water. I feel better after that. Then I run down to the docks to pick up a bucket of American anchovy, as my zizi calls them, sections three dash seven stockfish as everyone else does, for everyone else’s supper.
I wave and smile at Gino and Benito the entire way along the shore until they decide they would rather give me their three fish bladders instead of storing them inside of our Uncle Stonington’s lunch pail, and then I go to the main dock to pick up the fish.
Lium and Hale are in the bait shop nearby, and I swear I hear them snickering at my back while one of my grandfather’s goes through his entire basket and tries to show me every single one of the clear eyeballs, and I keep on having to compliment floppy dead fish whose tiny backbones his stuttering big hands keep crunching.
When I’m finally in possession of them, resettling the wide basket against my side, I happen to look up and notice the brothers still watching us. I say good morning, and they say hi and we start talking about the weather, which we all agree is very dry for this time of year.
When I say “we” I mean that I say it, Lium says if you say so baby, and Hale winds some heavy duty line that apparently has no end. We also remark on the lovely fish I just got, the early hour, and the shape of a certain cloud.
“I hear you scared the boys last night,” is the next topic we happen to land on.
Lium laughs low in his throat and puts a thing with a tiny feather onto an even tinier hook.
“You’d better be careful, just so you know,” I add. “They all think you’re amazing now.”
Honestly, they couldn’t stop agreeing over and over again that those two are really great guys. As far as I can tell, their assessments are based solely on the fact that the brothers could have squashed them into American anchovy paste and didn’t. Scientific method-wise, it’s not too solid, but I think it’s good anyways because it balances out what my aunts have been saying.
Lium keeps putting together the teeny lures and I watch him, back and forth, following his hands. Plucking something from a box that has lots of smaller boxes inside it, holding the piece up, putting it back, or stringing it in.
“How’d you end up there, anyways? You weren’t out back when it happened, right?”
Hale shrugs and I guess it’s my fault, having caused that extra upward movement, when he plops a heavy barrel on the floor, causing it to make a jangle that can’t be good.
Lium looks up from his work, but I think it’s less because of Hale and more because of me, because I’m the one he waits for to settle back down.
“We heard yelling,” he says and shrugs.
“Huh,” I say to that. I reach into the box for an impossibly small speckled feather and twirl it between my fingertips.
“So, how’s the husband?”
It’s my turn to shrug, “Good, we’re having dinner tonight, down here, actually.”
Lium gets up and starts dropping pieces of old metal parts into the blackened barrel.
“Well, have fun with that.”
“Thanks, I will.”
He grunts. He’s stopped chucking metal around, and now he’s just standing in the middle of the shop with the barrel hitched on his side.
“You going anywhere in particular with that, Lium?” I’ve fished my necklace out of my uniform’s collar and I’m working the little feather into it.
When I’m done, he’s got his sharp gaze on me, and I feel like explaining why I’d never get in trouble for taking one little feather from my own uncle’s shop, until like last night I get distracted by the two copper rings.
“Yes,” he says. I have to replay the last few seconds of my life on audio so I can remember what I’d asked him. Oh, yes.
“Are you going there any time soon?”
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know, I was just wondering.”
“Don’t you have better things to wonder about? Go wonder about your boyfriend or something.”
“My goodness, somebody’s cranky this morning. I’d tell you where my uncle usually puts his scrap metal except I don’t know where that is. I wish you the best of luck in figuring it out, though. Hopefully it’s before your arms fall off. Goodbye, Lium.” And I march out of the shop, taking my fish and my new feather.
The boy makes an unnecessary amount of noise putting the barrel down.
“Hey, wait,” he calls.
“Yes?”
He comes around and holds something up between his fingers. It’s another feather, a little bigger than the one I took, and perfectly white.
“Here,” he says.
I’m touched, “Thank you, it’s so pretty.” I take it from his pinched fingers, and run a crisp edge over the thumb that’s clutching my basket. Then I tuck it into my bun and pat it a few times.
“How’s that? Is it staying?”
He touches it, “Yeah, you’re good.”
“Great! I’ll see you later maybe, but I’ve really got to get back so I’m not late to the base.” I take a few steps backwards and tuck a spiral behind my ear.
“You’re a soldier?” he sputters.
I frown. “Oh, no. I could never do that. No, I’m trained to support the soldiers. You know, run around after them with a bunch of equipment, translate the PRTs, do gps sets, code switching, field analysis, hack other people’s stuff. You know.”
“No.”
My first reaction is to sigh. But he is our guest, after all.
“In the M.S.A., we have specialized people who assist the military people,” I shrug. “Basically? I just go around sticking whatever the guys want into analysis programs, and then I just read back whatever comes out. I generally use an aural modality setup with visual backup,” I shrug again. Tell it to me in human, specialist, as one boy liked to tease.
Fun kid. I felt bad for him. Got the TAG team command. Talented and gifted, as it were. Offering advanced students advanced challenges. I got stuck there after one particularly interesting Problem Solving Tuesday where I found a use for a small aircraft that was just sitting there in the hangar, all lonely. Sad, really. I just took my partner and we flew, over all the other kids who were swimming through the sound, which had been set on fire. It was February and there was no way I was getting in there.
The other kids said it was cheating after they joined us at the rendezvous, dripping, exhausted, singed, and they found out we’d already won the problem set. The instructors made them do push-ups for complaining. Looking back, it’s no surprise people gave me cold looks, after that. I think they were relieved when I got moved to the TAG team.
So that’s how I ended up there. Another kid got in after he hit a target between the eyes across state lines. And another finished some obstacle course in record time, while carrying his partner who’d broken his leg. That’s how most of us got there. Flashes of impressiveness, I guess they were.
But this commander kid, he was brilliant all the time. Naturally brilliant, and he knew it. I’d say ninety percent of the words he ever spoke to me were those orders, to speak something in human, specialist. And make it something I can use. I remember during one final exam, in Field Studies, the enemy team gas-attacked our position and he wanted to know why I let them break through our chatter bubble and find us. And tell it to him in human, specialist.
They tore it down, hard, sir. Well fix it. I am, sir. Great, tell me when you did, specialist. Yes, sir. Private Hosea, don’t just leave him laying there, pick up Private Dennison and stick a mask on him, will you? There’s vomit. And Specialist High-Land wants you to scoop the fucking barf out of his Goddamn mouth, I don’t wanna tell his mommy her baby hero died on his sandwich, if that happens, bitch is yours, Hosea. Sir? What! Not fixed but I did find their position. Really? Yes. Ok, hit them with something good and old-school, I want to hear them screaming from here. Yes, sir. Next time specialist, I’m buying you some steel to make that bubble-shit with. That would be nice, sir, but diamonds would be better, I think, hard plus they’ll play with the light. Diamonds then. Thanks, sir, oh! got it. A whole truckload of fucking diamonds, specialist. Thank you, sir. Goddamnit specialist, what’d you do to them, fucking Hadley’s out there trying to take his pants off. Oh, yeah, that’d be the grove of double-poison oak I just sent them into, sir. Oh, huh, I was thinking napalm or something but this works too, I guess, fuckit specialist, what’m I gonna do with you, alright, let’s move out people, eyes on me, Hosea, get the specialist and make sure she doesn’t trip on a daisy, on my signal in….
“You don’t look like someone I’d want to drag out onto a battlefield.” Rude boy. But fair enough.
“Yes, well, let’s hope you never do,” is what I say to him. And then I really do go. With fish and two new feathers.
At exactly five o’clock, I poke my head out the stairwell, don’t see the man with the ill-fitting uniform and skating run, and sprint.
A split second later, I wash up, throw on a dress Andrew hasn’t seen me in yet we don’t think, and put powder on my sweaty face while Eleni and my zizi try to fan me with their aprons.
They speed-walk with me back down the hill and I worry about my zizi who I think will chug along right off this island. Thankfully, we all make it. I tell her I feel like I was just here five seconds ago, like the whole day didn’t just happen.
She tells me to try to relax, kisses me, and pats my hair down. Then she starts the journey home doing a much better impression of an old lady, and I do relax a little bit. Eleni says she’s going back too, but I watch her slip into the undergrowth. Then I hear Cassie’s squeal. Eleni’s hush.
Andrew has set up a little dot of a table by his boat. I smile when he pokes a head over the railing and slides down the steps. I kiss him on the cheek, rather relieved he didn’t just tumble to his death, and ask how his meeting at the base went today.
The sun is still high enough that I might feel it burning but there’s a good breeze, and the shade of the boat is nice, too. He pulls out my chair.
“Very productive. I should be all set for a transfer to the Comm. division by January first.”
“That’s good news.”
He nods.
“How was it sailing here?”
“We didn’t sail here, dear. This isn’t a sailboat.”
“Of course. I just meant how was it…motoring…” I guess, “here, on your boat?”
“It’s actually a yacht.”
“Right…we usually just call everything a boat.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t been on this old girl,” he smiles and leans in. I raise my eyebrows in a go on, then, I’m ready to be impressed. Honestly I’ll listen to anything he says. I feel more at ease with him when he’s talking.
He takes me on a one hour and thirty-seven minute long tour of the thing. We make it back to the table, finally, as he’s still teaching me about yachts. Really, it’s impressive. Boring, but impressive. I get the feeling God could’ve put anyone on the planet across the table from this boy and he could go on just as seamlessly as he is now.
My zizi would tell me to thank my lucky stars that it’s me He’s put here, and in fact I’m sure that’s what she’ll come in my room to tell me tonight after Eleni and Cassie report back to her.
I can hear them playing cards.
I want to go into the bushes and play cards.
“How do you find the food?”
“Oh, it’s good, thank you. I haven’t had something like this in a long time.” And that was on purpose. But I won’t say that. That would be ungracious.
“They have a new kiosk in the mess. Have you been there?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Oh, well you should go. It’s great. This was their daily special. Russian?”
“It looks like it could be, doesn’t it.”
“Yes, I believe that’s it.”
The ethnicity of our food thus established, Andrew proceeds to make the appropriate toast. Then he proceeds to try to convince me I really must go to this new kiosk. He tells me how to get there from every building on base. I just keep telling him it sounds lovely.
Meanwhile, I poke at my animal-free meat and the ghostly vegetable medley. As to what the medley is made of, I cannot say, but given the cellulose I believe it is vegetable, and it would be greatly improved by some lemon. And strong hard cheese.
I’m sure my zizi would agree wholeheartedly with me. If she were here, she’d say it right out loud, I bet. Thank the grandmothers she isn’t here. Andrew would be repulsed.
I can’t seem to explain to her well enough that outside of here, people think milk and especially cheese are vulgar. Only barbarians eat them. But of course she’d say, Crusa, cheese is delicious. Then she’d go on and on, trying to convince my betrothed that he should eat the congealed and fermented mammary discharge of a big stinky animal.
I sigh. Andrew is busy explaining something or other so he doesn’t notice. I pet the feather Lium gave me this morning.
“And then one time during my internship in the city, have you been to the city? I know you went to school nearby. I love the city, it’s the greatest place on earth.”
He takes a forkful of bloodless meat and puts it in his mouth.
Thank the grandmothers.
“Only for field trips,” I remark.
“Half the people are government, always in uniform. Did you know that? Odd, being away from it. I think I must have just gotten used to it because I still put mine on every morning, and then I step off the boat and see all those guys in fishing gear and you girls and I’m like, wow, I didn’t even realize I did that. I feel like the city is where I’m supposed to be. I’ll always be a New Yorker at heart. But I like it here, too. It’s like vacation.”
I sit back and wait for him to decide I’m boring and that he wants to bring me home.
Fifty-four more minutes later, not that I’m counting or anything, he pushes his plate away. Hallelujah and amen.
I watch him with my chin on my fist, fascinated at how long he can go without breathing. His record over the past hour is fifteen Mississippi’s. Super impressive. I wonder if the lack of oxygen causes brain damage, which in turn compromises his social inhibition thereby both perpetuating and increasing the nonstop talking behavior.
“So, at Comm. HQ in the city, I’m the youngest one there by three months and twelve days. Nobody else usually gets apprenticeships at HQ. You usually have to work at a local outlet for at least two years. My instructors wrote me some great recommendations, though, and made some special calls for me.
“And plus I was the valedictorian of my class. You were too, right? Why you chose this measly outpost I do not know, but I guess you wanted to be with your family, huh? You’re so sweet. You should have come to the city, though.
“Anyways, at HQ I work with the two five-o’clock news anchors. That’s the feed your island gets, right? Since your mother. I think it’s better this place just covers weather and almanac. It makes more sense, being what it is. But being a news anchor, that’s what I want to do. Not just anybody can do it. You have to be a real leader, which I am. I did my sophomore thesis on the quantifiable qualities of great leaders throughout history, and then I compared myself to them. You read it, right? I have a lot of the most influential traits that they had. I actually scored higher than them on some measures. Of course, some were easy to beat. Like height. Most voted-in leaders are tall, but with the nutrition program I’m easily taller than 98% of the men I studied. The nutrition program is perfect for everybody. You, too. Who was your chaperone? She did an amazing job finishing you. I saw that picture on the stairs from before. Of course, anything is an improvement over those jumpsuits. But now you’re just as attractive as your cousin there, you know, the angry one. I don’t know why people say any different.”
I really hope Eleni’s not still in the bushes. Probably not, because she’s not stupid.
“And intellectually and discipline-wise you’re much more preferable over her. You’re pretty enough where anything extra like those two things can cancel out a multitude of sins of beauty. Some men just look at the beauty, but not me. I look at other stuff too. And you’ve got plenty of other stuff, even without considering the influence of the academy. In fact, you know you’re not really like most people from the academies. I was expecting something really different. But it’s ok. I actually like this better. It’s like you were only half there, kind of. You’re sort of soft.
