The Palm on the Edge of Space by Kathryn Milam
You slump along the Promenade des Anglais beneath the famous palm trees that dangle against the evening sky like the wings of large birds. Your feet languish in sandals bought especially for this holiday trip. Your wife prods the blue and yellow pram down the walkway in search of a shop with zwieback or biscuits au beurre. She looks at you, grimaces in her exhaustion. Your child, who is teething, who never sleeps, who has never been the antidote you’d sought, stretches her hands toward the fading fireworks of the Bastille celebration. The smell of sulphur dissipates in the salty Mediterranean air.
The two of them slog ahead, vanish across the street into the shadows, street lights dimmed to enhance the pyrotechnic display.
You study couples lingering on cafe terraces over glasses of crimson wine, plates of cheese, flickering candles. They lean in and smile, touch fingers across tables. A woman with golden hair lifts her chin and laughs at something her lover says, though you are sure she looks your way as you pass.
Music thumps from dim bars. Dancers spill out of doors into the night. A tall man bends to kiss a woman, her lips opening to his.
The strap of your shoe digs into your heel.
The roar of an engine is what you hear first, that and the shrieks. You are aware of havoc behind you, turn to see a white cargo truck smash through yellow wooden barriers and zig-zag down the avenue that has been closed to traffic, shattering benches, cracking light poles, crushing everything and everyone in its path. Dozens of people, young and old, sprint by you. A mother, cradling a toddler in her arms. A teenager on a bike. The prams!
A man howls, Run.
Bodies fly about like pins in an arcade.
The truck passes—so close, the odour of diesel overwhelms you. You catch a glimpse of the dark-haired man behind the wheel as he targets fleeing revelers, first one way, then the other. He grins at you as if he knows who you are.
You bolt behind him, see a woman’s legs, you think, caught in the truck’s wheel well, shreds of her dress fluttering like furious flags.
You scream for your wife—Alexandra! Alexandra! — but your words drown in the cacophony.
And then an image comes, splayed across your brain: you beside a grave, holding your bright daughter, who turns her face to the sun, the blonde woman from the bar, swathed in blue silk, consoling you in your grief, erasing every mistake you have ever made.
You in cahoots with the man and his truck.
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Kathryn Milam writes short fiction. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Milk Candy Review, Lunate, and Appalachian Review. Her story Smart House received the 2019 Denny C. Plattner Award in Fiction. She graduated from the MFA program at Bennington College.
Twitter: @MilamKathryn