The Garden of Eden

They walked up the trail by the railroad tracks. Heading upstream. To where the river made a pool. Where he used to go trying to see hippie girls swim naked. They were never there. On the left the hills dropped through impossibly tall trees down to the river. On the right a green cliff rose trickling with tiny waterfalls. Susannah stopped when saw a banana slug in the moss.

It was bright gold and eight inches long. You could see its alien mouth punching out a leaf, leaving crescent shaped chomp marks. Yellow eye stalks whirling and probing. I want to pick it up, she said.

And he had the sensation he was coming out of a time machine.

From a time when he was with her and loved her.

Living in a house in a valley. It was designed by someone important, maybe someone who drew for Disney in the old days. It looked like a postcard.

He woke up before her. He made her coffee so it would be ready. Every morning he let Puggington out to shit in the yard. He picked it up. So she wouldn’t have to. What did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices.

He took a shit shower shave and went to work in the back house. Behind a Japanese garden. There were horses in the neighborhood. Sometimes he could hear their hooves clomping on the asphalt. A squirrel came down from the orange tree to steal the birdseed and Puggington went into a rage. In her heart she was a wolf.

Susannah would yell at him once in a while, about pee on the toilet seat. But looking at her while she slept he saw a religious painting.

And he went to work so they could have insurance. They were going to try for a baby. The light in the bathroom was cold and blue and it made his age spots and wrinkles stand out. Who knew if it would work. But they would try. And the job was hard and his boss called him every ten minutes like he had a crying baby already. Never letting him rest. And he wanted to drown his baby boss. Shake him and strangle him. Leave his baby in the car with a pit bull.

But he could do it every day, because it was for something.

Sun rising behind mountains in the morning and the dog stretching out against his back when the nights got cold. He went out to work in the office out back and Puggington stayed in the yard. She turned her face to the sun, closed her eyes. Sat like a sphinx.