to Fisher's front porch seemed, well, portentous: beer glitter, bowl of
nuts, gold fish: orange, eyeballed, plasticky. We'd come prepared, had
followed Cancer's instructions: wear bright colors and explain to one and all you
are in love and don't know what to do; Capricorn's instruction: order pie first.
We'd eaten pie perched like pigeons on high stools, then ordered goat cheese
and crab meat, beer. My guppy had died that morning, but that was hard to
remember. Fisher had on Hawaiian. I was wearing green on a porch swing that had
not been there the last time I had. Lori started asking everyone for gum:
chicklets chicklets till our jaws hurt. Fisher sat down on the swing, said he was
tired, rocked the swing back and forth--crabs clawed up my stomach, swished
around in the beer--a luau that evening, could I bring old leis? Lori and I
slipped upstairs to the kitchen, bags of gold fish hidden in our fists, goat
cheese hard on our breath. We watched the water ooze from the faucet's neck, the
sink fill. We cut open the plastic, and then we dropped them. Splish. And ran.