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Back Paradise Rot
Chapters (26)
  1. Cover Page
  2. Halftitle Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Contents
  6. Milk and Silk
  7. The Chest
  8. The Shadows
  9. The Apartment
  10. The Apples
  11. The Fruitpearls
  12. The Double Sleep
  13. The Moonlip
  14. The Spores
  15. The Brewery
  16. Pym
  17. Seasnails
  18. Prune Skin
  19. The Honey Mushroom
  20. The Lighthouse
  21. The Storm
  22. Goldapple Stems
  23. Eden
  24. Black Fruit
  25. Under the Sea
  26. Epilogue

Carral’s bobbing head didn’t break her sleep. It was as if she dreamt of sleeping and being awoken, trapped in a double sleep. I finished reading the chapter in my biology compendium, mostly so she wouldn’t think she’d scared me, and afterwards I went downstairs to the kitchen and started preparing vegetables on the counter. At first I moved quietly so as not to wake her, moving crabwise between the fridge and the stove, dicing and peeling slowly and silently. But then I grew tired of her weird sleeping and began to make more noise. I turned on the radio, chopped onions and potatoes hard and fast, frying them up in the pan. Still no sound came from the stairs. Why didn’t she wake up? Was she trying to get to me, make me self-conscious? At this thought, I made an effort to be even louder. But it wasn’t until I’d served the food, put the kettle on – Carral long since given up on – that I heard anything from her. A long yawn sounded through the metal pipes in the railings, a finger joint clicked, a cotton sweater stretched, feet shuffled down the stairs. When I turned around, she was gone.

A little later she came and sat by the kitchen table. I was eating.

‘Did you fall asleep on the mezzanine today?’ I asked.

‘I guess I did,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I don’t sleep too well at night.’

She was wearing that thin pale-yellow wool sweater again. The yellow was so close to her skin tone and hair that she seemed naked, a sexless, matted nakedness. I cut the yolk from my fried egg and put it in my mouth. The yolk burst under my tongue, and I imagined it was her skin I was tasting, but she didn’t move, just continued to twirl a finger in her ponytail, looking down at the novel opened in front of her. I licked the sticky yellow from my teeth.

‘Have you been home long?’

‘All afternoon. Didn’t you hear me before?’

‘You were home? No, I didn’t hear,’ she said slowly, without looking up.

But I could hear her every move as the night settled in, and when we sat on the mezzanine again, I stared at her yellow sweater, trying to see a hint of nipple under the tight-knit wool fabric. There was nothing. Above us the light bulbs swung back and forth, like little golden eggs.

The Moonlip

The Moonlip