kitchen she wanted?
“I’ll wash,” Eli says. “You dry.”
“We have a dishwasher.” Jude points to it. Energy star. Top of the line. Guilt offering.
“But it’s better by hand. Better for talking.”
“What are we talking about?”
“You have something you want to ask me.” Eli fills the sink, adds the soap.
That’s a good guess. Jude can’t quite get to it though. “You could have been in Hiroshima or Auschwitz,” she says. “You could have helped. You could have walked beside Martin Luther King. You could have torn down the Berlin Wall. Right now, you could be in Darfur, doing something good and important.”
“I’m doing the dishes,” says Eli.
Outside Jude hears a car passing. It turns into the Klein’s driveway. The headlights go off and the car door slams. Marybeth Klein brought Jude a casserole of chicken divan when Michael left. Jude has never told her that Jack Klein tried to kiss her at the Swanson’s New Year’s Party, because how do you say that to a woman who’s never been anything but nice to you? The Kleins’ boy, Devin, goes to school with Chloe. He smokes a lot of dope. Sometimes Jude can smell it in the backyard, coming over the fence. Why can’t Chloe be in love with him?
“If you promised me not to change Chloe, would you keep that promise?” She hears more than feels the tremble in her voice.
“Now, we’re getting to it,” Eli says. He passes her the first of the glasses and their hands touch. His fingers feel warm, but she knows that’s just the dishwater. “Would you like me to change
The glass slips from Jude’s hand and shatters on the cement. A large, sharp piece rests against her bare foot. “Don’t move,” says Eli. “Let me clean it up.” He drops to his knees.
“What’s happening?” Chloe calls from upstairs. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I broke a glass,” Jude shouts back.
Eli takes hold of her ankle. He lifts her foot. There is a little blood on her instep and he wipes this away with his hand. “You’d never get older,” he says. “But Michael will and you can watch.” Jude wonders briefly how he knows Michael’s name. Chloe must have told him.
His hand on her foot, his fingers rubbing her instep. The whiskey. Her sleepiness. She is feeling sweetly light-headed, sweetly light-hearted. Another car passes. Jude hears the sprinklers start next door sounding almost, but not quite like rain.
“Is Eli still there?” Chloe’s pitch is rising again.
Jude doesn’t answer. She speaks instead to Eli. “I wasn’t so upset about Michael leaving me as you think. It was a surprise. It was a shock. But I was mostly upset about him leaving Chloe.” She thinks again. “I was upset about him leaving me with Chloe.”
“You could go to Darfur then. If petty revenge is beneath you,” Eli says. “Do things that are good and important.” He is lowering his mouth to her foot. She puts a hand on his head to steady herself.
Then she stops, grips his hair, pulls his head up. “But I wouldn’t,” she says. “Would I?” Jude makes him look at her. She finds it a bit evil, really, offering her immortality under the guise of civic service when the world has such a shortage of civic-minded vampires in it. And she came so close to falling for it.
She sees that the immortal brain must be different—over the years, certain crucial linkages must snap. Otherwise there is no explaining Eli and his dull and pointless, endless, dangerous life.
Anyway, who would take care of Chloe? She hears the squeaking of the stairs.
“Just promise me you won’t change Chloe,” she says hastily. She’s crying now and doesn’t know when that started.
“I’ve never changed anyone who didn’t ask to be changed. Never will,” Eli tells her.
Jude kicks free of his hand. “Of
It’s possible Chloe hears this. When Jude turns, she’s standing, framed in the doorway like a portrait. Her hair streams over her shoulders. Her eyes are enormous. She’s young and she’s beautiful and she’s outraged. Jude can see her taking them in—Eli picking up the shards of glass so Jude won’t step on them. Eli kneeling at her feet.
“You don’t have to hang out with her,” Chloe tells Eli. “I’m not breaking up with you no matter what she says.”
Her gaze moves to Jude. “Good god, Mom. It’s just a glass.” Then back to Eli, “I’m glad it wasn’t me, broke it. We’d never hear the end of it.”
Love is love, Eli said, but how careful his timing has been! If Chloe were older, Jude could talk to her, woman to woman. If she were younger, Jude could take Chloe into her lap; tell her to stop throwing words like never around as if she knows what they mean, as if she knows just how long never will last.
CANTERBURY HOLLOW
Chris Lawson
Of all the trillions of people who have lived and who will live, Arlyana and Moko were not especially important, nor heroic, nor beautiful, but for a few moments they were cradled by the laws of nature. In a universe that allows humans to survive in a minuscule sliver of all possible times and places, this is a rare accomplishment.
They met under the Sundome.
Arlyana wanted to see the killing sun for herself so she took the Long Elevator to the surface. The Sundome was a hemispheric pocket of air trapped under massive polymer plates on the crust of a dying planet called Musca. The Sundome persisted only through the efforts of robotic fixers, and the robots themselves needed constant repair from the ravages of the sun.
Through the transparent ceiling of the dome, Arlyana watched the sun rise over the world it had destroyed. The sun was a boiling disk, white and fringed with solar arcs. Ancient archived images showed a turquoise sky, but the sun had long since blown the atmosphere to wisps and now the sky was black and the stars visible in full daylight. A few degrees to one side, the sun’s companion star glowed a creamy yellow.
Dawn threw sunlight across the ruins of the old city. Rising from the centre of the city was a tower many kilometers tall. The tower had been even taller once: it had reached all the way to orbit.
As the sun rose in the sky, the number of visitors to the Sundome thinned out. Even knowing they were protected by the dome, it was a terrifying experience for many people to stand beneath the killing sun. They hurried to the Long Elevator and scuttled back home. Not Arlyana: she wanted to face the sun, to challenge its authority to kill her. While the bulk of the people around her withdrew to the safety of the rock beneath their feet, Arlyana chose to go further outward.
The Sundome hosted a number of small buses, life supports on wheels, that allowed visitors to tour the old city. They were rarely used in daylight hours. Arlyana went to the bus bay, now completely emptied of people, and found a bus that was leaving in a few minutes.
At its allotted time the bus gave a little warning beep, the doors closed shut with a pneumatic sigh, and then it trundled out the airlock gates. As the bus moved over the blighted landscape, it gave an automated commentary.
“Different astronomers on Old Earth,” said the bus, “reported different colors for our sun over different centuries. When people first settled Musca it was thought that the colors had been misreported due to the primitive telescopes of the time. Now we know that the old astronomers were seeing signs of instability….”
Arlyana tuned out the words, but the sound of the voice was soothing.
The bus made its way over to the great, ruined tower. The tower was impressive but once it had been majestic, almost god-like in its engineering. Now it was a candle stub of eroded carbon. The soil at the foot of the tower had been baked to glass.
The bus interrupted its commentary. “My apologies,” said the bus, “but a high energy sunburst has erupted and high levels of radiation are expected. The bus will now return for your own protection.”
