Bible Stories by Harry Downey
“Eve?”
“Yes, Adam?”
Yesterday after that snake creature spoke to you I saw you talking to
a woman down at the far end of the garden.
Was that your mother?”
“Noah, you have tried to explain to me that a voice has told you
what to do about the animals when the rain stops.
You’re going to let
them out to start breeding. But are you sure that you’ve picked the right
couples for the job?
For instance, those horses with a single long horn
sticking out of their heads ?
Have you ever had any second thoughts about
choosing Tristram and Gerald?”
Dalliance on an Egged Bus by KJ Hannah Greenberg
Albuquerque Quisling Jones pulled one more mucousy ball out of her nose. She thereafter rammed an elbow into the window over her seat and frowned when it resisted. It was the fourth time she had tried to liberate herself.
Charlie cocked an ear. His little mistress was his best source for dead hedgehogs, chocolate bar shavings, and other wonderful comestibles. That she had strapped a harness onto his back was of no importance to him as long as did not stop him from licking the ketchup from her plates, at home, and sniffing the base of all neighborhood lampposts, when they walked.
Hadassah huffed aloud. Her niece ought to have been content shuttling around in dark cars furnished with plush seats, iceboxes, and chauffeurs. Why invite lice or ripped stockings? Why sit on leftover squirts of hummus and tehina? Hadassah’s best coat had already become stained by one such souvenir. Worse, for more than twenty minutes, Hadassah had been subjected to nearly unintelligibly rantings about politics, land rights, and human dignity, spewed by a veiled woman seated across the aisle from her.
Because her left temple was buckshot with pain, Hadassah thumped the Plexiglas above Albuquerque, sending that acrylic streetward. Charlie twitched at the sound of falling plastic. Suddenly, a short length in front of him, a filled gum wrapper beckoned. It had floated in through the enlarged aperture and smelled like tutti-frutti.
The bus pulled to a curb. Some people left. Others entered. A burly sort stepped on one of Charlie’s paws. Hadassah, noticing, swung to palm-heeled the offender, but pulled her punch before making contact. That snapping sound of her wrist echoed over the voices of school children pushing to reach the vehicle’s back.
Meanwhile, Albuquerque slipped two fingers into the man’s coat pocket. She lifted tickets to a Beitar Jerusalem/Hapoel Ramat Gan game, an apple, a few wadded tissues, and a fifty shekel bill.
Albuquerque let the apple roll to Charlie. She kicked the tissues under another passenger’s seat. Although she could not read them, she concealed the other items.
Hadassah tightened her lips in response, unsure of whether or not her sister’s child could detect facial expressions. Allegedly, the girl had a visual field of less than twenty degrees. Theoretically, her polydactyl appendages were clumsy.
Minutes later, the girl, the dog, and the woman arrived at the stop nearest a certain gated community. Armed escorts and a Bentley Continental GT waited. There would be no more dawdling that afternoon.
