11

"Why did you say Phemus?" she asked suddenly.

    "Wuh?"  He was brushing his teeth.  

    "Emmet and Myra Phemus, not Emmet Phemus and Myra Candleberry.

 At the reception desk.  We're not siblings.  Why'd you give us the same

last name?"

    "I don' oh."  He spit and rinsed.  "Simpler."

    Well.  It was simpler.  

*******************************************************

    "I'd like to be your sister," she said the next day in the car, apropos of

nothing.  "I think.  I'm pretty sure.  Not a mean sister or anything, we

wouldn't be like regular siblings, we'd be like the siblings who stick

together through anything, who take care in each other, like in books.  Not

quite like a sister, but...  a lot like a sister, I'd want to be.".

    "You read too much."

    She shrugged.

    "Yeah.  Maybe I do."

    She was reading right then, eyes slamming against the screen where the

checkered words told her fairy tales, lifting to reproach him when she

spoke.  He was sick of them, so sick of her! in a way he hated her, he'd

stop the car just to push her into the street, throw her against the pavement

and watch her skull-- crack-- crack-- The lights above the roadway were

fading, and he brought up those inside the car to save her eyes, then used

his own eyes to study the emptiness beyond the window.

    The buildings they passed were cheaply constructed and largely

abandoned.  Here and there a billboard still flickered; "We're going to the

zoo," flickered one featuring two girls in sparkling leopard- and zebra-print

attire of dubious decency.  "You can come too..."   

    “Are we going to the zoo, then?” asked Myra, who had apparently

noticed the same signs.

    “Yes.”

    “What is the zoo?”

    “The zoo is a motley collection of those plants and animals deemed

most important to surface biologists.”  Copied from a proposal he’d seen a

few months back.  The document had continued to detail how the suffering

of these sick and exiled things would end and many unnecessary and

expensive species eliminated if funding was cut off.  It didn’t go anywhere;

no one cared, least of all the author.  

    “Motley…” Myra mused.  “Like me… how fitting.”

    “Yes.”

    “Do you think I’ll like it?”

    “Yes.”  Stupid question.

    She went back to the screen, but looked up again before he could move.

 

    “Are you grumpy?”

    “Yes.”  He could have cut her throat out with the searing pain behind his

eyeballs.

******************************************************************

“Put Payne on the schedule!” barked Neric at his secretary.  He liked this

secretary because she was mute.  And perhaps deaf also. At any rate, she

never responded to a thing he said.  “I’m guessing seven o’clock.  What a

day, what a day!”  He came into his office rubbing his hands together, in

the mood for sabotage and jelly doughnuts.

    “My dear viewers!” he cried with a sweep of his hand, “the party has

just walked in!”  Then he lay on his desk and took a nap.