Fanta and the Sauna

Yesterday, Sanj came over. We sat in the sauna at the gym, and she told me of how when she was a little girl in Africa, she was told to fast for five days. The fasting would, they told her, bring a good man for her to marry. She remembers being terribly hungry. On that same trip--the hunger subsiding as hunger does--she and her brother found a case of Fanta underneath the bed. She said she felt like a fishmonger finding a whole sea of orange fish. Beautiful, she said, so full of hope. Later, as we showered, I yelled over the stall, “You should write about that.”

“What?”

“About the fast and the Fanta. You should write about it.”

“I can’t hear you,” she yelled. I told her I’d tell her later, but the afternoon kept unfolding, and then we said goodbye at the subway, and walking home, I remembered: the fish, oh, the fish.

Now I sit tapping away at my computer, wondering if stories can be stolen, wondering if my desire to own that story and tell that story might--suddenly--lead me away from my desk and down the hallway, into the bedroom where, leaning over to pick up a sock to throw in the wash, I’d get a glimpse of something under the bed, and there it would be: a whole case of orange soda just waiting to be guzzled.