“Can’t we wait until morning?”
“And let the elephants shit all over the floor and keep us up all night with their trunk music, just to kill them in the morning?”
Celia nods.
Simon looks at the tiny elephants. The tiny elephants are very cute. A while ago, Simon would have liked to keep one as a pet, but he hates them now. Celia hates them too.
It makes them sad to hate tiny elephants because they used to love tiny elephants, before tiny elephants were imported to the city and infested their apartment. Simon hates the government for making him hate tiny elephants.
Simon looks away from the tiny elephants. He massages the right side of his face. He has a minor toothache.
“Let’s go to bed. The elephants have until morning to pack their bags.”
“Do you hear that?” Celia says to the elephants. “You have until morning. Then your death bell rings.”
Unlike rats, tiny elephants are not afraid of humans.
They do not scramble for the dark when lights come on.
They are festive creatures and might be pleasant to have around, if only they did not congregate by the hundreds or thousands and make noise all night, for tiny elephants are nocturnal.
“Still want a bedtime story?” Simon says.
Celia slips her arms around him, saying, “Yes please.”
They hold each other close, and in holding each other dis solve the sandpaper feelings that rubbed them raw earlier in the day, when they argued about money. They say that money is shit, but they are in debt, accumulating more debt, and learned two weeks ago that Celia is pregnant.
“I love you,” Simon says.
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t have drank tonight.”
Celia buries her face in his chest and sighs. “Are you sure you still want to start a family with me?”
“Of course I’m sure. Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
Simon kisses her forehead. She pulls away from him, kicks off her laceless red shoes, and tiptoes across the apartment, careful not to squash any elephants. She climbs into bed. Simon unties his shoes and throws them across the room. He shuffles into the bathroom, where the elephants have unwound the entire roll of toilet paper.
Simon decides to leave the toilet paper alone. Celia usually wakes up before him. He wants her to see the toilet paper and get mad at the elephants for being messy and wasteful. Then they can kill the elephants together. Maybe they will eat one. He wonders what tiny elephants taste like. He thinks that maybe he should be more concerned about the baby and less concerned about the taste of tiny elephants.
He opens the medicine cabinet and picks up his toothbrush. He squeezes a cashew-sized glob of glittering blue paste onto the frayed bristles, closes the medicine cabinet, and sticks the brush into his mouth without wetting the bristles. He stands in the bathroom doorway. While brushing he says, “Will I make a good father?”
Celia lies facedown in the pillows. The sunflower-patterned sheet is pulled up to her waist. She has taken off her shirt. Her back is a pale honeydew rind, bereft of distinguishing marks, like a desert without cacti or rocks. Her breathing is slow and heavy. She has fallen asleep.
Simon spits toothpaste foam into the sink and rinses his mouth. He swallows two aspirin for the minor toothache. He crawls into bed after turning off all the lights except the bedside lamp. He gets under the sheet and picks up the book on the nightstand. It is a copy of The Little Prince in the original French. Although he understands almost none of it, Simon begins reading aloud from the book.
After a while, he closes the book and turns off the lamp. He curls around Celia’s sleeping form, wondering if fetuses get lonely, or if loneliness only comes on after the body grows larger than a crumb.
First Light
Simon dreams that he and Celia are stapling bacon to the card board walls of a cathedral without doors or windows.
They have coated the entire exterior of the cathedral in bacon when a yellow crow falls of out the sky and begs them, as its dying wish, to go inside the cathedral and sit very quietly. “But how can we go inside if there are no windows or doors?” Celia asks the yellow crow, who weeps profusely for it has been shot through the heart.
“Ask forgiveness,” the crow says, then Simon wakes up. It is an unsettling dream, not the least because he and Celia do not eat bacon, nor any other meat.
She has turned away from him in her sleep. They each take up one side of the bed, leaving the middle cold.
They used to joke that they became one person as they slept. They used to sleep closer together. Now they sleep far apart, while tiny elephants cuddle on the floor around their bed.
He slides across the void of bed to spoon her. She stirs a little, pushing into him, murmuring, “Good morning.”
“Did you have good dreams?”
“A sad one. We were in a funeral home, trying to swallow green pills because we had died and one of us was being forced to go away. The green pills were supposed to make us inseparable, but the pills were as large as ostrich eggs. We couldn’t choke them down. It made me sad. Did you have a good dream?”
“We were outside a cathedral, doing something with bacon. I forget what.”
He never remembers his dreams for long.
He moves his left hand over her hip, up the side of her body, across her chest, and down her belly.
Her belly, where the baby is.
“What the fuck,” he says. “The blanket is squeezing my hand.”
He throws the blankets off. Three powder blue strings protrude from Celia’s bellybutton. They are as thin and transparent as fishing line.
The strings go taut.
He waves his hands back and forth. His hand passes through the strings without getting tangled or affecting them in any way, as if they possess no physical substance, like holograms. But when he makes to grab them, closing his hand into a fist, the strings feel solid in his grip. They feel cold and rubbery, like mozzarella cheese.
“What’s wrong?” Celia says.
He looks at her face. The strings jutting from her belly are not the only strings.
Strings come out of her hands, shoulders, feet, face.
“What’s happened to you?” he says.
“Nothing,” she says, wearing a panicked facial expression. “What’s wrong with you?”
As she speaks, her strings move in sync with her words and gestures. Celia and the strings act in such accordance that Simon cannot tell whether she is controlling them or they are controlling her.
“There are strings coming out of you,” he says. “Strings in your hands, feet, face… even strings coming from your belly. You must see them.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Is this a joke?”
Simon puts his hands on her shoulders and looks her straight in the eye so she knows he is serious. He speaks in a level voice. “This is not a joke. There are strings coming out of you. I don’t know why you can’t see them, but they’re there.”
She shakes her head and laughs. “I always knew you were a little crazy, but strings? Really, Simon?”
As she speaks, her body shifts like a marionette controlled by a trembling puppeteer. He imagines the strings weaving through her guts and muscles. He cannot touch her after thinking this. The strings repulse him. It is as if she is infected with a dangerous parasite. Despite his revulsion, he feels compelled to save her from these strings that are invisible to her.
“Let me cut your strings,” he says, averting his eyes.
“I’m going back to bed.” Celia turns her back to him and lays down. She pulls the blankets over her head. Her blue strings cut right through the blanket.
Simon tries to stay calm. He doesn’t want to freak out.