“Like the snow tomb of Ozymandias,” sighs Ozark. She drops a triangular flashcard. It slides beneath the circulation desk.
[:]
Ozark and Mrs. Scattergood duck into the reference section to change their clothes. Mr. Henderson sits at the circulation desk. He makes a convincing librarian. He puts the blue mug behind him, out of sight, on an empty metal cart.
“Hot tea by the library books!” he says.
“Goodbye!” waves the adult niece of Mrs. Borage. How bizarre. She has a rectilinear thorax. It is about the size of a reference book. Mr. Henderson glances at Mrs. Scattergood. Is she going to say something? She is.
“Would you like some tea?” says Mrs. Scattergood to Mr. Henderson. “I have another mug.”
X
Dorcas and Fiona have started building a metal fence around the sixteen dogs in the garden. Agnes insists. Invariably, there are guests who fear dogs.
Fiona went all around town collecting the poles. They all have wonderful names — Larch Saint, Bramble Saint, Honeysuckle Saint — but the lettering is inexcusably dull.
“It will be hard to add serifs without a soldering gun,” thinks Bryce. “I’ll have to gild them instead.”
“Dear creatures,” says Bryce, from deep in her lungs, like Ms. Kidney. “Have you ravened your krill paste?” The dogs are lying on their sides with their eyes shut tight.
“Do they seem moribund?” asks Bryce.
“Not really,” says Fiona. She dips a corner of toast into the krill paste and crunches.
Her face pales. She grabs her thermos from its holster and swallows frantically, many ounces of good liquid chocolate. Bryce takes the bowl of krill paste into the kitchen. She flours the counter and flattens the paste with the rolling pin. She picks through the cookie cutters.
“Reindeer!” says Bryce. She punches out sixteen reindeer, each mid-leap, with branching antlers. She lifts them with the spatula and lays them one by one on sixteen paper plates. They look appetizing, just like reindeer in the wild, silhouetted against the glaciers of the North. She hopes the wolves don’t get discouraged by how far away the reindeer seem, each one just a few inches tall. She tries to pick up a reindeer. It is unappealingly floppy.
“I’ll toast them,” thinks Bryce.
[:]
There is Mr. Zimmer, walking down the sidewalk. He is carrying a very large box.
“The baking pan!” says Bryce. Not a moment too soon.
“Mr. Zimmer is about to walk into a cairn!” cries Fiona.
Mr. Zimmer walks into a cairn. He sits down hard.
“Do you think that hurt?” asks Bryce.
“I doubt it,” says Fiona. “There are still so many leaves.”
Now that he’s seated, Mr. Zimmer can look much more closely into the faces of the sixteen wolves in the garden.
“They don’t have any teeth,” calls Mr. Zimmer.
“Oh no, not at all,” calls Bryce.
“I should have asked,” thinks Mr. Zimmer. He feels foolish now, with his trouser pockets filled with pork ribs. He had to take out his hip flask to fit them. Now the hip flask is under his hat. Mr. Zimmer pretends to scratch his head. He takes a sip of whisky. He wonders why the wolves are surrounded by street signs.
The garden looks like a complicated intersection. The wolves could walk out, but which way? Even Mr. Zimmer feels a moment of indecision, staring up at the forest of street signs, and he has been mail carrier for twenty-seven years.
[:]
“Come inside for schnapps,” calls Bryce. Mr. Zimmer puts the box on the front step. He wipes his palms on his blue trousers. He is still indecisive, but the whisky is helping.
“No schnapps,” he says.
“Presbyterian?” says Bryce.
Mr. Zimmer hesitates. Certainly he is Presbyterian. He is descended from James K. Polk.
Mr. Zimmer is suspicious of unmarried women, particularly of a certain age. They have brash ideas.
He wonders if he is poised to stumble upon an illegal operation. There is a strange smell coming from the house. It is a toxic smell, a new shower-curtain smell, the smell of thousands of freshly minted shower curtains, as though inside, the house is really a factory, the Shower Curtain Complex.
Mr. Zimmer takes another slug of whisky. It is good Presbyterian whisky, the very spirit of the speyside.
He fears he has discovered the illegitimate sister of the Security Spray Complex, which moved its operations away in the night, twenty-seven years ago.
The morning after, workers stood outside, looking at the chains across the iron doors. They looked at each other and then at the blue sky and then at the chains on the doors and then they left all at once and no one travels up this dead end road anymore, except Mr. Zimmer, who has to, come rain or sleet or gloom of night, according to federal law.
He tries to peek past Bryce into the house. Bryce is wearing a feather-stitched white cambric chemise. The feathers fill the doorway. Bryce is slightly embarrassed by the feathers. She tried to photosensitize the birds, but the birds did not recover. Bryce has not given up.
“Imagine the birds,” thinks Bryce, “photosensitized, absorbing light pollution, developing gently in the rainfall, traffic patterns appearing on their breasts and under-wings, their backs and their pinions!”
Of course, Bryce has written to the Audobon Society. She is a very proactive person and, given the opportunity, an excellent correspondent.
Someday the feathers in Bryce’s chemise will look like the sky over peri-urban Ohio. Someday the feathers will color faintly with the trefoil insignias of the cloverleaf highways, but not yet. The feathers are dingy gray, with chemical burns. Hardly fit for a party. She will have to change.
“Into cherry satin,” thinks Bryce.
“At least take this invitation,” she says. She hands it to Mr. Zimmer.
“It doesn’t have a stamp,” says Mr. Zimmer.
“It’s for you,” says Bryce.
“Still,” says Mr. Zimmer. He holds up his hands. Mr. Zimmer is a strict anti-corruption man, like James K. Polk before him.
“Especially if it’s for me,” says Mr. Zimmer.
X
Agnes is toasting bread. Next she will mix the nuts. Is there a tray big enough for the tremendous silver herring? No. The oven door? The oven door is gone. And the metal folding chairs.
“The brunt of everything falls on me,” thinks Agnes. It is because she has a professional degree.
Agnes must get out of the house. She strolls down to the center of town. She is shocked to see a bright pink arrow on the church and another on the courthouse. They must be visible for miles.
“And they’re pointing straight to the house!” cries Agnes. Who would come to the party on the highway? No one she can think of has a license.
“Only the dogs have been offered licenses,” thinks Agnes. “And they’re already here.”
Gervais? No, he always comes on foot. Will Gervais come at all? He doesn’t like to travel on Kingfisher days. He always brings the frost.
“Dear Gervais!” thinks Agnes. “Gervais Fool-for-Frost.”
[:]
There is a man standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the pink arrow on the courthouse. He’s wearing a black suit and a blue tie and shiny black shoes. He looks at Agnes. Examined straight-on, the man’s face gives the same aloofly pondering impression of the best three-quarter profiles. He has a little mustache. He looks very familiar. Agnes thinks he must be a currency model from the Commonwealth. She smiles to put him at ease.
“Where does a man like that belong?” wonders Agnes. “In this day and age?”
[:]