Savage Tales

febrile mind. I know nothing of this, only that Winnebago was prone to it and I found it variously intimidating and stimulating (groinal).
    "What are youze guys doin' in here?" said a clothing manufacturer to us as we fondled his goods without any interest whatsoever in purchasing. "Where do you get off?"
    "What?" I said. "My mate and I are perusing –"
    "She's not your mate!"
    "It's true," said Winnebago, who I had not realized could speak. "We haven't mated yet."
    "You've already forgotten," I said. "So quick."
    "It's not I who has forgotten," she said. "It's you who has mangled the mental infrastructure to create stories about things that don't and will never happen. Don't you recall that we're brother and sister?"
    "I recall nothing of the sort. And pretty soon you'll be telling me that I'm the one with narcolepsy."
    "Well, you are," said Winnebago.
    "Can you two lovers take your quarrel outside?" the clerk said. "You're tainting the air in here."
    "Of course," I said. "We wouldn't want to taint. May we borrow this?" I fingered a coil of yarn.
    "Don't touch that!" the man shouted. "It's Mayan!"
    I didn't know about that, but we left and left it.
    Outside I'd forgotten the point. "I'm sorry, Winnie honey."
    "Don't shorten my name to adorable chummy sounding derivatives."
    "My math... never so good..."
    "I don't care. Can we get out of here?"
    "We're outside. What more –"
    "Philadelphia! The city strangles my earthly ambition."
    "I didn't know you had ambition. I'm learning all kinds of things."
    "Now!"
    We caught a ferry out of there and ride it down d'shore like tourists and the smoggy felt of air aggravated my allergies and wouldn't let me have a romantic moment because of my sniffling and how it turned her off, my Winnie (I could only call her this in my mind), and the other passengers didn't get to witness the projected lovemaking project I had planned for them to witness like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe poem, my constitution no longer suited for such exhibition in the light of my snifflery.
    In the light of the callous afternoon Winnebago looked a sad bag of a thing, mere food for seagulls, and I had no qualms at all in pushing her over into the gravy toxic mash that passed for water in those days.

CLO YING

    " Hello, William, did you enjoy me? "
    "Get your hands off me," I said, which was funny, because no one had touched me, it was simply the cloying feel of his words, so intimate and so strange, this stranger, who I felt I knew but couldn't place. Like I'd seen him in a dream the night before.
    "Sorry, chum," the freckled man said, "that's just what Abraham told me to say to you. They were his dying words."
    I scratched my head, bewildered. Abraham? I felt like I could almost feel the meaning behind the words, but it was still coming through a glass. "Clarify," I said. "Explain."
    "You don't remember me, do you?"
    "Afraid I don't."
    "I'm Bela. Abraham was my twin."
    It all rushed back to me, a memory funneled into my brain.
    "Of course!" I said. "Abraham and Bela, the freckled fellas."
    "We didn't appreciate that name in high school. I don't appreciate it now."
    "Sorry. How are you? And Abraham?"
    "Abraham is dead. That's what I just told you had you been listening."
    "Death? So young."
    "He had thirteen minutes on me. I'm the young one, not that I expect you to remember."
    "How did he go?"
    "Tongue cancer."
    "Horrible."
    "Yes, and that's why I found it so strange that his last words had been of you."
    "Are you sure? After all, tongue cancer probably makes the person slur uncontrollably in a horrible manner."
    "No, it was you he spoke of. Willy Nilly."
    "Willy O'Neil," I said. "I've always resented that nickname."
    "Nevertheless, it's what Abraham called you. He went on for minutes in non-sequitur. He felt I would meet you shortly and he was determined to have me give you this message."
    "What message?"
    "That –"
    Before Bela could give me the message, his foot stepped on a banana in the supermarket aisle, and as only happens in a cartoon, he slipped and slapped his skull against the sweltering August linoleum, cracking out his brain yolk.
    "Good God," I said.

    That evening when my wife and I were in bed, I explained the whole sordid affair.
    "You remember him from a dream?"
    "I'm not so sure now. Maybe I'm only telling myself that. Maybe I made it all up."
    "It must be important. The dream. The death. The horror must linger. You may have nightmares tonight."
    "Why would you say something