099185 an old ass ruff cut
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Maybe a longer one. Bzzzz. Okay.
Now, people. People walking, people listening to their feet, people peeking at eachother from windows, touching each other through computers. Okay.
Not lots of people. Not a group of individuals, but all of them. One thing. Not a big complicated thing, a big simple thing. One you can hold in your mind. Not a big teeming tongue of the universe tasting itself, no. Just a big body wrapped around the world pissing and screaming. Doesn't know what it wants. That’s better. That’s more like it. Smiles all around.
Everyone’s talking at once. Quiet now. All extending down city streets, down every drain, around every corner. That’s a big word, every.
Bzz. Bzz bzzz. One alley in one city. A sound like a kazoo. A little man down at the end, smoking something, smoking something that makes music like a children’s music box as he drags and drags from it. A window up above. An older woman in her curlers yelling by the window. She’s throwing her husband out. He’s screaming and leaving. She’s staring at the phone. At the goddamned dresser he kept in the living room because he always slept on the couch. She hated it, but put all of his clothes in it anyway. He had told her that he was coming back for it. She told him good. Looked at the phone. Looked at the rings from all the coffee mugs he had left there, that she peeled off the table. Like she had had to peel him up off the couch. He was almost part of it. Looked sickly when he had to leave, yellow above his yellow beard. She saw the chicken bones he had shoved in the butter there. It was a wonder he got up and went to work. She wiped her hands on her pants. He seemed to regret leaving his couch more than he regretted leaving her.
She sits there the next day, staring at the phone. She’s still getting his money. She’s still got a lot of her own saved up. She goes to the kitchen and makes two eggs, one piece of toast. She gets her phone book and calls up an old friend from the department store. The toast is delicious, but only with the runny egg on it. The friend tells her that everything is on, that she’s set up with a man, next Tuesday, three days away. His name is Richard. She knows he’s too young for her and loves it. She doesn’t know how the friend got her the date. She gets her dress out of the mothballs. In the kitchen, the coffee is ready. She puts it on a coaster this time. Spits on one of the gooey rings still left on the table and wipes it off with the bottom of her dress. She waited through Jeopardy. Dipped a Kroger muffin in the mug through dateline. Then she put the curlers back in and went to sleep. The bed didn’t feel any different, didn’t make her think back to Tom. She had slept in this bed alone since their second year of marriage.
Her friends had told her she couldn’t do it. Said that it’s just how marriage goes, that you just have to keep going. What was she going to do at this age anyway? Get a man? Sure, she said. Sure I will. She waited until things were sure, talked with Debra at work. Found a young one. One who wouldn’t sleep on the damned couch.
She woke in the middle of the night that night with her night gown worked up over her belly button like it always was. She heard a Bzz bzz bzz coming in through the window, out the alley. She got up, pulled her gown back below her knees, and looked down into the alley beside her apartment. There was a little midget bum down there playing something. Or smoking something. She couldn’t tell. Probably didn’t matter anyway, she mused to herself. Anyone who plays something smokes something too. She sipped water from the cup on her bedside table and went back to sleep.
Next morning she went to work. Came back. Debra didn’t work that day, nothing to talk about. She made a ham sandwich and another cup of coffee. Pushed the dresser up against the wall next to the door. She had stuffed everything of Tom’s back into it already. Almost everything he had fit in. Most everything was cloth. He had more undershirts than he had shirts. She put his ashtray on top of it, got it off the balcony. She never trusted that balcony. Secretly hoped it would fall someday so that she wouldn’t have to throw Tom’s sorry ass out. That wasn’t the whole reason she made him smoke out there, but it was a nice bonus. At least the throwing him out had been easier than expected. She had been wise to put her name on the lease. She wondered where Tom had gone. Why he hadn’t called crying yet. She sat back on the couch and patted her brown curls, crossed her hands on her belly, looked at the top of them. Danity hands, she had always thought. Fat women always think they have nice hands, Tom had said once. Always think their tits are the best too. Just cause they get huge while all the rest goes to shit. Too bad they’re always like pancakes when they get em outta their bras. She frowned. He hadn’t even drank and he had said that shit. Good thing she had held out after that. If he didn’t like her body, well, he couldn’t stick his thing in it. She held her head high now, turned on the TV. Some young stud would be getting her soon. She wiggled her hips to push her butt back on the couch, felt like a woman doing it. She put her feet up.
They were to meet at Vincinso’s the next day. Italian, she thought, a big Italian place with big plates of spaghetti for us to share. Just like the lady and the tramp. She loved that movie. Didn’t know why, it was the one children’s movie that had stuck with her. Maybe it was the animals in it, she thought. I’ve always been kind to animals. Maybe I’m just happy that they can find love too.
The word love brought up Tom. She thought of his face. It wasn’t unattractive, she could still admit, but it was hard and used looking. Like a catcher’s mitt. Maybe not. Maybe she had just looked at it too long so that it had stopped making sense, like a word repeated. He had been forceful, always moved her out of the way and told her what she was doing wrong. But, at the same time, he always wanted to be left alone. Looked annoyed that he had to get up and do anything, especially if it was for her. They hadn’t made love for a good year or more because he refused to do it on the bed, and she refused to do it on the couch.
She fell asleep with the TV on that night, woke up to the sound of the Bzz bzz bzz like wind over wax paper. That instrument again. She was glad it had woken her, really, didn’t want to sleep the night through on the couch. She looked down to the alley again, this time through the living room window. She almost knocked over her only plant doing so. She saw a little whisper of a face down there, someone else with the musician. There was still a terrible amount of smoke, but she could tell that whoever owned the face, was dancing. Dancing with their arms out as if giving themselves up. They bent at the waist and wiggled towards the midget. He was little more than a smile, silvery moon eyes, crazy eyes, she thought. She tried to make out the rest of his body, but it blended in with the darkness at the back of the alley, like a black crayon jammed into a piece of shit. She didn’t know where to draw the line between the two. She could tell that he was wearing a white tank top, a ‘wife beater’ they called them nowadays, casually. She went to bed.
“So you like Disney?” She asked, swirling spaghetti on her fork. She hadn’t even needed to look at the menu. She was dead set on spaghetti and meatballs, knew they would have it. What Italian place wouldn’t? She tried to get the big plate to share, but Richard wouldn’t have it. He was quiet. She would have to draw him out.
“Um, sure.” He said, covering his mouth. A bit of sauce dripped out, speckled and white. “As much as the next guy, I suppose. You know, the same way everyone likes the Beatles nowadays. There’s just no way around it.” He was definitely too young for her. Looked freshly thirty. He was nice though. She crossed her legs, the top her thigh pressing against the bottom of the table. She extended her hand.
“I’m Grace, by the way.” He took his out of his jacket pocket, reached and shook hers over his alfredo, looked a little down and past their hands as if she might drip something into his food.
“Oh yes, Debra told me. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself either. I just thought, you know, we both got the names and the setup and-“
“Richard.” She smiled. “It’s a good name”
“Sure is,” he gurgled. He had found time to grab another bite of his alfredo.
His suitjacket was too nice, she thought. Too nice for this place. He had looked apprehensive about it when he first came in. Had put his hand in the pocket casually and thrust his head down. He was still doing it. Had put that hand back in his pocket.
“So this is awful… I don’t know, lady and the tramp?”
“Yes,” she almost squealed, lighting up, “isn’t it? Gawd, that’s just what I was thinking before I left. I can’t believe you thought it too it’s just so… gawd.”
“Well, you know,” he motioned with his for as he talked. It was clean. “Like I said. You’ve got to love Disney, it’s like-”
“The Beatles,” she finished. “Just like the Beatles. Oh, I love the Beatles too.”
He was quiet. Finished in fifteen minutes.
She tried to get him to come home with him. Didn’t want to play the normal dating game, had been married to long to do so. She just wanted a man who would actually sleep in her bed with her. She didn’t care how the sex was, as long as he had fun and then stayed there next to her. Oh god, she thought, I’m getting ahead of myself. He had only agreed to walk her home. He hadn’t spoken since they had gotten out of the restaurant. He pointed at signs sometimes, other businesses and things, told her where was good for drycleaning, that he knew Jimmy over at the smoke shop. He was a good guy. She could see his undershirt now through his white button up. The tie had slipped to the side.
When they got to her apartment, she turned to face him. They were right in front of the double door to the lobby. She was glad to live in a place with a lobby. It reminded her of the courting room her father had built onto the front of the house for her when she was a girl. She couldn’t wait to walk right through the lobby and go up the elevator, ignore the whole thing. She had hated it when her dad peeked through the door, made sure that there were four feet on the ground when he did. She wanted to stomp all over that place. Stomp on her father for embarrassing her so many times. She wanted to trample the lobby with this man and keep on going.
His eyes avoided hers. She took him as shy, not at all like his build. Or, maybe just not like the suit he was wearing. She went in for a kiss. Bzz bzzzz hu- bzzzz it started from the alley. She looked back, saw the smoke and the instrument again. Two moon eyes. It kept on, rhythmic but atonal. Bzzz bzz bzz, like a kazoo, really. She could see the cherry of a cigarette. Richard started to move a little bit, to dance. She looked at him, confused. He was more so.
“What the heck?” he looked at his feet.
“You don’t want him!” a voice called from the alley. “You don’t! I got something you want! I can make it! Ha HAH!” his voice was like a train car going over a bump in the rails, slamming back down. Big metal on big metal.
“Will you please take me inside? I’m scared.” She gave him her best doe eyes. He looked terrified, shifting his weight from right to left. Bzz bzz, it started back up.
“Yeah, sure.” He said. “I- just need to…” he pushed her forward, forceful. She grabbed his arm and put it around her when they got in, couldn’t get it all the way around. When they got into the carpeted elevator, he asked “Can you hear that guy from your apartment?”
“No,” she said, “Barely maybe.” She would just keep him away from the windows. His quiet little eyes were darting all around. She could see the spots around his jaw where he hadn’t shaved all the way.
Richard only sat in the apartment long enough to catch his breath. He looked like he hadn’t planned on coming up here. She tried to inch closer to him on the couch. The table was clean. He got up quickly, walked over to the dresser.
“This is pretty nice,” he said, running his hand over it. “good place for it. I always get erm… frustrated when I realize I’ve forgotten a shirt or something and always have to go back to the bedroom for it. I need to get a dresser like this, keep it by the door. Dress on your way out, you know?”
She didn’t respond, clenched her teeth and nodded. He walked around the apartment a bit more and then left. She stole a kiss before he got out, slipped in some tongue to let him know she would go further if he wanted. He just raised his eyebrows at her, turned. Tease, she thought, he’s a tease. Trying to hold out for another date. We’re all young men like this? She heard the kazoo music start up again about five minutes after he left. She looked out the window but couldn’t see a thing through all the fog.
When she woke the next day, she was on the couch again TV on, still in her nice dress. It would be all wrinkled now.
She looked to the window and was startled. She thought she saw a big face there for a second, something shining but translucent. She jumped.
She set the toaster and filled the coffee pot with water, grounds. She opened the fridge and remembered that she had been woken last light. The bzzing was so loud that she had to turn the TV up. She thought that Richard had called her too, but when she picked up the phone, there was just a weird dial tone. All sped up sounding. It was too soon after he left though, he hadn't even had a chance to get home. It must have been a dream. She tapped her nails on the counter. Why had he left so quick? It still looked like a man lived here. That was the problem with this place. She would have to make it look like a single lady lived here. Put some doiley’s and wal-mart flower pictures around. That would do it.
Checkout lane was dull that day. She had changed into a sweater and some jeans that swallowed up her belly, buttoned right over her belly button. She was always afraid that she was going to get reprimanded when she had to work register. She always rang things up too fast, never looked at the screen. When she rang them fast like that, they didn’t go through some times. You were supposed to look at the screen and make sure that they did. She never remembered.
Back in the plastic break room, she found Debra. Debra was a skinny thing, wearing a sweater too. It was much tighter, stretched across her little boobs. They poked up like dents in paper.
“So how’d it go?” she asked, absentmindedly. She told her it went well, gave her most of the details. Debra looked like she always did, like she couldn’t wait to get back to work. Such a hard worker she was. Debra gave her his number in case she wanted to call before he did. She said wouldn’t dream of it, but she took it anyway.
Four days later, he still hadn't called her. She had put two doily’s down on tables by then, taken down a lot of the posters around the couch. She called the number Debra had given her on the sixth day, but he didn’t pick up. She began to think about Tom again. She picked up the phone from the table and called his mom, the only other place he could have been. His mom picked up, told me in her wavering little doe voice that no, he hadn’t been by. Tom's mom asked why she had called. She didn’t want to tell her what it was that she had done right then, so she didn’t. Just told her that he wasn’t home yet, that she was wondering where he was, and hung up. She went to the kitchen and got another Kroger muffin, lemon.
Richard showed up the next day without calling. He was there standing outside of her door when she got back from work, still wearing the same suit and tie he had worn a week ago. She decided not to say anything about it, just greeted him instead.
“Hello!” She said, a little too happy. She walked towards him as fast as she could from the elevator, twisting her hips forward and raising her arms, as if running. He smiled big, looked a little sick. He hugged her back, weakly.
When I opened the door, he frowned. “Why all the doily’s?” He asked. There were only two. She stopped and leaned in the doorway “and the posters? Where did they go?”
She looked a little offended. “Oh you know, cleaning up. I just thought they didn’t fit quite with the apartment. I didn’t take down much though.”
“I kind of liked them.” He sat down on the couch without bothering to move the bottom of his blazer. It folded under him and wrinkled a little bit. He scratched at the cushion like a cat in a litter box.
“I didn’t think you had even noticed what was in the apartment when you were over here. You were pretty shook up by that bum.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He said, strangely dismissive. She brought two cups of coffee over to the table. “I don’t know what was going on with that.” He laughed. She had never heard him laugh before.
She sat down next to him, sipped her coffee, put her feet up on the table. She thought about turning the TV on, but didn’t. They talked about work. Talked about family. He sounded like he didn’t go out a whole lot, was maybe more boring than her, despite his age.
The conversation actually went okay. She leaned over and kissed him. He seemed startled, stared at the now clean table angrily. She asked what was wrong. He said that it had been a long time since someone had kissed him. She looked at him, confused. He turned on the TV after a second, let her kiss him some more. He kept it on the channel it was already on, was usually on, 41. Watched dateline. They made love on the couch during a rerun of mash. He lasted about fifteen minutes, enough time for her to have that thing she thought was an orgasm. He didn’t finish, just said he was done after a while, rolled off of her. She didn’t remember going to sleep, but she woke up alone in the bed.
She had to swirl her hair up with the big circular brush because she hadn’t put her curlers in. She started the coffee, got the eggs out of the fridge. She thought she would make a grand little breakfast before she went off to work. She couldn’t wait to tell Debra.
She walked a little bit out of the kitchen and stared at him on the couch for a while. Richard, no shirt. He didn’t look as young as when she had first seen him, but god damn he was attractive. His skin was like calf leather, but his stubble looked hard and manly. He should grow a beard, she thought. She walked back into the kitchen and heated up the skillet, made four fried eggs and bacon. He woke up when the bacon went on, but didn’t get up off the couch. He just sat up and put his feet up on the table, turned the TV on. She brought him a mug of coffee, lay their two plates down in front of them when it was all done.
She tried to talk to him, but he just said yes to everything and stared at the TV. She wasn’t sure if he was ashamed because of what happened last night, or if he was just being shy again.
“You don’t have to be shy anymore,” she said, adventurously. “I’ve seen you. We know eachother pretty well now.”
He just gave her a wry smile, reached over and pulled his blazer on over him, no shirt on. She thought it would get dirty like that, but didn’t say anything.
When she left, she told him that he could stay there until she got back to work if he wanted. He just nodded. She looked forward to seeing him, but wondered why he wasn’t going to work. Maybe he was off today. She didn’t feel that she could ask.
She saw Debra in the back before she went up the the checkout line, she was at her locker, putting her necklaces away. She always had nice ones, little stars, circles, fairies.
“So Richard came over last night.” She said, an uncontrollable half smile stuck on her face.
Debra turned to her quickly, “Really? Is that where he’s been?”
“Been? No, he was just there last night. I couldn’t even get a hold of him before that.”
“So he just showed up?” She closed her locker.
“Yep. Just showed up.”
“Hmm. Well tell him to call. His friends have been asking me about him. I didn’t realize he was you know, all caught up with something else.” Debra winked, walked off before she had a chance to protest.
She hated the way her hair looked when she hadn’t curled it properly, but went out there anyway. Made sure to scan everything real slow so that the computer would pick it all up. They had been checking her receipts, making sure that the stock sold matched up with what had left the store. She protested that stolen stuff would come back on her, but they just said that she could reconcile that with the cop on duty. She didn’t follow.
She got a rip in the bottom of my dress at about lunchtime. Right when she realized that she hadn’t brought anything with her to eat. She got something out of the snack machine and crunched on it in the break room, on one of the white plastic lawn chairs in there.
Richard was still on the couch when she got home. she was happy to see him, wrapped her arms around him from behind the couch and kissed him. The top of the couch left a little dent in her belly, crinkled her floral shirt. She was a little nervous, didn’t know if a man should really stay over this long in the first week of the relationship. He didn’t seem to think about it.
She was happy. He stayed on the couch like Tom had, stayed there for the next two weeks, but she didn’t think it was a bad thing. He wasn’t at all like him. He was much too nice, talked with her still about Disney sometimes. Never ate her muffins. She knew that she was going to have to get the divorce papers filed soon. That she would have to find some way to contact Tom. She didn’t want to call his mom again, thought she probably already knew, would scream at her, maybe wouldn’t even tell Tom that she had called. Tom could still be staying in hotels though. He had never really spent his money from work, probably had enough to go on for a while.
Three weeks later, she still hadn’t called. She was walking back home from work when she heard the Bzz noise again, heard it soft and low, not at all rhythmic, just humming from the back of the alley. She had begun to get annoyed with Richard.
She opened her apartment door and found him on the couch still, wearing the same suit. They had made love once since the first time, but it was on the couch again. It had scratched up her back. She tried to get on top to fix it, but it didn’t work. She didn’t want to think about it.
She walked up behind Richard and kissed him on the top of his head. He reached up and scratched his scalp. She went into the kitchen and grabbed a muffin, tried to go sit next to him on the couch. She moved his blazer out of the way.
When he turned to look at her, she jumped back, dropped her muffin. His face was all old like a catcher’s mit, he had a beard now. She hadn’t even noticed it growing, but it must have, he hadn’t brought a razor over. She looked down to her muffin, all shattered into chunks, and looked back up. She still didn’t like what she saw. He started complaining, said that she was always dropping stuff. Richard stood up, grabbed her by the shoulders and moved her over, gentle but firm. He grabbed the muffin bits and smooshed them into a ball, put them in one of the leftover coffee mugs on the table. She shuddered.
“I need to take a walk,” she said. Left.
The bzz was still going on in the alley, light meandering. She knew it was stupid, but she turned and walked down the alley.
It was all smoky back there, that little cherry still glowing in the back. The music picked up, became some kind of dance tune. She walked as carefully as she could, watching the ground for glass and rocks.
When she got back there, she began to feel a little pull on her chest. She could see the midget now, in dirty coveralls with a strange instrument in his mouth. It looked like a pipe, yes, but it had a crank on one side like an organ grinder, three valves from a trumpet, and a piece of metal and waxpaper for the mouthpiece. Something was lit and glowing on the lefthand side. It was louder than she could have imagined.
The pull on her chest grew, probably from the force of the sound, as the cherry brightened, like someone hitting a cigarette. She didn’t know what to ask the midget. Told him to shut up, that he kept her up at nights. He stopped abruptly and smiled. She caught her breath, felt a little sheepish now in the silence. The smoke began to clear.
“I ain’t what’s keeping you up at night.” He said, dryly.
“Yeah, well you almost ruined a perfectly good date.” She said, crossing her arms. “Popping out of the alley, scaring people.”
“Not my fault maim, not my fault. Man was just a pussy. Startled easy, you know-“
“Hey now!” her face all red “I don’t want to hear that kind of language, and especially not-“
He began to play again, loud and suddenly. She could feel her organs moving in the rhythm to the music, could feel them better than she ever had, as if they were about to burst through her skin and out into the alley. She screamed. He took his mouth away from the instrument again, the cherry died down.
“Now you don’t disrespect me, and I won’t disrespect you.” He said, the same crazy lilt to his voice she had heard the first time he yelled to her.
She agreed, sarcastically. The smoke began to move, twirled up like snakes to heaven. She shifted her weight.
“So how you like yer new man?” He asked, smiling still. A dirty little smile, like the soft clammy place between one's thighs.
“Like him fine. Like I said, I’m just glad he stuck around. He could’ve run off on me easily after that scare.” He didn’t look offended this time. “But he came right on back. I was sure he would, you know.”
“Oh he wouldnt’ve, not if it wasn’t for me.” He put the instrument on the ground, straightened his coveralls. Her head felt funny. “Nope nope nope. I gave him he needed- er, what you needed. You know I got it.” She began to turn away, thought that he was coming onto her.
The smoke was all clear now. She could see that there were two dumpsters in the alley. What she guessed her trash went to when she dumped it down the chute in the hallway. She saw some of her husbands clothes under one of them. Didn’t remember throwing them out, thought that they were still in the dresser. She walked over, bent down with some trouble and poked through them. She saw some yellow hair tucked into the pocket of the shirt. She pulled it out by the bottom hem and found shook the hair out of the pocket. It was her husband's beard. She looked to the dwarf. He didn't move, looked like he was caught between leaning and standing. She asked if he had stolen her husband's clothes. He just stayed, like a frame in a movie. She reached under the green metal and tried to pull the pair of jeans out from under the dumpster's black wheel. She looked down to see why it wouldn't come and saw her husband’s skin behind them. Jumped back, looked at the dwarf.
“Oh hey now, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do it.” His smile had dropped. Fallen right off his face. “Look now, I just dance organs. Ya see?” he stepped to the side. There was a little red pile behind him. “Now I don’t do nothing without purpose. I knew what you wanted. Saw you walkin’ out here every day. Knew you didn’t know what you wanted, and knew I did. So I danced some organs.” He stopped picked up his instrument again. “Danced em right outta your husband, and into that Richard guy. Wired him up just the same. If you really want Richard, here’s him right here,” he motioned towards the red, “But I don’t think he’s at all good anymore. Never was really. You’re happy now, you know? You’re happy.”
She looked up to her window and saw Richard standing there. Richard all stuffed up. Like a stuffed animal jammed into another stuffed animal. Did he even know? She wanted to run, but her insides were all cold and gummed.
“I know what you want.” The dwarf said, a little too loud. “I know. You just needed a new face wrapped up round the same ol shit." She stepped back and fell. Tom had sneaked back in.
Richard had jammed himself under the couch when she got back upstairs. Stayed down there like a stain in the apartment eating crumbs and complaining. She stayed over in the kitchen and bathroom, didn't even try to get him out, just smiled and didn’t.
Now, people. People walking, people listening to their feet, people peeking at eachother from windows, touching each other through computers. Okay.
Not lots of people. Not a group of individuals, but all of them. One thing. Not a big complicated thing, a big simple thing. One you can hold in your mind. Not a big teeming tongue of the universe tasting itself, no. Just a big body wrapped around the world pissing and screaming. Doesn't know what it wants. That’s better. That’s more like it. Smiles all around.
Everyone’s talking at once. Quiet now. All extending down city streets, down every drain, around every corner. That’s a big word, every.
Bzz. Bzz bzzz. One alley in one city. A sound like a kazoo. A little man down at the end, smoking something, smoking something that makes music like a children’s music box as he drags and drags from it. A window up above. An older woman in her curlers yelling by the window. She’s throwing her husband out. He’s screaming and leaving. She’s staring at the phone. At the goddamned dresser he kept in the living room because he always slept on the couch. She hated it, but put all of his clothes in it anyway. He had told her that he was coming back for it. She told him good. Looked at the phone. Looked at the rings from all the coffee mugs he had left there, that she peeled off the table. Like she had had to peel him up off the couch. He was almost part of it. Looked sickly when he had to leave, yellow above his yellow beard. She saw the chicken bones he had shoved in the butter there. It was a wonder he got up and went to work. She wiped her hands on her pants. He seemed to regret leaving his couch more than he regretted leaving her.
She sits there the next day, staring at the phone. She’s still getting his money. She’s still got a lot of her own saved up. She goes to the kitchen and makes two eggs, one piece of toast. She gets her phone book and calls up an old friend from the department store. The toast is delicious, but only with the runny egg on it. The friend tells her that everything is on, that she’s set up with a man, next Tuesday, three days away. His name is Richard. She knows he’s too young for her and loves it. She doesn’t know how the friend got her the date. She gets her dress out of the mothballs. In the kitchen, the coffee is ready. She puts it on a coaster this time. Spits on one of the gooey rings still left on the table and wipes it off with the bottom of her dress. She waited through Jeopardy. Dipped a Kroger muffin in the mug through dateline. Then she put the curlers back in and went to sleep. The bed didn’t feel any different, didn’t make her think back to Tom. She had slept in this bed alone since their second year of marriage.
Her friends had told her she couldn’t do it. Said that it’s just how marriage goes, that you just have to keep going. What was she going to do at this age anyway? Get a man? Sure, she said. Sure I will. She waited until things were sure, talked with Debra at work. Found a young one. One who wouldn’t sleep on the damned couch.
She woke in the middle of the night that night with her night gown worked up over her belly button like it always was. She heard a Bzz bzz bzz coming in through the window, out the alley. She got up, pulled her gown back below her knees, and looked down into the alley beside her apartment. There was a little midget bum down there playing something. Or smoking something. She couldn’t tell. Probably didn’t matter anyway, she mused to herself. Anyone who plays something smokes something too. She sipped water from the cup on her bedside table and went back to sleep.
Next morning she went to work. Came back. Debra didn’t work that day, nothing to talk about. She made a ham sandwich and another cup of coffee. Pushed the dresser up against the wall next to the door. She had stuffed everything of Tom’s back into it already. Almost everything he had fit in. Most everything was cloth. He had more undershirts than he had shirts. She put his ashtray on top of it, got it off the balcony. She never trusted that balcony. Secretly hoped it would fall someday so that she wouldn’t have to throw Tom’s sorry ass out. That wasn’t the whole reason she made him smoke out there, but it was a nice bonus. At least the throwing him out had been easier than expected. She had been wise to put her name on the lease. She wondered where Tom had gone. Why he hadn’t called crying yet. She sat back on the couch and patted her brown curls, crossed her hands on her belly, looked at the top of them. Danity hands, she had always thought. Fat women always think they have nice hands, Tom had said once. Always think their tits are the best too. Just cause they get huge while all the rest goes to shit. Too bad they’re always like pancakes when they get em outta their bras. She frowned. He hadn’t even drank and he had said that shit. Good thing she had held out after that. If he didn’t like her body, well, he couldn’t stick his thing in it. She held her head high now, turned on the TV. Some young stud would be getting her soon. She wiggled her hips to push her butt back on the couch, felt like a woman doing it. She put her feet up.
They were to meet at Vincinso’s the next day. Italian, she thought, a big Italian place with big plates of spaghetti for us to share. Just like the lady and the tramp. She loved that movie. Didn’t know why, it was the one children’s movie that had stuck with her. Maybe it was the animals in it, she thought. I’ve always been kind to animals. Maybe I’m just happy that they can find love too.
The word love brought up Tom. She thought of his face. It wasn’t unattractive, she could still admit, but it was hard and used looking. Like a catcher’s mitt. Maybe not. Maybe she had just looked at it too long so that it had stopped making sense, like a word repeated. He had been forceful, always moved her out of the way and told her what she was doing wrong. But, at the same time, he always wanted to be left alone. Looked annoyed that he had to get up and do anything, especially if it was for her. They hadn’t made love for a good year or more because he refused to do it on the bed, and she refused to do it on the couch.
She fell asleep with the TV on that night, woke up to the sound of the Bzz bzz bzz like wind over wax paper. That instrument again. She was glad it had woken her, really, didn’t want to sleep the night through on the couch. She looked down to the alley again, this time through the living room window. She almost knocked over her only plant doing so. She saw a little whisper of a face down there, someone else with the musician. There was still a terrible amount of smoke, but she could tell that whoever owned the face, was dancing. Dancing with their arms out as if giving themselves up. They bent at the waist and wiggled towards the midget. He was little more than a smile, silvery moon eyes, crazy eyes, she thought. She tried to make out the rest of his body, but it blended in with the darkness at the back of the alley, like a black crayon jammed into a piece of shit. She didn’t know where to draw the line between the two. She could tell that he was wearing a white tank top, a ‘wife beater’ they called them nowadays, casually. She went to bed.
“So you like Disney?” She asked, swirling spaghetti on her fork. She hadn’t even needed to look at the menu. She was dead set on spaghetti and meatballs, knew they would have it. What Italian place wouldn’t? She tried to get the big plate to share, but Richard wouldn’t have it. He was quiet. She would have to draw him out.
“Um, sure.” He said, covering his mouth. A bit of sauce dripped out, speckled and white. “As much as the next guy, I suppose. You know, the same way everyone likes the Beatles nowadays. There’s just no way around it.” He was definitely too young for her. Looked freshly thirty. He was nice though. She crossed her legs, the top her thigh pressing against the bottom of the table. She extended her hand.
“I’m Grace, by the way.” He took his out of his jacket pocket, reached and shook hers over his alfredo, looked a little down and past their hands as if she might drip something into his food.
“Oh yes, Debra told me. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself either. I just thought, you know, we both got the names and the setup and-“
“Richard.” She smiled. “It’s a good name”
“Sure is,” he gurgled. He had found time to grab another bite of his alfredo.
His suitjacket was too nice, she thought. Too nice for this place. He had looked apprehensive about it when he first came in. Had put his hand in the pocket casually and thrust his head down. He was still doing it. Had put that hand back in his pocket.
“So this is awful… I don’t know, lady and the tramp?”
“Yes,” she almost squealed, lighting up, “isn’t it? Gawd, that’s just what I was thinking before I left. I can’t believe you thought it too it’s just so… gawd.”
“Well, you know,” he motioned with his for as he talked. It was clean. “Like I said. You’ve got to love Disney, it’s like-”
“The Beatles,” she finished. “Just like the Beatles. Oh, I love the Beatles too.”
He was quiet. Finished in fifteen minutes.
She tried to get him to come home with him. Didn’t want to play the normal dating game, had been married to long to do so. She just wanted a man who would actually sleep in her bed with her. She didn’t care how the sex was, as long as he had fun and then stayed there next to her. Oh god, she thought, I’m getting ahead of myself. He had only agreed to walk her home. He hadn’t spoken since they had gotten out of the restaurant. He pointed at signs sometimes, other businesses and things, told her where was good for drycleaning, that he knew Jimmy over at the smoke shop. He was a good guy. She could see his undershirt now through his white button up. The tie had slipped to the side.
When they got to her apartment, she turned to face him. They were right in front of the double door to the lobby. She was glad to live in a place with a lobby. It reminded her of the courting room her father had built onto the front of the house for her when she was a girl. She couldn’t wait to walk right through the lobby and go up the elevator, ignore the whole thing. She had hated it when her dad peeked through the door, made sure that there were four feet on the ground when he did. She wanted to stomp all over that place. Stomp on her father for embarrassing her so many times. She wanted to trample the lobby with this man and keep on going.
His eyes avoided hers. She took him as shy, not at all like his build. Or, maybe just not like the suit he was wearing. She went in for a kiss. Bzz bzzzz hu- bzzzz it started from the alley. She looked back, saw the smoke and the instrument again. Two moon eyes. It kept on, rhythmic but atonal. Bzzz bzz bzz, like a kazoo, really. She could see the cherry of a cigarette. Richard started to move a little bit, to dance. She looked at him, confused. He was more so.
“What the heck?” he looked at his feet.
“You don’t want him!” a voice called from the alley. “You don’t! I got something you want! I can make it! Ha HAH!” his voice was like a train car going over a bump in the rails, slamming back down. Big metal on big metal.
“Will you please take me inside? I’m scared.” She gave him her best doe eyes. He looked terrified, shifting his weight from right to left. Bzz bzz, it started back up.
“Yeah, sure.” He said. “I- just need to…” he pushed her forward, forceful. She grabbed his arm and put it around her when they got in, couldn’t get it all the way around. When they got into the carpeted elevator, he asked “Can you hear that guy from your apartment?”
“No,” she said, “Barely maybe.” She would just keep him away from the windows. His quiet little eyes were darting all around. She could see the spots around his jaw where he hadn’t shaved all the way.
Richard only sat in the apartment long enough to catch his breath. He looked like he hadn’t planned on coming up here. She tried to inch closer to him on the couch. The table was clean. He got up quickly, walked over to the dresser.
“This is pretty nice,” he said, running his hand over it. “good place for it. I always get erm… frustrated when I realize I’ve forgotten a shirt or something and always have to go back to the bedroom for it. I need to get a dresser like this, keep it by the door. Dress on your way out, you know?”
She didn’t respond, clenched her teeth and nodded. He walked around the apartment a bit more and then left. She stole a kiss before he got out, slipped in some tongue to let him know she would go further if he wanted. He just raised his eyebrows at her, turned. Tease, she thought, he’s a tease. Trying to hold out for another date. We’re all young men like this? She heard the kazoo music start up again about five minutes after he left. She looked out the window but couldn’t see a thing through all the fog.
When she woke the next day, she was on the couch again TV on, still in her nice dress. It would be all wrinkled now.
She looked to the window and was startled. She thought she saw a big face there for a second, something shining but translucent. She jumped.
She set the toaster and filled the coffee pot with water, grounds. She opened the fridge and remembered that she had been woken last light. The bzzing was so loud that she had to turn the TV up. She thought that Richard had called her too, but when she picked up the phone, there was just a weird dial tone. All sped up sounding. It was too soon after he left though, he hadn't even had a chance to get home. It must have been a dream. She tapped her nails on the counter. Why had he left so quick? It still looked like a man lived here. That was the problem with this place. She would have to make it look like a single lady lived here. Put some doiley’s and wal-mart flower pictures around. That would do it.
Checkout lane was dull that day. She had changed into a sweater and some jeans that swallowed up her belly, buttoned right over her belly button. She was always afraid that she was going to get reprimanded when she had to work register. She always rang things up too fast, never looked at the screen. When she rang them fast like that, they didn’t go through some times. You were supposed to look at the screen and make sure that they did. She never remembered.
Back in the plastic break room, she found Debra. Debra was a skinny thing, wearing a sweater too. It was much tighter, stretched across her little boobs. They poked up like dents in paper.
“So how’d it go?” she asked, absentmindedly. She told her it went well, gave her most of the details. Debra looked like she always did, like she couldn’t wait to get back to work. Such a hard worker she was. Debra gave her his number in case she wanted to call before he did. She said wouldn’t dream of it, but she took it anyway.
Four days later, he still hadn't called her. She had put two doily’s down on tables by then, taken down a lot of the posters around the couch. She called the number Debra had given her on the sixth day, but he didn’t pick up. She began to think about Tom again. She picked up the phone from the table and called his mom, the only other place he could have been. His mom picked up, told me in her wavering little doe voice that no, he hadn’t been by. Tom's mom asked why she had called. She didn’t want to tell her what it was that she had done right then, so she didn’t. Just told her that he wasn’t home yet, that she was wondering where he was, and hung up. She went to the kitchen and got another Kroger muffin, lemon.
Richard showed up the next day without calling. He was there standing outside of her door when she got back from work, still wearing the same suit and tie he had worn a week ago. She decided not to say anything about it, just greeted him instead.
“Hello!” She said, a little too happy. She walked towards him as fast as she could from the elevator, twisting her hips forward and raising her arms, as if running. He smiled big, looked a little sick. He hugged her back, weakly.
When I opened the door, he frowned. “Why all the doily’s?” He asked. There were only two. She stopped and leaned in the doorway “and the posters? Where did they go?”
She looked a little offended. “Oh you know, cleaning up. I just thought they didn’t fit quite with the apartment. I didn’t take down much though.”
“I kind of liked them.” He sat down on the couch without bothering to move the bottom of his blazer. It folded under him and wrinkled a little bit. He scratched at the cushion like a cat in a litter box.
“I didn’t think you had even noticed what was in the apartment when you were over here. You were pretty shook up by that bum.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He said, strangely dismissive. She brought two cups of coffee over to the table. “I don’t know what was going on with that.” He laughed. She had never heard him laugh before.
She sat down next to him, sipped her coffee, put her feet up on the table. She thought about turning the TV on, but didn’t. They talked about work. Talked about family. He sounded like he didn’t go out a whole lot, was maybe more boring than her, despite his age.
The conversation actually went okay. She leaned over and kissed him. He seemed startled, stared at the now clean table angrily. She asked what was wrong. He said that it had been a long time since someone had kissed him. She looked at him, confused. He turned on the TV after a second, let her kiss him some more. He kept it on the channel it was already on, was usually on, 41. Watched dateline. They made love on the couch during a rerun of mash. He lasted about fifteen minutes, enough time for her to have that thing she thought was an orgasm. He didn’t finish, just said he was done after a while, rolled off of her. She didn’t remember going to sleep, but she woke up alone in the bed.
She had to swirl her hair up with the big circular brush because she hadn’t put her curlers in. She started the coffee, got the eggs out of the fridge. She thought she would make a grand little breakfast before she went off to work. She couldn’t wait to tell Debra.
She walked a little bit out of the kitchen and stared at him on the couch for a while. Richard, no shirt. He didn’t look as young as when she had first seen him, but god damn he was attractive. His skin was like calf leather, but his stubble looked hard and manly. He should grow a beard, she thought. She walked back into the kitchen and heated up the skillet, made four fried eggs and bacon. He woke up when the bacon went on, but didn’t get up off the couch. He just sat up and put his feet up on the table, turned the TV on. She brought him a mug of coffee, lay their two plates down in front of them when it was all done.
She tried to talk to him, but he just said yes to everything and stared at the TV. She wasn’t sure if he was ashamed because of what happened last night, or if he was just being shy again.
“You don’t have to be shy anymore,” she said, adventurously. “I’ve seen you. We know eachother pretty well now.”
He just gave her a wry smile, reached over and pulled his blazer on over him, no shirt on. She thought it would get dirty like that, but didn’t say anything.
When she left, she told him that he could stay there until she got back to work if he wanted. He just nodded. She looked forward to seeing him, but wondered why he wasn’t going to work. Maybe he was off today. She didn’t feel that she could ask.
She saw Debra in the back before she went up the the checkout line, she was at her locker, putting her necklaces away. She always had nice ones, little stars, circles, fairies.
“So Richard came over last night.” She said, an uncontrollable half smile stuck on her face.
Debra turned to her quickly, “Really? Is that where he’s been?”
“Been? No, he was just there last night. I couldn’t even get a hold of him before that.”
“So he just showed up?” She closed her locker.
“Yep. Just showed up.”
“Hmm. Well tell him to call. His friends have been asking me about him. I didn’t realize he was you know, all caught up with something else.” Debra winked, walked off before she had a chance to protest.
She hated the way her hair looked when she hadn’t curled it properly, but went out there anyway. Made sure to scan everything real slow so that the computer would pick it all up. They had been checking her receipts, making sure that the stock sold matched up with what had left the store. She protested that stolen stuff would come back on her, but they just said that she could reconcile that with the cop on duty. She didn’t follow.
She got a rip in the bottom of my dress at about lunchtime. Right when she realized that she hadn’t brought anything with her to eat. She got something out of the snack machine and crunched on it in the break room, on one of the white plastic lawn chairs in there.
Richard was still on the couch when she got home. she was happy to see him, wrapped her arms around him from behind the couch and kissed him. The top of the couch left a little dent in her belly, crinkled her floral shirt. She was a little nervous, didn’t know if a man should really stay over this long in the first week of the relationship. He didn’t seem to think about it.
She was happy. He stayed on the couch like Tom had, stayed there for the next two weeks, but she didn’t think it was a bad thing. He wasn’t at all like him. He was much too nice, talked with her still about Disney sometimes. Never ate her muffins. She knew that she was going to have to get the divorce papers filed soon. That she would have to find some way to contact Tom. She didn’t want to call his mom again, thought she probably already knew, would scream at her, maybe wouldn’t even tell Tom that she had called. Tom could still be staying in hotels though. He had never really spent his money from work, probably had enough to go on for a while.
Three weeks later, she still hadn’t called. She was walking back home from work when she heard the Bzz noise again, heard it soft and low, not at all rhythmic, just humming from the back of the alley. She had begun to get annoyed with Richard.
She opened her apartment door and found him on the couch still, wearing the same suit. They had made love once since the first time, but it was on the couch again. It had scratched up her back. She tried to get on top to fix it, but it didn’t work. She didn’t want to think about it.
She walked up behind Richard and kissed him on the top of his head. He reached up and scratched his scalp. She went into the kitchen and grabbed a muffin, tried to go sit next to him on the couch. She moved his blazer out of the way.
When he turned to look at her, she jumped back, dropped her muffin. His face was all old like a catcher’s mit, he had a beard now. She hadn’t even noticed it growing, but it must have, he hadn’t brought a razor over. She looked down to her muffin, all shattered into chunks, and looked back up. She still didn’t like what she saw. He started complaining, said that she was always dropping stuff. Richard stood up, grabbed her by the shoulders and moved her over, gentle but firm. He grabbed the muffin bits and smooshed them into a ball, put them in one of the leftover coffee mugs on the table. She shuddered.
“I need to take a walk,” she said. Left.
The bzz was still going on in the alley, light meandering. She knew it was stupid, but she turned and walked down the alley.
It was all smoky back there, that little cherry still glowing in the back. The music picked up, became some kind of dance tune. She walked as carefully as she could, watching the ground for glass and rocks.
When she got back there, she began to feel a little pull on her chest. She could see the midget now, in dirty coveralls with a strange instrument in his mouth. It looked like a pipe, yes, but it had a crank on one side like an organ grinder, three valves from a trumpet, and a piece of metal and waxpaper for the mouthpiece. Something was lit and glowing on the lefthand side. It was louder than she could have imagined.
The pull on her chest grew, probably from the force of the sound, as the cherry brightened, like someone hitting a cigarette. She didn’t know what to ask the midget. Told him to shut up, that he kept her up at nights. He stopped abruptly and smiled. She caught her breath, felt a little sheepish now in the silence. The smoke began to clear.
“I ain’t what’s keeping you up at night.” He said, dryly.
“Yeah, well you almost ruined a perfectly good date.” She said, crossing her arms. “Popping out of the alley, scaring people.”
“Not my fault maim, not my fault. Man was just a pussy. Startled easy, you know-“
“Hey now!” her face all red “I don’t want to hear that kind of language, and especially not-“
He began to play again, loud and suddenly. She could feel her organs moving in the rhythm to the music, could feel them better than she ever had, as if they were about to burst through her skin and out into the alley. She screamed. He took his mouth away from the instrument again, the cherry died down.
“Now you don’t disrespect me, and I won’t disrespect you.” He said, the same crazy lilt to his voice she had heard the first time he yelled to her.
She agreed, sarcastically. The smoke began to move, twirled up like snakes to heaven. She shifted her weight.
“So how you like yer new man?” He asked, smiling still. A dirty little smile, like the soft clammy place between one's thighs.
“Like him fine. Like I said, I’m just glad he stuck around. He could’ve run off on me easily after that scare.” He didn’t look offended this time. “But he came right on back. I was sure he would, you know.”
“Oh he wouldnt’ve, not if it wasn’t for me.” He put the instrument on the ground, straightened his coveralls. Her head felt funny. “Nope nope nope. I gave him he needed- er, what you needed. You know I got it.” She began to turn away, thought that he was coming onto her.
The smoke was all clear now. She could see that there were two dumpsters in the alley. What she guessed her trash went to when she dumped it down the chute in the hallway. She saw some of her husbands clothes under one of them. Didn’t remember throwing them out, thought that they were still in the dresser. She walked over, bent down with some trouble and poked through them. She saw some yellow hair tucked into the pocket of the shirt. She pulled it out by the bottom hem and found shook the hair out of the pocket. It was her husband's beard. She looked to the dwarf. He didn't move, looked like he was caught between leaning and standing. She asked if he had stolen her husband's clothes. He just stayed, like a frame in a movie. She reached under the green metal and tried to pull the pair of jeans out from under the dumpster's black wheel. She looked down to see why it wouldn't come and saw her husband’s skin behind them. Jumped back, looked at the dwarf.
“Oh hey now, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do it.” His smile had dropped. Fallen right off his face. “Look now, I just dance organs. Ya see?” he stepped to the side. There was a little red pile behind him. “Now I don’t do nothing without purpose. I knew what you wanted. Saw you walkin’ out here every day. Knew you didn’t know what you wanted, and knew I did. So I danced some organs.” He stopped picked up his instrument again. “Danced em right outta your husband, and into that Richard guy. Wired him up just the same. If you really want Richard, here’s him right here,” he motioned towards the red, “But I don’t think he’s at all good anymore. Never was really. You’re happy now, you know? You’re happy.”
She looked up to her window and saw Richard standing there. Richard all stuffed up. Like a stuffed animal jammed into another stuffed animal. Did he even know? She wanted to run, but her insides were all cold and gummed.
“I know what you want.” The dwarf said, a little too loud. “I know. You just needed a new face wrapped up round the same ol shit." She stepped back and fell. Tom had sneaked back in.
Richard had jammed himself under the couch when she got back upstairs. Stayed down there like a stain in the apartment eating crumbs and complaining. She stayed over in the kitchen and bathroom, didn't even try to get him out, just smiled and didn’t.