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DUCKY The sisters are waiting in the trophy room: Belinda and Ducky. The morning is the color of café-au-lait. Belinda, in salmon-pink silk with the brown printed roses, sips the air as if about to speak. She has nothing to say. Crosses her sleek legs. Lights a cigarette. The stag's head droops, the stuffed pike gapes, while Belinda closes her eyes against the blue Turkish smoke. "Darling," she says, "be a darling, put something suitable on the gramophone." But her sister strides to the window, her heels heavy on the warped linoleum. She fingers the buttons of her her bodice and gazes at the sun-stained blind. Behind her back, the space is crowded with yellow horns and leathery gills. She opens the window, and the room inhales the dust. She hoists her skirt, straddles the sill, steps onto the fiery gravel, and the house collapses like a paper bag, for nothing stays when Ducky goes.
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