Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff

explosion.
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    IN LATE APRIL, THE NEWSPAPERS are full of news of a strange illness. The journalists try to blunt their alarm by exoticizing it, naming it Spanish influenza, La Grippe . In Switzerland, it is called La Coquette , as if it were a courtesan. In Ceylon it’s the Bombay Fever, and in Britain the Flanders Grippe. The Germans, whom the Allies blame for this disease, call it Blitz-katarrh . The disease is as deadly as that name sounds.
    Americans do not pay attention. They watch Charlie Chaplin and laugh until they cry. They read the sports pages and make bets on when the war will be over. And if a few healthy soldiers suddenly fall ill and die, the Americans blame it on exposure to tear gas.
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    L. HAS GONE TOMCATTING with his writer friends only twice by the time spring rolls into summer. The second time,he has had only one martini when he pushes a very familiar redhead from his lap so roughly that she hits her head on the table and bursts into tears. C. T. Dane comforts her. When Dane is leaving, indignant redhead on his arm, he raises an eyebrow and frowns at the steadily drinking L.
    From that night on, his friends talk about him. “What’s eating old fishface L.?” Tad Perkins will ask anyone who will listen.
    Finally, someone says, “He’s writing a novel. It’s like having a mistress. Once he’s through with her, leaves her on the floor, weeping for more, he’ll be back.”
    The friends laugh at this. They raise their glasses. “To the mistress,” they cry.
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    ALIETTE’S CHEEKS GROW PLUMP and her legs regain many of their muscles. By May, L. is being driven crazy by the touches, leg sliding against leg, arm to knee, foot silky across his shoulder. He immerses himself in a cold-water tub, like a racehorse, before coming out to greet her.
    Their flirtation slips. Dawn is pinkening in the clerestory window, and L. is lifting Aliette’s arm above the water to show her the angle of the most efficient stroke, when his torso brushes against hers, and stays. He looks at dozing Rosalind. Then he lifts Aliette from the water and carries her to the men’s room.
    As she stands, leaning against the smooth tile wall and shivering slightly, he slides her suit from her shoulders andpulls it down. To anyone else, she would be a skinny, slightly feral-looking little girl, but he sees the heart-shaped lips, the pulse thrumming in her neck, the way she bares her body bravely, arms down, palms turned out, watching him. He bends to kiss her. She smells of chlorine, lilacs, warm milk. He lifts her and leans her against the wall.
    When they reemerge, Rosalind still sleeps, and the pool is pure, glossy, as if nobody has ever set foot in it.
    Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues, and poems fill the world?
    Now, when they don’t touch, they share the splash and the churn, the rhythm of the stroke, the gulps of water in the gutter, the powerful shock of the dive, and a wake like smoke, trailing them.
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    ALIETTE LEAVES HER WHEELCHAIR in the foyer and begins to walk, even though the pain seems unbearable when she is tired. She loves the food she loathed before, for the flesh it gives her. She eats marbled steaks, half-inch layers of butter on her bread. She walks to the stores on Madison, leaning against a wall when she needs to, and returns, victorious, with bags. On one of her outings, she meets her father coming home for lunch. As she calls to him, and runs clumsily the last five steps, his eyes fill. His fleshy face grows pink, and the lines under his mouth deepen.
    â€œOh,” he says, nearly weeping and holding out his arms. “My little girl is back.”
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    IN THE HOT DAYS OF SUMMER, the pool sessions are too short and the day that stretches between them too long. In his anxiety to see Aliette, L. writes poetry.