The Journey Prize Stories 25 (27 page)

I often see her at the vending machine. She never buys anything, but she slides her eyes over each item through the glass. I stopped once. When she noticed me, she turned toward the elevator. I said, “Too many choices?” and she smiled and waggled her lunch kit.

You get into the habit of transcription: sound of Smarties dispensed from the machine, sound of Coke can, sound of leather soles on a vinyl floor. Sometimes you try to adjust the levels. At the crosswalk, when I race a yellow light. Sound of honk. At home, when the neighbours yell, and one of them unhooks the fire extinguisher. Sometimes my fingers stretch for the mouse.

After work today, I returned to the newspaper stand and bought the last fifteen copies of
The Oregonian
. I don’t know why. But they were only one dollar each.

For Jaime’s fourth birthday, I mailed an Easy-Bake Oven. She loved it. The cookie dough turns pink. She said to me on Skype, “This present is my number two favourite.” But I want to send a gift I didn’t find on
this page
of the Toys“R”Us
flyer. Origami, maybe. Her mother loved origami. I have this Polaroid of her folding paper cranes – thirty of them, for her classmates on Valentine’s Day instead of cards or cinnamon hearts. Are four-year-olds into paper?

My sister and I bought ants on television once.
An entire colony, queen included
. We converted our fish tank into a two-storey formicarium – poured plaster over a plastic wall, over the clay tunnels we had shaped with our palms. Plus leaves and sand. The leaves you call “forage,” plant material for grazing livestock, a term we adopted. Livestock. Can’t play soccer after school – have to check the herd.

She sang for them. I played rhythm: chopsticks on an empty plastic jug. The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah. Work songs. You could watch them for hours, and sometimes we did. The entire colony shimmering through the chambers, a still black line, though every ant moved. Frames of celluloid projected on a screen, like a river, like blood cells. How motion can be static – it gets you thinking.

When we spotted an ant too close to the cheesecloth, she would fetch petroleum jelly from the bathroom, and we fingered streaks of it around the lip of the aquarium. I told her they harvested vaseline from jellyfish. She said, Do not. I said, Do too, and smeared a daub of it into her bangs.

We later experimented with radio and production speed. Which is to say, crawling. Which is to say, with speakers situated on either side of the formicarium. Do ants file faster to “The Imperial March” or ABBA? The study proved inconclusive.

After a couple of months, the plaster moulded and ants found their way into the kitchen, into the paper sack of flour and the dried figs. My mother made me dump the tank in the park “at least two blocks from our house.” My sister started piano. She signed up for voice lessons twice a week with an Italian woman who sang off-Broadway. I took up coin collection. There was money in coins. Ha, ha.

And they all go marching down.

To the ground.

   To get out of the rain.

A quick hello from your cockpit crew, this is Flight 166 with service to New York. We’ll be flying at 38,000 feet, mostly smooth, for four hours and fifteen minutes, takeoff to landing.

I’ve heard the cabin safety announcement so often, I could probably be a flight attendant. In preparation for departure, please be certain your seat back is straightened and your tray table stowed. There are a total of eight exits on this aircraft: two door exits at the front of the aircraft, four window exits over the wings, and two door exits at the rear of the aircraft. To start the flow of oxygen, reach up and pull the mask toward you. Place the mask over your nose and mouth. Place the elastic band over your head. The plastic bag may not inflate.

I have this shirt with a soundboard printed on the front. The caption says,
I know what all these buttons do
. I think a pilot could wear this shirt also.

Today, April wears a wool sweater the colour of eggshells, the colour of string. She’s hennaed her hair very red. Poppy, I’d say. I’d say: hellzapoppin. I think she must attract hummingbirds.

At break, I stopped behind her at the vending machine and watched her scan the items. I don’t even think she brought her wallet. I stood there for a full minute before I caught her staring at me through the glass. Then it was me who jumped.

She turned. She said, “Go ahead, I’m not in line.”

I said, “Me neither.”

She shifted her eyes to the potted plant.

“You know they’re scented?” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“The lemons.”

She drew her eyes up the tree to the yellow baubles of plastic fruit.

“Real wood, too,” I continued. “We voted for it last year. They emailed options from a catalogue.”

The elevator dinged open and one of the techs from Fifth Floor strolled out behind us. April stepped for the door. I stepped with her.

“What were the other options?” she said.

“Orange.” I walked inside the elevator and leaned against the far wall. “Banana. Bamboo.”

“I would have voted bamboo.”

The elevator opened at the main floor. I followed her through the lobby into the courtyard, an urban “greenspace” designed with white-slab cement, birch mulch, a stand of honey locusts, and a fountain.