Carcass Trade by Noreen Ayres Read Free Book Online

the hyoid bone,” the doctor said, “which means she was not strangled. Of course, a full osteobiography is only done on skeletonized subjects.” He looked at me over his glasses, raising his wiry white eyebrows. “You have Meyer Singer coming in for the teeth?”
    â€œYes. Thank you, Doctor. We appreciate your help,” I said.
    Mai Lu came around behind us from Dr. Schaffer-White’s table and laid a liver in the scale.
    Doug and I could leave now, return to the day’s sun and the tall stalks of purple lilies of the Nile taking deep encores in the breeze as the lunch crowds exited around Civic Center Square.
    In the hall by the rear door, Dr. Watanabe’s assistant was squawking her wide pen on a whiteboard propped against a wall on an empty gurney. She drew a red box around a note in green letters. It read “ATTN TECHS: Please do not put B.G.’s brains away—she’s coming in tonight.”
    I looked around as I heard the back doors slide open and the grumble of wheels from a new gurney being wheeled in. The nude form of a young Hispanic male was aboard. Three hot, raw holes pegged his chest.
    The beat goes on.

5
    The next morning I stood on my balcony overlooking the Upper Newport Bay, called Back Bay by locals, and searched for a hint of heron among the soaked bulrush tassels. Sometime during the night, a cloister of cloud had drawn down. I looked for a clearing in the fog and hoped to see, at the bottom of the reeds, the bowling-pin shape of a brown bittern, or the flashy pink legs of a black-necked stilt, these names, these birds, all new to me in the last three years since I’d come to live in my aunt’s condo.
    The telephone rang. It was my brother. Even though my feet were cold, I brought the portable phone back out to the balcony and continued to look through my field glasses. On the near bank, a cat darted out of sight as if falling from earth.
    I’m eleven years younger and an entire personality apart from my brother. Nathan calls from his home in the East maybe once a year. Despite our emotionally distant family, he carries a peculiar sentimentality about the twenty-fifth of December. Usually he’ll slip in a minilecture about my not keeping in touch with our parents, but I doubt he does a much better job at it. Once he said keeping in touch is what women do. Not this one, I said. The truth is, I do, but at my own choosing, not out of protocol. I figure our parents in Florida are doing fine and so is he and so am I, so what more needs doing? They never call me.
    â€œDon’t tell me I owe you money, Nathan. I haven’t borrowed money since college.”
    â€œA simple hello would do.”
    â€œIt’s a joke, Nathan.”
    I pictured my brother. Even with infrequent sightings, when I did see him I could recognize him as a good-looking man: trim, five eleven, even features, with a vertical crease in the tip of his nose that made him look much less serious than he was. The last time I saw him, a flattering gray had crept in among the dark brown hair at his temples.
    â€œYou sound like you just got up.”
    â€œI did.”
    â€œIt’s late.”
    â€œIs it?” I knew what time it was. Already I was beating myself up, counting the number of errands I could have accomplished by now. “Fancy that.”
    Northeast, a cattail bent nearly horizontal in the foggy layer, bobbing from the weight of a yellow-headed blackbird.
    Nathan said, “Pretend the phone just rang.”
    He could be a smug SOB. But I went along. “Oh hi, Nathan. Good to hear from you.” I walked back in, closed the slider, and took the phone into the kitchen, thought I’d try out new tea.
    â€œI’m fine. How are you? See, that’s how it’s done,” he said, but his voice sounded funny.
    â€œSomething wrong? Are Mom and Dad all right?”
    â€œYou could phone them once in a while.” I let silence reign, as the