CONVERSATION (Flash Fiction)

We sat side by side on canvas covered recliners on the front porch. It was late afternoon. The sun had already dropped behind the pines, beyond the ancient apple orchard, no longer bearing fruit. Another hour before the first high pitched call of the Whip-poor-will.
Shaster sat to my left, looking desirable in her blue shorts and size thirty-eight white satin halter, one shoe off, the other hanging on a toe. Her attention was locked into Laura Bedside’s latest blockbuster novel, “A Fly in Her Ointment.” I was left to my own peripatetic thoughts.
Ointment........ Oinkment. I wonder if that’s what they call pig balm?
I was in a mood for conversation.
“Did you know that pigs won’t eat orange peels?
“hmmmmm?
“No really, it’s true. You can feed them a ton of garbage and they always toss the orange peels aside.
“Well, I’ll just put that away in my vast store of important facts.”
Shaster kept on reading. I wanted conversation. I poured a glass of ice water and handed it to her.
“Did you know that every glass of water you drink contains 8000 molecules of everyone who ever died?
“Yecch!" Shaster sipped and put the glass down.
“It’s true. Well, you have to assume uniform distribution, which probably doesn’t happen. We’re mostly water, you know. Maybe only four thousand molecules.”
“Until this minute I was thirsty.”
Shaster looked like she could have drunk the whole glass of icewater. She didn’t look up from her book. Her hair was up.....cooler that way. There were tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead.
This wasn’t going well. I can usually get her attention.
“There’s something else. It’s important.”
“In this weather, nothing is important.” It was the hottest day of the summer.
“The world is going to explode.”
“Oh great. Where will we go?”
“Really, it’s going to blow into a gazillion pieces. Never be the same again.”
“Is this for real?” Shaster finally lifted her eyes from Laura Bedside’s pages.
“It’s only a theory at present...... well, to tell you the truth, it’s only my theory.”
“Oh. Then I can relax. You don’t exactly have a popular following with your theories.”
“Here’s how it goes..... You’re aware, of course, that Earth has a molten iron core. The reality is that it isn’t pure iron. There are heavier components, radioactive...... thorium, uranium. The theory goes that over millions of years these heavier molecules will migrate to the very center. One day, when everything is there in sufficient concentration and under the existing temperatures and pressures at the very center, Kablooey! Everything flies apart.
“I can see you have everything figured out.” Should we start packing?”
I stood up and stretched.
The first Whip-poor-will’s shrill cry brought a faint, distant response.
“Would you like a martini?”
Shaster looked up at me. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Edward Hujsak

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