Free The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind by David Guterson Page B

a nightclub. A man played a saxophone beside a water fountain, sweating. The woman was driving again, her lavender fingernails trailing across the upholstery. A man sitting in front of a gas station, the sun setting in the mountains behind him, scratched his head as she blew past.
    “Boring,” announced Paul’s mother, and turned a page in her mail-order catalog.
    Paul wandered into the kitchen. For a while he opened cabinets, looking at things—noodles, canned olives, bottled salad dressing. His father came in and went to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer, snapped it open and drank leaning against the counter.
    “We can microwave,” he said, loosening his tie. “Sound okay to you, Paul?”
    Paul nodded.
    His father opened the freezer door. “Beef stroganoff,” he announced. “Halibut in cream sauce, pasta marinara, shrimp gumbo—what’ll it be?”
    “Beef stroganoff,” Paul said.
    “I’m for halibut,” said his father.
    His father opened the microwave oven. “Can I get an aquarium?” Paul asked.
    “What?”
    “I want to buy an aquarium,” said Paul.
    “An aquarium?” said his father. “What for?”
    “I just want one, that’s all. Can I?”
    “I don’t know,” said his father. “You’d better ask your mother, Paul.”
    They went into the living room together.
    “An aquarium,” said his mother. “Where do you want to keep it?”
    “In my room,” Paul answered. “Please?”
    “Is it messy?”
    “No.”
    “Who’s going to clean it when it needs to be cleaned?”
    “I will. I promise, Mom.”
    “I don’t know,” said his mother.
    She turned the pages of her catalog.
    “It’s not like a dog or a cat,” said his father. “Personally, I’m for it, Kim.”
    “Why do you want fish?” said his mother.
    “I don’t know,” answered Paul.
    “All you can do is look at them,” said his mother.
    “I know that,” said Paul.
    “How much money are we talking about?”
    “I don’t know,” Paul told her. “I could use my Christmas money, though.”
    His mother tossed her catalog on the coffee table. She stood, tossed her bangs from her eyes, brushed a wrinkle from the front of her skirt and—stretching toward the ceiling, only her toes still touching the carpet, her hands balled into fists above her head—she yawned.
    “No,” she said. “You leave your Christmas money in the bank, all right? I’ll pay for the aquarium.”
    “ I want to pay for it,” Paul said.
    “You can’t,” said his mother. “ I want to.”
    Ken, a friend from school, a boy who wore a ski parka and who put gel in his blond hair, came to look at the new aquarium one afternoon.
    “Weird,” he said. “That one with the thing on his nose.”
    “That’s an elephant fish,” Paul said.
    “What’s with this one?”
    “That’s a severum. He got his tail chewed. That guy there—the Jack Dempsey?—he does it. He’s rude.”
    “Cool,” said Ken. “Do they fight?”
    “No.”
    “You ever see a Siamese fighting fish?”
    “No.”
    “I saw it on television,” Ken explained. “It’s so cool. They kill each other. You throw them in a tank together and watch them brawl.”
    “Really?”
    “People bet on them, I think in China.”
    “Really?”
    “It’s so cool,” Ken said.
    “You ever see two cats wrestle?” Paul asked. “It’s so cool. They—”
    “They’re screwing ,” Ken said. “That’s different.”
    Paul fell silent.
    “What’re the ones with the stripes?” Ken asked.
    “Those are tiger barbs.”
    “They’re kind of small.”
    “Yeah. Sort of.”
    “Maybe the Jack Dempsey fish could eat those guys. How come they’re not all chewed up?”
    “They’re fast,” Paul said. “They get away.”
    “Well, what about the blue ones? They don’t look so fast.”
    “I don’t know,” Paul said. “Those are gouramis. The Dempsey leaves those guys alone.”
    “What’s this?” Ken said, tapping the glass of the tank. “This one? Right over here?”
    “That’s a