Sixfold Fiction Winter 2016

  #7—NAGGING COUGH OR HOARSNESS. The Ambassador showed then, I suppose, the same persistence, the same oblivious tenacity that had earned the praise and gratitude of two Presidents. Afterward, when I learned who he was, I found pictures of him in old newspapers, photos of a tall, square-chinned figure striding down barricaded streets, meeting with bearded guerillas, boarding rust-covered bi-planes at the end of jungle runways.

  Quite simply, the man knew no fear. He was thick-skinned and arrogant, with an effete, slender nose that quivered when he was on the scent. He wasn’t at all what we’d dreamed of, pigeons, but he wouldn’t go away. Stepping across my path outside the studio, waiting with flowers at my hotel, sitting at the table next to mine in clubs—there was no end to him. And to his wearisome, heavy-handed devotion.

  “I will not live without you, Miss DeWitt,” he told me early in our one-sided courtship. “I am too old and too rich not to get what I want.” I laughed at the time, unfastening a pearl-and-diamond brooch he’d pinned to my breast. “And I, Mr. Ambassador,” I told him, “am too young and too beautiful to even consider spending my life with you.”

  We were married in a small civil ceremony. And if an old warhorse isn’t a stallion, he is good for nose-rubbing, for quiet grazing, haunch to haunch. We became fast allies, he and I, reading each other’s whims from across a room, gossiping, staying home for long weekends, sprawled in a nest of newspapers and take-out food cartons. Content.

  Which is why, years later when you abandoned me, dumplings, when you left me alone in the wake of those pathetic films, I survived. I even learned to cook, began to share the Ambassador’s fascination with bonsai. Sometimes, inhaling my red pepper pesto, or bracing a tiny, gnarled limb with florist’s wire, I wondered if it hadn’t all been for the best. If those black-hole movies hadn’t been instruments of providence, to bring me back to an earlier time, a slow and dreamy life I’d forgotten. A contained, unexamined peace.

  But then my good companion died, felled by a heart attack that left him upright in his lounge chair, mouth half open, eyes widened in surprise. I was abandoned again, alone with the old movies and a tumor that whispered to me in the dark. “I claim your cervix,” it whined. “Your ovaries are mine. They are like columbines, swollen, seductive. And I am a bee, sucking, sucking.” Nothing would stop the pain, my lambs, nothing I could do or swallow or inject.

  Still the movies helped. That shady baggage who went up in flames last week was my salvation. Crouched under the projector’s stuttering light, redeemed by her painted beauty, I was equal to the struggle. “You’ll never have me!” she and I yelled together. “Rough hands will not take from me what a gentle kiss would yield.”

  Now, lambs, you must carry that lovely strumpet off with you, read her back to life. Only a minute ago, Dr. Cameron peered down at me from a great height. Behind him, I saw a gloomy man fill a second syringe. They have disappeared again, but I can hardly write, my jewels. The world is spinning and I need to sleep.

  I promise, though. Even under clover and onion grass, I will feel your love. Read my cheekbones, not shadowed and lost, but plump with youth. Read my hair, not thinned by chemo, but rich and full, the color of desire. Read my breasts and hips, round with longing, waiting for your touch. I am not more beautiful than you can imagine, but exactly that beautiful.

  Soon they will come back. The nurse will hold out a stiff, forbearing hand, ask me to surrender my tablet. They will give me another shot, and tell me to count backwards. Seven, I will say, twirling away from them toward you. I am dancing even now, stamping and wild, my body a flame. Can you see me? Six, I will whisper, lost to the music, turning. Already my hair falls over one eye, my skin shines with perspiration and my legs flash like rain on sea grass. Five, I am whirling faster now, so fast I leave you behind. Four, you stumble after me, breathing heavily, stiff with need. Three, you reach out, fold me laughing against you. Two, we are falling together, swept under a dark, foam-headed wave. We are One now, you and I. Mark me, my precious morsels. Bend this page. Bite the corner off. No one will see you. Devour me. Swallow me whole.