Yak-Oil Soap

From:

Cricket Eyes And Bee Stings And Ears That See The Wonder

A Novel of Modern Life
by Ran Screaming.

Chapter MMMMDCCLXXVII

"John?"

He looked at her, and remembered summer nights, pizza, calamine lotion, vitamin pills, electric razors, thermostats, and jaundice.

"Yes?"

She looked at him, and remembered bobbing for apples, hopping over cracks in the sidewalk, skiing down snow-frosted mountains of snow, hoping for sunny days, waiting for buses, scouring the dishpans.

"I --"

Then he remembered that night back in 1992.

Yes, that night. On that night, he had looked at her, and he had remembered pop tarts, microwave ovens, rubber cement, socks, cake ingredients, yak-oil soap.

She had looked at him, and said, "What?"

And then she had remembered herding wildebeest, sacrificing a goat to the gods of abstinence, bursting balloons in the park as children looked on with tear-filled eyes, pumping gas into bottles and then stuffing up the bottles with rags and then lighting the rags and then running like hell.

Then she had remembered that she had remembered that afternoon in 1986.

"This --"