Fabulae

O How Unlike the Place from Whence They Fall

O How Unlike the Place from Whence They Fell He is helplessly putting dishes into the drainer to the on and off of Clooney’s pub sign. She is on the sofa, where she sews and listens to opera: toffee-colored buttons on a camel coat. She becomes aware it’s taking her one button per aria. Seven buttons left! Seven tragic deaths! On his walk that afternoon, he’d found the perfect stride to just hit the far side of each paving block. The satisfaction of it lingered all day, so that he hardly worried when the strokes of her hairbrush just failed to match the swipes of the gardener’s rake. “Let’s go out for ice cream,” he says. They are in the car when suddenly he is speeding exactly as fast as the train alongside them, as if it were the needle that would stitch them to the world. “Home free!” he cries, running a red light. If she weren’t counting cars she might have seen it, bobbing over the empty intersection, like fruit about to fall on its own. 51 ...