Page 92 - Vol. VI #3

O.G. (continued from preceding page)
she’d recently sewn and stuffed in her unmen- tionables, their motives still remain a mystery. The investigators found Olivia’s safe but it was empty of everything but a photo of her old darling Mama Leone.
Naturally, the residents and nurses were too afraid to finger her.
She wins the next two hands, raking in another three hundred bucks before the other players quit. One, a bald man in a Hawaiian shirt, shakes his head and sulks.
Let that be a lesson to you, she says. Respect your elders.
The three card players wander back to the bar on the boat’s aft side as she puts the money
in her purse. She orders another daiquiri and buzzes in her new wheelchair to the rails. There, she watches the sun set behind a spray of clouds. Children scamper round a nearby pool, their tiny feet pattering and trailing spots that evaporate almost immediately. She lights a cigarette and mentally counts the new roll of dough in her purse, wondering how long it has been since she took her last Oxy.
Sharks out of water! one boy shouts with eyes half shut, flailing in a circle, and other children splash him mercilessly.
Just as she proceeds to snuff out her cigarette and toss it to the sea, she smells a cigar and turns to see two tall dark-haired, dark-bearded men in collared shirts and bright red swimtrunks. One smokes the cigar while the other shuffles a deck of cards.
Ms. Goldblatt, yes? he says in an accent she recog- nizes at once. We hear you play a wicked game of Bridge.
Khan has published fiction in Post Road Magazine, Yalobusha Review, and Fourteen Hills, among others.
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Blue Fish Bowl
pigmented urethane, rice paper, glass dust on cotton paper stock
38'' x 50'' By Darryl Hudak