My approach is unconventional. It’s a ten-step approach alright, with bowling ball held slightly higher than my waist for extra power. But my ten steps are more like a cha-cha, a strip tease, a furious one-woman tango with myself … it’s ten steps of molten hot boogety bowling ballroom dancing.
But if my ten-step approach is Mardi Gras, then the strict discipline of my ball release is the Lent that follows. The dance is gone. I am a simple machine. My arm swings and I wait for the downward tug on my shoulder socket – the completion of the arc. Then, a slight twist of the wrist to finish, and that girlish golden orb is now a curve ball that kills.
My ball barrels down the lane. Cold, calculating assassin.
Then I hear her.
“You can aim perfectly, babeeeeeeeee, and still end up in the gutter.”
Bitch! I knew she would come! In fact, every single pin at the end of the alley is bottle-shaped version of Her! Ten slutty Jezebels regarding me with their twenty almond eyes. Ten tiny mouths speak in a bowling pin choir.
“This is for knocking out Frito, babeeeeeee.” The pins have my ball trapped. “Biiiiiiiiiiig mistake.”
My golden ball is hurtling back at me. I dive to avoid the oncoming missile but they already anticipated my move and I take it deep in my belly. My lungs collapse. I can’t pull any air into my chest. Drowning people suck water into their lungs at this point in the death process, but I don’t even have that pleasure.
Darkness.
Everything is becoming the same thing.
Then a pair of red lips from outer space fix themselves softly on my mouth. They blow a swirling whirlwind into my lungs – fluttering pink balloons opening up to receive it. The lips taste like grape jelly. And the lips form words. And the words string into something that makes sense in my mind.
“Biiiiiiiiig mistake. You need lesson in knowing who it is can help you, and who it is can hurt you.”
Flickr: MyVirtualLady
With nothing on but my bowling shoes, I square up to my ten adversaries at the end of the alley. I know if I crush them, she will come.
I am a worthy opponent. Fluent in the sacred geometry that is the bowling lane, I play a frame like Mozart tickles the ivories.
The methods I have at my disposal? Legion. Their effectiveness? Lethal.
Depending on the necessity, my weapon of choice might be the sleepy devastation of The Stroker. Or perhaps The Cranker, with enough centrifugal force to blow the legs off all ten pins from right to left.
But when the situation calls for maximum flaming revolution followed by sub-zero nuclear winter with ten pins lying face down in the ditch, I call upon… The Helicopter – a devastating hook I made popular in Taiwan, where the lanes are all as pock-marked as a pimply-faced teenager.
For that technique alone, the Taiwanese government made me a national hero, and the Chinese have been actively recruiting me ever since –hoping my dangerous methods might be applicable to the spin science of ping-pong, the Olympic event in which they are always looking for new ways to spank that belligerent upstart nation just over the pond.
But I won’t play one side against the other. I have no concern for status, rewards, or a seaside villa in Guangdong. I have but one sacred loyalty: to the fair country, the fertile fields, and the beachfront property that is Me, Myself, Alone.
If I slay these ten pins, I know that she will reveal herself to me.
And then I will teach the bitch some manners.
- Flickr:Circulating
Really? Have I really been challenged to a duel via tape recorder?
I can remember when my mind used to be someone I could count on. But I can’t live in the past.
Yanking the golden bowling ball from its movie star pedestal, the weight of it almost pops my shoulder out of joint. But the ball is luxuriously round. My thumb and two middle fingers slide inside the holes like three fleshy penguins sliding into a tunnel of fish.
Whoever was responsible for this drill job knows my fingers in the most personal way: the carving follows every indent, every knuckle fold, every baby-fine hair on the back of each finger. The inner canals of this bowling ball are such faithful reproductions of my fingers that I wonder if the maker would design a vibrator for me as well.
December 2nd,2009
Clandestine |
2 Comments
The closet is hot but I shut the door behind me.
I’m in.
Lemony floor wax scents the air, while a humid breeze slides up my bare thighs. Weather’s right for bowling.
Far away, at the end of alley, all ten pins stare at me, those petulant little sluts. Their lower lips stick out, daring me for some action. And it’s action I shall give them, because my curveball will slap the earth right off her axis and melt polar ice caps with the sheer gravity of its spin.
But I am taking my time. Because this, my friends, is not about Craps, with its simple sevens and elevens. Nor about Blackjack’s twenty-one. No nine innings. No four quarters. No three furlongs to the second.
Bowling is a game entirely devoted to the Deep Mysteries of the Number Ten.
Ten Commandments of Exodus.
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
The Ten Martyrs – one of them, a rabbi rolled up inside a life-sized copy of the Torah and burned over a pile of green wood. The original Kosher doobie.
Ten: the exact number of fingers on both hands. And Ten is also the atomic number of neon. Our very chemistry, cosmically entwined with both the buzzing Budweiser sign, and the sweaty hands wrapped around the beer.
There Are Ten Cents In A Dime, Which Is Itself 1/10 of a Dollar.
Ten, the Highest Score in Olympic Gymnastics.
Ten Girls on a Roller Derby Track.
And when driving a race car, “Ten-Tenths” means driving as fast as the machine will possibly allow – ten toes inside a heat-resistant boot, pressing pedal hard to red-hot metal.
But here in this strange walk-in closet, I feel the electricity of the number Ten in this ancient game of Bowling — so ancient that remnants of it have been found in the graves of long-dead Egyptian children: a parting gift from parents, choking on their grief, who sent along home entertainment for their dead little ones’ trip across the sky in Ra’s barque.
The Power of Ten: let the multiplicity of it blow back your hair. Resist it not, like dog ears fluttering in the car window.
The Power is Thus: Ten bowling pins, looking radiant and pure like ten shiny bottles of milk. Knock them down. Demolish them. Do each one of them grievous harm. Do this the best you can, ten times in a row. For most people, the game ends here.
But for the Initiates of the Perfect Game, ten perfect demolitions results in a cosmic pregnancy, a virgin birth from which springs an eleventh chance.
Let those who have dog ears hear!
A second strike in the tenth frame brings forth the final and majestic Truth: that from ten frames can come twelve strikes, and from twelve strikes, comes 300 points, and 300 points delivers to your table a free pitcher of Budweiser, a chili-cheese dog, and an HSBC-sanctioned ring which wields a mighty power in certain circles.
The tape recorder cranks up to life.
“You think you better bowler than me, babeeeeeeeee?”
November 26th,2009
Clandestine |
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Flickr:i-plus
My knees relax, dropping the death grip on Frito’s head. Animal instinct warns me to look for something to tie him up. Twine. Embroidering yarn. Baling wire. Unfortunately, I already used the last of my dental floss.
Scanning the room, I choose an old classic: a good, long telephone cord yanked from the wall. Wrap it four times around his around his buttery, babyfat wrists, and — while usually at this point, I like to grandstand a little, throwing my hands in the air like a hog-tying cowboy – at this point, the state of Frito’s wrap job just doesn’t interest me anymore. My entire life is inside that tape recorder.
I slide over and pull it close to my belly, feeling the vibration of the motor. The warmth of her voice.
I rewind it again.
“Why you so bossy, babeeeeeee?”
Again.
“Why you so bossy, babeeeeeee?”
Again.
“Why you so ….”
Stop it! Stop saying that! That’s not who I am! You don’t have one fucking clue who…
The door to a walk-in closet opens up with a girlish squeak, and a thin beam of light slips out.
“Babeeeeeeee….”
With the tape recorder under my arm, I roll from the bed and slink tight against the wall next to the closet. Normally, in this situation, I’d pop a heel off my boot – a useful, spiked weapon in a pinch. But looking down to my feet, they are attached only to pale legs, leading to perfect knees, ending finally in a small, perfect tuft of female madness, and I realize I’m still buck naked. This whole night has me completely off my game.
Peeking inside the door to the closet, I immediately have to step back like my toes just slipped off the edge of a cliff. I’m seasick. That tuft of madness has gone to my head like a green appletini on top of nothing for dinner.
When I look inside again, the closet spans the length of a bowling alley, flanked for a ¼ mile on both sides by a line of bowling shoes. On a pedestal to my right, a golden bowling ball basks in the recessed lighting of the closet, smug like a prom queen in the tanning bed.
The tape recorder vibrates under my armpit.
“Whassa matter? You no like to bowl, babeeeeee?”
November 14th,2009
Clandestine |
2 Comments
Angie McKaig Photography
It is worth the screeching agony of broken knees to feel the relief when he takes the pain away.
Now I feel like expensive beachfront property: a princess laying on the lily pad of God’s own pond. Stoned on the lack of pain and the scent of blossoms, I slide my tongue into the open mouth of each passing koi.
The fat Hawaiian winks at me with his golden eyes. He’s a Kodiak bear stuffed in a Hawaiian shirt. He should have a ukulele. And he’s looking very hopeful.
“Name’s Frito.”
Frito? Reminds me of chips. Which reminds me of guacamole. Which brings to mind avocados. And finally….my thoughts have gone to cucumbers and that, my friends, is where I draw the fucking line.
Frito? Wrong answer.
I take my brand new knees, throw them over his head, and clamp his fat neck between them. His jugular vein pounds between my legs. It would be easy to pop his neck vertebrae with a twitch of the hips. Mom taught me combat techniques, but she also taught me the Hula.
“So you think my inebriated state gives you the hall pass to my goods, motherfucker?”
He is sucking air so hard he can’t answer my question. Not that I didn’t already know the answer.
Pervert!
I squeeze my legs even harder and his golden eyes start to bulge a little bit like a pug. (Another Heloise Hint: never squeeze a pug’s neck. Humans’ penchant for genetic meddling has encouraged the development of shallow eye sockets in pugs making them prone to having their eyeballs pop out when their necks are squeezed. As much as you want to, never, never squeeze a pug.)
Through lack of oxygen, I can feel the ferocious pounding of Frito’s jugular has been reduced to the intensity of a popcorn fart. His head is caught between my thighs, and when I tip him at the correct angle I see his red face has gone white dwarf. He is tapping the bed like he’s tapping out of a wrestling match.
“Say uncle,” I tell him.
He taps.
“Say uncle!”
Still he taps. He’s stubborn. I’ll give him that.
“Frito, say uncle by the time I count to three or I’m going to snap your head off and use it like a beach ball the next time I’m out to Maui!”
Frito’s fingers reach the tape recorder, and he taps “rewind” just as he passes out.
Now I’m curious. So I hit “play”. And through the static and reverb, there’s no mistaking that female voice with the Japanese lilt.
“Why you so bossy, babeeeeeee?”
Larry Page
I can feel each of my kneecaps has split into four separate and distinct pieces. My knees scream like wild ponies about to meet the gelding knife as the fat Hawaiian picks me up, laying me out on the bed to have a look. Poi stink is hanging in the air like a bad smog.
“Yep. I thought so,” he said finally.
“Thought so, what?”
“You’ve got signs.”
Sounds like rickets. Scurvy. Signs!
His finger traces the knee skin draped slightly between the four islands of bone that make up each broken knee cap.
“As you can see, the space between the four broken pieces creates something of a symmetrical cross design. It indicates a condition distantly related to the appearance of stigmata. And although the medical community will tell you otherwise, signs are relatively common: tilesetters get ‘em; jockeys; really old nuns; and downhill skiers, from years jamming the bumps.”
He cups each knee with a smooth Polynesian palm – the kind of palms that are fleshy and muscular from husking coconuts, heaving sacrificial virgins down the mouths of volcanos, and gripping handcarved oars that powered boats along the ancient route of the Kon Tiki. His palms are comforting now, like warm Hawaiian sugar.
“But when a person’s got signs like this, they never realize the divine import of what is happening to them. The doctor puts ‘em in a cast but the knees just never heal right. They creak and they ache. People fight the pain for years with handfuls of Tylenol, anti-inflammatories, immunosupressants, human growth hormone… but it will eventually lead to one thing: total knee replacement. Little do they know, they just replaced the living secret to the Universe with a piece of polyethylene plastic.”
“On the other hand…” He mercilessly squeezes each knee in the vice grips of his cruel-to-be-kind Polynesian hands.
I wail like the siren of an ambulance that should be coming for me right now but won’t, because my broken knees are in the hands of this fat Hawaiian faith healer.
“ON THE OTHER HAND,” he yells over my screaming, “MAYBE YOUR KNEES ARE JUST BROKE.”
Maybe so. But when he removes his hands, my kneecaps are as perfect as two newly minted silver dollars.
Andres Lazaro
He wrecks my rhythm.
Looking like a sumo wrestler in the off-season. Slack muscles. Layers of blubber so deep they carbon-date back to that very first primal layer of baby fat that he never outgrew.
And that smell. I know it from somewhere.
Thinking…thinking. I’ve got it: Hawaii. A childhood memory. Swimming in the ocean with my mother. My single mother who had resolved herself never to marry despite a dizzying array of suitors — among them CIA agents, high-ranking government officials, and a handful of taut cabana boys who thought wrongly that they even stood a chance. She cast them all aside and devoted herself only to me, her daughter, her one true love.
I had been watching underwater while she showed me the correct way to execute the frog kick when a reef shark with a deformed, corkscrew fin slid out behind her. The ocean dampened my scream when he opened his face and crushed her in two bites. He turned to flash me a toothy grin that was gushing her blood.
Thrashing made me the perfect next target, but I was yanked from the red foam by an old Hawaiian who had been snacking on roasted poi in banana leaves just before the attack. That sickening sweet stink was still on his breath when he pulled me up by one arm.
And in this moment, dripping milk in this dim apartment, all I can smell is that stench of rancid poi leaking from under this fat man’s arms — arms which I actually cannot see but have to be buried somewhere beneath the touchable chub and smooth skin that is unique to Polynesians. And with the deftness of a greased ninja, one blubbery wing snakes backward, grabs me by the dental floss and flips me twice in the air. I land on my knees in front of him with such force, they are definitely shattered.
Fucking fat Hawaiian. Now I’ll need surgery.
“Where did your people take her?” I hissed.
Already, he has my hands wrapped in a tight cat’s cradle made of unwaxed dental floss. I like the look. My hands seem slutty in fishnets.
“Where did we take her? If you knew anything at all, Princess, you’d be way more concerned about where she took us.”
They snatched her, and now they’ve sent somebody else to finish the job. To terminate any witnesses.
I lie in the milk and listen.
Traffic below the window. Taxi horns. Prostitutes slamming car doors. A bar fight spilling out onto the sidewalk.
Then another click. Coming from the bedroom. And the white noise of a radio tuned in between stations. Followed by the pained squeal of mattress springs heaving under the weight of a healthy-sized backside.
If I stand up, I run the risk of dripping and giving away my position. So I roll silently from the puddle of milk to my purse near the bedroom door. I’ve got dental floss inside. Cinnamint. (Here’s a Heloise Hint for you: unwaxed dental floss, when wrapped carefully around the index and middle fingers of both hands, has the tensile strength of piano wire and can slice through neck skin like a cheese cutter slides through a good smoked gouda.)
From my purse, I roll toward the bedroom and peek inside.
Male. Fat. Hawaiian shirt. Wispy hair slicked back in oily furrows. He is at the far edge of the bed, facing the opposite wall which makes me smile: he is defenseless as a lard sculpture in the sun. Rolls of his back fat ripple from side to side as he frantically punches buttons on an old tape recorder in a way that suggests he has no idea what he’s doing.
“Piece! Of! Shit! I AM pressing ‘play’ and ‘record’ at the same time!”
An idiot. I’m sensing opportunity.
I roll next to the bed, stand up lightly behind him to do the math. If the floss is too tight, it will break. Too much slack and it will never burrow through all that neck fat to hit windpipe.
I tighten it just enough to turn my fingertips cold and purple.
He’s still punching buttons. I reach for him. Now.
“Isn’t it ironic?” His voice stops me cold.
“There’s a completely naked woman behind me dripping with milk. And me, without a single cookie.”
The first clothes I take off are my suede boots.
If I am playing strip poker with whoever took her away, I’m already one game ahead.
Next, the jacket drops to the floor. Followed by tailored black pants. Ivory silk blouse. Bra and panties fall into the spilled milk which is stretching out across the floor like a white blood stain.
Clothes. They were all too heavy on me.
Leaning against the wall for support, I bang my head on it to be sure it’s solid.
This is all real.
Too real.
So I slide down the wall slowly. Lie face down in the puddle. Just my chilled skin on pure milk. Absorbing vitamins and calcium through my pores to shore up my bones which have suddenly gone soft. I’m like a pink kangaroo baby born premature. Left the pouch too soon thinking I knew what the fuck I was doing. But now I’m starving here by myself. Have to face the fact that I probably won’t make it.
And why should I? This is the way of things. Think of all the baby water buffalo snapped underwater by alligators hiding beneath the wash during rainy season. All the baby turtles picked off by birds before they can make it to the safety of the ocean. How many of us are murdered before we even begin to partially bloom? We are beyond counting. We are Nature’s half-baked, and we are legion.
Click.
There’s someone still in this apartment.
Cucumber melon liquid soap, body spray and hand cream. Tiny hand soaps in the shape of watermelon wedges. It’s a fruit fucking salad in here, but I am not convinced. This woman has something to hide.
The sink fixtures are smooth to the touch, contemporary, all Price-Pfister. Lime-colored towels under the sink. Lemony cleanser. And Charmin bathroom tissue to dabble on her strawberry-flavored ass.
I hate this bitch.
A fancy European showerhead sends down a wide shower like an April rain. How convenient that you happen to be there completely nude, holding your loofah and bath gel.
Not a speck of mold in between the tiles.
That’s it. I’m moving on to where all women’s terrible secrets are kept: I’m moving on to the medicine cabinet.
My fingers, in black leather, slink onto the backsplash, over the ivory wallpaper, and coast to a stop next to the mirrored medicine cabinet. I want to prolong this moment.
Oh, fuck it.
I open the mirror wide, with a grand gesture, ready to be shocked and horrified.
But I’m not.
There is not one single incriminating thing in here. Not an eyedropper of Visine, not a can of anti-fungal spray, not even a tube of whitening toothpaste. The only thing behind this medicine cabinet is a plain white recipe card with the following quotation penned carefully in blue ballpoint, and taped to the back of the cabinet:
“Thy faith hath made thee whole”.
You cunt.
As I leave the bathroom, I hear the crash of two glasses and the unmistakable thud of a carton of milk hitting the floor.
Her voice is panicked. “Take me! Take me! She’s not ready!”
I run to the kitchen. But she is gone.
She’s gone, and all the milk is spilled.
Do I want to see her room, she asks me?
Oh, I see.
Like this is afternoon playgroup.
Well, let me first explain that this is the afternoon playgroup run by your evil nanny with an uncontrollable desire to lace her tongue between the spaces in your sandals where your toes peek out. Did I explain that?
Well, then. By all means. Lead the way.
She puts her arm around my neck in a stranglehold that means business, restricting my air passage in a way that only junkies and dogs on a leash can fully appreciate.
We slide down a pocket of air and drop through the open window of a penthouse loft with a queen-sized bed for a landing pad . Even in the dark, I can feel the brightness emanating from her yellow walls. Wedding veil curtains. Two fresh-cut lilies in a vase.
She can’t be this fresh. This daisy-like.
“Look around,” she tells me. “I’ll pour you a drink. Vitamin D alright, baby?”
She knows my brand.
That doesn’t prove anything!
I move to the underwear drawer. Before I open it, I try to guess what I will find. Lemon-colored thongs, ribbons in shades of peach and mango, bikinis with wild cherries and roses.
But I am wrong.
When I slide open the drawer, it is full of white, cotton, full-bottom undies. And not one single bra in the place.
This is a girl with issues.
When she hits me with the whipped cream, she shoots me into the fifth dimension.
Maybe it is our scalding hot moment in the milk. Maybe it is the actual impact. Maybe it is the whiff of nitrous oxide escaping its canister that grabs me by the hair and drags me around the corner into the next universe.
Bitch is gonna pay.
With the sound of a zipper, I slide out of my own chest like I am sliding out of a body bag. From above, I see a circle of clacking puppets drawing around my body as I lie bleeding. Legs akimbo. If the dairy manager had a stick, he would have poked at me like a dead tiger. I smile inside, because even though I’m not even conscious, he’s keeping a careful distance. I still have blood on my mouth and he has no idea where I’ve been.
Pathetic.
But me? I’m beyond all that. I’m a bubble on the air above the Mini-Mart and I can’t control my direction. I’m being pulled backward although I’m frantically dog paddling over the city as hard as I can. Swimming is useless. I’m so high over the planet now I can feel my sinuses swelling in my face. I’m afraid my head will explode.
I am going to die. I wonder if it’s going to hurt.
I’d kill someone for a gallon of milk right now, to help me swallow this death rattle caught in my throat.
Then like a squirrel in the road, who should appear in the middle of my careening death spiral into space?
She smiles.
I lash out to claw her cheek but miss her by a mile.
“So listen, baby,” she says from behind me. “Do you want to come see my bedroom?”
She is a fuzzy peach pulsing in the glow of the fluorescent dairy case. Beneath her skin, there is a tang. A perfect ripeness.
So I bite her.
I lunge at her with an open mouth, and bite into her shoulder. Surprising. I taste blood instead of juice.
She slaps my ear and it rings like a silver bell. So I grab her lovely throat and throw her back against the butter display. Margarine slides out of spilled crocks onto the hard linoleum. And we wrestle like puppies there in the butter and the blood.
She is slippery but I am very patient. When she relaxes for a moment to catch her breath, I use my momentum to slide onto her chest and pin her. She struggles beneath me, but it is too late: I am already working the ancient origami milk magic that will enchant her and bind her to me for the rest of her days.
Separating carefully the two sides of the sealed opening of the carton, I pop out the cardboard middle into a perfect point. I hold it over her for so long, threatening her with it, teasing her with it as her skin wonders when it will land. Finally, I let a single drop fall like a sizzling spatter of Crisco from the carton onto the vague protrusion of a nipple under her blouse. Her back arches to meet it. She giggles at me.
Taking the carton from me, she yanks my face close to hers, and slowly pours the milk over my head. It rolls through my hair like a bridal veil. I love her face then, dripping white with the life force food that has nourished a thousand generations of tottering Hindu calves.
Her warm lips breathe into my ear….”Koneeeee..cheeeeeee…waaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
And that Japanese assassin bitch slips out from underneath me, smacks me in the side of the head with a whipped cream canister, and I am out like a light at midnight
I leap over my cart like a steeplechaser. Snatching that cold milk right out of her grasp — that soft, petulant grip like, oh, she never meant to take it in the first place. Like she was only teasing.
She giggles at me, and butterflies leave her mouth, tickling my face before they float west toward the bakery section. I want to snatch one and jab a pin through it into a piece of cardboard. The smoke, the heat, the butterflies rising — it is like a swamp in that dairy section. An egg cracks from spontaneous combustion.
It is time to show the bitch who is Boss.
She sees me looking at her. Her eyes dart to the tiny, single-serve boxes of milk on the top shelf! I know exactly what’s she’s thinking. Green cat eyes. She turns from me and stretches from the very upper reaches of the dairy case to grab the coldest, the freshest, the most perfect container at the very back of the line, all the time her tight skirt hiking closer and closer to that tender split infinitive protected by only the thinnest gossamer layer of cotton panty.
Her arms are raised. Basking in the coolness of the refrigerator section.
Her face is glowing, like she just mowed the lawn. Or she just ran a mile to get here. Or she just had a passionate moment in the parking lot with a purse-sized vibrating egg hot enough to melt her naugahyde bucket seat.
Her cart is nearly empty. Only a plastic container of ripe strawberries, and a cantaloupe. She is checking and rechecking them, thumping the melons with such feverish intensity that sweat is starting to appear in rings under her bra strap and a dark triangle of moisture is collecting in the small of her back. The intensity of her effort is causing moisture to bake from between her breasts. In fact, smoke appears to be rising.
The only thing that stands between me and my milk now is the dairy manager who is on his knees, stocking up the whipped cream canisters he hasn’t been sucking on in the back.
“Ma’am,” he nods in my direction. A fleck of cream still sticks to his beard.
My eyes roll back in your head. I try to control it. My teeth are grinding now.
“I do not need help. Of any kind. Especially. From. You.”
I am a mule, and I want to kick him in the head and watch his teeth fly out.
I want to crush those white, dairy-loving teeth and see their dust end up on a beach in a Cape Town.
Or in the hoof of a Nepalese llama.
Or on the tongue of a thirsty Bedouin who forgot to keep his mouth shut when the wind kicked up.
Then I see her.
It smells like dripping cucumbers, like dropped eggs, like Lysol, and money that’s caked with a thick layer of finger grease.
Just get the milk. And get out.
“The dairy section! Where are you hiding the dairy section? Up your fucking ass?”
The produce manager points with one of the cucumbers. Go Left.
Down the cereal aisle.
Carefully take down a tall box of plain Cheerios to go with my perfect white milk.
“Mama! Mama, I want this kind!”
Chubby little baby fingers point toward the Frankenberry. It’s all I can do not to grab those outstretched little pillow hands and put them in my mouth.
I reach down a box of Count Chocula and hand them to the child.
“Try these, little one.” Wink. “Be daring.”
The mother quickly places herself between me and the child.
“Pretty girl,” I tell her, and keep moving.
Sunshine is pouring through my window, but I yank it shut.
You would never know this, but behind the bathroom mirror lie my tools. And this exacting work demands all my concentration. Unfolding the clippers carefully, I follow that single crooked varicose vein that leads from my inner thigh all the way down to my pulsing, pink, beautiful toe.
Cold precision snip.
It’s perfect.
I want to cut further. I want to cut deep enough that I’ll feel this tomorrow with every step. But I am so practiced in the art of self-restraint.
My toenails are caught by the breeze as they fall from my toes. I watch them fly like tiny spider babies thumbing a ride out of town. Piling up like snow over the newspapers in my driveway, and on the backs of dogs sleeping on my porch, it’s a sign that new season has begun.
I choose my black boots to go with my black suede jacket. They look classic against the snow as I march to my Mini-Mart Doom.
When I enter that establishment, I am a long-dead pirate who’s sailed into the public wading pool by accident. There are no humans here. They are puppets, and their slack little mouths fall open if a string isn’t there to hold them up. Their teeth clack together and they have no idea what to say.
“Hello, Miss!”
The produce manager turns toward me with a dripping cucumber in each hand.
“Put those down! How the fuck dare you?!” I hiss at him.
Pervert. You’ve known men like him. He shakes his head and goes back to building his little cucumber house of cards. Like he didn’t mean it that way. But I know what was said, and I’m on to that shit.
There had been a gallon in the refrigerator at the start of the evening, but last night was too thrilling. I had washed my face in it. I had dipped my feet in it. I had let my questions roll over a bowl of it like white waves on a Japanese ocean. And in the end, I had filled my favorite spike-heeled pump with cold, white milk and drunk it down so deeply that I went to bed giddy with a hot sake belly burn.
And here I am. The morning after. My shoe is ruined, and I am staring into the empty metal box that is my fridge.
Or maybe I haven’t had milk for days. I can remember that too.
Regardless.
What it means is that today I must clip my toenails, put on my jacket, and walk out into the daylight glare in my lovely, porcelain, milk-soaked skin.
Today, I have no choice. Today, I must visit The Mini-Mart.
