The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir. Susan Daitch

for whom the sale of missiles (huge profits skimmed off the top) to Iran was just a day at the office.

      We argued back and forth for a while. The masterminds were very ordinary people who wiped inky fingers from reading newsprint off on their pants and then took out the trash, or, no, they were devils of ingenuity and originality, architects of secret second governments, coups, the man or men behind the curtain. Alyssa made herself another drink, then fell asleep on the couch. I touched her shoulder, close enough to smell her orangey breath, but she didn’t move. The big shirt wasn’t big enough to cover her butt when she snoozed on her side. It hiked up to reveal a band of sunburnt skin. When she woke Alyssa would be embarrassed to find she had conked out on my couch. My neighbor liked to present herself as the kind of person who could eat nails for breakfast, but I turned off the television and let her sleep. Her olive feathered hair was brown at the roots, and her ink-stained hands were partially hidden under her head. Catullus was nowhere to be found.

      Alyssa stopped me in the hall. She had signed for a flat package, a ten-by-fourteen-inch envelope, but she admitted she’d been sitting on it for awhile.

      “How long have you had this?”

      “A couple of weeks. I hadn’t seen you, so I held onto it. I could have shoved it under your door, but the envelope is thick, as you can see, and might have torn if I really pushed it, and you never know. What if you got broken into again?”

      “What if you knock into one of your candles, a rug catches fire, and you burn the place down?”

      Alyssa ignored me. She worked from home, everyone in the building knew this, so it was assumed she would sign for deliveries. I wonder how much mail traffic found a home in her column. Virgo: You will get something important in the post, possibly bad news. Ignore it. She followed me up the stairs chattering about the Chernobyl disaster. In her column she had written: Capricorns: Beware of explosive and poisonous workplace situations. This could be time to consider a new form of employment. It looked like she was going to follow me inside.

      “So who’s writing to you from Iran? Are you an arms smuggler? There’s no return address, but I looked at the stamps.”

      “Yes, bombs are mailed to me in packages just like this one.”

      “It’s too small.”

      “These are only bomb-making instructions. I run a Do It Yourself operation. The bigger operators have warehouses out in Queens and live on Park Avenue. I’ll tell you about it later.”

      “When later?”

      “Maybe tonight. Thanks for signing for the package.” She lingered in the doorway as if she expected me to invite her in, so I would open the package in her presence. I didn’t want to be rude to Alyssa, but was compelled to practically shut the door in her face.

      “I’ll bring the vodka this time,” I heard her say in a singsong voice from the stairs. I opened the package. Inside was a long letter in Farsi.

      Dear Ariel,