This honeymoon was exactly as they’d wanted, except perhaps for the heat wave. Was it accident or divine plan that they met when they did? Did convention or passion lie behind the formalization of their bond? Why had they been granted happiness when others were struck down by busses? The fishing lodge where they’d spent the week was just as luxurious as they’d heard - fashionable yet remote. Marriage is a matter of custom and circumstance, of a culture and a couple, and yet that doesn’t begin to explain it. What’s the difference between now and before, Louisa asked herself, knowing for certain that there was one.
She laid her hand on his knee.įor hours, they drove, contented, watching the world through the windows of the car, separated only by the stick shift. Now and then, some feature of the landscape bore mention - a wind-twisted tree or fleeting specimen of wildlife - and the mention drew a laugh or a quiet response. Tomorrow they’d be back with others, in their everyday worlds. They sat and soaked it all in, the breeze and the warm foreign air flowing around them like vapor. In fact, it seemed that everything was cause for some kind of revelry, so copious had been the recent festivities. They’d noticed the island roads were strewn with carcasses, and even after a week, every sighting still seemed worthy of mention, every death averted a cause for minor celebration. As they passed a seventy-kilometer sign, she saw a low, oval critter skitter across the gray gravel road and vanish in the grass. She scanned the narrow road ahead for some obstruction, some sign of why her husband of seven days would be stopping. The rental car slowed, straightening Louisa in her seat, snapping her back to awareness.
“Six-X,” short fiction by Elizabeth Gaffney, appeared in the Summer 2018 issue.
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