World Famous Love Acts by Brian Leung

Author:Brian Leung
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2011-06-14T04:30:00+00:00

It is this night Gideon thinks of as he sits on his deck, waiting for his mother to arrive from San Diego. A pair of jets make vaportrail sutures across the sky, the scars healing from their farthest point. He knows it is five o’clock by the specific gradation of yellow. It is the easiest time for him to breathe, looking at the back-lit olive trees and Spanish-style homes, the increasing sound of traffic washing insinuation from the air. He realizes he is waiting for that transition which never comes to Los Angeles: people, like certain perennials, coaxed into extended seasons. He examines his hands, convinced he can feel the skin pulling back from his nails. They are dry and peeling in minute strands.

Gideon looks at the adjacent hill a mile off, everything behind it a vague, petroleum orange. At the top of the hill stands a single palm, a black and accidental keyhole after the sunset. He drove to it once. The tree’s base was covered with nails and staples from years of lost dogs and yard sales. It seemed unaffected, it’s rustling crown of fronds thick and new, making the air sound carbonated. But now its form is simply dark and distant.

Looking out at Los Angeles from his home, he begins to understand the geometry of lights, a plain of red dust and halogen shards. It is like a bed of hot coals he has just crossed. A quarter moon sits low in the sky, tinted orange like a dim lantern. The light falls on Gideon’s skin like dying flame. He feels the oncoming night and people like himself making decisions that will change their lives. We are consumed like fuel, he thinks, and we are cautious because every twilight is a fire walk.

He considers the intricate processes of preparation and how he will be remembered. They will say he was successful. He had a career and a house with a view. But it has all come down to reversion, as if he has recreated an expectant mother waiting for his birth. I have relinquished myself, Gideon thinks. He had counted on his life’s momentum and now it is leaving him as he sits alone on the deck of his backyard. He accepts the conditions of this final inertia, the feeling he is slipping, falling back, and he hopes his mother will arrive in time to catch him.

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