The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

bid her goodbye and put her in a car, he leaned down for a kiss and Amelia allowed it.

*

Amelia went up the stairs to her apartment. There, on the fourth landing, she found a glue trap with a squealing rat. She had chanced upon such sights before and they did not bother her.

She stared at the rat. Before she could figure out a proper course of action, she attempted to peel the vermin off the trap. She managed to rip the board off the rat, but the animal bit her. She pressed her hand against the wound and hurried into her apartment, looking for the rubbing alcohol and the cotton amongst the mess of expired prescriptions (these had belonged to her mother; nobody bothered tossing them out, shrines to her memory), hair clips and makeup, which were scattered upon a small shelf.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ Marta asked.

‘Rat bit me,’ Amelia said.

‘You better not have rabies.’

Amelia opened the bottle of alcohol and soaked a cotton ball in it, then carefully cleaned the wound. Her sister was by the door, but had not offered to assist her. She merely stood there, arms crossed, staring at Amelia.

‘Where were you?’

‘I stayed with a friend,’ Amelia said.

‘You fuck up my routine when you don’t take the girls to school.’

‘I don’t do this regularly.’

‘Sure, you don’t.’

‘Look, you want to make sure your kids get to school on time? You take them,’ Amelia said, wondering if they had any damned Band-Aids, or if she was going to have to wrap a towel around her hand.

‘I pay the bulk of the rent.’

Amelia opened a cardboard box and placed two Band-Aids on her hand, forming an X.

‘I pay for the bulk of the groceries,’ Marta added.

Amelia slid her thumb across the Band-Aids, smoothing them down. Maybe she could have the bite checked out at the sanitation clinic, although that would mean arriving early and waiting forever.

‘I paid for Mother’s medicines,’ Marta said, holding up three fingers in the air.

‘And I took care of her!’ Amelia yelled, turning to her sister, losing her shit, unable to keep a middling tone of voice anymore. ‘I was here, every day and every night, and where were you when she was pissing herself in the middle of the night? Two years, Marta! Two years of that. I threw my whole career and every single chance I ever had out the window because you wouldn’t help me take care of her!’

They had never discussed it because it would have been bad to say such things, but it had to be said. Amelia was tired of pretending that what happened to her had just been bad luck, bad karma. She might have been able to finish her degree, she might have kept the scholarship, but Marta had been way too busy playing house with her then-husband to come round the apartment complex. But when he left her and Mother died, then she came real quick to take possession of the shitty little apartment.

‘What makes you think you had a chance?’ Marta replied.

‘I better go to the sanitation clinic. Wouldn’t want to give your kids rabies,’ Amelia said, brushing past her sister and rushing out of the apartment.

On the stairs, she found the rat she had released from the trap. It was dead. Her efforts had been in vain.

Amelia kicked the corpse away and marched outside.

MARS, SCENE 4

INT. CELL – NIGHT

SPACE EXPLORER sits in a cell. Outside, it is night and the nights on Mars are unlike the nights on Earth: pitch-black darkness, the eerie silence of the red-hued sand plains. Despite her extraordinary location, the girl’s cell is mundane. Iron bars, a rectangular window. This is all that we can spare. The budget is limited.

In the distance, there is laughter from the SPACE EXPLORER’s captors, who are celebrating their triumph. Drinking, music.

The EVIL HENCHMAN stops in front of the SPACE EXPLORER’s cell to taunt her. She replies that THE HERO will save her. THE EVIL HENCHMAN laughs. Let him try!

SPACE EXPLORER is unflappable. She believes in THE HERO.

Although, perhaps she should not. Her story has been traced with carbon paper, in broad strokes, but carbon paper rips easily. And the writer of this script remembers pulling the carbon paper through the typewriter when he was a child, the discordant notes when he banged on the keys, the holes he poked in the paper so that it looked like the night sky needled with stars.

But the stars have shifted. This makes sense in an ever-expanding universe, but it brings no comfort to the writer to feel them moving away from the palm of his hand.

9

‘Why did you stop making movies?’ Amelia asked.

‘I got old.’

‘I looked up your filmography. You were still in your thirties.’

‘Your thirties is old when all you do is show your breasts to the camera,’ Lucía said.

Her turban was peach-colored, her dress pink. She wore a heavy seashell necklace and her nails had been freshly done, perhaps on account of the upcoming holidays. Despite her retirement from show business, she always managed to look like she was hoping someone would take her picture and ask for an autograph.

‘I saw what happened to other actresses. There were certain people – Silvia Pinal, María Félix – who were able to remain somewhat relevant during the eighties. But for most of us, it was raunchy sex comedies and bit parts. Perhaps I might have been able to make it in soaps, but the television screen is so small. Televisa! After the marquees!’

Lucía lifted both of her hands, as if framing Amelia with them, as if she were holding a camera. Then she let them fall down on her lap again.

‘So, I cashed in my chips and married well. I thought it was more dignified than shaking my ass in a negligee until the cellulite got the better of me and they kicked me off the set. You probably don’t think that’s very feminist of me.’

‘I don’t think anything of it,’ Amelia said.

Lucía