Nightmare in Water #2

March 2008
I am crouching in a wooden dinghy in the trough of a titanium swell awash with 1000-ruble bills and islands of bloodclots. I don't know how to stand. The sky is pre-tornado green. I peer over the edge of the boat and grasp at the cold bills, throwing them hastily on the floor. I don't see any MVD's, but the thought that they may arrive makes me tension my gut, girding my intestines upwards, lessening the pressure they exert on my pelvis. The bottom left corner of my heart is being touched by a minty thumb that massages circles on it, and this makes me pull my shoulderblades back and together. The left one moves down farther to squeeze the thumb out.
The money is cold and some of it is bloody.
...
I am on land, face to face with my friend Joern. He has an angular face that he says dogs don't like. He's one of the people I trust most. We're face to face, shoulders pushed forward to shield the bills from view. I'm counting them, they're the color of fir needles. They show a four-sided pyramidal tower with a view over a vast plain. We count the bills together- 24,000 rubles, 1000 dollars. We get to the last bill, it's worth 5000 rubles and is sherbet orange on subtly, uniformly rough cream paper. The picture is in motion- conquistadors in tin hats are herding a crowd of Incas before them, driving them over a cliff with their blunderbusses, brilliant cerulean and seafoam plumes are leaping out of the engraved agonized. The womens breasts are swinging, and they and their children are screaming. Joern grasps the bill like he wants to take it, but looks at me with the same serious look dogs hate and which makes me know he's listening, and tells me, you're rich, do you understand, you're rich now, do you understand, you're rich. I can see he wants it, and he sees me seeing him, but we are friends.