Hatched by Robert F. Barsky Page B

moved a little closer to her and gently touched her hand. He was almost always either joking, or instructing, he seldom just let go as he did then. He didn’t dare go any further, but had no way to respond that wouldn’t destroy this special moment. And so he continued, but looked once again to the words that had brought him to her warm skin for strength.
    “Once again I see these hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines of sporting wood run wild. These pastoral farms, like this one, Jess.”
    She smiled softly. She was almost weeping at the joy of this moment.
    “These pastoral farms, green to the very door. And wreathes of smoke.” He motioned upwards to the nearly obscured sky, intimating that Fabergé Restaurant was emitting smoke, which it undoubtedly was, but invisibly.
    “Smoke sent up in silence, from among the trees.” He motioned to the buildings around them once again. “With some uncertain notice, as might seem, of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, or some hermit’s cave, where by his fire the hermit sits alone.”
    Silence. Calm. The endless clamor of the city had been turned into a distant din.
    “I’m the hermit, Jess, on this pastoral farm.” He raised his hands and opened them towards her body. “You are my fire.”
    This was the type of moment that had led them to imagine a future for themselves, together, in some place that could resemble an actual pastoral farm. In moments like these, Nate was so tender, so eloquent, and Jess so open, so giving, so generous. But Nate was also a wandering soul, and although he could describe rootedness, he was always onto the next thing, the next idea, the next challenge. He had dreamed of being alongside her, with her, inside of her, but then alongside her again, and then in front of her, and then off somewhere, and then . . . And so in that walk-in on that momentous day he was inside her, and she wanted him, but not like that, and he pushed her into those cartons of eggs stacked up for consumption, and he pushed her, and her body succumbed, and the eggs shattered, onto her chest, into her chin, upon her forehead. Smashed.
    The rustling sound returned, and they were both suddenly made aware that the animal near them was large and powerful, one of the thousands of raccoons, as it turned out, that roamed the streets of New York, like foragers in the jungle of wildlife that had managed to make this artificial island into a commodious home. This was a good decision on the part of New York’s wildlife. The trash in Fabergé Restaurant was comprised of discarded golden nuggets, either prized sumptuous creations that were too much for overstuffed clients, or somehow flawed according to John’s wildly ethereal standards.
    Not knowing how to stay in this moment, particularly in light of the interruption of this masked intruder, Nate continued in his quest to articulate his philosophy. “Jess, it goes beyond resentment.”
    She had been transported, and could barely recall what they’d been discussing before pastoral farms. Nate barreled on.
    “These are very special relationships that can only be formed in places like Fabergé Restaurant. We are in the bowels of paradise, slaving away to satisfy the most far-flung desires of a class of people who exceed in their resources even the aristocracy of previous eras. That creates resentment.”
    “Indeed,” she said. She looked through the darkness at him, inquiring as to his very existence.
    Nate, who was Nate-the-Prep-Cook, had but a single public life, which he spent working. The rest of the time, he read copiously, particularly in genres of social history, the application of political theorems—especially radical ones—and of course fiction, realist novels mostly since they, when written by the likes of Balzac or Zola or Dickens or Steinbeck, were the best kind of social, political, activist history and practice. Or so thought Nate. But he had this rather magical knack for memorization, and he applied