Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
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his wife from Spain who refuse to speak to anyone during the six days and<br />
nights they occupy what used to be the master bedroom, a woman who has<br />
been on permanent disability for 10 years because of repetitive stress syndrome,<br />
several people waiting for low income government subsidized housing, a<br />
Satanic lesbian couple and several retirees: a librarian, a steel worker, and a<br />
mathematician. But even so, there is something more than that, something<br />
peculiar about each one.<br />
Every night at 3 o'clock in the morning, your boyfriend calls from<br />
home. It's early afternoon where he is. It doesn't matter to him that you are so<br />
far away - he has a supply of other people's calling card numbers. He tells<br />
you that he should have let you go, that he thought you wanted to be free, that<br />
he doesn't know what to do now. You don't know what to do either. It's been<br />
over three months.<br />
The operator of the glass bottom boat explains that fish have sensitive organs<br />
called latera/lines. These latera/lines pick up the vibrations made by other sea creatures,<br />
he says. That is how they manage to swim so close to one another without touching.<br />
They also do not scrape their bodies on the coral below.<br />
He turns on a special light that illuminates the reef Small iridescent<br />
angelfish dart in and out of neon-colored lunar rock. Strange fleshy pink, white and<br />
green plants beckon. They are sometimes tubular, sometimes spiky, sometimes fluttering<br />
like ostrich boas.<br />
One night, your boyfriend calls to tell you that he has made a friend<br />
for you. She is the sister of a woman he has met back in the <strong>State</strong>s. You do not<br />
want to know this woman, you say. It is a ploy, a way for him to keep tabs on<br />
you, to know what you are doing.<br />
"You're always alone," he says. "It's not good."<br />
When the woman shows up in her new car to pick you up, some of<br />
the residents come to their windows. It's rare to see someone from the outside<br />
around these parts. She is tall and has long, curly auburn hair. She lives in a<br />
condominium on the beach. She is beautiful. You get into the passenger's seat<br />
and you drive away. You tell her about how this morning, in the upstairs<br />
shower, which you rarely use, you looked up and thought you saw an eye<br />
watching you through a hole in the ceiling. The woman is horrified. "What<br />
did you do," she asks. You tell her that you quickly turned off the water,<br />
dressed and ran down to the owner 's office, but he refused to answer.<br />
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