THE LAST PAGE BY LILLY BOOMBOOM

Even so silent, they had to close her eyelids. Her gaze showed some joy, piercing the walls, keeping something nice in them for good. Her hair still shone… The pneumonia she never cared about, a red negligee in the well painted mouth…

"The boa constrictor was a present from the president will come with me to the Viking funeral" and she abandoned herself as if she were a child in an angel's lap. Lilly ordered the last rites in a demanding thin voice: "I'm a faithful whore… I want "As Time Goes By" playing at the back of Padre Almeida's speech, I feel thrilled at the mere idea of it. And she died as she had lived, surrounded by thrilling sensations. She did not wait for her childlike men nor would she breastfeed them now: Quita.

The needle, stuck to one of the record grooves, sounded in a desperate cardiac precision. Lilly poured naked through the house, den, basement and backyard. She filtered into the mirror, fitting into the mango tree hole. Her life in flashback, blowing off orange dim lamps, the sun opening slings in the window panes. Glass lamp decorations danced randomly at the languid breeze. The wind fluttered the pages of the poem book which belonged to a client who shouted verses when he came off with Boomboom muse on the porch. Lilly climbed the fresh mountainside that you could see from the sea, and its Viking boats...

sailing, at large,
three seeds opened
up when the funeral ended.
1998 - Short story awarded by the
National Short Story Contest
of Rio Grande do Sul

Translated by Thereza Christina Rocque da Motta