Free Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt

trade in truisms, my friend,”
    “Truisms are sort of a specialty with me,”
    “I won’t dispute that, it may even be true, but I would still like to hear whatever it is that has you engaging in dress-up and meeting with off-duty centaurs in the wee hours,”
    “You mean besides my interest in the silver angel,”
    “I mean besides your interest in the silver angel, yes,”
    “And you think lending me this thing, this submarine, is going to help you get it?”
    They both paused and looked at the thing in question, which rolled between them with surprising delicacy, surprising to Harry, that is, of course,
    “Don’t
you?”
said Alfonso,
    “It’s a sad story,” said Harry, “so sad I don’t even tell it to myself anymore,”
    “So it tells itself to you,” said Alfonso,
    “Yes,” said Harry, after a long pause, “Even though I tried to bury it, it keeps clawing its way up through the dirt—all my efforts to erase it have failed,”
    “It has its way with you,”
    “Something like that, and then something like … but that’s a little silly …” said Harry, trailing off and wondering if, at any moment, whatever it was that was keeping him calm would be swept aside and he would howl,
    “Like what?”
    “I’ll spare you,”
    “I appreciate silly, I dress up every day like a centaur, after all,” said Alfonso,
    “You make a very fine centaur, I noticed you straight away,” said Harry,
    “Flattery is good, it is very good,” said Alfonso,
    “I was thinking of a syllogism, a very simple one, say, ‘All people are mortal, a man’s offspring were people, therefore the man’s offspring were mortal,’ and while, as I say, the syllogism is quite basic, more than just the middle element is missing from the conclusion, at the same time that said additional element remains not merely present, but also essential to the conclusion,”
    “A haunted conclusion,”
    “Yes, exactly, a haunted conclusion, the conclusion is haunted, and now I have to stop talking about it because if I don’t you will see a man tear his hair out in front of your eyes,”
    “Climb inside the submarine,” said Alfonso, “I’ll push you the rest of the way.”

H arry got inside the submarine without a word, and Alfonso began to push, and in the time it took them to reach the tree-lined boulevard where Alfonso left Harry, as he had promised, directly across from the silver angel’s accustomed spot, the angel in question, who was still, at this early hour, just Solange, finished encasing a crumb of ginger cookie in Lucite and sat a moment staring at her work, admiring the fearful clarity of the medium, as always a little bit in love with the turgent liquidity of its hardening, the elegant curve she could still alter with fingertip, or slip her tweezers into, or some part of herself, although it would be as well, if she planned to do some Lucite diving, even just figuratively, to finish her coffee first and perhaps have another bite of her bread and rose petal jam, a jar of which Che Guevara had left outside her door in the weeks following the murder of her young man, and which had sat untouched, attracting flecks of dust and cinder, until one evening, upon returning home from a day on her box, she had scooped it up and deposited it on one of her many bare shelves, where it had continued its unopened existence until that morning, when she had looked down at her stale but salvageable bread and thought of the pale pink jam, which seemed to explode out of the jar as she opened it, then tilted the jar and let a pink glob slide down her tongue into her mouth, where after it had settled a moment it made her gasp and grab for the table to steady herself, before she tilted the jar again and gasped again, then spread some on her bread, which made her think of coffee, of how marvelous it would be to have a cup of fresh coffee to go with her bread and jam, and it wasn’t until she had the coffee before her and had taken another bite,