“Are you always like this?”

              “You smile at my jokers. Good, you don’t hate me. I know his wife thinks I take her husband from her, and she is Elijah, prophet name, first American name I understand, but really you, Elijah,” She smiles up at stonily grinning Eliza, “taked Juan,” she means Ron, “from some other he loved. Everybody is taked from past darlings, cheated away by new. In my village we say (unintelligible), it means, but it sounds stupid in English like all truths, ‘The eye breathes in, the heart breaks out.’ My country is I don’t know it, my village is so small, only a flyshits on the map. But our saying is true. You have felt your heartbreaks?”

              “Not yet.” says Ron. Eliza still grins.

              “Congratulations, you have a future of love in front of you. Another one.” she turns up the radio, scrabbles in the beachbag for her pizzabox. “You hear? Dead troop in Iraq.” It’s a single-serv mini-pizzabox. The lid says BUONA APPETITA across the top, which Rose says is American for “Get Fat.” The rest of the lid she painted, gorgeously, to look like the honor roll next to the World War One cannon outside Wildwood City Hall. Gold eagle on top, red scroll in its mouth saying OUR HONOR DEAD.

              “For dead soldiers they tell on Empty-Art,” she means NPR, “I draw X, for times dead,” she said. “Dead times 104 since the Bush wins the war. Then in the box I will put newspaper story tomorrow. I must make a tear through it.” She opens the box, shows stacks of torn paper. “I like tears in stories make tears from your eyes.”

              “Tear in a story is different from a tear in your eyes,” says Ron.

              Rose shrugs. “Only in English. They don’t give dead names on Empty-Art, I don’t know, do governments save these names for black walls in Washington like Viet Nam after this new war they keep winning gets lost? I don’t know, I suspect.”

              “Can I talk to you privately for a moment?” says Eliza, motioning me off down the beach. “It’s nothing, a little family business.”

              “Keep smiling,” she says grinning, “If you don’t, first I’ll kick you in the balls, then get Ron to find some way to throw you in jail for child support no matter how much you pay. What is the meaning of this? Why is she calling me Elijah? And why is she sitting there showing her fucking tits to Ron and calling him Juan – for Don Juan? And is this little toots the reason you haven’t exercised those precious visitation rights you fought so hard for and seen Re-Re not at all these last weeks? And just asking but, nice breasts but, isn’t she a little plump for your tastes, dear?”

              “She’s pregnant,” I say.

31

  

Copyright 2008 Disclaimer