Slonim Woods 9 by Daniel Barban Levin

Author:Daniel Barban Levin [Levin, Daniel Barban]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2021-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

Dan

I WAS WOKEN UP, predawn, by explosions. In the moment of coming back from some dream—my dreams in those days were always fitful and fragmented, like torn sheets of paper being pieced back together—I couldn’t tell if the muted booming that had cut through my sleep was Ethan playing video games all night again or the fireworks that had been making the horizon blush over the Norfolk countryside every night so far in November. Probably both. I’d thought Guy Fawkes Day was, as implied by the name, just one day, but it turned out to be an entire month. Norfolk was all rolling, empty hills, houses hundreds of years old made of flint dug out of the surrounding countryside, and my flatmates said the stereotype of this part of England was that the farmers fucked their pigs and had six fingers on each hand, so I guessed it was the kind of place where people had copious access to fireworks and not much to do but use them.

I swung out of bed and started my workout, two hours of push-ups between stints of washing dishes, an element I’d added out of exhaustion with the intractable grossness of my younger roommates. After my first set, I went down to the kitchen, where cold dawn light was just beginning to fill the room. I noticed a pool of blood on the floor, then traced the line of red up to the counter, where someone had left an uncooked steak in unwrapped plastic on the steel counter. I ignored that, not knowing what to do with it, and went to scrub the deep well of dishes like it was my job. Then back to the room for forty more push-ups, and so on, until I reached four hundred, and the day was almost ready to begin.

I had an assignment from my poetry workshop to write something inspired by a piece of art, so as the rest of the ziggurat woke up, I headed to the on-campus museum. The end of the semester was approaching, which meant returning to the United States for the winter holiday. I’d thought I wanted to stay here for the winter, but when I’d finally told Larry my plans, nervously explaining that I couldn’t afford the ticket, he’d said I needed to come home, it would kill me if I didn’t, and he would help me pay. Because he cared about me so much. I couldn’t say no. Ultimately, he’d convinced me to convince my parents to pay for my ticket, which they had, but they insisted that in return I let them pick me up at the airport and that I come see them in New Jersey before going to New York.

The museum on the UEA campus looked like a gigantic marshmallow had been tipped over in a field, and it was connected to the campus by a long, thin walking bridge. From the bridge, I could see the lake, pale birds wheeling up and down, tracing some kind of vast, imperceptible pattern in the air.

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