Read Online Keys of Babylon by Robert Minhinnick - Free Book Online Page B

me. Or watch it in our own apartment when we owned a videotape machine. With popcorn and sundaes. Juan liked ice cream.
    I worked everywhere. Cleaned up in Wendy’s. It had just opened. Ever had one of Wendy’s old-fashioned hamburgers? I might have flipped it for you. At Pizza Hut I crushed all the cardboard to be collected. Heated the plates. But I took the pizza crusts back to the room I was renting.
    Larry looks up. His chin is shining. But after the third mouthful he hasn’t touched his food.
    You married? he asks.
    No sir. No sir I’m not.
    You should be married.
    Why?
    He studies her now. In her blue uniform with the Sunset crest. In her sandals that he hears slap down the corridor when she leaves his room. Bigfoot. He used to hear her on the night shift. Slap, slap. Before the new medication. Before they took away his phone.
    Because.
    Because what?
    Just because.
    I wanted children, says Maria. If I’d stayed home I would have had children.
    How old are you? he asks.
    Coming up to forty. Or is it fifty? Ha ha.
    Larry sucks in his cheeks. I used to take my son to Wendy’s, he says. Maybe not Wendy’s but some diner in Phoenix. My son, Jacob. It was a treat. He liked root beer too. He always wore these big thick glasses. Made him look like a bug.
    They’re moving to Anthem this week, she says quietly. Exciting for them.
    He prods the food. All my father brought to this country, mutters Larry, is a violin. A poxy violin. He played it on the ship coming over. He played it walking down the gangway, his ass hanging out of his pants. Then he never played it again.
    He must have been proud of you.
    The old man is scowling.
    I bought a violin for Jacob. He never touched it. Always had his head in these encyclopaedias we had. He could reel off every president’s name and dates. The capital of every state. Augusta, Maine. Sheesh . My wife bought them from a door-to-door salesman. Took up a whole shelf. You got kids?
    No. I told you.
    Why?
    Because.
    Because what?
    Just because.
    Maria looks out of the window. The Goliath truck is there again. The heaps of white sacks. From her pocket she takes the stone she had thought to show Larry. The black stone she had sucked in the desert. One round stone.
    Hey, the sky’s really red, she says. If you feel like it I’ll take you out tomorrow. To our tree. Or you can watch the Cardinals game. Could be close, I hear. Now eat your nopalitos , Larry. They’re going cold.
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A welcome for the river god

    It was on the blackboard. So, I thought, it must be true. On a little blackboard at the back entrance, facing the car park. I was coming out of the Spar and the Polski Sklep and I had my provisions already, if you know what I mean. I was stocked up, and feeling good about things.
    Because the town wasn’t bad, and the weather had been dry all month. But better than anything was the sea. I could hear it as I looked at the blackboard. A sucking, a sighing. Big swell, they had said, for the next few days. I could imagine the spray with the sun in it. The ocean showing its muscles. And the smell of it. That was the difference. The shock. Even after a month, I wasn’t used to that smell. Salt and catpiss and redcurrant leaves. Or boiling tar. Tar popping in its barrel.
    Dangerous, really, the sea. That’s what I think when I walk the promenade. All these pensioners and school children come to gaze at it. But the sea is threatening. Imprisoned for a thousand years, but capable still of killing its jailer. Yes that’s the sea. Whispering in its own language. Waiting for something to happen as it loiters under the green railings. That’s what the sea does. It waits. The sea has patience and will never run out of time. But I can feel the minutes pass. The days. Gone like bubbles of black tar. Gone like pounds and pennies.
    The day I first went in I’d been nervous. You never know what idiots you’re going to meet in