“Yeah, well, don’t get carried away and make the rest of us look bad, either.”
“Okay.” Lady Mary nodded seriously.
“And one more thing.”
Lady Mary looked up at Silverfish as a car slowed.
“You were asking before. About a silverfish. See, it’s an ugly bug. But it does one cool thing.”
“It does?”
“Uh-huh,” Silverfish said, sauntering off in the direction of the now-stopped car. “It eats other bugs. And especially,” she called back to Lady Mary over her shoulder as she got in the car, “especially, it eats roaches.”
Vacation
by Trina Corey
Trina Corey has made her living as a teacher for the past twenty years. When she decided to try writing fiction she chose as setting a place she’d traveled to in college, and came up with this atmospheric tale. She lives with her family in northern California, and is currently working on a story set in the nineteen thirties.
My ex-husband was dead, God rot him, and I had given our daughter all the solace I could (which was quite a lot, I am a very good mother). But I was tapped out, and after hugs and pats on the arm and “don’t worry”s from her and me, I had turned over Jenny’s grief support to my son-in-law, and was heading out of town. For deep in the corners of my only partly healed soul, I wanted to dance and sing and whoop to the sky that I had outlived the bastard.
The cover story was that I was going to look at the wildflowers which were having their bloom of the century after a winter of extraordinary rains. Since we were only eight years into the century, this didn’t do even partial justice to what was going on in the wilds. Seeds that had waited through two, three, or four decades were rooting and flowering. It made the papers. Crowds of people were thronging to see. I decided to say I was joining the throngs, and it was true, I’d look at the flowers. I love flowers. I know flowers. And if people saw me out there with a giddy look on my face, I didn’t need to tell them that it wasn’t because I’d seen my first trout lily, but because I was drawing breath, and Stephen never would again.
I headed for Death Valley because I’d never been there with him, and I had, most happily, been there with my first serious boyfriend. It had been a lovely trip, full of heat and life and, much to my surprise at that time, plants growing in what I’d believed to be an empty desert.
The only campground where I’d been able to get a reservation was barren of all life, except people and more people. Even flower lovers come with noisy generators and blindness-inducing lanterns. I set up my tent on ground that was more rock than dirt, took a small pack with water bottles, a sweater for the cold that came with full night, and a flashlight to pick my way past the howling circles of propane- and kerosene-driven lights. Quiet and darkness came within five minutes as the trail curved around and up a steep hill. I wasn’t looking for flowers now, I was looking for stars, and needed to have open ground between me and the sky-drowning glare of the campground.
There were millions, billions. Worlds upon worlds of lights, thick across the center of the sky, more sparse toward the jagged shadows of the Panamint mountains, and colored — look long enough and you’ll see the blues and golds and reds of the stars. I watched them, and breathed the clear, empty wind falling like cold water from the higher slopes. Watched until the stars had moved partway across the sky. Watched until I could see my hand’s shadow on the ground from their light. Watched, and practiced breathing the clean air of a world that no longer had in it the man who had scarred me.
When I got back to camp, it was quiet, and mostly dark. I pulled my bag out of the tent and slept under the wheeling stars.
The next morning I headed into town for breakfast. I can’t bring myself to cook with the kind and volume of grease necessary for proper-tasting hash browns, but I do love to eat them. The cafe I’d seen on the way into the park yesterday lived up to its clean, friendly appearance, and the young red-haired waitress brought me potatoes that sizzled and crunched and I silently thanked the pig that had died to make it possible. I also promised myself to hike far and fast, hopefully keeping my blood moving quickly enough to prevent the lard from settling in my arteries. I had opened Morris’s book on desert wildflowers to refresh my memory — mostly I knew the flowers in the Santa Cruz Mountains — when the waitress came back with more coffee and a message.
“Gentleman at the counter would like to join you, if you don’t mind. He asked me to ask you.”
I looked over in the direction she’d tilted her head and saw a man about my age (early fifties), more gaunt than thin, but with strong shoulders, a good head of mostly brown hair, and gray eyes that half disappeared in laugh lines as he smiled at me and held up a book. Same as mine. I glanced at the waitress and raised my eyebrows in inquiry.
“He’s been around for a few days, comes in for breakfast, tips good. You’re the first one I’ve seen him hit on,” she said.
I grimaced at the phrasing, but took a deep breath and considered. Distraction in attractive male form could be pleasant. He knew, or was interested in knowing, wildflowers, so there was nonpersonal conversation immediately available. I could celebrate later. I moved my books and maps to my side of the table, smiled, and extended an open hand to the seat opposite.
He came over, slid onto the bench seat, and rose again halfway to extend his hand. “Frank Ross,” he said, and his touch was dry and slightly cool.
“Jane Galen,” I said. “Tell me what you’ve seen so far,” and gestured to the books.
We spent the next half-hour, and two refills of coffee apiece, going over the clumps and swaths and solitaries that he’d seen. He was knowledgeable, but not fanatic.
He was also funny, and he smelled good, and when he asked if I’d like to join him for a hike (he offered to provide, and carry, the sandwiches and water), I listened to the rumble of his voice, noted the beginnings of attraction, thought why not, didn’t listen to the answer the smart side of my brain was muttering, and said yes.
We met, as agreed, at the Charlie Pete trailhead and set off, west, away from the sun, on a path that wound across the flat valley floor. The day was still comfortable, though that would change in the afternoon, but not to the life-threatening temperatures that would come in later months. I’m not one of those people who count species, but we must have seen a few dozen, and as far as sheer numbers? Well, there were more flowers than people, but not by a nearly big enough margin. It felt, at times, like Disneyland. After I’d snarled at three families who thought picking handfuls of ephemeral beauty was a good idea, Frank asked mildly if I’d like to head into the hills for lunch. “With pleasure,” I snapped, and took off almost at a run for the trail that branched off to the right. He kept up with me easily, and I wasn’t surprised when he said he was a runner, and averaged more than twice my ten miles per week.
The cheese sandwiches he’d brought were delicious, and the water cold. Chewing prevented me from continuing to rant, and I was grateful I wasn’t in mid swallow so I could laugh when Frank said, “Think of them as locusts, bipedal locusts, in pink capris and orange-plaid Bermudas.” His long fingers fluttered through the air, making two-legged winged shapes. We were sitting on an outcropping of shale that overlooked the valley, and Frank’s hands blocked my view of the humans in question, who were continuing their depredations below. His long legs were also an enjoyable visual alternative, tanned, with clearly delineated muscles, hairs lightened almost to blond. He saw me noticing, and we looked at each other thoughtfully. The sexual attraction became damn near visible in the air between us, curling like smoke, tendrils growing and twisting in the wind that wasn’t there.