Tide King by Jen Michalski Page B

could at least quench her thirst with a tall, cool drink.
    She did not love him, he knew. She did not love anyone, as far as he could tell. Her drunk of a ex-husband who couldn’t provide for her in the way she was accustomed, the men she’d dated who could barely spring for dinner and a movie, always skipping those acts and wanting to add a third, which usually took place in her bedroom. The girls at the telephone company where she worked, who gossiped and were boring and never heard of the Louvre. Eva required a sophistication and kindness and curiosity from everyone that she assumed she had herself, if only because she always reminded him she was all of these things.
    â€œI can’t help it; I’m a sophisticated woman,” she had apologized after he asked her, with his money, to buy his mother a nice blouse at Pennelmen’s Department store. “I would never step foot in Pennelmen’s. The cheapest fabrics you ever saw. And no imagination, no style. I mean, maybe that’s okay for an old woman…you should let me get her something at Barrett’s.”
    â€œI don’t think my mother would wear anything from Barrett’s,” he answered, looking in his wallet. And even if she looked good in the frilly chenille, the billowy scarves, and other French-looking outfits, he couldn’t afford it.
    â€œWell, I will not set a foot in Pennelmen’s, I’ll tell you that. My reputation couldn’t stand it.” She lit a cigarette and crossed her arms, ending the conversation. She had compromised enough in her life, she’d always told him—and look where it had gotten her!
    It was not the sex, not only the sex—the sole benefit he imagined most boys to derive from such a relationship—that he continued to see her. She was a good-looking woman, for thirty, and had a quick wit and could flatter one with a single raise of her eyebrow. But why he thought he had loved her, he didn’t know. He supposed he felt sorry for her. It was the hole of the persecution in which she was buried, by men, women, by society, she had impressed upon him to believe, all while she stood there holding the shovel.
    â€œPeople from Ohio, they just don’t know anything.” She floated her eyes to the ceiling, taking a cigarette herself. “They certainly don’t know how to live.”
    Well, he had certainly lived, and he had seen some things. He had lived, she would be happy to know. If he saw her again.
    He dug at the darkness, twisting his body in increments so small, it was a miracle there was oxygen to breathe. But he could not squirm without becoming tired. He felt himself doze off. When he awoke again, his left leg burned. His hands went to his phantom calf and grazed something firm, fleshy. His stump had grown again. He wriggled the toes on his left foot, all five, and the steely, curly hairs he remembered on them burned as the nerves beneath them fired their own internal gun battle. He breathed and choked on the acrid stink of flesh. Jesus. He had dreamed, or hallucinated, he was a below-knee amputee.
    Where were the others? He wiggled, kicking his legs, his arms in little motions. He was buried in rocks, maybe. Had there been an explosion? And why was he not broken into so many sticks, marionette limbs?
    His voice. It sounded so far away, like those other voices. Murmurs of men close by but far away. Was he hearing things? He inhaled, wondered whether his lungs were punctured. Once he inflated the branches of lung in his chest, a few deep breaths, he shouted over and over again in the rocks. Why would he wake up after such catastrophe, only to die in rubble? He had to be found. His parents had to know. Stanley Polensky had to know. He shouted but what sounded like a wounded gurgle came out. He gurgled until he was too tired to make a sound.
    When he awoke again, he was so hungry. The rocks were softer; he wondered whether it had rained. He could see ribbons