Юджин Фишер - Adrift

They met at Janet’s office, and she led him to her room, which was sparse, with an organized closet; a small, clean desk; and a single, narrow bed. Janet took Laurent to the bed with her and took off her shirt. She showed him the lines on her abdomen, from the surgery for her ovarian cancer. Laurent in turn showed her the furrow on his hip. He told her of being fifteen years old, and hiding in a bush from militiamen looking to grow their ranks through kidnapping, and being struck by a bullet fired randomly into the woods. They explored the scars with their fingertips as they shared their bodies with each other.

After, with Laurent lying with his head on her chest, Janet found herself thinking many silly thoughts. She thought about marriage and immigration. And about divorce. She was already married, after all. But if she wasn’t, on how short a notice could she marry someone else? Was she like the captain of a ship? Did she have the power to declare marriages? Could ship captains even do that anymore?

She dragged the tip of her nose across his short coarse hair and breathed deeply. It was all just fluff. Idle thoughts to pass the time until the ship arrived to take Laurent and his sisters away.

The departure was a relatively subdued affair. The ship docked and Janet took the Mokinas with her to meet with its captain, a bony, cheerful man from Belarus who said that the sisters would have one room and that Laurent would have another, and assured them that the trip would be a comfortable one. “Far more comfortable than your trip here, no? We try, anyway!” His jocularity rushed fluidly to fill any empty conversational space, which was a relief to Janet, who found she had no words that felt adequate to the occasion. She hugged each of the siblings before they were led, carrying their new bags full of donated clothing, away into the ship.

After all the necessary but tedious administrative tasks were taken care of, Janet went to the observation deck at the top of the platform to watch as the ship sailed away. She found Henri already there, leaning out over the railing.

“I was surprised you didn’t come to see them off,” she said.

“I saw the looks on their faces when they first got out of that container,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to see what looks they were wearing as they got on that boat.” He held his cap in his hand to keep it from blowing away, and he was facing into the wind, which might have been the cause of the streaks blown back from his eyes. “I’m going to find a way to get those girls out of there. It isn’t right that they should go back. DAMSCo should offer that boy a job. I’m going to make waves about this.”

Janet didn’t respond. She was fantasizing about a world in which, if you could just make it to here , that was enough. A world where you could expect to be met halfway.

She wondered where she would be going when it was her turn to leave.

Copyright © 2010 Eugene Fischer