The Impossibly by Laird Hunt Page B

the events I am now relating, I was under the impression that it had changed, but it had not. I am not very lucky, I told her later that day, when I saw her again, which is to say that I did see and speak to her again, whether or not it was her. We were sitting in a dark room on a couch and had been discussing science fiction movies, a topic I had proposed. Certain events were to begin shortly, and until they began we were obliged, according to instructions, to wait together in the dark. She had refused to gloss her presence in the room, except to say that it was job related, and she hadn’t asked me why I was there, so I told her about a movie I had seen recently in which the rocket a man is riding in loses an engine, forcing him to crash-land on a planet populated by citizens dressed in iridescent robes, who enjoy going to the arena, where often there are gladiators fighting wild pigs. The pigs in the film were very large, I explained to her, much larger than the average pig and they could fly. Actually it would not be quite fair to say the pigs could fly. What they could do was hover. This was described as a form of instinctual levitation. As a young man, subsequent to my coin-diving period, I knew pigs, our pigs—often I was given the job of filling up their trough. It was quite a deep trough and the pigs were frequently hungry and, as I remember it, I used to hold this against them. Made aware of this, a friend suggested we hit them with two-by-fours. It was unclear to us whether or not they noticed. One day having worked with the pigs, I went to school without changing my shoes. Normally in such instances, the teacher would strike us with a textbook. That day, however, he instructed me to remove one of my shoes and, holding it carefully, used it. Basically, the spaceman was lacking both the tools and the materials to repair his rocket. There were many shots of the stranded rocket—a glistening, elongated cone with elegant blue fins. It was pleasant to hear the people in their iridescent robes who came daily to offer advice to the spaceman say, titanium.
    That’s a nice word, isn’t it? I said. Yes it is, she said, in fact, right this second it wouldn’t be a bad thing to be encased in it. Encouraged, I told her about another movie, this one involving an android whose eyelid function wasn’t working, causing it great discomfort. Then I stopped talking because suddenly she was holding my hand. That had not occurred for some time. For quite some time. That her hand seemed larger than it had previously and that her arm against mine seemed slightly longer than previously did not matter in the face of this pleasantness. Do not, under any circumstances, yeah right, I thought, squeezing her hand and sort of humming a little. It is definitely a nice word, she said. Yes it is, I said. Then our period of waiting was over and there were others in the dark room with us. Two of them sat down on the couch. I felt to make sure that the roll of red duct tape was still in my pocket—it was. A moment later, however, it wasn’t, and she was no longer holding my hand. After I had finished selling cakes, I went to a small restaurant I know. The restaurant is lit, principally, by yellow bulbs behind yellow shades around which, in the right season, insects circle lazily. The proprietor is a kindly person, and the waiter is neither too quick in his service nor too slow. I ordered, on this occasion, what was described in the menu as “a large piece of meat,” and as I waited for it I sipped a pleasant beverage and looked at the other diners. They had all, it seemed, chosen the large portion of meat, and it was agreeable to watch them lift their heavily laden forks and wipe at the corners of their mouths with their napkins. By and by the waiter came to me with my own plate. It is a lovely thing, during those occasional intervals when nothing is all that is required and more, to eat a nice piece of meat in a warm, dimly lit room, one