Nine Island by Jane Alison

the balustrade and, if he kept going, the runnel of water. Wouldn’t that be a surprise. He wavered: then leaned his right shoulder against the glass and began to creep. The water now fell in a Morse pattern: runnel-drip-drip, runnel-drip.
    There has been a fire alert reported in—
    â€”Now she thinks she actually sees something far out in the water. Really? Out there, yes, where the waves smooth out, or maybe it’s the other way around, where they start to swell. She puts a gritty hand to her stomach. Yes—something that is definitely not water is out there, white the way the surface of the moon is white, meaning not really, a curved thing, slicing in—
    The other girls are looking, too, huddling dovelike, hands at throats and mouths in girl-terror. Oh, god, do they disgust her. She stamps the sand from her knees and steps toward the water—
    Pure drip now. Halfway there, Buster stopped. The diaper with its blue stickers made his little hips so thin, wobbling above his bony shanks. Almost no skin on those shanks.
    â€”What are you doing! the girls cry. Are you crazy? You can’t go in! It’s a—
    Three feet from the puddle now.
    Am feeling guilty. Knee juddering with anticipation.
    â€”oh, yes, she can go in if she wants. The itch in her is now a rip, a rip that wants more ripping. She wants—
    A long drop slowly formed, not ready to fall. It swayed.
    If the breeze surged—
    Buster didn’t even know if it was daytime or night.
    Once a prancing little boy-cat! A brave small kitten boxing my hand.
    Wavering with opaque eyes, skinny hips, in diapers.
    He pressed his head to the glass, pushed on.
    The breeze lifted—
    And water flew and fell and showered his head, streamed into his eyes, leaked over his fur, his old curled paws.
    Wet fur at my nose, nails in my arm.
    I’d never drown my baby baby baby cat.

A M THINKING:
    Maybe too soon to have cat as only love interest?
    Maybe not retire just yet?
    Because those giddy moments come, they do, those delirious, ecstatic moments when I’ve had a little to drink and the garlic sizzles and funk plays loud and I dance, I dance to “Pass the Hatchet,” I do the bump with the granite counter and spin and bump again, and I think, yeah—I want I want I want I will !
    Flash images then of men reeling in and out of the place, me greeting each at the door and dancing somewhere, driving full speed, everything moving quick as light, then waving each good-bye again, a superfast imaginary life.
    This is what I’d seen in the sky of spinning ions when I arrived in paradise. This idea of how it could be, once I’d left my poor death-in-life marriage and resolved to live the life.
    Before setting all hopes on Sir Gold.
    When in fact what happened, what happens, is that the numbers change slowly on the microwave clock as I wait for the pasta to cook, again.

TWO

A NOTICE HAS appeared by the mailboxes: there’ll be a board meeting this week to discuss the pool. Now everywhere in the building—lounge chairs, elevators, lobby, garage—white heads nod close and whisper, with quick looks around in case someone hears. Millions of dollars at stake, they say, as much as eight million dollars. It’s all about concrete and whoever’s most connected to the business.
    Worst news.
    Did the math as I spiraled down to the dock. Eight million dollars divided by three hundred thirty-six apartments (if you say the Tower and Penthouse apartments each count as six) = about twenty-four thousand dollars each. Which my landlord will pull out of me in nasty big pieces I don’t even nearly have.
    Although I might in six years, if I drown Buster now.
    Out on the Venetian, then, walking fast among the jogging and cycling panthers and sylphs.
    Once upon a time, when you were maybe fifteen, you didn’t even want to be seen, and all the same, out you walked, and honks, shouts, maybe even a crash caused by you as you