Tokyo Stirs: (Short Stories about Asia) by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Fishing with Shiva

[8] I tell her all the time if she’d just goddamn listen. Damn near drives me insane. I ain’t going back to Kathmandu, not unless I can meet Linda there.

‘Linda ain’t there, Honey,’ Ms. Cherrydew says.

Typical answer. Broken record player worse than me. The hell Linda ain’t there. How does she know anyway? Maybe she’s just trying to get at me. Pick at the scab until it can’t stop bleeding.

This is the last time I let her take me to the community garden. Always calling my bluff when she’s the one lying. Give this medicine to her. Interleukins. See how she operates. Head cloudy glazed brain dying. I’m well and dandy most days anyhow. Just when things get dim you know the drill, Bob, you know it good and well.

Play the role assigned to you.

‘Linda is dead,’ she says. ‘You ready?’

Blasphemy never felt so blatant.

‘I’m not done torching things,’ I tell her.

Don’t growl, Bob, she gets hissy when you do that. I’d fight her if I could, but I got no swing left in me and it’s America and I’m rich enough and she’d sue me and be one rich little Southern Bell caretaker when all was said and done. See if I give up my house that easy. Too many people fingering legal triggers like hungry soldiers of fortune. See if I care. The smell of propane tinges the air. The weather’s turning gray and my eyes are watering. Epiphora, where’s my tissue?

‘Linda updates her Facebook,’ I tell her. I know about Facebook and it ain’t that hard to use as long as Ms. Cherrydew helps me sign in.

‘We’ve talked about this before. Your Linda doesn’t have a Facebook, Honey. That’s my friend Linda. You, yourself, don’t have a Facebook either,’ she says.

How am I supposed to reason with this kind of knuckleheaded logic? That damn Southern accent is too syrupy and nice.

‘I just ordered pizza from a website the other day; it appeared at my home and I ate it, dammit.’

‘I ordered it, Mr. Latchman,’ she says.

‘Don’t ‘Mr. Latchman’ me. If I can order a pizza off the internet and flush it down the toilet the next day it’s real. Linda’s alive.’

‘Ok, you’re right. Now give me the torch,’ she says. ‘It’s getting close to your afternoon naptime. I think somebody’s starting to get grumpy.’

But I want to burn more weeds, I start to tell her. I want to smell the propane sweet and intoxicating. I don’t say this, but she knows, and I know something about watching things wilt and turn black and disintegrate and turn into crumbs. Shiva, you blue bastard, we’re more alike than you think. I’ll give her the torch for now, but I ain’t done with this garden.

‘Why are you stalling?’ she asks. ‘Let’s go, rain’s-a-coming.’

Stalin. You hear the things she calls me? Caretakers these days love to figure out the best way to get under your fingernails, like a damn yellow fungus growing and growing. The Cold War never ended for many of us and it never will.

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