She appeared naked in the window like a middle-aged woman in France he saw one summer in a hot alley, two stories up, smoking a cigarette, looking over the jagged rooftops of her arrondissement. It was subtle, beautiful, cliché. The door was cracked as a welcome invitation. He stood in the vestibule decorated by a bare light bulb as she came out of the bathroom combing her hair before putting on a dress. To him, the body was a secret covered with cotton and jeans until the last minute. To her it was skin and maintenance, beauty and a means. (sb)
June 2, 2008
forty-three
During her thirteenth autumn she thought it was funny; the neighbor boy was so young, he hardly knew what to make of her. In his yard, behind the dirty cream-colored wall of the mini mart, standing next to a sunken and rusted Chevrolet, she undressed. He was nine and simply continued to eat from a box of stale animal crackers as she clumsily stepped out of her striped skirt and black leggings.
She giggled, “I’m testing myself on you.”
He poked a stick into the damp grass, feeling little more than confused at this great thinning of leaves. (ms)
June 2, 2008
forty-three
Before gravity did its dirty work he had been with a few. When combs weren’t enemies and cheap beer didn’t do anything but get you drunk. Now he reconsidered bars as a viable option for companionship. It was a mess being single.
So he went to the pet store and picked out a carpet rug for the dog dish. He considered personalizing it with the canine’s name but chose plain blue to match the linoleum instead. Exiting the store, he heard,
“Hey banker…”
She waved before getting in an aging convertible.
He hesitated, thinking of beach hotels and wedding cakes. (sb)
June 1, 2008
forty-two
The first eight years of their marriage were spent in the mauve house with his dying mother. Her children kicked at the neighborhood’s graffiti-covered fences. Her husband sedated bees in the backyard and gathered honey. She pickled cucumbers and made poppyseed milk on holidays. Her mother-in-law’s dementia slowly worsened and they had to drag the disoriented woman back inside at night. They told her to stay in her room. They tried to forget her presence, but her husband’s face throughout these years always reminded her of a man carrying a stack of boxes down a very long flight of stairs. (ms)
June 1, 2008
forty-two
Tired of pumping gas, stupid customer jokes, staring at the same four-lane road, St. Jeffery’s Southern Shack, Bar 85 and Walmart, he threw his uniform on the counter and said “Fuck this.”
He called a girl who made him feel ambitious and they spent the night mixing laughs with Jim Beam. The next morning to muted cartoons she asked,
“What now?”
Two weeks later Morgan was 18, cleaning fried catfish off plates and spending 15 minute breaks staring at a familiar gas station, a four-lane road and a field of broccoli.
He thought of leaving again for the hundredth time. (sb)
May 31, 2008
forty-one
“It started in my toaster, burned the whole place down.”-A likely excuse from ever-absent receptionist Gina.
Jack, semi-sober, at the semi-awkward office party Friday, held out car keys and said, “My roommate used to fuck ‘er; I know where she lives.”
A car was packed with as many people as possible, who, minutes later, saw that not only Gina’s apartment, but also half of the seven-story building was a charred skeleton.
“Oh shit,” someone murmured, thus restoring Gina’s credibility.
But they never trusted her around the break room’s microwave again, and they watched her closely with the coffee machine. (ms)
May 31, 2008
forty-one
Morgan arrives home late after another mildly exciting night with co-workers at some downtown bars. Before his key hits the lock, he stops to the sound of a frail voice. Across the street, an old lady with wild hair and a red dress stands in the door frame of an unremarkable house, slightly silhouetted by a yellow light. An elder man appears and frantically grabs her hand. She drops her head, glances outside, then steps back in as the door closes. Morgan has never seen them, only the yellow light, early in the morning after peaking outside his bathroom window. (sb)
May 30, 2008
forty
Susie had been a surprise, sitting absolutely vertical on her bar stool, sipping a cherry coke. He asked her name. Susie. Sober Susie. He was unable to tear himself away; after three whiskey sours her presence was so utterly unexpected.
On Friday she said, “I have to go to work,” ending their two days of uninterrupted nudity.
“Yeah, me too,” he sighed.
They pulled up to the strip club simultaneously. They eyed each other suspiciously on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m dancing; what are you doing here?”
“I’m bouncing.”
They both shrugged and smiled. “Well, okay.” (ms)
May 30, 2008
forty
Cold Berliners breaking down a wall with kitchen utensils and overgrown fingernails while a Russian man with an ink blotch forehead watched on from a large carpeted room in Moscow led to a New Mexico Uranium mine to close its doors in late 1991. No more yellow cake meant no more job. He worked HR approximately 36 feet underground in a sterile room playing Bach. The family was packed shortly thereafter and directed towards the California coast where Morgan would celebrate childhood with oily, make believe forts under his parents station wagon. There had definitely been a couple close calls. (sb)
May 29, 2008
thirty-nine
After his fatal heart attack she finds herself looking through her father’s things. The pornography is not as surprising to her as the electric razor. In her childhood he had scoffed at such things. She used to sit on the bathroom counter and watch him take to his face with heated shaving cream.
She presses the rubbery button on the top. It makes a loud buzzing sound, vibrating in her hand. She touches the metal grill. Her finger remains unharmed. She presses the razor to her arm, amused at shaving off first one patch of wispy hair and then another. (ms)
May 29, 2008
thirty-nine
Some chicas were eating outside of Don Pedro’s with crispy Aqua Net hair and hoop earrings talking fast Spanglish. No doubt it was about quiet boys with slicked back hair who looked unaffected and hung out in groups of ten-plus with girls in their arms, saying nothing, just watching the lady-less ones talk too much. He still wanted to know what it would be like to take out a real latina. Be called papi, try stealing kisses between gum bubbles and getting drunk with her tios as mama worried about the new, gringo through Catholic prayer alone in the kitchen. (sb)
May 28, 2008
thirty-eight
While staring at the yellow scarf draped over his bedroom light he finally realizes the extent of his boredom. It’s their first night apart in over a week, and he’s been fingering the telephone keys for the past hour.
Finally calling, he asks, “What are you doing?”
“Emily’s talking about cute boys,” she drawls lazily. “I’m painting my nails, how cliché, right?”
“Okay,” he laughs.
He decides to make a peanut butter sandwich. While scraping what remains from the jar, his phone lights up with a message from Jeffery indicating the friend’s sexual exploits with another attractive young man. (ms)
May 28, 2008
thirty-eight
“Yeah… traffic is so bad people actually read in their cars while stuck in rush hour.”
Never having been to Los Angeles, Kamile closes her eyes and imagines a middle-aged white man in a freshly washed, black Mercedes with the windows up and the AC on so the hot wind doesn’t mess up his hair. He’s reading a novel…
No.
Script…
No.
Book that he’s thinking of making into a script.
Almost.
A new script… yet to be filmed… given to him by his friend… who is some hotshot in the industry.
Perfectly…
“…L.A.” he scoffs interrupting her image. (sb)
May 27, 2008
thirty-seven
They bought two guinea pigs, but- one of them being misgendered- ended up with eleven. The girls are delighted, making baskets out of their skirts to carry the babies, revealing polka-dotted panties. At night the girls’ mother can hear the guinea pigs squealing, like the singing of birds. She can’t help but wonder about lifespans and whether the girls can withstand a series of eleven funerals- eleven dead lumps in shoeboxes. They are sensitive children, especially Mara, who refused to come out of the bathroom for nearly eight hours after hearing the story of the neighbor’s cat and the dryer. (ms)
