Page 15 - WTP VOl. X #6

had smooshed into the recycling bin the night before.
“Oh this? a science experiment I suppose. Don’t mind us.” She flipped a curtain of brown hair over her shoulder and smiled at me over sweatshirt sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
Showing up unannounced was quintessential Ellis. I expected it, or should have. A while back, some months or so ago, in the Spring just after Janey, Ellis busted into the Medicaid Call Center and announced to my co-workers that she landed the dream at a corporate law firm in the Big Apple. From that day forth I would be her bitch housewife. “She quits,” she said, standing on my desk in Ivanka Trump pumps. It’s what I needed, to forge a new (a higher-paying) life plan.
“I thought I’d bring the puddle home, offer it an of- ficial welcome to the family.”
“What, like the cat?” I said, my voice rising without me, “You’re barking down the wrong puddle.” I felt thin, see-through, as if my lungs were draining down the puddle in whirls.
Ellis pressed her tongue to the crack of her lips and narrowed her eyes. “You’re funny.” She took a step. “I thought I could pour it in the basement. You could be home. I could make coffee. Soup. Could be an indoor camp out. And yeah, the cat could be there, curl up on your lap. She misses you too.” She paused as if to think. “I don’t like it when you sleep out here.”
Ellis squatted and frowned at her gloved hands. She scooped at the surface with the funnel’s mouth. Liquid pattered into the jug. Could it be that easy? I watched the remaining water turn fussy and murky, churned, in its shallow crater. What could she think of me? The funnel scraped against the bottom of the
crater, the sound of sand grinding between molars. Ellis readjusted to her knees. The jug sloshed.
I wanted to tell her to piss off, her and her soup and her campout, to mind her own pretty-penny-fucking business. But I didn’t. She was ladling the pitless puddle that had swallowed my sister into a Tide de- tergent jug, and I wanted to know how in the hell she was doing that.
The wind shifted. The familiar stench hit me in ver- tiginous waves. Hadn’t it been yesterday? that I had lost my fishing rod to the puddle. I had checked the line and guides before lowering a jig beneath the surface. I wanted to know how far it went—how far she went.
Immediately down, down. Two, three, twelve feet. The jig wasn’t sinking. Not like water. The tension was wrong. There was a least 70 pounds on the hook, a full-grown sturgeon plummeting into impos- sible depths. I imagined its armored scales, razor- blade eyes, my jig in its belly, diving—falling?—a straight line from my feet into a purple shaft. Down? Or else up? Fins grating seaweed bowels of the uni- verse. Beer-bottle nose rupturing constellations of wormholes.
Did the puddle watch the construction of the high- way? How long had it sat before Janey stumbled upon it? Did it fall as rain? Could it evaporate—drifting perpetually imperceptibly into the sky? How many others had it swallowed? How many were down there? Or else drifting away? Had it depths? Had it an end? Did it—could we?—travel forever down? Had I hooked Janey by the earlobe?
I yanked back hard. No show. Almost all 200 yards of line were rigid down the gullet of the puddle.
I triggered the reel and fell flat on my ass; the
give was immediate and stunning, but it was wrong. It was as if the stretch between the stur- geon—Janey’s ear?—and the point where the line submerged had melted into taffy or bubblegum. I reeled, the tension gave, but no more line resur- faced. I could feel it. Stretching.
After an hour of reeling, I fed the rod into the puddle and cut through the trainyard to the nature preserve. I stared up into the night until Ellis had found me.
“It’s only a puddle.” She waved the jug at eye level. “Earth to Alyssa. Hey, buy you a beer.”
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