Strange Sisters by Fletcher Flora

Author:Fletcher Flora [Flora, Fletcher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pyramid Books
Published: 1954-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

She was caught in the centrifugal action, whirled around and around the circumference of the conical world. Then she was flung out of the whirling mass in a great, high dizzy arc, and she was standing alone at a great altitude on an arid lip of rock. Below her was the world, and the world was no longer a whirling spiral of many colors but was now a colorless and desolate cup of perfect stillness. Above and beyond her, outside the world, there was a sound like rollicking thunder, and pretty soon she identified it as the laughter of God. God sat on an electron with His feet on a proton and held His sides and laughed and laughed and laughed with the rollicking, thunderous laughter. Leaning forward from the lip of rock, she stuck a finger into the cup of the world and found that it was dry. She pushed the cup away from her and said to God, "Fill it up. Fill up the cup of the world."

"Lady," said the bartender, "you've had enough. Don't you think you've had enough?"

She looked at the bartender, and he was not a man. Neither was he a woman. Neither a he nor a she was he. He was an It. It was an It. How beautiful and considerate was the English language to have the neuter gender, a wonderful and wide and pacific category that was neither one thing nor the other. Other languages weren't like that. Some other languages. Spanish, for example. She had studied Spanish in high school, and she had hated it because nothing was neuter, everything was he or she. Even pens and pencils were he and she. El and la. She was very clever to remember that from away back in high school. Good morning, Mr. Pencil. Good morning, Miss Pen. No neuter. Never any beautiful It. The neuter was a green and quiet little island in a stormy sea, and you swam and swam in the stormy sea until your arms and legs were like lead, and the soul inside you was exhausted and indifferent, and just when you decided to quit swimming and sink into the dark water, you came to the little neuter island, and you climbed up onto it and rested, and after a while your muscles and your soul were ready to swim again.

She said to the bartender, "The cup of the world is empty, It. Fill up the cup, It."

"Please, lady," he said. "You've had enough."

"Enough?" She looked at him slyly and laughed. "You are so right, It. I've had enough. I've had more than enough, if you only knew it. Do you hear that sound? If you listen very closely, you can hear it. It's like thunder a long way off. Do you know what it is? It's God laughing. It's God laughing because I've had enough."

"You just take it easy, lady. I'll tell you what. You get back in the booth, and I'll bring you some nice black coffee.

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