Steel Animals by SK Dyment

Author:SK Dyment
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2018-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

22.

WANDA AND BEN have returned to Toronto to assess the bike repair shop and decide what to do with their lives. They are making love, and he is breathing in the new tantric way that Wanda has taught him to. Distracted by the half-finished glider project and the possibility of setting a lucrative new repair shop in New York, Ben can’t keep his thoughts focused. He is fighting the urge not to visualize the male server at the New York Pilsner bar when a souvenir plate of the Statue of Liberty that hangs over their bed falls from the wall and strikes him on the head. He collapses into Wanda’s arms, and Wanda, delighted with the sudden intimacy, holds him tenderly, until she notices the blood trickling from his hair. The plate, like all good souvenir objects designed to celebrate freedom—and commemorate the first thing immigrants and tourists see upon their arrival to New York—is made of a heavy-duty ceramic similar to the cermet chosen by NASA. It does not shatter but falls like an Olympic discus onto the hand-hooked rug by their bed. Ben moans in such a spectacular way that Wanda is not alerted to the fact that he has just been knocked unconscious, causing all the precious neurons they fought so hard to remaster to suddenly go on the blink. She is enjoying the feeling of his more sensitive muscles relaxing in, and on, her body. But the weight of him is getting to be a little too much. When she sees the blood, she rolls his body slowly onto his side, hoping to look into his eyes. Instead, he slips from her embrace and to her dismay, rolls to the floor. The fall is three feet.

In a heartbeat, Wanda is at his side, slapping Ben once across the face. Determining he is unconscious, she calls an ambulance to rush to their home. Unsure what to do, she reaches for the little watering can that she keeps by the window and waters Ben frantically with a vitamin-enriched plant fluid. To her surprise, he begins to stir, a smile beautifying his face. She pops a small device in his mouth that measures the pH balance of his soil.

It hangs from his lips like a cigarette and Ben begins to speak: “I saw it all so plainly, Wanda. I was wearing a backpack full of math books, and Rudy was at my side. We had borrowed some things from his father, some things Rudy always wanted but never had the nerve to take. He wanted his father to pay more attention to him. His father had been involved with the men he did business with, taking late calls, running off to meetings, and drinking like a fish for months. He was obviously involved in some big scheme, but no one in Rudy’s house knew what it was. His father was sworn not to discuss it with anyone else. I was the only one outside their house who even knew something was different, who knew anything, and that was because I had promised.

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