THEN Maybe the first part of the story would be called The Bracelet, or else Bracelets would turn out to be the better name. Paulina suspected there were at least two, one an imagined version of the other, but she couldn’t tell which was which. How could she know? She herself imagined something made of intertwining strands, modeled on the actual bracelet her cousin had brought back from the island of Ceylon, or so he’d claimed. She’d been very young. She hadn’t seen it since. Now, sitting by herself in the stifling dark, she examined it in her imperfect memory: braided gold wire and elephant hair. “A mixture of the contrived and the biologic,” he had remarked in his high, precise voice, which nevertheless carried with it an ironical inflection, as if he didn’t expect to be taken seriously. Her father’s cousin, actually, was what she had been told. Like all the men in her family he was handsome, with a lean, sensitive, clean-shaven face. His yellow hair was longer than necessary, as Gram often said.
What do You think about All Those Vanished Engines?
