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She Came From the East Joanna Howard
He appeared on the dock as if by request, his jacket damp in the spray, his shoulder weighed down with ropes. Forget what they say, the sailor wore bracelets. She had freshly arrived from the East. Her hair was well gilded, and her dress crisply layered like a pastry. The two stepped onto the boat, a private affair with pheasant under glass. The harbor was still, but the pier seemed to shift. They could sit on any wall; every thing was a bench and above it a vista through glass. Several moments began and were interrupted. One hates to use the word ‘desirous’. As a matter, finally, a husband slipped up on wheels. One fold of a lap robe tore in the catches of the motorized chair. His knees propped against each other in a narrow tent. His toes threatened to slip from their perch. Obviously, the misleading part is to be brought in on something, to be hired into the family, so the sailor noted, though the coordinates of the detail had yet to be presented. With one in the barrel, why had she collared him? What did she expect him to carry, or crack? Still there was no reason to not to be hopeful. It might all come down to a quiet moment of friendly persuasion. A thin sallow butler, in a faintly naval costume appeared with the salad. It seems you have someone for everything, on this boat, the sailor said. I can’t imagine what you want with me. I will need more pronounced physique for the job I have in mind, she told the sailor. The role of wife has certain challenges. With a genius, even more so. Can you tell a war story, I’d like to be sure of things. I don’t like to be graphic in front of mixed company or mixed drinks. Still, he began a long story that involved a small boat, a large boat, the enemy, and a blonde to whom he’d never said ‘I love you”. There was much more to it: he’d stabbed a piano player on one of the islands, and blown taps for a friend on the naval base—when had he learned his General was actually his father?—AWOL and incognito, he had lost himself in a raft and drifted for days, washed aground again, and the spray of the beach had come up over his shoulders as he lay half conscious against a rock, wild with a fever, when the enemy had come aground to search for turtles for soup. He’d been lost out there a long time, though remained quite still. He’d imagined a nurse or a nun had joined him. He’d imagined quite a few things, but for the report he kept it brief. He limited things to the large boat, the small boat, and a fire on the bridge, and tapped his leg which rasped dully of oak below the knee. It had an effect on her she hadn’t anticipated. As always, when she saw someone so large, with this churlish torso, she imagined him dancing lightly in suede shoes and hunting tweeds, under rising mists. Hers was a vision of the expendable. She was not very vacuous, though she was still working out the minor points, a story which begins in windows and ends in mirrors, and nothing cleanly cut. Something is Missing Joanna Howard Once I read a fortune in tea leaves of an old woman, the landlady of a crumbling house for wayward types, those who travel incognito and slink through the streets of Barcelona darkly clad and ominous, in leather, wearing eye-patches and sweaty bandanas tightly tied at the throat. What could she do but take in degenerates to creep about her attic in the after hours? To slip through her kitchen in the gray before dawn in indigo pea coats, fan out thinly, disappear on lesser highways and in unsavory ships. She was so poor the water in her pipes ran nearly red from rust and the leaves of her tea were badly tainted. What could I tell her? Things were so murky. I could hardly admit I was a self-taught Hungarian. I looked closely. A knife fight? A decorative stiletto? A blood-curdling scream? It hardly seemed a fitting end to describe for the frail and delicate. I shrugged. She shook her head. Nothing familiar? Are you looking carefully? She asked me with polite skepticism. I am looking very carefully, but things are still muddled. A thin worm of intestine crept out from the gape at a man’s side. The leaves at the bottom of the cup were pale as pewter slivers. The powerful smell of mineral sediment rose out of the cup. What was there in this? The blue wool of a fisherman’s sweater cut chest-bone to navel drifting up on the beach? Have you got a son at sea? I asked her. She looked hopeful. I have a daughter in Perpignan who makes jewelry. Have these leaves been steeped before? Not perse, she told me. Polluted? An unsavory term. Somewhat adulterated? We sometimes must economize. There are my borders to think of. She was right. In the leaves were swimming a dozen fates of the blackest water, and her own scant future was overshadowed and washed-out. I’m self-taught, I told her. I need more practice. I’ll never sort this out. I’ll come another day, and try with cards. She was unconvinced, but hardly saddened. In her mind, something glorious was unfolding, a silken vision of future that she was working out of the pale leaves. The fantastic, the unthinkably thick swirl of a sudden change.
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