The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
My first four pancakes showed up hot and perfect and I asked for extra butter. When they were just right (dripping, not soaked and turning into paste) I shoveled up huge bites into my waiting mouth, letting it fill me as nothing else did. Who could care that they were the last of their kind when the zoo had such good food?
And yeah, people were staring. People are always staring at me. That was a constant of my existence, and I was used to it. I ignored them. I slurped up hot coffee and wiped the plate down with the last bite of cake.
“Hit me again,” I said, and the waitress took the plate away. A few minutes later, another fresh hot stack of pancakes appeared.
I didn’t know how many times I could do it, but that was the day I was going to find out.
And then a man sat at my table.
He was perfectly ordinary, with brown hair and brown eyes. He had the Pill body underneath his tan suit. I looked him over.
“Can I help you?”
He stared at my mouth for a minute and I waited. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he finally asked.
I rolled my eyes hard and started to butter my pancakes. I was going to need more butter. “Fuck off, creep.”
He put a hand against his own chest. “Please, I meant no disrespect. I’m being sincere. You’re so lovely. So rare. I haven’t seen a woman like you in almost a year.”
I waved to the waitress but she didn’t see me. I debated. I’d rather have the butter, but if the cakes got cold before it showed up, it would hardly matter at all. I scraped the dish that I had and began to cut up pancakes and ignore my visiting weirdo, hoping he would go away.
He cleared his throat and ordered a cup of coffee. “Please, allow me to entertain you while you eat and I’ll pick up your check.”
I sighed. Few things were as motivating as free food. So I let him sit.
He asked me about cinematography, about why I had come to LA. I talked in between cups of coffee and plates of pancakes.
“I had all these ideas about the story only I could tell when I got here. The things that were unique to my experience. It’s funny now, because there was nothing unique about my experience. I guess everybody thinks they’re one of a kind.”
He glanced over his shoulder a little, then pushed the cream pitcher toward me for my coffee. “Look around. You nearly are.”
I shrugged. “I guess. But there’s no way to tell this story so that people will understand it. You ever see the way fat people on the street are shot for news stories? Headless and limbless and wide as the world, always wandering like they’ve got nowhere to be. That’s the only story people know. We were always a joke, we were always invisible. And now, we’re going to disappear. Because we were never meant to exist in the first place.”
“Are you?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Going to disappear?”
“Who the hell are you?” I finally asked.
He sighed and finished his coffee. “I can’t tell you that. But I can show you something that might change your mind.”
I don’t know why I said yes. Maybe I was dreading going back to school where nothing fit. Maybe I just didn’t want to answer the question of whether I was going to take the Pill. Maybe it was just the way he looked at me—really looked at me. Not like I was a problem to be solved or some walking glitch in the way things are supposed to work.
I got into a strange man’s car outside of the pancake house and I let him show me.
The club was up in the hills, just off Mulholland Drive. It was in this gorgeous house, built in the golden age of Hollywood for some chiseled hunk who had died of AIDS. The lawn was perfect and I could smell the chlorine in the pool the minute I stepped out of the car. The neighborhood was the kind of quiet where you know that even the gardeners muffle their equipment.
My nameless escort walked up the stone path toward a wide, shaded, black front door. He looked back over his shoulder, glancing at me.
“You coming?”
I was.
It was dark inside the house at first, my eyes adjusting from the bright sunshine slowly. After a few minutes, I saw that it was merely dim. The living room was furnished beautifully, sumptuously, with a clear emphasis on texture and deep padding. The room was empty except for one woman, sitting on a chaise longue and reading a book.
We approached her and she looked up. She was an absolute knockout: a redhead with full lips and built like an hourglass that had time to spare. Her dress clung to her, making a clear case that she enjoyed being looked at. She was not walking around in an Amy Blanton body. She was an original.
The man I came in with tapped his fingers on the top of her book and said, “In the chocolate war, I fought on the side of General Augustus.”
The redhead nodded, not saying a word. She shifted in her seat and reached for something I couldn’t see. Behind her, a bookshelf slid sideways, revealing a deep purple tunnel behind it.
I nodded to her as we passed, and she smiled at me with a hunger I couldn’t put a name to. I had no idea where we were headed.
We walked through a series of rooms. The entire house was decorated in the same style as that first room: sensual, decadent, and plush. As I got to see more of it, I realized that everything was also built wide, sturdy, and I’d never think twice about sitting in any chair I saw.
In every room I passed, I saw the same thing as I peered through the door. There was a fat person surrounded by thin people staring at them. Some of the onlookers were crying, some were visibly aroused. Different races, different genders. All well-dressed. All nearly identical in those Pill bodies. A tall fat woman was lounging, shrouded by veils in a Turkish bed, nude and lolling and made of endless undulations of honey-colored flesh. She fed herself grapes while someone was making her laugh. Ten people sat around her bed, watching.
A fat man, as big as Andrew used to be, was dipping his gloved fists into paint and punching a blank, white wall. He was being videotaped and photographed, lit gorgeously while people murmured praise and encouragements.
In one room, a short Black woman whose curves defied gravity ran oil-slicked hands over her nudity, smiling a perfect, satisfied smile. Two men stood near her, their mouths open, hungering endlessly, asking nothing of her.
We came to an empty room that had a round tub at its end and a set of low stone benches. The domed ceiling made our footfalls sound epic. The water had steam rising off it, even in the warmth of the house, and smelled like the sea.
“Salt water,” he said. “Much better for your skin. Would you like to take a dip? You don’t have to talk to anyone or do anything, but some people may come join you. How does that sound?”
“I don’t have a bathing suit.”
His smile was slow and he dropped his chin like he was about to share a conspiracy. “Have you looked around? Nobody will mind.”
“What are these people getting out of this? I don’t need this.”
He pulled out his phone and showed me the app that the house used to keep track of money. Each fat performer had an anonymous identifier and a live count of what they were making.
“Maybe I could persuade you to work for a couple of hours, just to see what you think? You’ll make the house minimum, plus tips.”
I watched the numbers climb up. “Just to sit here? I don’t have to touch anybody? Or even make conversation?”
He nodded. “We’d prefer that you work in the nude, but you don’t even have to do that. Just enjoy the hot soak. What do you say?”
It sounded weird as fuck, but I wanted two things immediately. First, I wanted the money. If I was going to go home and refuse the Pill, I was pretty sure I was going to need it. Second, I wanted to go back to the room where the boxing painter was being filmed. I itched to get behind a camera in this place, to tell the story of the endangered species of fat people. Not like the Visionaries had wanted it, but the way I wanted it. Like this. Dark and rich and seductive.