City of Truth Read Free Page B

through coffee and dessert, nibbling at each other like mice, picking each other off like snipers. Such fun, such pathological fun.
    Helen reached into her handbag and pulled out a crisp sheet of typing paper speckled with dot-matrix characters. "This came this morning," she explained. "A rabbit attacked Toby," she announced evenly.
    "A what? Rabbit? What are you talking about?"
    "He's probably forgotten the whole thing by now."
    "It attacked him?"
    Ralph Kitto
    Executive Director
    Camp Ditch-the-Kids
    RR #1, Box 145
    Kant Borough
    Dear Mr. and Mrs. Sperry:
    As you may know, your son makes it his annoying mission to release all the animals caught in our rat trap. Yesterday, in performing one such act of ambiguous compassion, he was bitten by a rare species called Hob's hare. We dressed his wound immediately and, checking his medical records, confirmed that his tetanus immunizations are up to date.
    As a safety precaution, we retained the rabbit and placed it under quarantine. I am moderately sorry to report that today the animal died. We forthwith froze the corpse then shipped it to the Kraft Epidemiological Center. The Kraft doctors will contact you if there's anything to worry about, though I suspect you've started worrying already.
    Figuratively yours,
    Ralph Kitto
    "Why didn't you show me this earlier?" I demanded.
    Helen shrugged. "It's not a big deal."
    Smooth, nervy Helen. There were times when I wondered whether she liked Toby. "Aren't you bothered that the rabbit died?"
    "Maybe it was old."
    My teeth came together in a tight, dense grid. The thought of Toby's pain troubled me. Not his physical pain — it might have even done him some good, toughening him up for his brainburn. What distressed me was the sense of betrayal he must have felt; my son had always negotiated the world in good faith, and now the world had bitten him. "There's something I should tell you," I admitted to my wife. "Before burning Martina's doggerel, I memorized her address and phone number."
    Helen appeared to be experiencing a bad odor. "How readily you exhibit the same disgusting qualities one associates with anuses. Honestly, Jack, sometimes I wonder why we got married."
    "I sometimes wonder the same thing. I wish that rabbit hadn't died."
    "Forget the rabbit. We're talking about why I married you."
    "You married me," I said, telling the truth, "because you thought I was your last chance."
    TWO
    Saturday: pigs have wings, dogs can talk, money grows on trees — like some mindless and insistent song the litany moved through me, rolling amid the folds of my cerebrum as it always did when one of my nieces was scheduled to get burned. Stones are alive, rats chase cats — ten lies all told, a decalogue of deceit, resting at our city's core like a dragon sleeping beside a subterranean treasure. Salt is sweet, the Pope is Jewish — and suddenly the child has done it, suddenly she's thrown off the corrupt mantle of youth and put on the innocence of adulthood. Suddenly she's a woman.
    I awoke aggressively that morning, tearing the blankets away as if nothing else stood between myself and total alertness. Across the room, my wife slept peacefully, indifferent to the world's sad truths, its dead rabbits. Ours was a two-bed marriage. The symbolism was not lost on me. Often we made love on the floor — in the narrow, neutral territory between our mattresses, our conjugal Geneva. Yawning, I charged into the shower stall, where warm water poured forth the instant the sensors detected me. The TV receiver winked on — the Enduring Another Day program. Grimacing under the studio lights, our Assistant Secretary of Imperialism discussed the city's growing involvement in the Hegelian Civil War.
    "So far, over four thousand Veritasian combat troops have died," the interviewer noted as I lathered up with Bourgeois Body Soap. "A senseless loss," the secretary replied cheerfully. "Our policy is impossible to justify on rational grounds, which is why we've started