The Death of Small Creatures Read Online Free PDF Page B

gondolier plunges his staff into the water and shoves his vessel forward; the ease of its glide that slows your sense of time and makes you think gondolas all over this city move at precisely the same speed. You think you can reach out and catch one, but they move quickly. They have always been moving this way. One day when there are no more gondolas moving, Venice will hoist itself from the imagination of civilization and become a real place in time.
    â€œWhy are you hiding that?” I say. “Beer in Venice is like pop in North America.” The edge of my voice catches me. I am inflicted with the bitch I have become.
    He says nothing. He has an older man’s tolerance. He holds the bottle to his lips, the green glass rim, looks hard at the gondola as the gondolier bends his neck into his chest and angles his body at a forty-five-degree angle over the stern of the boat and disappears into shadows.
    I’m thirsty. There will be only select moments in this day that I don’t long for a drink of water; every twenty minutes another litre taken in and perspired out. Soon, thousands will die of heat exhaustion in France. I will feel shabby in cheap Mariposa dresses as we stroll around Paris during the final phase of our trip. I will come back hating a city I’m supposed to love. One night I will tell Leigh I hate him for looking at a young French girl in a white designer dress of such subtle yet superior quality I will want to cut my own skin. Instead, I will take off my cheap shoes and throw them at him from across Rue Lourmel.
    Another night the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen close up will saunter past us, sort of dancing along the curb and sidewalk, a twinkle in her eyes. I will have a strong impulse to cut part of myself away, my hair maybe, a finger, a toe, spurned by the knowledge that a more moderate alteration would be redundant, even laughable. But I will walk away from Leigh instead. I’ll walk for three hours toward the lights of the Eiffel Tower, like travelling down a dark prairie highway toward the beacon of a distant town. The tower will seem close, then disappear, then close again as I round a corner. My heart will beat fast as I stroll the concentric circles of Paris increasingly lost—as if there are degrees of lostness—café after café, thirty-four degrees at midnight, the scent of hot concrete and roast duck in the air. It will feel like walking deeper inside, as though it is possible you’ll turn a corner and feel your body disappear. I will realize the folly of life with one man, but each time the tower disappears I’ll believe in love again.
    â€œWhere have you been?” he’ll say when I return, and I’ll think,
He loves me. Thank god he still loves me
.
    That lost.

    We have hardwood floors and red walls in our apartment. I walk on tiptoes because of the people who live below. I think this makes me a compassionate person and take pleasure in my goodness, but really it’s a learned behaviour from girlhood. I feel light and airy as I do it. Sometimes I catch myself, and as my socks sweep across the floor I realize I’m getting older and farther from the truth. It’s good to be quiet. It’s possible everything can break.
    There is no large red rug in the middle of the living room, something to soften the edges I’ve repeatedly said. There is a large ugly painting of three fish about to intersect on the wall above the dining room table. I hate this painting because I know the fish will never meet. The table is a relic from his old life. I have seen photographs of his slender ex-wife kneading dough on its surface. His children painted pictures there. His youngest child, a daughter, is named after a Linden tree. His second son, a loganberry. His first son, Grant, embodies his father’s legacy. I have named no one over the course of my life, except my beloved cat, a pet ant and a snail. Spoofer. Anty. Snail.
    On the