Bukhangi

For a month it went up and down a canal three metres deep in a city that came to look: one million six hundred thousand leaning on the rail.

The mayor thanked it. It had brought in what publicity would otherwise have cost trillions. It was not seen eating. It listed a little as it swam.

This morning, the water colder, they fixed nets to pontoons and moved them slowly toward the sea, the city streaming it live, the shark going on ahead the way you keep ahead of someone sweeping a floor.

At the mouth they hung one more net so it can't come back. That was the help: a door that works one way, and past it deeper water, no rail, and nobody counting.