The same color as the stains in the sheet your mother took out of the washer after she had inadvertently scooped up a poisonous snake black as fear with the dirty laundry and it had struck repeatedly as it drowned.
Done with the beer, you crack in half a fistful of spaghetti, drop the two stiff bundles into the boiling water, pour yourself a Dalwhinnie as the water froths, drop three ice cubes in another glass and slip it into the freezer, then step out onto the deck again with the salmon steaks on a plate in your left hand and the scotch in a cold glass in your right.
You lay the two radiant pink slabs on the grill and close the lid.
Now you consult your watch, balance the scotch on the railing, close your eyes, and concentrate on the gentle fluid motion of the creek until it becomes the only thing you hear.
How, sitting in the restroom in Szeged in flat southern Hungary, you discovered there was no more toilet paper and so you reached into the pockets of your pants and wiped your ass with hundred-forint bills because forints were worth so little and they were all you had.
How in Kathmandu you kneeled to pet a brown puppy curled up against a wall in Durbar Square and realized it was dead.
At the base of the porch, you unzip your fly and, looking into branches netting above you, pee in a long and formidable arc.
That is where Andi finds you.
She comes around the corner of the house, camera case and tripod over her shoulder, stops in midstride, and slackens into laughter.
You laugh too, happy to see her, and raise your left hand, indicating that she should hold off a second.
You finish, shake yourself dry, zip up, and trot over to kiss her.
She hugs you and her dense café-au-lait hair smells of some fragrant shampoo or leave-in conditioner.
While she heads down into the basement to drop off her equipment, you flip the salmon and move into the kitchen to stir the spaghetti sauce and prepare her scotch so it is waiting for her when she returns.
Now you step out on the deck with her and ask her about her day.
In flickering chips of summer light, she tells you about her shoot at the mill in Troy, how it turns out to be the case that every logger maintains a beard while everyone in logging management is clean-shaven.
She comments on the breaking news story she heard on the radio on her way home that the government is planning to make the Hanford nuclear site near Richland, Washington, into a national theme park.
Offhandedly, almost as an aside on her path to more interesting narrative terrain, she tells you:
I called Grannam this morning.
You didn’t need to do that, you say too quickly. Look. All we have to do is learn to be a little more… what’s the word?… tolerant. We have to learn to be a little more tolerant. She’ll get used to us being gone.
You put down your scotch and start lifting the salmon off the grill with the spatula.
I told her I was pregnant, Andi says.
You stop lifting.
Your eyes pivot toward her even though your body idles.
I told her I went to the doc as soon as I missed my period, she says.
You resume lifting. You lower the salmon steaks onto the earthenware plate so that they overlap slightly, then you squat, turn off the grill and the gas tank under the grill, stand, pick up the plate in your right hand and the scotch in your left, and head toward the back door. Andi opens it for you.
Thanks, you say. I’m pretty sure I’ve got this grilling business down. Seven minutes on the first side, the one with scales, flip, peel off the scales with the spatula, five minutes on the second, then an additional two on the first.
You turn off the burners on top of the kitchen stove, pour the spaghetti into a colander already in the sink, walk back and stir the sauce.
Studying your moving hand, you say:
Could you do the water?
Andi replaces you at the sink and turns on the faucet. The pump in the basement fumbles awake. Andi opens the cabinet above the counter and takes out two glasses and one at a time holds them under the faucet. She puts them alongside the salads on the brown turtle-shell plastic trays you have prepared.
You’re making me nervous, she says, taking up a position by the refrigerator.
So the government takes a place that manufactured plutonium for bombs after World War II and decides to make it into a national theme park?
Like Williamsburg, she says, only bigger. Disney is involved, I think. Disney or Bertelsmann.
They have garbage in those storage tanks they don’t even know what it is anymore, it’s so mixed up.
You spatula the salmon steaks onto the earthenware plates on the trays, then add the spaghetti, then garnish the spaghetti with the bright red garlic-and-basil sauce.
You lift one tray, Andi the other, and head out to the deck and down the stairs to the spacious wooden chairs by the empty fire pit.
Balancing your tray on the flat wide armrest, you shake out a napkin and place it in your lap, then retrieve the tray and set it across your thighs.
Andi follows suit.
Six-hundred square miles of waste facilities designed to last a hundred years, tops, housing we don’t even know what, you say. Is the salmon okay?
The salmon is perfect.
Not too dry?
It couldn’t be moister.
Because I hate it when it’s too dry. All I can think about when it’s over-cooked is carcinogenic residue.
They’re not calling it a, quote, national theme park, unquote. They’re calling it a, quote, historical sanctuary and health resort, unquote. People sit in uranium mines in Montana for their aching joints. If you prefer to avoid direct exposure, you can rent radiation gear and a respirator.
People will sightsee. This will become their idea of a vacation.
Maybe they’re really visiting in order to view our culture’s gains and losses.
Two-headed cows in Chernobyl. A little forget-me-not at the gift shop on your way out.
You eat in silence, paying close attention to your food, until Andi says:
You told me to take care of it, so I took care of it. At the time it struck me as a good idea.
I didn’t do anything for dessert, you say.
That’s fine.
Extra calories, I thought, and suddenly wham: tomorrow morning we’re up three pounds.
Good thinking.
There’s some fruit in the fridge, if you’d like something else. Watermelon. Cantaloupe. I think we have some blueberry sorbet, too. I could check. Blueberry or mango. I’m not sure which. One of the indecently colored ones.
She’s eighty-nine.
And coffee, of course. We have coffee.
She can’t travel. There’s no way she’d be able to come out to visit or anything.
Decaf. Mocha java.
I’m okay, thanks. The ball will be in our court.
You arrange everything for maximum equilibrium on your tray, delicately tease your napkin out from under it, ball it, adjust it on the oily plate, stand.
Close your eyes.
Open them.
Nothing changes.
Everything changes and everything remains the same.
I think I have to watch some TV right now, you say, aiming for the deck.
Clicking randomly through channels, you listen to Andi wash dishes downstairs.
Water sibilates.
A pot clanks against another pot.
Silverware clinks and jingles like a bowl of spare change.
The pump in the basement clacks on, hums for the length of a Nike commercial, clacks off.
The refrigerator opens with a sucking sound. Something rattles. The refrigerator thumps shut, reminding you of an airlock on a Hollywood spaceship.
They thought your childhood was too weird to be true.