Lydia Millet - Ghost Lights

“So this bombing, did it, you know, kill people?”

“The bombs were anti-personnel, so yeah, that would have been an objective. I didn’t do any follow-up though, I was in and out, that was it.”

“You don’t feel bad about that? Killing?”

“It’s not ideal. But we all kill,” said the vegan, and forked up a piece of roasted red pepper.

“Not people ,” said Hal.

“Of course we do,” said the vegan.

“Me personally?”

“You eat other people’s food.”

“Not following you.”

“People who need it more than you do and die for lack of a pound of corn. It’s what we all are, isn’t it? Killers. I mean, all that life is is energy. The conversion of fuel. And we take it all. A quarter of the world’s resources for what, five percent of its population,” said the vegan. “That’s us.”

He patted his mouth carefully with a paper napkin and raised a glass to his lips. It looked like bubbly water.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Hal. “Talk about oversimplified.” He should drink water too, to clear his head. He looked around for a dispenser.

“Yeah well,” said the vegan. “Arithmetic is simple. That doesn’t make it wrong.”

This kind of discussion was pleasing only in a work environment, and only when it dealt directly with taxation. In a party setting it was unwelcome. Hal had the feeling of being caught in a trap by the vegan. Maybe you had to be careful of vegans. The vegan menace.

Although the vegan still seemed friendly. He spoke in a soft, moderate tone.

“Come on,” said Hal weakly. “You’re talking about what, middle-class lifestyle? At worst it’s manslaughter. It’s not murder. It’s not like flying over a jungle and cluster-bombing Mayans.”

But the buttery corn was slipping out of his grasp. It was devious and slippery.

“Manslaughter or murder, the guy still ends up dead,” said the vegan. “Does it matter to him how the killer rationalized?”

“Where’d you get that water?” asked Hal. He also needed a napkin.

“Right over there,” said the vegan, pointing.

Hal made his way to the table with the water. He was leaning over an array of light-blue bottles when an elbow struck his ribcage.

“You’re married, right?”

It was Cleve, with a woman hanging onto his arm.

“Oh hey, I got you that cognac,” said Hal, nodding confusedly, and looked around for where he’d set it down.

“Because the guy you’re talking to?”

“He claims to be a pilot,” said Hal. “With the Air Force. He talks like an earnest grad student though. Do you know him?”

“He’s a pilot. Yeah. But he’s also a flaming faggot,” said Cleve. “What, you didn’t notice? He’s probably hitting on you.”

“I’m old enough to be his father,” protested Hal weakly, but Cleve was already clapping him on the back with a smirk.

“Just a babe in the woods,” he said, and moved off.

There was still butter on Hal’s fingers, or maybe vegetable oil. He reached for the top of a stack of paper napkins and wiped his fingers, then picked up a bottle.

When he sat down again beside the vegan he looked at him differently, applying a This Man Is Gay filter. He remained unsure, though. The vegan was buff, clean, and ate politely, but there were straight men like that.

“You know Cleve?” asked the vegan.

“Not really,” said Hal. “I know someone who knows him, a guy at the embassy. I don’t really like either of them. Just between you and me. But he told me you’re gay.”

The vegan laughed easily.

“Guilty,” he said. “Though I doubt he put it that way. Cleve’s got issues.”

“They let gay guys fly fighter planes?”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell. Hey, it’s not like we’re color-blind. Or women.”

“Ha,” said Hal. He had finished the whole bottle of water. He felt almost sober. “My daughter always wanted to fly,” he said.

“She should take lessons,” said the vegan, and set his plate down on the table.

“Paralyzed,” said Hal.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

He was far soberer, yes, but the food was making him drowsy, the food on top of the alcohol.

“I need to lie down, I think,” he said to the vegan.

“There’s a hammock,” said the vegan. “I’ll show you.”

They walked down the stairs, past the pool, past the crowds and onto the beach, where there was a small stand of palm trees. A string hammock swung there. Someone had just vacated it. There was a breeze off the ocean.

“Perfect,” said Hal, grateful.

Cluster-bomber or not, the vegan had been good to him.

After he settled down in the hammock the vegan patted him on the shoulder.

“Good talking to you,” said the vegan, and moved off.

“You too,” said Hal.

When he woke up he would tell Brady: You were wrong. The kindergarten teacher was right.

They cluster-bombed and cluster-bombed and told the diplomats nothing.

• • • • •

What woke him up was not the flying dinosaurs but their calls. The calls of the pterodactyls were the same as the hoarse, throaty cries of young men.

He heard them and shifted in the hammock, registering the way the strings were cutting into his back. He was sore along the lines the strings had etched. White light made him cover his eyes.

Struggling awake he saw it was morning — no, midday; the sun was high in the sky — and the monsters were in the sky too but shockingly close to him, red and green dinosaurs with spread wings. He was back with them. Prehistoric. He could smell the salt of the sea and the freshness of morning air. Dinosaurs had been birds, many of them, and birds were their descendants. . they skimmed along the ocean, over the waves. It must be high tide, because the water was not far away. It lapped at the sand just a few feet downhill. He was between palm trees, so the dinosaurs were only partly visible.

One landed. It had feet rather than claws. It was running.

It was actually a young man holding onto a glider thing. Was it parasailing? No. . kitesurfers, that was it. He’d seen them before, on Venice Beach. The man hit the sand running, calling out again hoarsely, a cry of triumph. The others were behind him, still over the water. The young man let his red wings go, his red apparatus on its metal struts, or maybe they were fiberglass. It tumbled behind him. How had he taken off? How did they do it?

Another one alit on the water.

Hal struggled out of the hammock as the fliers landed, rubbing his eyes, bleary: the party would have ended long ago. The party had continued without him, leaving him behind. When he was a young man, in high school and college, he had been almost frightened to miss a party, at least any party his friends were attending. He had thought that everything would happen there, at that precise moment, that on that one occasion all friendships, all bonds would be cemented without him. In his absence, he had feared, the best times would be had and he would have missed them.

He did not have that feeling now. Sleep was a good way to leave a party.

His neck was stiff, though.

He patted his pockets. Wallet, check. Something in his breast pocket; he extracted it. It was a mass of tangled pipe-cleaner. Formerly a toucan. He pulled at it, trying to get it back into shape, but no dice. He must have lain on it.

He left the shouting men behind him, the ones landing with hoarse cries of victory. There were more of them coming, more red and green shapes over the horizon. Best to leave before the full-scale invasion. Recover in the hotel room; possibly sleep more there. But first he needed to rinse his mouth.

He walked over the sand to the water, where waves were curling. The wind was up. Behind him the first man landed was grappling with his sail apparatus; ahead, beyond the break, another man was surfing. Hal bent and scooped water into his mouth, jumped back from the edge, gargled and spat. He did it again until his mouth felt salty but clean.