Victor Lavalle - Lucretia and the Kroons

She made it three steps before she slipped.

She was falling before she could even scream. Sunny had to scream for her.

“Loochie!”

Loochie threw out her hands to try to regain balance but that only made things worse. She flailed. She could see the water underneath the Unisphere. It was so dark it looked green. She saw the gaps between the longitude and latitude lines, like the gaps in the grillwork of her security gate but magnified a million times, and she hurtled toward them. And now the smell from the water, pure muck, did reach her. A sharp ammonia scent and something worse along with it. It felt like she’d been punched. She was going to dive right into it.

But she stopped falling. Alice had grabbed her by the waist of her jeans.

Alice pulled her back in.

Alice walked across the latitude line with Loochie in one hand. Alice grunted with the exertion but she made it. All the way across. Where Sunny crouched. Alice reached Africa and set Loochie down. Sunny put her arms around Loochie and Loochie fell into the embrace. Sunny held Loochie tight.

“You’re with me,” Sunny told her. “I’m not leaving you.”

Those words made Loochie cry even harder than when she’d been alone in the Playground for Lost Children. But this time Loochie wept with relief and happiness. She was with Sunny. Sunny wasn’t leaving her. Loochie and Sunny and Alice sat inside the Unisphere. They rocked in the cradle of Africa and they were safe.

A pack of feral dogs would’ve sounded more civilized. The Twins circled the structure. Loochie thought she and her friends were about to get caught for sure. But the Twins were distracted. They were looking around for Loochie and Sunny, but they also scanned the pathway around the Unisphere. Looking up for the girls and down at the ground, back and forth. Loochie couldn’t understand what they expected to find at their feet. It wasn’t like the girls had shrunk down to the size of small rocks. But then one of the Twins almost seemed to sing, a high-pitched coo, the sweetest sound she’d ever heard one of them make.

He leapt to the ground and snatched something up. The other Twin crowded close, cooing too. In a moment the other Kroons — Pit, Lefty, and Chuck — were scrambling closer to the Twins. But the first Twin ignored them, seemed to have forgotten about anything, everything. All except what was in his hand. He stayed on his knees and hunched over, his back to Loochie. She couldn’t see exactly what he was doing. But in a moment his hands glowed an orange color, as if they were on fire, as if a flame had leapt up out of his palm. The Twin brought his face down to his palm and inhaled deeply, loudly, and his shoulders rose and fell.

The other Twin pushed his face closer to the fiery hands. The other males sprinted closer. Even Alice sat up straighter there inside the globe. But in a second the orange glow died out and both Twins fell backward on their butts, in a stupor. They tilted their heads back and gray smoke wafted from their nostrils. They smiled absently and shivered. Their whole bodies seemed to deflate. They seemed like they were about to fall over. At least until the other three Kroons got close.

Pit choked with rage. He looked like he’d chop the heads off both Twins if he got hold of them now. The Twins scrambled to their feet and ran, slightly wobbly, away from the Unisphere and the other Kroons chased them. The girls watched them all go. Finally Loochie lay on her back and looked up through the top of the globe.

“That was weird,” Loochie said.

Sunny said, “I’ve seen them do that before.”

Both girls looked to Alice, as if she might offer an explanation, but Alice only stared at the spot on the ground where the Twins had found their treasure and stayed quiet.

“Well, can we at least start heading back home now?” Loochie asked.

Sunny didn’t answer. Loochie sat up but Sunny stayed on her back.

“I still have my lighter,” Sunny said. She raised her left foot and wiggled the rain boot until the lighter, a cheap little Bic, slipped out. She held it between two fingers and wiggled it. She looked at Loochie.

Loochie sighed. “Why are you acting like this? You really think I care about that right now?”

Sunny shivered for a moment, it looked involuntary, and her eyes rolled up slightly like she was about to faint. Then she coughed and cleared her head with a shake. She looked at Loochie and her eyes were clear, focused. “We said we were going to smoke a cigarette together. Just in case. You remember I said that? So I want to smoke a cigarette together. Now.”

“I’ll smoke ten packs of cigarettes with you,” Loochie begged. “But let’s do it after we get back to my apartment!”

Sunny’s expression changed. A wash of anger doused her face. “I’m not going back that way! Don’t you get that? Stop acting so stupid and try to understand!”

Loochie grabbed Sunny’s arm and squeezed tightly, with malice. “Don’t talk like this on my birthday, Sunny.”

Sunny looked down at Loochie’s hand. “Your birthday was in November,” Sunny said.

“Fine,” Loochie said, letting go. She contorted herself until she could reach into her pocket. She pulled out the two remaining cigarettes.

“Where’s the other one?” Sunny asked, sitting up.

“I smoked it already,” Loochie said. “It was nasty.”

Sunny waggled her head from side to side. “You just didn’t know how to do it right.”

Sunny snatched one of the cigarettes from Loochie’s palm. “Hold on to that one for me,” Sunny commanded, and Loochie slipped it back into her pocket.

Alice sat up too now. It took a little work but when all three crossed their legs they were able to sit in a circle. “The first thing I want you to do,” Sunny began, “is breathe like this.”

Sunny sat erect and breathed in through her lips but then she held on to the breath and pushed her bony chest out. She let it expand and held the air inside. Finally she deflated and the air rushed out of her nose, a faint, shushing sound.

“Now you two do it.”

Loochie gave it half a dozen tries. Alice clearly knew how to inhale, but Loochie was lousy. She might get the breath down into her chest but just as quickly she’d fall apart, coughing and snorting. And this was before she’d even inhaled any smoke.

Sunny watched Loochie with disappointment and even aggravation.

“Well where did you learn to do it?” Loochie finally spat.

“I watched my grandmother? Duh?”

When Sunny put it that way Loochie only wanted to prove herself better at it than Sunny could ever be. So all three sat there, for about ten minutes, just practicing their breathing. They looked like a yoga class.

Finally Sunny’s patience ran out. She tapped the bottom of the lighter against the stainless steel plate beneath them. “We’re just going to have a try now,” Sunny said.

“This made me sick the last time,” Loochie admitted. She looked away from Sunny when she said it, feeling stupid and inexperienced.

The practice had helped, though. While Loochie still coughed badly at first, she was able to get it right after a few pulls. Sunny, meanwhile, puffed expertly. And what about Alice? What did she do? Obviously she couldn’t smoke a cigarette without a bottom lip. Instead, Loochie and Sunny took turns inhaling the smoke and leaning across to Alice and blowing it down her throat. Alice inhaled expertly, considering the realities.

Each time the girls exhaled they watched the smoke trail up, gray ribbons and clouds, floating toward the sky. Soon enough the whole cigarette was smoked down. After it was done they lay on their backs again, looking up at the unchanging, overcast day.