John Pursch: She’s Cargo

Lobots copulate twelve at a throw
in shabby She’s Cargo street locales
from slobbered Yeast Side shanty town
to Nord Spore hooker blight contestant-go-fluky
picture of exhibitionist know-how numbnut
parameter pyramid of jelly control plop
to tarts on Ferris wheels shy below spurned
cat-o’-entrails movie deluxe Borax queen
in refutation angst of popped hammerhead circle.

Limbs fly off in window dressing spatter confutation proxy,
daring us to crowbar ribs from rivulets of dead probate
scheme contusion blend, slipping forlorn into time-trap dusk
of seashore aphrodisiac extortion grind to lollipop curls
on redheads lost at seizure’s pendular swoop
of crosstown planetary schism.

“Whoopee!” Clem he shout at nose-blown geyser strike
of blow-by-lobot itch release to salami entrance handyman
galore parade of daring epistemic guard dog troll platoon
in defalcation’s grisly functionary sleaze entombment.

Dozen parolees inundate the frontal odor fire escapee
via hidden halftrack backdoor neckline perpetration hatch,
flooding ontic whereabouts with muddy bootjack cataclysm
hemorrhage of bile-line inguinal incursion limps
in strongly piled circadian torsos, keyed to lowered
basket flecks of cauterized graveyard she-food fare,
canned separately for disheveled ship-to-scorecard
embolism retreat beyond animal crimes.

“Went straight because the causal chops impaired me,
fuel-hide raucous onto roto-tundra umbral ventral sensate
infiltration gauze of cheesy clothesline sex capade
in fecal cavitation socket cordite plume
to aging pterodactyl flight machine, dumbly pounding
balled smack time-groupie phlegm whey behind her
knee-hollow damping site on periscope sighs of landed
signatory waistcoat pillory seduction,”
spews Punky Ankle Anna,
Queen of Registration Globules
Nun Withheld Phlegm Mynah
Blockhouse Pardon Crumbling Swath.

(Lunge tidal surely flour wan off dementia’s flying
as studious asp finery canned sloughed madams,
blown over airy evergreens in softened thuds
of counterpart seclusion hayseed overcome
to needless quay-sag bovine territory spells,
waxing promo flush to boggy lurch
of dried lobotic eyeball crust on
incandescent sunrise baker’s boson.)

“Thet Juan dare be goin’ peduncular!”
gestures Chary Attic Maelstrom Chunky-Chunk-Alike,
Hairy Force Majeure of Slobbered Beast Slide Quotient’s
flexible pummeling yard, blockaded jest sloth
of She’s Cargo’s wurst bane of sallow neighborhood
gazette gazebo quadrant cesspool undertow,
wherein none buddy varied mostly despicable
hand froggily desk-hutch inching pestilential rotifers
and emotive villainy care to proffer their somewhat bruised
bottom-fleecers in courts-o’-pallid barrier quaff-line barkeep
fleabag keg-cracking retrograde to discotechnique blunt enthrall
of slathered cornball mockeries of bobby schlock extraordinary
shy school churlish coffers filling burned saliva into vanities
of fairly haltered tail shod sapientially by leering shoeshine malice
hailstorm queens on streetcar sidebar bridle grease commotion
elocution carts, wheeled sensibly into the dawn.

Todd Mercer: The Retail Battle of Big Rapids

We can see them coming for us. 

They roar out of the night-dark in their pre-embargo SUVs and their armorized patch-togethers. Hundreds more of those savages are running behind the advancing line of vehicles. They’ve got weapons put together from Lawn & Garden and Hardware: wrought iron pikes, hydraulic nail guns, that kind of thing. We took heavy casualties last month. We’re weak little bitches at the moment. They might have rolled right through and wiped us out this time—and it is still going to be ugly—but we have a chance. An informer who shops both stores tipped us. Thank God. Here’s hoping the informer didn’t tell them a few things too. 

We have the entire road frontage along with part of the flank of the lot edged with six foot picket privacy fencing. Their scouts saw us putting the fencing in, yet they still came. 

“Nick! How many?” calls The Greeter from down on the ground.

I lower my binoculars, lean over the edge of the RV’s roof we use for a lookout post. “It seems like all of them.”

“Well come on then. Let’s get to the fence and see what we can do about it.” Down the ladder quick with my heart in my throat, but I’m not showing my fear. I trained myself to never show fear—I’m a goddamned mail carrier, after all. 

The Greeter’s wheeze is crackling. “This all started with Reaganomics,” he manages to say. “That’s how it all went to shit.”

“Reaganomics? What the hell is that?” 

He knocks his glasses off his nose by accident, and stops us to find them on the asphalt. 

The store goes dark on the inside. Then the parking lot lights are cut too. The Store Manager’s helicopter takes off from the roof, heading wherever all the managers live. Somewhere that isn’t Big Rapids. Which means we are on our own. It’s been a long time since they tried to squelch one of these fights with police. Now it’s will versus will, the people that live in their cars in the WalMart parking lot versus the people that live in their cars in the Meijer parking lot. I hear other towns have the same standoff with at the Target-Depots and AppleShacks. We work at these stores, we live there, we stick together.

“Forget ‘em, these guys are going to slaughter us. Come on.”

“I was going… off shift… in an hour,” he huffs, damned unsuited for these conditions.

“Collect yourself, old man.”

Even before we reach our spot, we hear the staccato thumps of nails impacting the fence fronts. If I wasn’t a mailman, I’d say we’re going down this time.

*         *         *

I used to be Unaffiliated and out of work. I’m not proud to admit this, but I used to shop at a few different places. A long time ago most people did, but now try it and no one trusts you. 

There’s no way I could have been doing as well as now, without the help of The Greeter. Four years ago I parked my old ’23 Buick beater in one of the few spaces that wasn’t claimed long term, and walked in the WalMart with a short list. I hated to leave the car, since I was traveling alone, and—goes without saying these days—everything I owned was in it. You hear what happens to the unattended vehicles of the Unaffiliated.

He was doing his Greeter thing in the front entry when I first saw him, holding his price-coding wand. 

“Welcome to WalMart. Let’s scan that arm, shall we?” 

And of course my data is in there, everyone’s is, but sometimes the whole thing feels inorganic.

I asked, “What if you don’t scan it?”

He looked over the frames of his glasses. “Then you can’t be assigned a price class. You would actually have to pay the whole cost that’s printed on the price tags.”

“Okay. So what?”

“Sir, nobody pays the full tag price. Unheard of. I simply don’t see it here.”

The eroding morality behind the price class system felt too compromising to be complicit in. Not that I hadn’t gone along over and over before. Almost everyone else does. But I couldn’t that once manage it.

The price coding people don’t let it be known, exactly how their structure works. But I know. I have to tell this guy.

“There are at least five discount classes. Maybe six. The first discount goes to the Affiliated. “

“Oh I don’t know about that sir, they don’t call me into the management meetings. Can I help—“

“Another discount class is for those who don’t mind that the goods they buy were made with child labor.”

“Sir, all I do is scan the arm, and tell you where the Housewares are located. I’m not political.”

“Another discount class—“ 

Before I said more the Greeter reached forward abruptly; he put a business card in my hand. Thinking of all the cameras on us, I turned around and went back outside before I looked to see what I had. A card with a name and a number on it, nothing else. I climbed in the Buick and hung shirts over all the windows, and called the number.

It rang twice.

“You want to work for the Vehicle Postal Service?” the woman who answered asked immediately. 

“When can you start?”

“I think you’re mistaken.”

“Did a greeter at our Big Rapids store give you a card?”

“Yes.”

“Are you already with another outfit?”

“Do you mean, am I Affiliated?”

“Are you?”

“Not at the present time. I am considering my options.”

Are you wanted for any felonies or misdemeanors?”

“If you know who you called, you must already know the answer.”

“Okay then. We’ll need you to report to the Receiving Manager, if you’re ready to work today.”

“This doesn’t even make sense.”

“Last chance. I’m busy. Affiliated mail carrier with a free parking spot and some dental coverage, or we’ll call someone else and give it to them. We don’t hire often.

Within minutes I was delivering postcards and enforcing the lot rules. The lot rules part is the hard part.  I don’t even want to talk about that side of it. A week later, I had a regular meal.

*         *         *

In about ’28 the post office changed their longstanding notion of what a legal residence entailed. They started delivery to people whose addresses are vehicles. 

Wherever you go now, you see the same thing—houses stand empty, sometimes blocks of houses, while nearby people live in their rides. Oh, you hear of squatters camping quietly in empty places, but that’s not worth the years of jail time, in my view. 

The surest way to end up locked up as a State guest now is staying Unaffiliated, trying not to pick a team. Don’t get me started on the pathology of the times.

I started out living in rental homes. Then I landed a surprisingly good job and kept it for a long enough to ratchet back my constant background panic.  So I signed a mortgage on a Tudor with shade trees. Three bedrooms. That situation didn’t last. I reverted to renting. Then later—well, I neither bought nor rented. More and more people were getting out of houses. The government gave up trying to save the country from the abyss.

I stopped kidding myself, before the last money was gone. Bought the Buick and improvised.

The day I found a spot in the lot, and a friend in the store, and lucked into the mailman position, that’s the best day I’ve had since the year my family left out on me. After a day like that, the shoulders are a bit squarer. 

You have to make a little stand somewhere. You have to have pride in facing up to life.

*         *         *

The mail arrives at the last bay of the receiving dock, around back of the building on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Management takes pictures of all materials. I sort it, bundle up any company add-ins, and generally by noon start weaving my way through the lot. It can come to a long walk criss-crossing a short distance.

The mailman knows everybody. If I don’t know you and your car is in this lot more than an hour or two, be sure that I’ll find out what you are about. And if you’re wrong, you’re gone. If you’re wrong, I’ll know it when we talk and I look you in the eye. I’ve got a reliable knack.

I don’t put up with serious criminal activity on my lot either. Still, please lock your car when you aren’t in it. I see locks left up and I field theft reports. It keeps happening.

We get by better with diminished expectations. I tell the people in this parking lot to be glad that mail still runs at all. 

There’s an afternoon carrier who delivers to the people busy working first shift inside, the Day stockers and cashiers with preference or seniority. That’s who delivers my mail, if I ever get any. And she did. She did great. Today she brought a letter from my son who I’ve been worrying about for years. First word from him in forever. 

He’s fine, he says. Doing real well. His mother is in Florida with her improved husband. He wants me to know he finished his MBA. He’s going to be one of the managers, live wherever the managers all live. He says, don’t worry, Dad, I’ve got it all figured out.

I can’t say why I’m crying and smiling both.

*         *         *

The expectations: try to carve out a life and a space to live it. You go ahead and dare to experience love for other human beings, and keep yourself on the best path that’s open. Even doing right, some night ‘They’ may come for you. I know how it got this bad, but not what to do to make it better. For a few years the ’They’ of concern were the police, always coming, carrying people away from their families. Now it’s the other poor folks. We’re divided into tribes, and we’re at each other’s throats. 

In this town, I’m afraid they‘re hungrier than we are. 

They’re here, looks like all of them. Vehicles grouped in a tight wedge, they hit our barricades a few dozen yards down, accelerating to at least fifty or sixty miles an hour. Fencing and plywood fly backwards, skitter down the pavement, letting them on in. 

They hate us deep, they won’t show mercy.

The Greeter turns his back to the section we’re braced behind, the one other vehicles are almost upon. 

“Run!” he shouts at me, “Save yourself!” He pushes me back in the direction of the store. Before I don’t see the old man anymore, he’s standing there in his blue vest, which will surely catch him negative special attention, somebody’s grandpa who had to return to the workplace.

There’s a flare overhead. For a moment the area around us is day-bright. I see the lettering where his name tag reads, “Todd Mercer.” He’s smiling and waving at those Meijer bastards over the fence, doing his job, Greeting. He calls out, “Welcome to WalMart! Can I help you fiiiiiiinnndd anything?” when they bear down and roll right over the top of him.

It’s heartbreaking, but even so, someone’s bound to live through this attack who resides in one of these cars out here and is praying for a Greeter job. 

I’m sprinting faster than the Canadians did, back when we invaded them. I don’t care if you think I’m a coward—I’ve got mail to deliver tomorrow, assuming there’s anyone here left to receive mail. If you ever luck into a quality job like that, you keep it ‘til they bury you. That will happen soon enough, don’t help them do it to you.

Fuck those guys. We still have the lowest goddamn prices in Osceola County. 

TODD MERCER won the first Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest. His chapbook, Box of Echoes, won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest and his digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is forthcoming from RHP Books. Mercer's poetry and fiction appear in Apocrypha & Abstractions, Blink Ink, Blue Collar Review, The Camel Saloon, Camroc Press Review, Cease, Cows, Cheap Pop, Dunes Review, East Coast Literary Review, Eunoia Review, Falling Star, 50-Word Stories, The Fib Review, Gravel, The Lake, The Legendary, Main Street Rag Anthologies, Melancholy Hyperbole, Misty Mountain Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, theNewer York, One Sentence Poems, Postcard Poems and Prose, Postcard Shorts, Right Hand Pointing, River Lit, The Second Hump, and Spartan.

John Pursch: Buncle Slim

“I what plump fergot to warsh off the ink
from muh stumpie hafta-go-lurchy peninsular spoutin’ pin,”
chuckled H. Prerogatory Q. Nappie O’Wrangler the Pith,
fifteenth Earl of Shampooed Hamwitch,
Deaconate of the Touchy Toupee of Norse Umbrian Flaregun.

He smoked long and lean bicuspid fillings
of juiced encaustic tonic notary pulp city
flagon destruction compartment moths,
what flipped their mythologically impacted wings
from mating rituals known clear across Louvered Swobodia
for their grout-wrenching performance narratives
of bulimic sod and tarts in disrepair,
flung from torn fishnet undergarments
outa store-bought frontier delusions,
pasted to your brainpan by emerald daydreams
of popcorn movie head and stick-figurine incendiary
plow horse blowtorch defibrillation,
courting debilitated deputies
of Pyre Sighland lug-alike canned detestation,
clear from Sloshing Foam, P.C.
to Scuppered Downhome Outhouse Pisregard
(piling place of D.T. Ponereport,
dirtiest sniveling whore genital contrail remover
ever found in the heinous annals of twirled hysterical sunsets,
steered navel-wide from pluperfectionist magisterium
to bailiff broadsides fired county cluck-wise
in bullfrog buttress imitation’s filial possum
of ostrich custard election know-how).

Show me how far we’ve come
from umpteen umbrella shots in Pealing Drama, Taxes,
you syrupy sudsy slurper of deep-fired
slattern-crookin’ creek-bred rusty Aphasians,
plied what with plopped cycle breasts milked by
inert shoddy lop-of-the-two-piece
boardroom snooker jock set,
imploding hourly on chunnels ground
to clockwork Styrofoam pajama spurts,
confronted belles o’ battling bleeding litigants
he daubed with heisted creepy cradlers
from hovering hilltop feudal larders,
fueled to foveal floating rotation bilge,
sloshing over the wobbling epiglottal eyesore
of precedents becalmed to rows of stimulated sheet petal Sundays.

Datelines glide to comely home front stowaway illusion meals,
accepting ptomaine heat erasure by the handyman’s
expressly mobbed contusion grease fanatic semblance,
propped in worrisome decibel emotion proxy snooze belief
for gulch-cowing cooler chatter,
recollected sideways by Buncle Slim,
Carbuncular Capsizer of Defenestrated Tailors
Swirled Canticle-wide and Chopped Sousa Doozy
Infant’s Peduncular Nerdly Emblem Grazer.

Slim what shot up add mirely demotion’s causal mannequin
of his churlish dame’s devotional membrane and claimed
in terrified desultory infusion breath:

“Who’d savory grafted android rights
of wayward billowing Beluga breast
inspection torts to anyone,
ladder lonely slum underfed corpse
of inclined planet placard plaque
derision numbnut criminologist
wud you mired obey pee-cullin’ year shelf
in mah courtyard gloomy vestibule,
figurin’ tea cup a pleasant spleef afore ya mentioned
the hummed hymnal intentionals
of smugly played imbibement daze
gone festerin’ likely into puissant comedy of terriers?”

Wheedle know,
this candle figure eight o’ nine trailing tongueless crab tree,
ferried along the groin grain gloss of homespun chattel pie
by anyone but Buncle Slim,
whale eet waddled nut fairly furor than say a gantry mire
before laughing in sway bar munificence
to country island lug nut slake,
contested sliding follicle delusion
set to porous gravy overshirt of dung
in fair heathered henna implants.

Showering humps every switched day
from cylindrical nightstand sloop
to jib to jabbering spinnaker buboes,
the crowded Doctor Mastiff staggered outa timed machinery’s
pubescent portal chest into naked timesheet numbing gents,
kneed ‘em to submissive postulates
of Oilskids Reproductive Surgery Repair Service
(manned by one furious rattler biding nautical
his shipping gyration’s motivated clime),
and cobbled two gasping thunderheaded blonde rodeo queens
to form the next great preener of shore
and screaming sliver of screen shot chunky flesh
to salivate a dousing seizure’s pinochle entendre,
planting the Americon phlag, all plastic and purple,
from middle C to lower intestinal bucolic rage,
right in the rectilinear rectal mulch of down-and-shouted
towny frowsy whorehouse continuity’s newly elected
Precedent Hearball O’Bunky,
worldly peasant extraordinaire,
founder of most android nude colonial pederasty societies
on cheesebag planetary discursive entrails
strewn atop the Asstoroidal Bleat,
flaunting Dearth’s mythical prowess,
full candy canard petroleum petard infarction dog,
just tarrying to stultify Chupacabra Peter’s frozen waistline
into mordant extraluminal humping oblation.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. His recently released experimental lit-rap video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

Donal Mahoney: The Button Workers

Since the United Nations passed the Universal Right to Work Law in 2093, Skewer International has brought back from other planets thousands of migrant workers on its company spaceship.

On the last trip, Manfred, an interloper, somehow boarded the ship even though he lacks one of the prerequisites for a United Nations green card--namely, a button in his navel that can be turned off to prevent him from speaking. 

The navel button is a requirement of companies on Earth for any interplanetary worker. Manfred talked incessantly while the company pilot flew from planet to planet taking on board hundreds of other migrant workers, all equipped with navel buttons. His job was to bring them back to Earth to work in potato fields all over the world.

"Manfred, will you please quiet down," Wally, the pilot, said. "You're keeping the others awake and it's tough on my concentration. There are lots of planets and I wouldn't want to land on one that has no workers waiting to get on board. I'd waste a lot of fuel taking off again." 

"I'll do the best I can," Manfred said. "I never got a navel button like the others so it's hard for me to keep quiet. But I'm a darn good worker. All I want is a chance."

The United Nations' version of a "green card" allows migrants to work in any nation. Talkative Manfred is unaware that he will be sent home on the next spaceship that leaves Earth to pick up more workers. Once he has a navel button installed, he can apply again to come back to Earth for a job.

"No navel button, no job," Wally whispered to himself. "A long day's journey into plight."

In 2093, the demand for button workers continues to grow among farmers in the United States, Italy, China, Tajikistan, Moldova and Belarus. Other countries are expected to begin hiring them as well. 

The workers are valued by institutional farmers because migrants don't complain about working conditions or low salaries the way domestic workers often do. And the button workers don't need health insurance or retirement benefits. If a button worker gets sick, he or she goes back to the home planet on the next spaceship. And when they are too old to work, it's back to the home planet as well. 

"They're always surprised," Wally thought to himself, "when they get sick or old and home they go, the same way they came. It saves companies a lot of money. If they die in the fields, however, they're put on a company pyre. It's a cookout, as one manager calls it."

At the present time button workers, no matter the nation in which they work, do only one kind of labor. They plant and harvest Yukon Gold potatoes 12 hours a day. During their workday, they have their navel buttons turned on so they can say yes to the foremen on horses overseeing their work and giving directions.

"Let's get a move on" is typically what workers hear from foremen. And they respond by working faster. Domestic workers don't respond like that. They're apt to protest, maybe even picket. And pickets around the potato fields won't get the Yukon Golds planted or harvested. The button workers can be counted on to get the job done. They have no idea what "unions" were before legislation led to their disintegration.

At night, with their buttons turned off, the workers head back to their sheds for a bowl of cabbage soup before they bunk down for the night. Libations are limited to water. On Sundays, each worker gets two bowls of cabbage soup and a Pecan Sandy cookie.

Monday through Saturday, reveille sounds at 4 a.m. when the foremen on horses blow trumpets, ready to lead the button workers back to the fields.

"Let's go, you buttons," the foremen yell between blasts on their trumpets. "The potatoes are calling."

Research is under way at several universities to fabricate navel buttons for domestic workers who perhaps can then be hired to work in the fields. The media remains critical of industry because the unemployment rate is so high among domestic workers. 

But, currently, domestic workers are not an attractive pool from which to seek new employees because of the tumult created for many years by fast-food workers seeking a living wage. Their wages have never gone up but the workers now get an extra sandwich for every 8 hours they work. 

"Some of them are barely skilled enough," complained one company president, "to put a pickle slice on a hamburger, never mind adding condiments as well."

Industry predicts that eventually farmers from every nation on Earth will hire interplanetary button workers and that they will soon work in factories as well. Manufacturing jobs will then be brought back to the land of the free and the home of the button worker. 

Stock Market savants say the Dow Jones average will rise dramatically as a result. What more could anyone want in a free market economy.

Anuradha Bhattacharyya: BIG MAX

Som did not know how to go about it. He left it to chance. He came across Nalini as a witty, willful girl and he was afraid that it would be difficult to steer things round to his way. However, one day, he extended his friendship to her and the next day he asked her out for a walk. In this way the two of them became palls. But Som wanted more …

Early one evening, as the two of them walked aimlessly in the crowded streets of Kolkata, their conversation turns from books to themselves. Nalini says,

See he’s wearing the same T-shirt. Som smiles, she continues,

No, the collar is just your opposite.

Som laughs, Ya, mine’s pink.

Where are you taking me?

To Big Max.

You’ll get to see the cell-phone-girl? They laugh,

May be your Xavarian will be in there too.

What was he like? I mean, how tall. Did he have a beard?

He looked like he didn’t shave that day.

So you won’t know him if he shaves.

I don’t care, says Nalini with a toss of her head.

I wonder what he wanted. Probably lying about himself.

I was wary.

Ya, you should be careful.

At that time I was literally praying that you’d come out.

What’s my coming out got to do with it?

Why, he’d at least shut up then. After receiving no reply from Som, who was concentrating on the street, she says,

But he did mention Gaurav.

Said he knew him.

Wanted him. So I asked him to go to the college. What could I do if he wanted a book from Gaurav?

But he didn’t move.

What’s wrong today? There’s another copy.

What copy?

Your.

That’s a pink one, isn’t it?

It’s faded.

Both of them fall silent. The busses make it hard for them to hear each other. They shout at the top of their voices confident that no one but they could hear what they were saying. But by now they had covered more than four kilometers after leaving the bus. Nalini was getting tired. Som was also breathless; he is barely audible when he says,

Shall we go there?

I was thinking something.

What?

Something. Nalini giggles.

Hm?

They were also wearing the same pink and white stripes, even the jeans, but you look most handsome.

Uh uh.

They laugh loudly, almost forcefully.

Why?

Why what?

Why?

Come this way.

Hold my hand.

Kid.

And you are my uncle.

Uncle?

Hold my hand!

This girl.

Okay brother. Now hold.

Don’t you think one can tell by the way we walk …

That we’re not brother and sister? Our faces don’t match.

Som remains quiet. He was thinking hard. She continues,

That’s why I said uncle!

I can’t look an uncle.

Even an infant can be an uncle.

No, I am an uncle but I don’t look …

You look my brother?

Not really. By the way we walk … don’t you think … we look different?

They turn into a side street which she can’t recognize. She looks up at him and asks,

We are not going to Big Max? They were nowhere near Big Max, the famous restaurant on Palk Street in Kolkata.

No. I said we’ll go to that place.

You said Big Max!

Initially I said that, but I told you when we turned this way.

You tell half the things to yourself. Now tell me: where are we going? We’ve been walking too long already. I’m tired.

You get tired very soon, don’t you?

I don’t have your long legs.

I wish you had more stamina.

Your hands are very spongy.

Spongy?

Chubby.

Soft, Som corrects her.

There’s too much flesh, red flesh. I haven’t touched such a fleshy hand before.

Not mine before?

I mean except yours.

See, I’m a soft man.

In palmistry …

Damn your palmistry.

No no, listen first.

It says flabby palms are a sign of deceptive character.

Oh?

Yes. Contact with you will be disastrous for me.

For once – it is right. Saying this, he laughs without laughter in his heart. His heart squirms.

It doesn’t say that!

It says I’m deceptive.

Yes. Like you haven’t told me where we’re going.

You’ll see.

She is pretty. He sees Nalini looking at a girl wearing black.

Hm? Nice legs.

Go after her.

He laughs again with an effort and says, For once …

Now she looks up at his face and turns pale. She does not laugh. He continues,

So? For once you’ve shown correct sense. Shall I go after her?

Go. And after a while she adds,

I know.

What?

Your company is disastrous to me.

I’m dangerous! D A N G E R O U S !

It was a long silence before Som resumes,

Anyway. He can see Nalini thoughtful. Then she says,

I think that man is the same one.

Who?

There, speaking on the phone. I think he’s the same one.

Which one? That’s an older man, out there. That one?

No-o not the Xavarian. That’s the one who talked to me in the BCL.

You never told me about him.

I forgot. He came up to me and asked for the book I was holding. Almost snatched.

Why did you let him?!

I didn’t! He asked, ‘are you taking it?’ I said, ‘yes, I think so’ and held on to it. But he almost snatched it and had a look inside.

You.

The book. It was The Heart of Darkness and he asked if I was in M.A. English. I said ‘what are you in’ without answering and he said research in something and got away. Didn’t I do the right thing?

You should be careful.

I think I must wear faded dresses and put oil in my hair.

He looks much older. Probably lied to you.

Maybe it’s not the same man. I didn’t even look at his face.

Hah !?

Som can’t tell what she was thinking, but he finds that she has screwed up her nose and her gait has become slower. He turns round the next bend and waits for her to catch up with him. Then she says with a forced smile,

I’m getting scared of everybody.

Including me?

Uh, except you.