James A. Foster
We face each other across a linen-draped table at a crowded outdoor cafe in Amsterdam, me astride a giant tortoise and the trout floating in midair. Between us, a crystal trumpet vase sprouts a single black tulip.
“Hit me,” he says.
I tuck a cigarette into his mouth and light it. “Those things’ll kill you,” I say.
He tips a pectoral fin toward his head and says, “Can’t. No lungs.” Smoke puffs from his gills.
An organ grinder holds a leash tied to a monkey, who wears a waiter’s uniform and little red kepi. His name tag says, “Hello. I’m Bobo.” The organ grinder wears thick black glasses, and a white cane with a red tip lies beside him. He turns the crank of the hurdy-gurdy. “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” comes out.
Everyone but the trout and I—and Bobo—pairs up to dance. As the couples rotate slowly, Bobo slouches, hangs his head, and sobs.
A fleet of silver dirigibles swim into view high above us, blotting out the sun.
“It’s cold as death,” I say.
“Didn’t notice,” the trout says. “Cold blooded.”
I ask, “Where do trout go when they die?”
He blows two perfect smoke rings, one out of each gill, and shrugs. Or something like a shrug, since he doesn’t have shoulders. “Depends on how.” The smoke rings rise and merge into a figure eight.
“Meaning?”
“Usually, something takes us up.”
“To Heaven?”
He shakes his body, which wags his face. “No, no, no. Just ‘up.’ As in, ‘Out of the water.’”
“Like what?”
“Osprey. Eagle. Sometimes otter. Or one of you. To eat.”
The dancers’ feet leave the ground and they begin to rise, still rotating slowly with the melody. “Everyone has to eat,” I say.
“I tell you secret. Little fish? Full of protein. Once I am old, bugs are not enough.”
I think of Swift’s Modest Proposal. It’s a good thing human babies aren’t smaller, or shaped like minnows: like long, thin, slimy cigars, perfectly suited for a big fish’s gullet. Babies would stick in my throat.
The dancers stop dancing then tip over, backs to the ground, stomachs toward the dirigibles. They accelerate upwards. There are no birds.
Ash falls off the end of his cigarette and rises, toward the horizontal bodies.
“What if you just get old, and die?”
He did the fin-shrug. “We float off. Bear eats us. Or something. Or wash up onshore and rot.” He makes burble, which I suppose is a laugh, “Finally. Bugs eat us.”
Shade from the dirigibles chills my espresso. “That’s your body,” I say. “What happens to you.”
He doesn’t answer at first—just stares through lidless eyes. I wonder if he misses his river. There’s a canal nearby, but that’s saltwater. That would kill him. He says, “Beats me.”
The un-dancers zoom upwards now, far above the rooftops.
“Do you mind?” he says, pointing with his eyes at the stub dangling from his lipless mouth. It makes him look cross-eyed. I take it and drop it in my cold coffee. It sizzles then floats, belly up.
The music stops. The organ grinder begins to snore. Bobo unties the leash and shuffles over. He tugs his little white apron and tips his tiny hat. He nods to the cigarette butt floating in my cup and says, “Another?” His voice is surprisingly deep for such a tiny fellow.
“No thanks,” I say. “We’re done here.”
The trout bobs his head, as if nodding.
Bobo returns to his station, ties the leash around the blind organ grinder’s neck, and turns the crank. It plays, “So Long It’s Been Good to Know You.” The organ grinder begins to tap dance, beating time with his cane.
Far overhead, the floating bodies smash into the undersides of the dirigibles, like bugs on a windshield. Their shoes fall off and flutter down, like snow. The airships drift silently away.
The trout is gone.
JAMES A. FOSTER is a retired Distinguished Professor of Biology, Philosophy, and Computer Science, with an extensive academic publication and editorial record. He lives with his wife Martha and calico kitten Skitterbutt in a tiny former logging town in Northern Idaho. Since retirement, he’s been writing fiction, and has published a poem and a short story in Bowery Gothic and Synkroniciti. He holds an A.B. in Classical Philosophy from the University of Chicago, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. In his spare time, he reads classical Greek, plays the Blues, pursues wild fish in remote places, and drinks excellent whisky.