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The ark and the river went through a city. The man in the eagle-suit welcomed strange animals aboard. Cows huffed alongside - escaped from the slaughterhouses. A taxi drove into the river.
Siggy said to the cows, 'I'm terribly sorry, but we already have two of you. This is an arbitrary business.'
The taxi was still afloat. An impossible number of passengers unloaded, treading water in place. Someone tipped the driver, and he sank with his cab.
And then I was watching myself, making my way through the water with my suitcase overhead; my fellow-passengers from the cab were chatting.
One said, 'There's no proof at all that the driver was actually Zahn Glanz.'
'Whoever he was, you overtipped him,' said a woman, and everyone laughed.
When I came alongside the ark, Siggy said, 'I'm sorry, but I believe we already have two of you.'
I said, 'For God's sake, Sig, a sense of humor is essential.'
'If you're really with us, Graff, you may board,' said Siggy. But a vicious Oriental bear was protesting. 'I mean really, Graff,' Siggy said. 'We can't give up the ship.'
Then Gallen put her arm around my waist dragging me under. 'I've been thinking where we should go Graff,' she said.
'All right! I'm with you!' I screamed, and bolted upright off the sleeping bag, into her arms and the movable soccer shirt.
'Graff?' she said. 'Graff, I just said I thought about where we could go.'
'Well, I've been thinking too,' I told her, and clung to her.
I had my eyes open as wide as they'd go. I counted the stripes on the soccer shirt. They were nice, broad stripes - two white and one red, from the collar to where her breasts began and unstraightened the striping; five red and four white, from her breasts to the hem on her thigh. I lay my head on her hem.
These stripes were more restful than counting sheep.
'Or walruses, Graff,' said Siggy, somewhere. 'Wallowing, frolicsome walruses.'
'All right, that's enough. I'm with you,' I said.
'Well, of course you are, Graff,' said Gallen.
Plans
JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL, I reenergized myself and took a long walk upstream to a good fishing spot, where I could wade out within easy casting range of the rocky pools on the far bank. I pulled them in very handily there, while Gallen rode to Singerin for beer.
Before she was back, I had a fire going and six trout cleaned for Freina's super-flavored pan.
My head was clear. It's always good to have a few money plans forced on your mind; it keeps you from having notions of other, vaguer plans.
We'd talked over where we should go next, and Gallen thought that Vienna might be best - because I knew my way around the job spots there; but mainly, I think, since her glimpse of Mariazell, Gallen had her eyes on the city life - as she imagined it. I was worried it might make her stickish, but I had to admit that Vienna did seem the likeliest place for either of us to get a job. Now, what I'd argued with her, though, was this: you'd also spend more money in Vienna than anywhere else around us, while you were looking for a frotting awful job. And what would keep us fed and well slept for two weeks in the country wouldn't hold us for five or six days in Vienna - if we wanted to eat. We could still drive out past the suburbs each night and camp in the vineyards - if we weren't eaten by watchdogs. But you couldn't catch your meals in Vienna, for sure.
On the other hand, in the wilderness we were in, there were too many places for things to hide - and be popping out at me. There's less daydreaming in a city, all right, and Hannes Graff could stand to have less of that.
So Sunday evening, after we'd eaten, we sat with our beers and talked it over again.
'I've been thinking,' said Gallen.
Well, thinking's good for you, I thought - at least, this fussy kind. Also, this business at hand seemed to have taken her mind off her first sneeze. And no one should ponder on that subject for very long, I'm convinced.
'The trouble is, Graff,' she said, officiously, '--as I seem to understand it - we need more money than we have now, if we're to give ourselves enough job-hunting time in the city. Until the first pay check.'
'That's precisely what the trouble is,' I agreed. 'I think you've got it.'
'Well then, it's solved,' she said, and brought her long auburn braid over her shoulder - holding it out to me, the way a vendor shows you his vegetables and fruit.
