“Buffalo” by Jennifer McCartney, page 2

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         And what is the moment where she will make it go in? Into the skin into the skin. She pressed the hook and a dimple appeared in her forearm. She was left handed. And this mermaid lure she’d bought in a fishing village in Spain, and the older man his face so tanned so tanned but he was not threatening and he liked her. He liked her because she came from Canada and she was young and educated, and she asked him about his village called Zahara and her sandals were made of blue leather, so unusual that blue leather. Duck’s Egg blue. Mamasita he called her. Mamasita and he held her hand. A piece of her—a hand. So many pieces of her on stone churches, city halls, stadiums, temples, clock towers—holding time, spouting water, supporting pillars, clutching scales. And this fish. This fishy woman. Was she a cutter now? Was this cutting? Was this the one last bit of cliché? At this age she was too old for cutting, yet the puncture was there. The puncture was there and the object was there. Which was more important? What could save her in this world in her bullshit quest for authenticity when nothing she studied helped, when it was all deconstructed for her. She understood now, all the pieces and what she was—whole then, broken now—but the reverse can’t ever happen. She was sure of that. There was no backwards. No building up. Synonyms, she thought. Nothing happens with words only deeds. The anarchy of no things, all actions. But it was all dead. All of it now was dead, all her learning. And she suspected this, and that was the worst thing. Suspecting that it was as bad as it was. Her skirt that day cost money, too much money and her part in all this had always been set. There was nothing to escape from when it was all built up around you. She bought the objects, she bought them with money. She was inside the system as it was always intended and even the books—the books about how women should be different than how they are now they are paid for and published and marketed and she read them along with all the other women taking courses or backpacking and having men hold their hands while they laugh in Europe because it’s all so young and so young until you’re not and it’s broken and you’re here.
         Nice cunt, he’d said.
         Nice cunt.         

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         Since the man with the hand Bea had been using any number of words and phrases to impose differences between them. Words that seemed invented to express anger and which she used well, when Kotter understood them. Militancy. Patriarchy. Dictate and corporate consumerist narrative. But the fridge was full of intact beer bottles, and most of Kotter’s experience with anger came from his days at Pickton’s. Anger appeared and disappeared according to the body’s blood alcohol level and in three to five hours, it dissipated of its own accord. But Bea had sworn off alcohol.
         He couldn’t have known then as his stomach digested the beef on weck, the big salty pickle and the two local beers (only two) and as he touched the MOBILE JESUS engraving on the suicide guard and as he watched the lights of boats passing too slowly to matter and as he felt the damp in the air, he couldn’t have known what sleep was about to inflict upon Bea. He had only the vague feeling that she was on the edge of something now, the edge of something he couldn’t save her from. The edge of something that wasn’t good and he didn’t know it would be a dream that would nudge her, from behind.
         So he pressed his mouth to the inch-wide slot in the plastic suicide guard and spat out into the city, while the dream began.
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