Free Bone Dance by Joan Boswell Page A

to the store? Maybe they’d trade for that needlefish you’ve been wanting,” he offered, picking up the mail from its pile under the slot. It was stifling in the house, but Myrna wouldn’t allow an air conditioner to alter the tropical conditions. Tonight was his washing and ironing night, he remembered with dismay as he stripped off his wet shirt.
    Myrna dipped into a small holding tank for Bubbles’ supper. “Are you kidding? Even if she bullies the others, she’s the queen of her species.” As she warbled “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” her ritual during feeding time, the mammoth jaw of the twenty-inch leviathan vacuumed up the feeder guppies.
    The costs escalated with the new glass fortress. Along with lavender gravel, Myrna had to have the latest bionic filter system, which required constant monitoring for weeks to establish a balanced chemical cycle. Bill would come home to her stunned face peering at a murky test tube. “Not more ammonia! She’s swimming in a toilet. Time for another water change.” And out snaked her Python syphon hoses to drain and refill the tank. No bath for Bill until midnight. And if it wasn’t ammonia, it was too much chlorine or iron. Delivery men lugged in spring water in gargantuan proportions. Subscriptions to Freshwater Aquariums and Tropical Breeders littered the coffee table. That was where she learned about the fluval, a costly refinement which sold so rarely that the pet store owner made a mark on the wall when one left the shelves. “Now I can relax at last,” she said. “This baby will filter out anything!” And the new toy hummed away.
    In fact, everything hummed day and night. And Bill, nevera heavy sleeper, lay tossing for hours, Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” running through his mind. One night when he got up for a glass of milk in the wee hours and switched on the kitchen light, Myrna was crouched in the living room with the glow of the tanks giving a ghastly pallor to her skin. “Douse that, jerk!” she yelled. “I just got the boys and girls settled. The reflection is confusing them. Look at Bubbles, gone behind the condo, just as I dropped down her favourite tiger shrimp.” A grinning plastic skull coughed up air as its teeth met and parted.
    Deciding on a drink instead, Bill overturned the ice cube tray into a tumbler, added a double thumb of bourbon, then took a long swallow. Several minutes later, he was relaxing in bed with
The Outcasts of Poker Flat
. Blizzards, he thought. Convenient, quiet. Easy to run off the road in deep snow, leave Myrna, go for “help.” How long would it take come January to drive up to the wilderness north of Sudbury? Six hours tops! Suddenly he gagged. “What is this?” he yelled as he pulled bits of pale ragged flesh from the glass.
    Myrna appeared in the doorway, a smile flickering. “Silly Billy. Just some cod I froze for Bubbles for slow release. Won’t hurt you.”
    A few weeks later, when Bill tried to use his VISA at the Shell station, it was rejected. Myrna, responsible for paying the accounts, blamed an oversight. But then he found the warning letter from the tax department and handed it to his wife, who was crumbling white mosquito larvae. “So sue me,” she said, tapping on the glass at an inquiring discus. “Do you know how long it takes a bank to foreclose? Nearly two years. By then, your GIC comes due.”
    â€œMyrna,” Bill said, a catch in his voice, “I saved that for a fly fishing trip to the Yukon.”
    Myrna didn’t answer, admiring her new red cap oranda, itslumpy pompon plastered on like an exterior brain. It was lurching around the tank, gobbling whatever came near. Bill blinked at his wife’s henna hair, sculpted eyebrows with that perpetually surprised look, exaggerated lipstick outline. Only Lucille Ball got away with that.
    Later that month, as