LITMIR.BIZ

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out of fright, must have urinated—soaking into his scalp was a trail of liquid that started several rows back and, because of the angle of the bus, crept into his hair. He quickly dried himself on one of the seat covers. Liquids were constant enemies he had to avoid.

      Where was his valise? He raised his hands to explore his head and ensure there were no soft dents caused by the urine but instead he felt something else.

      His left arm was missing. It should have registered as a bigger problem that he was missing part of his paper body, but physical pain was something he no longer experienced. His paper skin had always seemed distant, so distant that he never received messages in his mind of any sensations of pain. The only hint was in his vision, when things lost their shape and blended their colors and textures. Land and sky would mix into each other, blurring borders; edges bled into their surroundings, and he would swim in a concave pool of colors until the sensation passed. This usually only lasted a moment. It was how he recognized something was happening to his body.

      However, with the commotion and the increasing urgency to escape, it gave him less time to pause. The seats and windows were blurred into one puddle of colors, of lights and darks, and then the moment passed and details returned. Nearby, the remaining passengers scrambled to the emergency exit and out into the salty air. The bus lurched forward again, and those inside cried for help.

      With one arm, Michael searched under the seats. He found his valise toward the front. Because he was so light, his own body weight didn’t tip the bus forward as he wandered up and down the aisle. Beneath the old woman’s wool blanket, still smelling of camphor, he located his missing arm. Some stout person must have stepped on his fingers, for they were smashed flat.

      He clumsily dragged the arm and case to the emergency exit, only to discover he could not lift himself. He was the last one inside. Through the front glass of the bus, he could see the swift muddy waters in the canal.

      A shadow from above fell over his face.

      “It’s true, then. Inlanders like to stay on the inside.” There grinned the man with one eye.

      Michael humbly smiled back. Why shouldn’t they be friends, after such a horrific accident? The man put out his large hand, the same one that had tried to touch Michael’s face.

      “Give me your suitcase first.”

      Michael hesitated.

      “Give me the suitcase first, and then we’ll pull you out. Hurry.”

      Michael raised the valise with his good hand, and the one-eyed man grabbed the handle.

      “Thank you,” Michael said. He was learning a valuable lesson now that he was on his own. He told himself not to be quick to judge others and was thankful that the man was forgetting what had happened. “Can you take this as well?” He held up the broken-off limb, embarrassed to look the man in his one eye.

      The metal of the bus creaked again as it started to lean further.

      “Hello?”

      The man was gone.

      2

      ON THE DRY PAVEMENT LAY THE BODY: A NUDE GIRL WITH WHAT looked like seaweed for hair, with fishing line and beaded floats tangled in it. At first, Michael thought it was a body risen from the dead, southern custom dictating that all bodies be buried at sea in the great Bay of Bones. Perhaps there had been a mistake, and she had been buried alive and tried to swim back to land? But the triple set of gills—crusted with sea foam and bursting from each side of her neck, told him this creature had not originated on land. Her skull—crushed, the bones piercing the skin of her face. One of her webbed hands held a rusty knife; the large fin that extended in place of legs had been severed down the middle and was filled with a canyon of dried blood. Her bluish lips had a taut smile, exposing two sets of small, serrated teeth. The stench of her body overpowered the lingering gasoline from the bus. Around her an elastic cloud of flies stirred as people approached, and then returned to cluster onto the soft spots of her iridescent skin.

      The bus finally gave in to gravity and disappeared over the low cement wall. The passengers paused as it slid below the canal’s trembling surface. Several fragile passengers whimpered; a few ran away. Michael stood back. Two clean-cut young men had pulled him out after spotting his detached arm waving like a flag outside the window of the bus. They had nearly tossed him across the highway, misjudging his weight so badly. He thought they were heading toward him for a better look, but the corpse of the fish girl was far more intriguing.

      The man with the missing eye was nowhere to be seen, Michael’s valise gone with him. It was as if another part of his body had broken off. There was too much going on around him, though, to think about this. He neared the crowd, wobbling past a few sweating passengers who lay on the ground, pressing cloths to cuts on their foreheads and forearms. Michael saw flashes of bright red. Blood always thrilled him, not because he was sensitive to it but because he no longer bled like that.

      Leaning for a look, Michael wondered aloud: “It’s a dead mermaid?”

      “Should’ve run her over,” someone complained.

      “And we were almost home.” The woman who had smuggled lemons and laurel leaves was crying. “Typical city trash! Get me out of here.”

      “She was dead before we got here,” said a woman with red hair, frizzy as if she had been electrocuted. She put her hand out to touch the body but pulled back when a pair of mating flies landed on her palm.

      The bus driver became defensive: “I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. I had to swerve out of the way.”

      “Of course she was dead. Who lays in the middle of an off-ramp?” the woman with red hair said.

      “Has anyone seen a man with an eye patch?” Michael asked.

      They ignored him. All of his concerns of being noticed in the city faded. He had always wanted to blend in, and the time he needed to stand out to get somebody’s attention and assistance, he was no match for a dead mermaid. He looked around, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if he wasn’t simply dreaming. With his one functioning hand, he touched his face and stroked his ears, and for a while he waited in vain to wake up.

      Soon, several ambulances arrived. The men inside were volunteer paramedics who set up zebra-striped barriers around the body and covered it with a black tarp. Littered around everyone were their blue entry forms, flopping on the pavement like gasping fish. Then a fire truck arrived and passengers began arguing over who would get a ride to the hospital.

      The sky was turning past evening—a brilliant expanse of pinks and blues, like nothing he had ever seen inland. In a way, the accident had served a purpose: he was now free from his past by losing all of his belongings. As the paramedics struggled to write with dull pencils what passengers were saying, he longed for his own ledger book. They never glanced over at him, and so he decided they didn’t need him—there was no one here to ask for his entry form—and he walked away.

      The exit off-ramp led to a road that connected to a main street that stretched as far across the peninsula as he could see. Buses and taxis sped beside cars and bicyclists. The street was lined with tall buildings, many starting to turn on their lights as the sky darkened. Michael stuffed his detached arm in his jacket sleeve and used his good hand to hold it in place by clasping the elbow. At a stoplight, he stood beside a flyer that said:

      SAVE THE CITY: SAY NO TO ANNEXATION!

      He joined a loose crowd of restless pedestrians and strolled as if he had always lived here. He had told no one at home he was leaving. At this time, his brothers, Leo and Ralph, had probably returned to the house after all of their deliveries of their coffee beans in town, and their father was leaving the high school where he taught. They probably thought he was still in his room. His younger brothers had turned their backyard into a coffee farm and sold their coffee to local coffee shops and grocery stores. Michael was their bookkeeper, and the day before, after counting the bags they had taken away, he updated their accounting books, went into his bedroom, and then packed his cardboard valise with a few belongings, including two socks stuffed

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