Creatures Great and Small By Sal Moriarty

Note: microfiction, as a literary genre, is characterized by its brevity and the condensation of complete narratives into a compact form, typically ranging from a few words to a few hundred. The text below is an effort in that direction.

I'm sitting poolside at my apartment (management calls it an “apartment community”). It's ten-thirty in the morning on a Saturday.

I just finished a book: “Hitch-22”, by Christopher Hitchens”. I'm halfway through a cigar. This, generally, is when I leave; before the masses descend. Most will stay till dark, behaving horribly in front of their offspring.

As they wander in, all are in good spirits. It'll be a different story in about ten hours when they stumble back to their domiciles, leaving a trail of beer cans, ripped flotation devices, empty lotion bottles and all manner of bodily fluids. I wouldn't venture into that hot tub in exchange for a date with Scarlett Johansson.

To my left, a few twenty-somethings sit down at a patio table. A young woman begins talking about astrology and tries to guess the others' signs. She has many piercings and tattoos; her eye lashes are bleached.

Two middle-aged couples sit at the edge of the pool, dangling their feet in the water. They have a cooler filled with Coors Light. It's difficult to hear what they're saying, but one of the men says he doesn't like complicated things. The others nod knowingly.

Nearby, I witness the first argument of the day. A man says something derogatory about the BLM movement. A fiftyish woman, with a tattoo of a unicorn on her thigh, takes exception. It's a heated argument but will pale in comparison to confrontations around the pool later in the day, when blood will be drawn.

A professorial-looking gentleman finds a reclining chair, and a space to stretch out. He covers himself in a protectant of some kind, which looks a lot like Crisco. He's given a wide berth.

As I prepare to make my exit, a couple arrives and take seats at a table to my right. It has an umbrella to block the sun. The man, probably in his forties, is dressed in a Hobie tee-shirt and knee shorts. He's wearing flip flops, his cap turned backwards.

The woman, about thirty, is wearing a two-piece bathing suit, but a modest one. It is the color of water in the Bahamas. She has long dark hair and an olive complexion. I'm reminded of the portrait of Berthe Morisot, by Manet.

These are not people to stay by the pool for ten hours, behaving badly. They're together but are not actually a couple. It is clear, once settled in, they are confidants. They lean in to speak, and occasionally chuckle together at some shared observation.

He does have a romantic interest in the woman, but she engages him much like a mob wife might engage her priest. It is clear to me, where the woman is concerned, if a man were to tread recklessly, she might get in his head, and never leave.