A Sinkful of Stars

He dips his hands into the sink of black water that feels cold to his touch. The water reflects the stars in the night sky, a crescent moon, and for a moment he imagines himself grasping a fistful of stars and swallowing their radiance whole until starlight pierces through his navel and lights the room. But the only light comes from a pear-shaped nightlight his wife brought home two summers ago, and as the bulb flickers droplets from his fingertips touch the water in the sink basin and send ripples through the cosmic pool.

Down the street, he knows the soldiers sit in their barracks, lounging on creaking bunks with cigarettes clenched between yellowing teeth. They talk about the native women and their flowing red skirts that flutter and lift slightly in hot breezes. They mock the men's accents and call this place God-forsaken, and sneer at the iconic statuettes that line the windowpanes of each house they pass in their green and brown topless cruisers. He knows the foolish men who built those damned barracks laid the foundations over little rivers that now wear away the cement and mortar and would someday send the lackluster edifices toppling down to dust and earth again. And maybe grass would grow once more on those annexed tracts of land, and the people would replant their flowers and vegetables and use discarded rifles as hoes to till the land.

Even the tepid star-water cannot sooth his burning flesh. In the next room, two women sleep: one brown-haired American, one his brown-skinned native wife. The white woman had left this sink of water to cool beneath the moon. He had watched her splash her face and bare shoulders with the water, her big brown eyes casting quick glances in his direction to make sure he came no closer to her towel-garbed American body. He knew she thought his native mind lusted for her foreign body, but in truth his eyes only looked to see if the water would melt her alabaster flesh from her alabaster bones and reveal some hidden secret of what it meant to be "American." His gaze went now to the sleeping brown woman who occupied his bed and carried his child. The two beds sat side-by-side, so that if either woman stretched out her arm during the night she might brush the other's face or breast.

Tomorrow morning the American will rise and take him with her to snap pictures with the huge black camera she drapes around her narrow and slightly tanned neck. She will document the children outside of the school with their black curls limp with sweat as they sell single cigarettes for nickels and dimes. She will photograph the soldiers during their drills until they become shadowy silhouettes against a flaming sunset. She will shoot the brown-skinned women who will hide their faces with yellow and green cloths and peek around their shrouds in time for the camera's flash to blind their brown and emerald eyes. He will watch when she removes the camera from her neck and reveals the band of ivory flesh it conceals. He will watch the dewdrops disappear from blades of grass and spiders dropping down to wrap their meals in silk. He will watch the puddles form in dips in the road and wonder why it has not rained. Tonight he thinks it will rain later in the day, or Sunday morning.

He splashes star-water into his eyes and looks toward the beds. They merge and become one, half night, half alabaster moon, all fire and ice in this blazing night that burns his flesh and dries the water before it can work to soothe his parched tongue.