21 November 2005

.16

He got back quickly with the cooler. It was still dark out, but he had to work fast.

He took out his scalpel. Punctured neatly the skin of her abdomen—point pressing down and a little globe of blood. He cut carefully, with ease, hand sliding against her skin and surely turning the corner—a perfect right angle. He peeled back the layer of skin and there they were, like Queens, miraculously suspended over the tubes bowed and humbly waiting like willow trees. He snipped and they came with ease into his hands. Plums. He removed her ovaries. He sealed them in plastic bags, covered them in ice, closed the lid and turned one last time to her.

“Thank you for this chance,” he said to her.

He bent down. Kissed her on the forehead. Got up and wrote a note to the porter: “Signore, please forgive that I was unable to remove her as I promised. And please forgive this request, but I hope you understand that it is an act of desperation. Please take care of her. She has an orange dress with white flowers in the closet. Dress her. Brush out her hair. Braid it if you know how. And then, please, have her cremated. She looks like the kind of woman who wants to be cremated in pigtails.” He placed 500 euros on her bloody chest.

And then, he left with the cooler in his hands, in the early morning, and made his way, as the sun was rising, to the airport.

09 November 2005

.15

He crossed the room.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” he said to her.

Standing above her. Looking down at her. Image of a curvaceous girl on a panda floating above her head on the dresser.

“Okay,” he said. “I will make you new. But first I have to go and get ice.”


05 November 2005

.14

The photograph was not from India. It was the tropics but not a continent. A cliff island in the Caribbean judging from the fat girl knees and the passport.

The knees were still the same, dimpled on the side, thighs sloping down and cupping the bottom of the bone, a little bowl of flesh for that vulnerable, floating cap.

How would he get her to India?

Bring those knees up to her chest, tie her up like a calf and mail her UPS ground? Would he then get a ticket for himself and meet her at the other side? Send her to a hotel room? Would he open that box and pull her out, bring her to the windowsill and say, “I brought you. Here you are, dead in India.”

Was that what she wanted?

It was hot, humid, sticky.

The back of his collar clung to the back of his neck.

He undid the top button.

Took a photograph of it. His button.

“She is born in India.”

She wanted a new beginning. She wanted a fresh start.

She saw in him an opportunity.

She had made a choice earlier that evening—to take her chances, bet that someone like him would be here, that he would collude with her—give her what she wanted. Give her a new life.

There was a reason why she had picked this night. The strip on the ovulation test kit in the trash was hot pink. She had made a choice.

03 November 2005

.13

The beginning of a Romantic novel: A British child of the Orient with beautiful parents soaked in sherry. The father is drunk and has a thick black mustache. The mother is a willow-of-the-wisp. She wears perfumes and chiffon. The daughter plays with monkeys and hangs from trees barefoot in sky-blue dresses so short they barely cover her underwear. She plays with the servants, of course.

She is born in India.

So, she is wild and well bred.

Her parents never see her—just the chef, the butler and the governess. The chef and the butler wear turbans and are fond of her scampering. They make a scavenger of her—hiding coconut treats in deep pockets that she digs her little hands in. She is transported on their shoulders. Little Sahib. The governess has a Mary Poppins type jacket and skirt and lace-up shoes without all the sugar and songs. Like an Anne Sullivan—taming her unruly Helen.

She had never been to Asia. He was sure of that. She was the kind of woman who dreamed about it. Whose flirtations with British girl literature had aroused not only her curiosity of the world but had propped her burgeoning puberty. She counted herself among the Sara Crewes of the world—beloved by dark men who spoke in accents and on whose sadness her empathy could connect to a foreign place.

Where was this photograph taken? Her girl child on a slide in front of a pink house in front of a cliff—a mountainside? In that red-flower bikini. Missee Sahib was happy.