Aquarium Friday and Other Stories

Aquarium Friday

She blew out a breath.

“I don’t know – ray and ray. Praying. Preying. I don’t know.”

He stared at the Budweiser ad on the other end of the bus and smoothed down her hair.

“Okay, we’ll see the praying mantis first.”

“We can see the clownfish after that, yeah?”

He liked the clownfish. She found them a little ridiculous, and contrary to his expectations, Finding Nemo had only cemented her opinions on them.

“I can skip the clownfish.”

“No, it’s all right.”

He kept looking at the Budweiser ad and she fell asleep against his arm. When they got off their stop he wiped a bit of drool from the corner of her mouth and a tinge of colour crept into her cheeks. She pressed her hands to her face as the bus drove off.

“God, it’s cold.”

“I should’ve got the umbrella,” he said, looking up at the flat grey sky.

She linked her arm with his; it felt uncomfortable with all the layers of jacket and sweater between the crooks of their elbows. He scuffed his shoe against the sharp edge of a tile and dislodged a hardened bit of dirt from the grooves of the sole.

“I’m hungry,” she said suddenly.

“I told you you should’ve had breakfast,” he said as he steered her towards the café outside the aquarium entrance.

“I wasn’t hungry then.”

She ordered a cup of Chinese green tea and a doughnut. He knew she would rather have an espresso but she was trying to balance the guilt of the doughnut with the metabolism-boosting goodness of the tea.

She fished out his wallet from his back pocket and paid the cashier.

“I’m gonna hide this doughnut in my purse,” she hissed after eating half of it, as if it was the most diabolical thing she’d ever done.

“You do that,” he mumbled, looking at the entry tariffs for the aquarium. He was on unpaid leave.

She stuffed the half doughnut into her bag and finished her tea. He paid the tariff and they went inside, straight to the stingrays before anything else.

“They’re really rather beautiful,” she sighed, her head tilted upwards as they stood in the glass-ceilinged corridor. Above their heads, the stingrays wobbled, their small mouths moving silently and meaninglessly. He held onto the ends of the tassels on her bag and said, looking at the shape of her face, “Yeah, they are.”

She closed her eyes.

“Do you ever think they’re trying to say something?”

“Who?”

“The pray – the stingrays, I mean.”

He looked at her. The elastic of her jeans clung to her waist, the rest of the fabric hanging off her bones resignedly, like it had given up on the function of being a pair of skinny jeans. Her scarf looped three times around her neck, and her hair looked green in the shifting light. The shadows on her face moved. The shadows in both of them lurked, and were still in that moment.

He said, “Maybe.”

She was looking for a different answer: something longer and philosophical; but he wasn’t philosophical and couldn’t try to sound more impressive.

She opened her eyes, almost scaring him. Then she took his hand.

“Clownfish?”

He kissed her on her cold lips and almost smiled.