Better Living Through Plastic Explosives

by Zsuzsi Gartner

  “May I?” the mother asked. Not even showing at four months. It was as if the mother had a sixth sense. When the woman put her hand on her belly, that’s when Lucy almost cracked. As she walked towards the door, only a kick from her baby to her navel, its first, kept her from turning around and, palms outward, dropping to her knees and begging, “Crucify me.” But they would probably have forgiven her, which would have been even worse.

  LAVA PLUME

  In the distance, at the far end of the block, Lucy hears the car before she sees it. The tragically amplified bass, the pointless revving of the engine. She pictures the weasel-faced driver with his sparse chin hairs and Tasmanian Devil tattoo, a plump, scantily clad girl riding shotgun, egging him on. Lucy is all steady nerve and muscle, magma coursing through the chambers of her heart, churning through arterial walls.

  But there’s something else as well, something zooming by faster than it should. Faster than possible.

  A cry of pure joy splits the air. A spinning wheel, spokes a whirl of silver glinting in the sun, fire tumbling overhead in an arc. Typhlosion, the flame-thrower Pokémon, its collar of fire a terrible beauty. The most evolved Pokémon of its kind. Anything touching it while it’s aroused goes up in flames instantly.

  The explosion is more intense than she thought it would be. Long minutes pass. The boy and his dog soon to emerge from a cloud of drifting ash like the survivors of 9/11. Ghostly grey, but upright, moving slowly as if reborn. Bloodied but unbowed. But no.

  The boy a constellation. The Dog Star. The boy endless sky now.

  The boy bread. The boy salt. The boy completed his final evolution.

  And her?

  Think about that old comic where the guy turns his wallet inside out and a few moths flutter out.

  Think inside out. Think permanent flutter.

  Or not. Try not to think about it too much.

  That got name?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are many people I’m grateful to (and for) who lit a path for these stories—foremost among them Caroline “Kitten-witha-Whip” Adderson and Charlotte Gill, fellow traveller, without whom this book might have remained a silent scream.

  I owe oceans of thanks to Jackie Kaiser, agent extraordinaire and a great dame, for making everything easier; to Nicole Winstanley, my editor and publisher, who fizzes with vitality, grace, and intelligence, for her caring, intuitive editing; to the scarily smart and kind Nick Garrison, a redoubtable troubleshooter who saved me from some of my indulgences; to laser-eyed Shaun Oakey; and to the patient Sandra Tooze and rest of the crack team at the big flightless bird’s Canadian headquarters.

  Patty Jones, Lee Henderson, Neil Smith, Sarah Selecky, and Matthew J. Trafford provided jetpacks of psychic fuel. Timothy Taylor generously bequeathed me the name and DNA of Patrick Kakami.

  Huge thanks are due to Gudrun Will, of Vancouver Review; Denise Ryan, of The Vancouver Sun; and John Burns, formerly of The Georgia Straight, three modern-day Medicis, and to the other editors, Sarah Fulford (Toronto Life), Jared Bland (The Walrus), Kim Jernigan (The New Quarterly), and Sylvia Legris (Grain), who so enthusiastically published some of these stories in earlier incarnations.

  My astonishing students at UBC gave inspiration, while Capt. Andrew Gray maintained the lifeboats.

  The words of so many writers inspire my fiction, but I’m particularly indebted here to the writings of Charles Darwin (for “Summer of the Flesh Eater”) and to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (for “Mister Kakami”).

  Thank you to the Canada Council and the B.C. Arts Council for monies I’m sure they thought I’d squandered a million years ago.

  And, as always, I am grateful to my friend Patrick Crean for enduring faith, and to my great loves John and Dexter Dippong for absolutely everything.