Free The Abundance of the Infinite by Christopher Canniff

Annabelle. She is exquisite, a baby Greek goddess. Look at those tiny, as yet unformed fingers. She is baby Aphrodite, singing amidst the foaming waves of the sea. She is born in, and will rise from, the sea.
    Annabelle stirs. The form is blurred, inconstant, changing. My brush moves with her, caresses her, forms her outline anew once again. Her form is the sincerity and the reliability of change.
    Annabelle rises to sit vertically on the bed and rubs her eyes. She yawns, and stretches a baby feline stretch. Looking over at the sky outside, I see that it is overcast for the first time that I’ve been here. I have a difficult time accepting that Annabelle and Yelena, who is still sleeping, are here in front of me.
    I imagine with fear that they are sadly strangers with similar features to those I have known, who upon closer inspection are revealed to be unfamiliar to me....

17

    â€œHave you been to the mountains, to the rainforest? You have? To the mountains, but not the rainforest. We can go together, I know of a place where you get a guide to take you through … we can see termite nests in the trees, swing from vine roots high above the forest floor … we can trek by the trails and eat fish straight from the Amazon … we can kayak and white water raft …you’ve thought about this, have you? You’ve seen this in your dreams?”
    I recall Yelena’s words as I set out with Karen for the bus station. The man with the dusty taxicab, who welcomed me to Manta, inquires, with a grin, whether I’ll be back.
    â€œWet season will soon be here,” he says in Spanish, looking skyward. “Still, many places of this country remain flooded from El Niño.”
    â€œI will be back to see the wet season,” I reply, boarding the bus with Karen. Yelena and Annabelle, sadly, are gone. My copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron , which I hold beneath my arm, plunks with a cloud of dust onto the street. Quickly retrieving it, I place the worn volume in my backpack.
    I will go to Peru some day, I say to Karen as we find our seats on the bus bound for Quito. I don’t explain to her how my father never had such intense dreams as he had there. It was because of the thin mountain air, my father said, a lack of oxygen combined with what he called the spiritual energy of the place. He dreamed of oversized condors with supernatural energies laced with gemstones and jewels, of the beginning and the end of the world, the end coming with fire-breathing dragons flying over barren landscapes. He dreamed of angels allowing him access to a telephone which he could use to talk with anyone, living or dead, which he used to talk at length with a friend of his who had died in a motorcycle accident. I told my father something he didn’t like because he said it was something my mother would say, and in fact my mother had taught me once that speaking to the dead is abhorrent to God and that the reason for King Saul’s death was his consultation first with the witch of Endor and then with the spirit of Samuel.
    Karen says nothing for a long time. I know what she is thinking. We’ve had the conversation only hours before. We couldn’t go to Peru now, even if we had the time, as we wouldn’t get past the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border. They’re at war, those two countries. It’s too dangerous to leave to go anywhere, the Señora told us, adding that we should stay very close to home and try not to leave our apartments for at least a week or two.
    â€œThe protests against the government will happen soon,” the Señora said. “I have seen them before many times. The police fighting against the military, both fighting the people. You wait, it will happen.”
    â€œI’ve seen it too,” Karen added, “the tear gas and the tire fires lining the streets and the highways, the guns, the police with their plastic shields.” She explained further, detailing the looting