My Fenced Bore arrived, tough and pink. I thanked the grave waiter and saw him sprawled in a green field with mountains in the background, kissing his much older girlfriend, shame and excitement in his blood. The table behind me was full of posh British men on a stag-do. My ten-thousand eyes roamed their polished cordovan and worsted wool going thin at the inner thighs and elbows. I watched four of them receive parental beatings. One raped another boy, one was raped by a woman. All of them sang in various choirs. I saw an undulating ocean of pornographic breasts, vulvas, anuses and sucking mouths, and hours of lectures on every Western subject imaginable. I stabbed the beef but was too overwrought to bring it to my mouth. I was glad it was dead.
“Don’t you like yours?” Dawn asked. “Send it back. I’m sure they get it all the time.”
The ceiling turned sherbet orange. The eyes began to evaporate from my limbs. Each one felt like that of a dying person, begging for one more glimpse at life.
“Do you want some of my Caged Roll Spills?” Matteo asked.
I shook my head. The violet was draining from the tables and walls and carpet.
“This is all right, but the food in the North is amazing,” Howie said. “You’re going to love San Sebastian. Don’t have too much fun, though. We’re still in the middle of the New Mexico deal.”
“Any favorites?” Matteo asked Howie.
Both Howie and Dawn had dreamy looks on their faces. No one seemed to notice a difference in my countenance. I fished in my purse for something to help ground me and pulled out my father’s rosary.
I was no longer at the table, no longer in Spain. Around me, sky and field were vast. The sweet smell of ripening wheat mixed with acrid fungicide. Black buzzards and swallows dove overhead as I drove a tractor up to the farmhouse where I’d been born. My feet felt huge leaping down. My hands were heavy and big and my head was farther away from the ground than I was used to. The sun sank, and I was starving. A tiny girl in overalls and a soiled t-shirt ran onto the farmhouse porch waving a plastic pony.