“Shall we burn away to nothing?” asked Virginia, now incandescent. “Or shall we burn back to childhood and burn back to ghosts and angels and then come forward again? It does not matter. Oh Crusty, this is all such fun!”
“Perhaps,” said Jackie Newhouse, through the fire, “there might have been a little more vinegar in the sauce. I feel a meat like this could have dealt with something more robust.” And then he was gone, leaving only an after-image.
“Chacun à son go?t,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle, which is French for “each to his own taste,” and he licked his fingers and he shook his head. “Best it’s ever been,” he said, with enormous satisfaction.
“Good-bye, Crusty,” said Virginia. She put her flame-white hand out, and held his dark hand tightly, for one moment, or perhaps for two.
And then there was nothing in the courtyard back of Mustapha Stroheim’s Kahwa （or coffeehouse） in Heliopolis （which was once the city of the Sun, and is now a suburb of Cairo） but white ash, which blew up in the momentary breeze, and settled like powdered sugar or like snow; and nobody there but a young man with dark, dark hair and even, ivory-colored teeth, wearing an apron that said KISS THE COOK.
A tiny golden-purple bird stirred in the thick bed of ashes on top of the clay bricks, as if it were waking for the first time. It made a high-pitched “peep!” and it looked directly into the sun, as an infant looks at a parent. It stretched its wings as if to dry them, and, eventually, when it was quite ready, it flew upward, toward the sun, and nobody watched it leave but the young man in the courtyard.
There were two long golden feathers at the young man’s feet, beneath the ash that had once been a wooden table, and he gathered them up, and brushed the white ash from them and placed them, reverently, inside his jacket. Then he removed his apron, and he went upon his way.
Hollyberry TwoFeathers McCoy is a grown woman, with children of her own. There are silver hairs on her head, in there with the black, beneath the golden feathers in the bun at the back. You can see that once the feathers must have looked pretty special, but that would have been a long time ago. She is the president of the Epicurean Club—a rich and rowdy bunch—having inherited the position, many long years ago, from her father.
I hear that the Epicureans are beginning to grumble once again. They are saying that they have eaten everything.
（FOR HMG—A BELATED BIRTHDAY PRESENT）
INVENTING ALADDIN
In bed with him that night, like every night,
her sister at their feet, she ends her tale,
then waits. Her sister quickly takes her cue,
and says, “I cannot sleep. Another, please?”
Scheherazade takes one small nervous breath
and she begins, “In faraway Peking
there lived a lazy youth with his mama.
His name? Aladdin. His papa was dead…”
She tells them how a dark magician came,
claiming to be his uncle, with a plan:
He took the boy out to a lonely place,
gave him a ring he said would keep him safe,
dropped in a cavern filled with precious stones,
“Bring me the lamp!” and when Aladdin won’t,
in darkness he’s abandoned and entombed…
There now.
Aladdin locked beneath the earth,
she stops, her husband hooked for one more night.
Next day
she cooks
she feeds her kids
she dreams…
Knowing Aladdin’s trapped,
and that her tale
has bought her just one day.
What happens now?
She wishes that she knew.
It’s only when that evening comes around
and husband says, just as he always says,
“Tomorrow morning, I shall have your head,”
when Dunyazade, her sister, asks, “But please,
what of Aladdin?” only then, she knows…
And in a cavern hung about with jewels
Aladdin rubs his lamp. The Genie comes.
The story tumbles on. Aladdin gets
the princess and a palace made of pearls.
Watch now, the dark magician’s coming back:
“New lamps for old,” he’s singing in the street.
Just when Aladdin has lost everything,
she stops.
He’ll let her live another night.
Her sister and her husband fall asleep.
She lies awake and stares up in the dark
Playing the variations in her mind:
the ways to give Aladdin back his world,
his palace, his princess, his everything.
And then she sleeps. The tale will need an end,
but now it melts to dreams inside her head.