interested in a splash than a drink, and when chasing a ball, he always found a way to guide it into a ditch or puddle. And once he was in the water, no amount of coaxing could get him out. He preferred the rocky part of the coast to the sandy beaches, so they made him dog shoes fromscraps of leather to protect his soft paws, and at the mere sight of them he would begin to bark for joy at the promise of water. It wasn’t long before Milk was a better swimmer than Hashi, and the silky white hair he had inherited from his mother was almost always damp. At the end of a day of swimming, as the sun was going down, the boys would groom Milk on the beach, leaving the comb caked with salt crystals when they were done.
In one thing, Kiku and Hashi actually envied Milk a little: though he’d lost his mother early in life just as they had, Milk later got a chance to meet her. One evening, on the way home from the beach, they came across several dogs rooting in some garbage. Though she was completely changed from their last meeting, Kiku immediately recognized one of them as the white dog from the mining town. A patch of fur was missing where Gazelle had hit her, her eyes were cloudy, and she drooled a bit, but it was unmistakably the same dog. Her right front leg was bent and dragged along the ground. Milk, having no idea that this was his mother, growled quietly for a while, then seemed to lose interest and passed on with the boys. The mother never even glanced up. When they had gone quite a distance, Milk stopped at the crest of a hill, shook himself, and gave a long, mournful howl.
5
Anemone woke past noon but stayed in bed another two hours. An unlit cigarette dangling between her lips, she wondered why she hadn’t had any nightmares. Could be the extra oxygen from the new plants, or the heat, or maybe even the new feather mattress. Which? She fished out some bottles from the refrigerator by the bed: vegetable juice, mango juice, a lactic acid drink, and seltzer. Grabbing the thermometer and an electronic blood pressure meter from the dresser, she checked herself over. Temperature normal, blood pressure a shade low; so she did ten minutes of yoga in bed and drank some mango and vegetable juice. She put the rest of the bottles back in the refrigerator and lit the cigarette. Swirling the smoke in her mouth, which was still a bit numb from the acid-sweet combination, she made a mental note that the world’s worst flavor combination was mango and menthol. Her friend at the Turkish restaurant had been right, she thought, remembering an ad she’d seen in a magazine featuring a fat lady pushing a laxative: “A moving experience.” The friend had told her that all fat women were habitual liars: their center of gravity is lower or something, putting pressure on the front lobe of the brain. Flabby stomach muscles and stiff shoulders make for shaky scruples.
Glancing at the calendar mobile suspended from the ceiling, she realized that she had no work lined up for the whole week.Plenty of time for tennis, she thought, but then she remembered that the gut in both of her rackets had broken three months earlier and the guy at the tennis shop kept putting her off, saying that he had to order real gut from New Zealand. The idiot had probably ordered live sheep for all the time it was taking. She tried to imagine what else she could do to kill a whole week, but the effort made her tired and she gave up.
Anemone had been born seventeen years earlier, the product of the union of the manager of a company that produced a popular nasal decongestant spray and a child singer, now forty years old, who had her vocal chords fixed so her voice had never changed. Anemone was their only child, and unlike most children, whose first word is usually “mama,” meaning something between “mother” and “food,” Anemone’s first word was “cute.” This was because, all day every day when she was still a baby, everyone around her was constantly
In one thing, Kiku and Hashi actually envied Milk a little: though he’d lost his mother early in life just as they had, Milk later got a chance to meet her. One evening, on the way home from the beach, they came across several dogs rooting in some garbage. Though she was completely changed from their last meeting, Kiku immediately recognized one of them as the white dog from the mining town. A patch of fur was missing where Gazelle had hit her, her eyes were cloudy, and she drooled a bit, but it was unmistakably the same dog. Her right front leg was bent and dragged along the ground. Milk, having no idea that this was his mother, growled quietly for a while, then seemed to lose interest and passed on with the boys. The mother never even glanced up. When they had gone quite a distance, Milk stopped at the crest of a hill, shook himself, and gave a long, mournful howl.
5
Anemone woke past noon but stayed in bed another two hours. An unlit cigarette dangling between her lips, she wondered why she hadn’t had any nightmares. Could be the extra oxygen from the new plants, or the heat, or maybe even the new feather mattress. Which? She fished out some bottles from the refrigerator by the bed: vegetable juice, mango juice, a lactic acid drink, and seltzer. Grabbing the thermometer and an electronic blood pressure meter from the dresser, she checked herself over. Temperature normal, blood pressure a shade low; so she did ten minutes of yoga in bed and drank some mango and vegetable juice. She put the rest of the bottles back in the refrigerator and lit the cigarette. Swirling the smoke in her mouth, which was still a bit numb from the acid-sweet combination, she made a mental note that the world’s worst flavor combination was mango and menthol. Her friend at the Turkish restaurant had been right, she thought, remembering an ad she’d seen in a magazine featuring a fat lady pushing a laxative: “A moving experience.” The friend had told her that all fat women were habitual liars: their center of gravity is lower or something, putting pressure on the front lobe of the brain. Flabby stomach muscles and stiff shoulders make for shaky scruples.
Glancing at the calendar mobile suspended from the ceiling, she realized that she had no work lined up for the whole week.Plenty of time for tennis, she thought, but then she remembered that the gut in both of her rackets had broken three months earlier and the guy at the tennis shop kept putting her off, saying that he had to order real gut from New Zealand. The idiot had probably ordered live sheep for all the time it was taking. She tried to imagine what else she could do to kill a whole week, but the effort made her tired and she gave up.
Anemone had been born seventeen years earlier, the product of the union of the manager of a company that produced a popular nasal decongestant spray and a child singer, now forty years old, who had her vocal chords fixed so her voice had never changed. Anemone was their only child, and unlike most children, whose first word is usually “mama,” meaning something between “mother” and “food,” Anemone’s first word was “cute.” This was because, all day every day when she was still a baby, everyone around her was constantly
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