(Scene I) He bought his wife a computer (Scene II) and took her to dinner, an expensive dinner that smelled of butter, wine, and capers.
She ate slowly. He poured the wine. Outside, the moon burned like an eyeball observing winter’s January. A wasp or a bee circled among the ceiling lights. Two waiters got to task. He watched as one of them climbed a ladder, was stung in the face, and crashed onto a table.
(Scene III) She gave him another ring, a cell phone, and a tie with red smiles. (Scene IV) On the drive home they had the moonroof open, the windows. They saw a deer at the top of a hill.
“She’ll be home next week,” she said, the wind breaking against her hand.
“We’ll have to suffer through hummus and that flat bread she likes–what’s it called?”
“Pita,” she said.
“Right. Not bad but definitely not limed chicken. This is a perfect night.”
“It is,” she said. “But I do have a story. A little story to tell.”
“A little story to tell?”
(Scene V) She was told to take out the trash. It was a city in Argentina. Her father said, “Watch out for the dogs. Go out and come right back in.”
In those days they put trash into buckets and carried the buckets to the street. She remembered the smell of cooking oil in the air. Someone yelled in the apartment up the street. Yelled from a window. There are dogs running in the streets. They wait for the moon. They run in packs.
She put the bucket into the street. She heard barking. She heard cars. She heard someone yell about the packs of dogs. She looked high and saw a yellow moon through a thin linen of silver cloud. Up the street she saw the small shapes of animals coming and coming fast. She ran for the house and slammed the door shut.
(Scene VI) “My father said, ‘There’s blood on your leg. Why do you have blood on your leg?'”
“It’s amazing you weren’t killed,” he said.
“I never even felt the bite,” she said. “I didn’t know I’d been bitten.”
The End
