I adjusted my electrum-plated sunglasses. Garjana had lost so much weight her shoulder blades jutted from her pale blue pullover and her neck wobbled like a rubbery stalk. She'd wrapped a black scarf around her head and wore a white ceramic mask to hide her face from my eyes, a courtesy. I couldn't help but notice the worn heels of her scuffed brown shoes. My heart sank.

         "Why so glum, chum?" she said, the cheer in her voice affected, hollow.

         Wondering, half-jokingly, if she'd joined some kind of hunger cult, I said, "Let's go grab a munch. I haven't had breakfast. There's a diner up the street, quiet. We can talk there."

         "I'm not hungry."

         "Have a coffee or something. It's not even noon so it's too early for a drink drink, right?"

         "Super funny," she hissed.

         "Just saying. Haven't talked to you for what, three months?"

         She touched her mask and pondered it. I wondered why the hesitation. I sensed she wasn't altogether there. She had kicked the opioids, despite looking tubercular, but other things may have accounted for that. She'd battled anorexia in the past, as well as addiction.

         "Okay," she said. "But didn't we do enough talking? I mean, all I remember is talking and talking. You always had something to discuss or go over or rehash. You were always—to borrow your pet expression—breaking my balls."

         I said nothing as we walked toward Teddy's Diner, a shabby little joint squeezed between a hardware store and a secondhand clothing shop with a dusty dressmaker's dummy in the window. The shop owner, a scowling middle-aged woman, popped up beside the dummy and fixed her gaze on Garjana. This was a mistake. As we walked away I thought, The dressmaker's dummy now has a companion, as lifeless and stiff, though not as needle-friendly.

         Certainly this monstrousness should have been an issue, but from the outset I knew who Garjana was. That said, I resented her insinuating I was some kind of blabbermouth, or a bore. To my recollection, she'd done most of the talking during our ten years together. And our accumulation of stone statues had swelled during that last year—except for those scattered about the city, signaling to the uninformed a new and perhaps undesired monumentalism; and I could do nothing to mitigate Garjana's volatility—and the ensuing unnatural transmutations. Fortunately, we never had any kids. A year after we were married, an ectopic pregnancy almost killed Garjana and permanently damaged her fallopian tubes.  

         We entered the diner—boasting a battered tin ceiling and distressed red-padded booths, probably original. A few hunched men at the counter ate and drank in silence. We sat by a window with a street view. Late summer and some trees were yellowing or showing rust. Garjana stared out the window, but at something beyond the street. She'd always been high strung and freewheeling, but good-humored and reasonable. Drugs and alcohol had obliterated that Garjana. Two or three rehab stints later, she professed recovery, but I wasn't sure.

         I caught the bleached blonde server's eye and she brought us two laminated menus. "Something to drink?" she said, ogling Garjana warily.

         "Coffee for me," I said, lifting my sunglasses to flash my eyes.

         "Tea, please," Garjana said, ducking to avoid an untimely petrification. "Orange pekoe if possible. And please bring a straw."

         "You bet," the grimacing server said, and padded off glancing over her shoulder.

         I couldn't read Garjana, given her mask. While masks had become commonplace during the pandemic, ceramic ones remained rare.

         The server brought our drinks. Garjana's tea came in a little metal pot with the tea bag still steeping. She lifted the pot lid, squeezed the tea bag with a teaspoon and set it in the saucer beside her teacup. Her hands looked scaly, discoloured. She poured tea into the cup, added milk from a small glass container, and stirred. Then she ripped the wrapper off the plastic straw and stabbed it into the cup.

         "So what's new?" I asked.

         "What could be new?"

         A dense silence passed. The server returned. "Have you decided?" she asked.

         "Bacon, eggs over easy, hash browns and wheat toast," I said.

         "I'm good," Garjana said, hissing at her teacup and fitting the straw to her mouth slit.

         The server hesitated before taking our menus and heading off.

         I had rented my flat—down the street, above a Portuguese grocery—after our separation three years ago. Our uncontested divorce had recently been finalized. I don't know how I felt about it—relieved, sad. Exhausted, primarily. I tried to keep my spartanly furnished flat as clean as possible, no rats or roaches. I'd left most of the furniture, statuary, and kitchen stuff with Garjana. She continued living in our house until she sold it last year and moved into a duplex near the lake with Vanessa Rhodes, a yoga instructor, who may or may not have already been turned into stone.

         "Why'd you make me come out here?" Garjana asked. "Had to Uber it, my car's kaput."

         "I'll reimburse you."

         She hissed under her mask. "I don't care. I'm beyond caring."

         I fell silent.

         "You look awful" she said, sucking on her straw.

         It was true. My physical decline had been sudden and dramatic. Liver cancer will do that. I was surprised she hadn't noticed my jaundiced complexion and yellow eyeballs.

         "Stoners always look like shit," she said.

         "Thanks," I said.

         "Just saying."

         The weed helped curb the nausea from the chemo and radiation treatments. I'd worn a Blue Jays cap to hide the hair loss.   

         "I'm sick," I said. "That's why I asked you to come here."

         "How're you sick?"

         "Liver cancer. Late stage."

         "Oh," she said, touching her mask.

         My food arrived. The eggs, still runny, nauseated me, but I slowly ate them with mouthfuls of toast and hash browns. I'd dropped twenty pounds in the last month alone. I offered Garjana a strip of bacon; she refused it, though her headscarf rustled.

         "I'm waiting for a transplant, but we'll see."

         "How'd you get liver cancer? You never drank that much."

         "That's cirrhosis. You get cirrhosis from drinking."

         "Right. Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

         "It doesn't matter," I said, "I just wanted to see you, and give you this." I produced an envelope. It held a cheque made out to her for ten thousand dollars—most of my savings.

         She opened the envelope and pulled out the cheque. Her headscarf rustled. The cheque trembled in her hand as she stared at it.

         "I won't be needing it where I'm going." At least the prospects were dim.

         "I can't take this."

         "Yes, you can. I'm sure it'll help square some debts and cover rent for a few months."

         She continued staring at the cheque, her headscarf rustling until she flattened her hand on the top of her head. Finally she slid the cheque back into the envelope and looked at me with her vibrating eyes. Even wearing electrum-plated sunglasses, I averted her gaze.

         "Do you expect me to feel sorry for you, or guilty? Do you expect me to hold your hand through your sickness and comfort you? Because you know that's kinda silly."

         "No," I said. "I just wanted to give it to you."

         "What if you get the transplant?"

         "A long shot, frankly."

         Garjana softly hissed.

         I finished eating and paid. Walking back to my place we ran into a postman who caught Garjana fixing her scarf and—mesmerized by the writhing coif—fecklessly stared into her eyes. She made no attempt to avert her gaze: old habits die hard. Thereupon the postman assumed a remarkably kinetic posture as he hardened into stone. He resembled one of those sculptures civic arts committees commission and install around the city to create an aesthetic of urban industry, or urgency. Even the postman hustles in this town, as evidenced by this uncannily accurate representation. The artist got everything just right, the little cap, and the mailbag, bulging with envelopes. Garjana was an artist, after all, though not everyone would agree with that assessment. Intolerance plagues our society.

         I asked Garjana to come up but she said she wanted to go home.

         "You're still living with Vanessa?" I asked.

         "Yeah, but she's been in Acapulco for more than a month. Met some guy. I don't know what's going on. Anyway, I'm gonna grab a cab."

         "Want me to call you one?"

         "Nah, I'm just gonna walk and hail one. No worries. I'll be okay."

         "Bye, Garjana."

         "Let me know how things go. Maybe the chemo and all that will help."

         Adjusting her ruffling headscarf she walked away and didn't look back.

         About a month after that day I called her—it had come down to an immediate liver transplant or nothing—but her phone was disconnected. Despite a few efforts—I tried contacting Vanessa, who was still in Acapulco—I never did track her down and never heard from her again, though more and more people in town turned to stone.

Magomed Magomedagaev                          

Salvatore Difalco currently resides in Toronto. He is the author of Black Rabbit & Other Stories (Anvil). His short stories, essays, book reviews, and poker columns have appeared in publications across Canada and the USA.