The Ambassadors
fiction by Miles Klee and Mads Gobbo
I inspected the water’s surface for scum, leaning slightly to block the light, pressing two fingers against my forehead to see if this time they might sink through the skull. There would be a dinner party next to the pool, at the wrought-iron patio table Georgia had had shipped from Italy. I supposed those wroughters or smelters were dead now, along with their fellow pasta makers and belladonnas and nutbrown old gentlemen.
Misha insisted our guests would thrill to the risk, even with our guards and electric fence. She made creamed everything. The usuals arrived, morbidly punctual: Zip and Sandra Morlock, Tabitha Slatz, the Dandelobs and their scabby dog, and the vile Doctor Rodney. Once we buzzed him in, Rodney removed two cigars from his breast pocket and beckoned me to stand between the shed and the pool.
“My, isn’t it blue,” he puffed. “The temp?”
“Seventy-seven degrees,” I mumbled. “Seventy-fucking-seven.”
He wasn’t a real doctor. He probably couldn’t pronounce most of the chemicals I put in my pool, I seriously doubted he could. Actual science. He knelt at the edge and ashed right into the water.
“Rodney!”
“What?”
“You’re upsetting the pH.”
“Dinner,” Misha called, “and hurry, or Zip will eat everything.”
Keep us breathing fire!
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