until the ants shrank to a cellular level. They would remain, their antennae a swaying villi mass in her small intestine, but she might not be so discomforted. The doctor was asking us about how we dressed and slept and Phillip was explaining the shared seats and tailored shirts while she thrashed.
“Remove these demons,” she cried, terribly hoarse.
The doctor glanced at her file and put it down. “I’m not sure how to begin,” he said, producing an otoscope to examine our ears. “Your record notes a rash and hair loss, but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusion that involves a demon or demons.”
“These boys—” she said, before Morris touched her with a gentle hand and removed her ability to speak. She jabbed at us, and we focused our thoughts until the blackness on her nail spread. Finger and nail dropped onto the floor like a crust of bread. The sick spread from her finger to her arm and she watched it, weeping in pantomime. The doctor began testing our reflexes with a rubber mallet and marveling at the transference of reflex.
“I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have a sons,” the kind doctor said. We laughed and laughed!
Blood
Your boyfriend’s dad taught us how to explode mosquitoes. All you needed to do, he explained, was flex your arm and some mechanism would lock the insect to expand until it burst. Your boyfriend’s dad was a contractor who worked on places in the neighborhood and lived on a street lined with unfinished homes. He said that all we’ve got is our minds and our muscle and so we ought to know how to use both. He would jab at your arm and say Isn’t that right, Joshua? And you would laugh and rub the back of your neck and agree that he was right.
The neighborhood was the type where all the houses went up at once, so fast that their wood all surely came from the same trees, sheetrock from the same stone. You let me tag along with you and your boyfriend and sometimes he gave me ten dollars to get us some cheeseburgers.
We tried the thing with the mosquitoes for months, skipping the sprays and creams that might ward them off. We never saw them get us. We were pocked with welts that stung under tanning oil. I remember running across unfinished rooftops, jumping from house to house, but that wasn’t right. It was your boyfriend’s dad who did that and only once, striding a gap onto a garage extension to avoid climbing down and climbing back up. He was strong and cocksure, and seemed fairly confident in his own immortality. I’m still attracted to any man who can whistle.
Your boyfriend was all right. He played the violin. The three of us were lying on a roof once and he said that after death your consciousness snaps out and that’s all. I thought he had fallen asleep. You said that when you died you wanted your ashes cast into marbles and distributed to your family. I would get the one that looked most like a galaxy, and your boyfriend would get the second. If anyone died, you said, it wouldn’t be one of us. He shrugged and said it didn’t matter either way. We climbed down and looked at the beams where one of the guys had drawn maybe one thousand separate pairs of tits. I was reading a book in school about a girl who folded paper cranes and so this made sense.
* * *
The three of us rode our bikes to the community pool and watched the girls playing tennis. I always found three or four spokey dokes for my bike in the playground by the court, the plastic nibs half buried like they had grown there. We once broke a ramp constructed at the base of a hill for our red wagon and that was the worst thing that happened to any of us, as far as I knew or cared. The idea that everything was fine laid the delicate foundation of my life.
You figured out the mosquito trick right at the end of the summer, before you went to high school and I stayed with the little kids. It was the sweet spot of August and almost my birthday. We were sitting in a half-finished
“Remove these demons,” she cried, terribly hoarse.
The doctor glanced at her file and put it down. “I’m not sure how to begin,” he said, producing an otoscope to examine our ears. “Your record notes a rash and hair loss, but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusion that involves a demon or demons.”
“These boys—” she said, before Morris touched her with a gentle hand and removed her ability to speak. She jabbed at us, and we focused our thoughts until the blackness on her nail spread. Finger and nail dropped onto the floor like a crust of bread. The sick spread from her finger to her arm and she watched it, weeping in pantomime. The doctor began testing our reflexes with a rubber mallet and marveling at the transference of reflex.
“I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have a sons,” the kind doctor said. We laughed and laughed!
Blood
Your boyfriend’s dad taught us how to explode mosquitoes. All you needed to do, he explained, was flex your arm and some mechanism would lock the insect to expand until it burst. Your boyfriend’s dad was a contractor who worked on places in the neighborhood and lived on a street lined with unfinished homes. He said that all we’ve got is our minds and our muscle and so we ought to know how to use both. He would jab at your arm and say Isn’t that right, Joshua? And you would laugh and rub the back of your neck and agree that he was right.
The neighborhood was the type where all the houses went up at once, so fast that their wood all surely came from the same trees, sheetrock from the same stone. You let me tag along with you and your boyfriend and sometimes he gave me ten dollars to get us some cheeseburgers.
We tried the thing with the mosquitoes for months, skipping the sprays and creams that might ward them off. We never saw them get us. We were pocked with welts that stung under tanning oil. I remember running across unfinished rooftops, jumping from house to house, but that wasn’t right. It was your boyfriend’s dad who did that and only once, striding a gap onto a garage extension to avoid climbing down and climbing back up. He was strong and cocksure, and seemed fairly confident in his own immortality. I’m still attracted to any man who can whistle.
Your boyfriend was all right. He played the violin. The three of us were lying on a roof once and he said that after death your consciousness snaps out and that’s all. I thought he had fallen asleep. You said that when you died you wanted your ashes cast into marbles and distributed to your family. I would get the one that looked most like a galaxy, and your boyfriend would get the second. If anyone died, you said, it wouldn’t be one of us. He shrugged and said it didn’t matter either way. We climbed down and looked at the beams where one of the guys had drawn maybe one thousand separate pairs of tits. I was reading a book in school about a girl who folded paper cranes and so this made sense.
* * *
The three of us rode our bikes to the community pool and watched the girls playing tennis. I always found three or four spokey dokes for my bike in the playground by the court, the plastic nibs half buried like they had grown there. We once broke a ramp constructed at the base of a hill for our red wagon and that was the worst thing that happened to any of us, as far as I knew or cared. The idea that everything was fine laid the delicate foundation of my life.
You figured out the mosquito trick right at the end of the summer, before you went to high school and I stayed with the little kids. It was the sweet spot of August and almost my birthday. We were sitting in a half-finished
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