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"Daylight Saving's tomorrow," the bartender said.

"Yeah?"

"That's right. Tomorrow night you lose an hour to drink."

"How's that go again?"

He smiled and said, "Spring forward, fall backward, that's the easy way to remember it."

"That's right. Always forget."

The overhead lights were on, so bright now, and most of the people had cleared out for a party somewhere. Glasses were being
collected. A young man was mopping down the floor and throwing bottles into a large trash bin, an awful noise.

"So tomorrow," the bartender told me, "you'll have to start happy hour an hour earlier in order to offset the government watches."

"Yeah?"

"Yep."

"But I have to go now?"

"Sorry to say. You're a good tipper."

"Any cabs in this town?" I asked.

"Here? No."

"Can you give me a ride?"

"Me? Sorry, no."

I got up and felt all too clearheaded, as if I had been drinking to stay sober. "Good-bye now," I said, a bit disappointed
that I hadn't made friends, that I hadn't stumbled onto a group of others who were off to do wicked things—to steal road signs
or wake up single women with pebble-throwing entreaties. Instead, I just sat alone at the bar, the stools on either side of
me empty. No one even tried to pick a fight.

In the warm after hours, I walked aimlessly down the street, my thumb stuck out for nothing. I glanced around like someone
traveling by himself, someone who wants to see glorious sights yet doesn't want to see them alone, someone looking sideways
for a friend. And I thought about giving Gretchen a call and telling her that I was alone in this town and wished that she
was with me, at my side, the two of us tipsy or maybe just flat-out wasted. But I didn't spot any pay phones.

Up ahead, the lush grass of Kosciuszko Mound was too inviting to pass up a roost. I lay down at the crest. Live oaks, their
trunks in deep shadows, twisted so that sky was glimpsed through crooks and curves, the Spanish moss hanging luminescent,
as if a distant relative to the moon. And before passing out, I imagined children, practically babies, little girls rescued
from a cruel fate who come to this place and dump cupfuls of earth from old Perish to a new beginning, slowly covering me
in the dank soil, legs disappearing, torso disappearing, arms disappearing, now just a head remains, the final reminder, but
soon that will be gone too and only a monument will live on.

May I ask, has this ever happened to you?

still in motion

A SINGLE REFERENCE brought them here:

He said he would not ransom Mortimer; forbade my tongue to speak of
Mortimer; but I will find him when he lies asleep, and in his ear I'll
holla "Mortimer!" Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
nothing but "Mortimer," and give it to him to keep his anger still in
motion.

There it is, the one and only starling in the entire works of Shakespeare, the verse, like the bird, more menacing than beautiful.
But in 1890 the Society Friends of New York (picture a group of bored Victorian matriarchs escorted by one lonely Columbia
professor of English) decided that the full range of the Bard's winged creatures should be represented here in America, for
culture's sake, for heaven's sake. So with little fanfare, they released sixty starlings into the Ramble of Central Park.
The next year, for good measure, they released forty more. A hundred birds and a hundred years later, the country seems to
speak nothing but Mortimer.

And recently, Debbie Reynolds (her unfortunate married name, a name she came this close to not taking, but certainly better
than Slotnick) has fallen into the habit of sitting on her porch, a Ruger 10/22 rifle with a Ram-Line 30-round banana clip
slung across her lap, ready to shoot the storming marauders. She overlooks the elaborate purple-martin houses, two of them
with eighteen apartments apiece, and waits for the Luftwaffe to strike. Starlings really are the Nazis of the bird world,
their sleek plumage SS black leather, their song Nuremberg cheers, their attitude all blitzkrieg. They land on the perches
and poke their beaks inside with Gestapo-like tactics—
tseeeer, tseeer
—then seize the nests of the defenseless and fling out the flightless chicks with irrepressible zeal—
whooee, whooee.
But before they can turn the backyard into Poland, Debbie takes aim and picks them off with considerable skill, usually getting
three before the rest fly away. Her personal best is six, though with a proper silencer she could vastly improve her kill
ratio.
Thwump! Thwump! Thwump!

"A silencer!" her husband says, a bit shocked at this news. "They're totally illegal."

"Oh, come on, take it easy. I'm half kidding." Debbie smiles with half-seriousness, her hands skillfully breaking down the
gun for careful cleaning, the parts spread across the kitchen table.

"Jesus, I married a hitman," Chester jokes, hoping for some levity in the situation, though her behavior has started to concern
him. Just the other weekend Debbie ran naked from the shower and stormed out onto the porch with the 10/22. "I heard something,"
she muttered, her eyes searching the sky for intruders. But there was no confrontation, no starlings, so she shot a poaching
squirrel instead. "I love my new scope," she said.

And Chester told her to get inside.

"Relax. No one can see me."

"You're turning into a hillbilly," he said.

"Oh, shut up." A puddle was forming at her feet, darkening the wood, and the morning light seemed to favor her wet body as
if the sun hungered for an opportunity to melt flesh. "We're in the boonies anyway," she said.

"This is hardly the boonies."

"Oh, please, this is the WASP version of the Ozarks." Debbie reached down and picked up the expelled shell casing and sniffed
the residual cordite, a heady odor. "Blue trash," she said. "The Hatfields and the McCoys by way of Ralph Lauren."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Moonshine and Chardonnay."

"Okay, funny enough. Now please just get dressed," he said.

"Yes, sir." And she marched back inside, the 10/22 on her shoulder.

Chester sat down on the rocking chair and gazed out at the rented view: ten acres abutted by woods. The two of them moved
to Millbrook about ten months ago. Chester wanted to leave the city, wanted fresh air and grass, wanted to work at home, wanted
to shuck complexity in favor of simplicity, wanted to start a family, wanted a basic happiness that he couldn't find in New
York. And Debbie had been mugged at knifepoint. She was walking down First Avenue after a late dinner with girlfriends and
up ahead she noticed a black man coming toward her. She made a point of not crossing the street, of not clutching her purse,
of not falling into the bilateral world of racial stereotypes; in fact, she imagined a pleasant smile on her face and hoped
that this thought would somehow reflect positively on her features, a benign faith against unwarranted fear. And as she was
pushed against a storefront grate, a distance settled on her, about a ten-foot perspective, which made everything in her life
remote. That's me? And she couldn't believe it. That's really me? Right there? With a knife under my throat? Debbie Reynolds
in peril? And this distance seemed to stay with her as if, on that night, time was cut into the before and after of an indifferent
history.

Chester leans across the table and scoops up a few loose .22 cartridges. They almost feel pleasant in his hand, cool to the
touch, so smooth, the brass casings clinking together like high-powered worry beads. He holds one between his thumb and index
finger, all of this velocity briefly restrained, but tomorrow, or the next day, the bullet will be ripping toward a starling's
breast. While mowing the lawn, he'll often come across a fallen bird, the wings frozen in their final frantic strokes, the
tips sticking up in the grass with lonely surrender, and suddenly he's the choreman of the killing fields.

"Hey, Angel of Death," he says to Debbie.

Debbie stops oiling the magazine assembly and pretends—"Ha ha ha"—to laugh.

Chester tells her that he has a surprise.

"And what would that be?" she asks.

"A trip," he says, "kind of a seventh-anniversary trip. Just get away for a while, you know, have an adventure."

"An adventure?"

"Yeah. And maybe it'll help us with this whole pregnancy deal. Relax us a bit."

Debbie frowns. For the last three months they've been trying to start a family, trying to catch up with their friends: the
friends with the two kids, the three kids, the one kid in college and the one kid in diapers, the stepkids and half-kids,
the adopted Chinese kid, the autistic kid with absolutely no idiot savantness, all those kids, the cute kids and the ugly
kids, that are dragged along wherever the parents go, the kid foodstuff and shitstuff jammed in vinyl bags, the kid seats
buckled in the backseats of cars, the kid toys lost and must be found, the kid strollers parked with the littlemost care for
shins, the kid hands empty and forever needy. Chester and Debbie, the friends always ask, why don't you guys have kids?

"We've only just begun." And Debbie immediately regrets the Karen Carpenter allusion. "It takes a while," she says.

"Oh, I know, I know. But I've kind of planned this trip, heard about it on TV, on some travel program about great escapes,
and I thought it would be a nice change of pace." Chester pauses, hoping that he won't have to bring up the last defense of
nonrefundable tickets. "The Galapagos," he says.

"The Galapagos?"

"Yeah, a cruise around the islands."

"Jesus."

"It'll be fun." Chester grins, the cartridge still pinched between his fingers, a symbol he projects into words. "The birthplace
of evolution," he says.

"Of Darwinism," she corrects. "Evolution has no birth. I think that's the point of it."

But Chester isn't listening. He's dreamily watching the bullet float through space while Debbie strains for the background
chatter of attack.

There are no starlings on the Galapagos Islands. Feral pigs, yes. Domesticated goats, sure. Dogs and cats, certainly. But
no starlings. They don't belong here, not like the finches and the mockingbirds and the boobies (blue-footed and white-footed)
and the albatrosses and the frigate birds and, of course, the tourists. Debbie finds herself watching these people more than
the animals. She's embarrassed to be classified in the same category. Bullshit about Americans being the worst, the Germans
are much more repulsive. They condescend to the animals, mock them by huddling and whispering, gloating at how easy it would
be to conquer this place. And the dumb-ass Australians pretend to wrestle with the bull sea lions, the beachmasters with their'
harems.
Hoy!
The pasty British grin imperiously at the mere mention of Darwin, common nationality their last brag. The French are always
checking the time for unknown reasons. Canadians, no matter how intelligent, sound witless with that vowelly accent. And the
Dutch are too thin.

On the beach, everyone is snapping pictures with equal frenzy—
ca-click, ca-click, ca-click
—while the animals laze around as if this were Cannes and all the paparazzi gadflies and tick-birds, the price to be paid
for environmental fame. The sea lions are the flavor of the moment, the beach covered with them and the waves washing in more.
An American family of five seems tempted to dress up one of the critters with a hat and sunglasses—something they probably
do to their dog back home—but the naturalists, a constant swarm of khaki, have a mantra of limited human contact. There's
no ingrained fear of man, no mistrust, no hostility, so please don't touch the animals, don't feed them, don't do anything
that might spoil this Eden on earth. How would you like uninvited strangers making a mess of your living room? So be respectful.
But people can't help laughing at the exposed sexual equipment of the beachmasters. They're hung like horses!

Chester, a video camera strapped to his hand, stands a few yards from his wife and gently prods the air in front of him. "Why
don't you get a little closer to the animals? You know, maybe bend down next to one. It'll look great."

"Who are you? Marion Perkins?"

"Who?"

"Never mind."

"Well, you have to do something."

"No," she says. "Too touristy."

"Too touristy."

"Yeah."

"Well . . ." But Chester holds off from the possible rant: Too touristy! What the hell do you expect! It's the fucking Galapagos
Islands, a tourist's mecca, a Disney World of the natural world. Now get over there so I can capture the moving quality of
this place. But instead, he tries a different approach. "How about you filming me?"

"I'm too tired."

"Too tired?"

"Yeah. And it's hot."

"C'mon."

"No. I'm serious."

Debbie pulls out a cigarette from her fanny pack and lights up. "How's this for action?"

"I wish you wouldn't smoke."

"I'm not pregnant yet."

"Well, you might be."

"I'm not. Trust me."

This stubbornness, bitterness, viciousness, Chester was hoping that the trip might reintroduce Debbie to a more relaxed state.
Maybe it's because she's off the pill, her body reacquainting itself with fertility, with more painful cramps, with more massive
bleeding, with more tampons a day, with more haphazard a system. No more daily doses of progesterone, squeezed from the corpus
luteum of pregnant sows, synthesized in a lab, packaged in a plant, prescribed by an OB-GYN, sold by a pharmacist, and punched
out of a daisy-wheel calendar. So neat and tidy—your own moon held in a cheap plastic shell. Who knows? Maybe a chemical imbalance
is the root to her bitchiness.

Chester goes over and wraps a beefy arm around Debbie, squeezing her shoulder, but she brushes him away like a molesting stepfather.
Stop it! All this performing. A perfunctory exhibition of togetherness. It's the same with their sex life right now; it's
not about them anymore, it's about an other, a hopeful zygote that directs their lovemaking with imperious Catholic precision.
The two of them are missionaries of the missionary, every night of estrus considered a holy communion, a transubstantiation
into flesh. Chester climbs on top of Debbie and holds her head in his intertwined fingers; he kisses her gently; he doe-eyes
her until she almost pukes. And then he begins not to screw, lay, ball, frig, or fuck, but to make a baby, create a life,
genesis, his ass pumping with extra vigor, pepping up Team Milt for the big meet. Oh, the beauty! This is why we're here on
this planet! Debbie hears this and she wants to disappear into the comforter. Why continue the breed, with its inevitable
genetic flaws, its damaged psyche, its mortal terror and suffering? Why not simply stop? All that is beautiful eventually
turns nasty anyway, so why pretend otherwise? And aren't we evolved enough not to fall into the same overpopulated trap? Let
the others do it: the trailer-park girls, the religious, the disenfranchised, the Third Worlders, the egotists with their
family names, the hopeless striving for pampered hope. So every night for the last month Debbie has slipped in her old diaphragm—she's
had it since college—and she's wet with odorless, tasteless spermicidal jelly.

"Here." Chester hands her the camera and walks toward the sea lions; they're stretched out like a line of brown corpses, drowned
and washed up after a shipping disaster, the ablating sea wearing away arms and legs and heads. He kneels next to a few. "Get
me," he says.

"I'm not the home-movie auteur."

"Just do it."

"Okay, Mr. Nike." Debbie raises the camera and pushes the button to film. The view through the viewfinder—the blinking red
REC in the corner—is the view that the robotic Debbie would see in this world, the robotic Debbie that would fool everybody,
the robotic Debbie that would allow the real Debbie to remain unchanged. And maybe this robotic Debbie could be the happy
wife, the happy mother with the babies, cyborg babies, their eyes Sharp, their ears Panasonic, their brains Microsoft.

"Are you getting good stuff?" Chester asks.

"I suppose."

"Here." Chester lies down on his stomach, the last in a row of sea lions baking in the sun. He closes his eyes. Debbie imagines
a pissed-off beachmaster shambling toward her husband. A tragedy caught on tape. They've been known to attack, one time castrating
a man who was swimming in the surf. She read that somewhere.

This is their third day of a five-day package deal. Chester booked the trip through FitzRoy Tours, a small outfit, a two-man
operation: Miguel the Ecuadorian captain/cook/first mate and Edmund the British naturalist. The boat is a barely suitable
cabin cruiser, recently converted from a twenty-five-foot fishing trawler. Miguel used to dive for sea cucumbers, popular
in China and Japan, their slightly toxic juice thought to be an aphrodisiac, like a bear's liver or a rhino's horn, but more
potent, almost hallucinogenic, a booming industry until the environmentalists came in and cried
Overharvesting!
and shut the whole thing down. The moment Chester saw the battered boat listing in the Puerto Ayora marina, he immediately
understood the inexpensive package deal.