Time slipped away behind my imagination, beyond time. Gazing steadily at those tortured fi ngernails, I seemed to see a door opening into an underworld with aliens eating people. Then I gazed into space, as father waved and yelled at me, “What are you staring at?”
“What happened to your fingernails?” I burst out without the least embarrassment.
“Nothing. They have been kind of eaten by the machines,” he said calmly, peeking at his fi ngers that were now spreading wide and fl at. His facial expression was iced. He fi nished his words like a gentle blow, “when I do some handwork over the years.”