The dream always started the same way: she was searching for something. She never knew what she was looking for, but the sense of urgency about finding it would not let her stop. Once she found herself in the maelstrom of a crowd, looking at people's feet until two clogs appeared. Another time desert dunes undulated before her eyes until she spotted an oasis beyond the mirage. Now she was looking at hats at the races: some were garish, others demure. The dull clip of hooves on the grass grew louder in her head and when she thought she might scream, she saw him, in his trilby, holding a single white rose.
Walter stroked his forefinger against the ridge of his thumbnail. The naked glare of the lightbulb cast shadows as it swayed above the kitchen table. It exaggerated his wife's expression. He thought about leaving. He imagined the sound of the chair scraping the floor, the gape of his daughter's expression as he walked out and the pause before she started her litany of why he was a bad father. It felt as though the walls might close in on them. No. On him. The pressure on his chest morphed into sharp pains in his ribs. Something was going to explode. He stroked the gap between his eyebrows and cleared his throat.
Whenever he was asked to tell the story of how he met Cara, Flick could almost feel the wind in his hair and the judder of the handlebars. As a boy, he loved coasting downhill to the town square, where his presence scattered the nuns and mums like chickens. More than once he had laughed at the fists and shouts thrown in his wake.
The Taxidermist had a secret. When he toiled for hours on his
project of the cat kingdom, the secret surfaced in the small lines
between his eyebrows. All of his competitors believed the secret had
something to do with his work. Tell us, they would cry, what is it that
makes the coats so shiny and the teeth so white? As he always did, the
Taxidermist would look at them, smiling his wry smile, and say: it's the formaldehyde.
