Excerpt from Spider Love Song and Other Stories by Nancy Au, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Uh oh. Hide the duck, Lai," said May in a frantic whisper.

"What?"

"Hide the duck! Look." She gestured with her eyes. "It's a ranger."

"Maybe he's here to give us a medal for saving the duck."

"No. He's here to take the duck."

As the ranger got closer, May could see that he was broad-shouldered. Perhaps Filipino. He stopped a few feet away, near enough that May caught a whiff of the man's aftershave, a peculiar blend of sweet pickle, metal, and rose.

Lai smiled crookedly at him.
May cleared her throat. "Is there a problem, officer?"
Eyeing Louise in the lunch cooler, the ranger reached for a notepad in his back pocket. "What are you doing with that duck?"

"This is our duck," chimed Lai, straight-faced, her eyes bright brown mirrors.

"Were you planning to leave with the duck?" asked the ranger as he started to write in the notepad. May, terrified her wife's doggedness might really get them in trouble, responded, "Not exactly."

"I don't see anything wrong with that. What's the harm?" said Lai.

The ranger stopped writing to look at her.

"Geez. All right, look." Lai closed the lid of the cooler with the duck inside. May knew that her wife was employing her useless out-of-sight-out-of-mind tactic. "We are saving this duck. It would die without us. And this one here," Lai jutted her thumb at May, "thinks I have no maternal instincts!"

"It's a serious crime to take wildlife out of the park." The ranger clicked his ballpoint pen a few times, studied what he'd written.

Lai furrowed her brow. "If you let us take the duck, you can ask us for something that you want. Do you like ice cream? This park has great ice cream."

The ranger crossed his arms. "You can't take the duck."

Ignoring him, Lai addressed May instead. "My wife, the ever-forever-right missus-with-a-plan. You can't marry someone, tell them you don't want a baby, and then take away their only duck."

May shook her head, sighed tiredly. After seven years of adulting for two, she thought she'd seen it all with Lai. She studied her wife, who was now poking her head into the cooler and whispering to the duck. The ranger, who continued to write in his notepad, occasionally flipped through a thick pocket-sized book full of what May surmised were park rules and regulation numbers.

"I'm sorry, Lai." May was now sweating profusely.

"You always think you know what's best for me. Why don't you think I am capable of doing anything?"

"Lai, this isn't the time," May said under her breath.

The ranger cleared his throat. "Look, it's a felony."

"Really? A felony?" May asked, alarmed.

"If you leave the duck, we can just forget everything. I won't even write you a ticket." May wondered if the ranger, having found the park code Lai had violated, had learned that dealing with Lai and the duck involved more paperwork than he was willing to process.

"No, you look," said Lai to the ranger, her voice low, steady. "Louise is the victim here. We are saving her." She took the duck out of the cooler and cradled it. People in the park had started to gather around to watch the drama: an old man holding a red balloon, two toddlers clutching their mother's hands and stepping clumsily like drunkards, a teenage couple. May glanced nervously at their audience. How could her wife make such a fool of them in such a public way?

"I wish you could see yourself," said May, "how idiotic you look when you act like this." Pulling her cell phone from her pocket, she took her wife's picture. The teenagers cheered. May took their picture too.

"Stop it." Lai grabbed at May's phone.

She dodged her wife's grasp. "No! I want everyone to remember you like this."

"Who is everyone?"

"EVERYONE!" May gestured at the strangers circled around them.

Excerpted from Spider Love Song and Other Stories by Nancy Au. Copyright © 2019 by Nancy Au. Excerpted by permission of Acre Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.