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THREE FICTIONS
by Bob Thurber
MISMATCH
It's an August night, airless and hot. The AC is on the blink. I'm in
charge so I'm working the drive-thru, leaning my head out, trying to catch a
breeze, but there's nothing, no air inside or out.
I hear the bastards before I see them. I hear the roar. Four kids in a
convertible, the driver racing his engine by the menu board. They start
screaming all at once into the speaker box. They name combos and specials
and a ton of drinks. They order a number of items not even on the menu. Then
they speed past, tires screeching, exhaust pipes firing. I get a glimpse of
the driver, a kid I fired almost a year ago. I write down the plate number,
but rather than fill out an incident report, I drop my paper hat on the
counter and flip the keys to a pimply girl working fries.
"Lock it up when you leave, honey." And I walk the half mile home.
Twenty minutes later I'm gnawing an ink-stained cuticle that smells like
pickle juice. I've got the phone pulled out of its jack and both my lamps
off. I'm fired for sure, but I don't care. I've got alimony and child support, but I don't care. I'm staring at the screen of my computer, trying
to be a writer. Every day I practice. But today instead of plots and characters and scenic
descriptions I'm thinking about trudging down the hall and washing my filthy over-my-ears hair. I worked noon to closing two nights
in a row and a double shift today; and I haven't showered since the weekend.
My clothes and my sheets and most of the furniture smell of fried food; an
odor I personally can tolerate, but which the room has commandeered to
entice flies and various other insects through the finger holes and gashes
in the window screen.
Drawn by the glow, several flutter and land on the screen. One by one I
squash them with my thumb. I'm swinging a rolled up issue of Penthouse,
battling a moth the size of a humming bird when someone knocks at my door.
It's such a deceptive knock that at first I think it's the door across
the hall, or one further down.
"Who's that?"
"Kelly."
I move up close to the door and stare at the wood like I've got x-ray
vision. I try to remember the landlady's first name, which she scribbles on
her weekly receipts, and, which I'm sure starts with a P.
"Kelly who?"
"We haven't met. I'm new, from upstairs."
I crack the door a full two inches, and play a five second game of
one-eyed peek-a-boo. It's a girl. A young woman, slouched slightly left,
supporting a see through basket of folded laundry on her modest hip. She
has Wilma Flintstone hair, a pretty face, and Barbie-doll boobs.
"Hi. I'm Kelly. I just moved in." She eyes the ceiling. "Right
upstairs."
I swing the door open just enough to fit my shoulders through.
I look at her face. I look at her blouse. She's under the light and I
get a good long bare-bulb look at the tiny freckles parading into her shadowy cleavage.
"I hope I'm not interrupting."
"Not at all. Not at all." I swing the door open. "Would you like to come
in?"
Her smile vanishes like a candle in a gale.
"Oh. What's that smell? Are you cooking something?"
My own smile, inherently crooked, pinches at my neck.
She bobs on tip toe, leaning left, then right, looking over my
shoulders. "Anyway." She clears her throat, pulls a rumpled brown and yellow
argyle sock from her side of the basket. "I found this. In the dryer. I
thought it might be yours."
I hold my breath as I pretend to examine the object she's holding like a
dead mouse.
Her nose is twitching.
"Nope. Not mine."
Her eyes are the exact blue of broiler flame. She slants a look,
nostrils twitching, then she drops the sock into her basket.
"I'm sorry." And she spins away, moving like she's got a motorized gear for
a hip.
Hours later, hard rain slanting in, I wake in a sweat, clutching the
argyle's mate, thrashing at the covers, dreaming I'm drowning in a sea of
missing laundry.
HER K BIBLE
Shortly before she ran off to join the Army, my sister Darla went cuckoo
from reading Kafka, Carver, Salinger, and Joyce.
She considered Carver's work "clearly" everything Joyce's wasn't. And vice
versa.
And Salinger's "attempts", she decided, were just silly notes to the
teacher, "ill-mannered, deliberately discordant, and uncomfortably sexually
aloof." At that time I liked Salinger and was prepared to fight. But she
surrendered too easily, and later confessed she actually felt sorry for the
man. All things considered, she believed it the best thing for everyone that
Jerome had stopped publishing the exact moment he had.
But Kafka, whom I had not read, drove her straight over the edge. At
seventeen, she fell into Kafkaesque dreams and fantasies. She razored her
red hair short as a boy's, took to living in a long grey overcoat, rain or
shine, and carrying a huge book of blank pages, a sort of diary-to-be, that
she called her K Bible.
She powdered her face to hide her freckles, drank twenty to thirty glasses
of water a day, ate nothing while in the presence of others; and one night,
at dinner, when my mother asked how long she planned to continue on this
insane diet, Darla said: While you sleep, mother, I eat the mice in the
walls, I eat the moth larvae in your sweater box, I pick at the dust mites
crawling on your pillow, and I collect the dark purple scabs that fall from
the dried scratches your claws have ripped into my brother's tender back.
My mother said: You! You stop! You leave him out of it!
I flinched and said, What did I do, when did I become a part of this story?
She handed me her book, my thin sister did. She showed me her K bible -- all
the pages adorned with my flesh.
DUCK WALK
The moment I got off the phone with the mortgage people, my mood turned
black. I thought I was going to faint. Then I heard the girls shriek and the
screen door slam. I pasted on a crooked smile, laced up my dancing shoes,
hurried downstairs.
Ann was frying eggs in a skillet.
Third night in a row we'd fed the girls early, giving them French toast
and orange juice, then let them run wild outside and in, upstairs and down.
Ann jerked the pan, flipped the eggs like a saute chef. "What did they
say about the refinance?"
I put the cap on a bottle of fake syrup.
"Recording gives their office hours, that's all. I'll call tomorrow from
work."
"Look over here at me," Ann said.
I pushed some plates around. Then I climbed over a chair and pinched a
half of soggy toast off the tray of Janet's highchair. "How come Janet
didn't finish?" "Look this way, please."
I looked, but briefly. My eyes wouldn't hold steady.
"Oh, my. I know that look," Ann said. "How bad is it?"
"This look," I said showing all my teeth.
"For your information, Mister Gloom. I'm more worried about you than I
am about them taking the house."
I licked my fingers. They were horribly sweet.
"No one is taking the house," I said.
She brought the eggs to me. "Tell it straight. None of your sideshow
acts. I want to know."
I distorted my face -- long chin, stiff tongue, goof ball eyes. I rolled
my eyes, made my ears wiggle. I pushed my stomach into a bulge. Then I
squatted, hands on my hips, elbows sharp.
Ann said: "Please stop!"
The kids stampeded in. Two of them shrieked. All of them laughed at
Daddy, funny Daddy.
Ann tried to shoo the girls away, but I wiggled a duck walk. I flapped
my arms and they screamed. They made a circle. I wagged and quacked. They
clapped and giggled. I fell over, trembling, sobbing at their mother's feet.
They couldn't stop laughing.
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