Thousand: Ninety-Nine

drink order the bartender reaches up and plucks from the tree’s branches one of its fine fat fruits. The bartender puts the plum to her mouth and bites. Plum juice sluices down her chin and, as she chews and bites and bites and chews, working her way through the slippery, softening plum, the juice drips from her chin, and the juice runs down her bare arm to the elbow where sweet golden drops gather and fall. “I’ll have what they’re having,” says the tree. Once upon a time there was a dog. The dog had begun its story by digging