The shattered windows, blistering paint and whispering mold drew the Lover to the building in the drowned district. Inattentiveness and bad luck drew him to the nail that protruded from the wall like a curse. The vigor of his bloodstream drew the fungal spores on the sharp metal into his body. There they became progenitors and ancestors. When the Lover woke in his two-room apartment above the small restaurant on the corner the next morning, more than a dozen thin mushrooms peeked out of the wound in his thigh. The fruiting bodies were long and translucently white, like the fingers of a ghost, each topped with a tiny, ivory-colored cap. The fungi smelled of ozone and forbidden thoughts.

 

*   *   *

 

The Chef had been drawn to the Lover by the ease of his smile and the calm of his eyes, and the two men had lived in each other’s orbit for some time. When the Chef saw the pale fungal digits in the Lover’s thigh, the Chef’s attraction to the Lover was reborn. And just in time.

 

“Never trust the food of a skinny chef,” the Lover had used to joke. But lately he had only told the Chef: “You are getting thin."

 

“Did you know that fungi are neither plants nor animals?” the Chef asked the Lover. “They are so distantly related to animals and plants that they are almost like extraterrestrials, strangers on their own planet.”

 

“I did not know that,” the Lover said, “but I can feel it.” He had already turned a shade stranger, a hue subtler. His skin smelled like sparks.

 

“Shall I fetch the doctor, so he can treat your wound?” the Chef asked.

 

“No need,” the Lover said. “I will be all right.” The gleam of fresh desire in the Chef's eyes had not escaped the Lover, and he wanted more than anything to keep it.