Penny Loafers by Connor Beck

Crammed like rats, I drove our home, laden with trash, through much of the Midwest. While Mariane dreamt in the passenger seat, scrunching her half-asleep body into the shape of a ‘G.’ I could tell by the subtle way her breath swayed upon each crack in the road, she was dreaming of her.

“Hey, baby?” I crooned, placing my palm against her cheek as my neck stretched to keep hold of both her, and the dark highway ahead.

“Shhhhhh,” she gave me. Whether their time together was pleasant or not, it was theirs.

I kept comments of roadside Jesus to myself; I was grateful to find someone else still awake. I mouthed the beginnings of a prayer upon impulse as my eyelids loosened their grip and began to sink. Though when my mouth winced from the way its contents made my teeth ache, I stopped. Sliding my tongue against each tooth, I assured myself that they were all still there, albeit a little more crooked. They seemed to me then the only thing I knew to be true, and they were changing constantly.

Cities meant showers, though, “This really isn’t even much of a town,” Marianne confessed. She awoke, stretching her tree limbs oddly throughout any space she could. “This sucks!” she yawned. The buildings around us grew denser but no taller and we continued. “Baby?” she asked.

“Yeah, baby?” Our hands fell within the others as the sunlight fortified our fragile minds.

“Their capitol building looks like a cock,” she said with a soft puzzlement.

“I know baby.”

“Do you think they do?”

“I’d like to think it haunts them every day.” We giggled. We envisioned each old white official, each tighter in the ass than the last lined up at the unveiling. Taking turns to view their new phallic pride in shock; too scared to admit to the other that they would even know what to compare it to. All while the queer artists and architects snicker and collect their checks.

For ten dollars we washed ourselves in the same stall at the first Planet Health we saw, though we still both had to pay full price for a day pass. Skipping breakfast because of it, we sucked on tomato packets and pepper while we exchanged noon-day vows.

“I love you because of the spiders you keep in your head, and I will always be there for you each time one leaves,” she told me. I decided I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, though I knew it was quite a lovely thing to tell someone.

“I love you because when you walk through my mind you do so softly, always wearing the same well-worn penny loafers. You’re the only one I have ever let.” When I think of her, she’s encased from the knees down in cement slabs. And when she tries to walk, she trips and always sinks down through to the same spot, where I think I’m growing a tumor. But cement slabs is not one of her favorite words. Penny loafers is.

In some odd way, the city felt like someone you’d put off driving for, and so we did. The school buildings we decidedly weaved through all felt flat to us, and made us wonder if the students studied underground or perhaps somewhere off in the tall grass that we passed on our way in.

“That sounds nice,” we agree.

There’s a club fair surrounding their union, and our lunch is spent purchasing a small begonia from a group of students promoting sustainability.

“I’d like something green Frann,” she pouts, until I agree. I do agree, though I know all we’ll have soon is brown. For five dollars we decided to call her Begonia, and we promised to one day name our daughter after her if her flowers should last through the week.

“They will.” She swore, whispering sweeter things than she’ll ever say to me into the ears of Begonia, and I fall a little further in love with her.

 “I know,” I say, and believe it.

We were angry when dinner rolled around, and still over budget. We decided on hotdogs and agreed to share a large diet coke from a peeling shack with an anthropomorphic hot dog on the side. They were peeling too. The little bits of caffeine we greedily wished not to share made it a little easier to stand, a little easier to sit, and a little easier to spend the rest of what we had on a fresh tank of gas.

Lacking any alternative and knowing the car will never be anyone’s other than ours, we hot-glue Begonia’s base to the dash. Mary fashions a crude awning from the travel brochures she collects, before propping the partial tent around Begonia’s furthest-reaching leaves to offer her some shade during the days to come. We agree to water her every morning, whether that’s what begonias need or not.

Continuing east out of Lincoln, the farmland was defined by an insignificant collection of sheets and slats dotting crop mandalas. They looked like they wished to blow whichever way the wind wandered. Held down by the strong leather-skinned folk, who waved out through their dusty windshields and into ours, each time we passed. The wafting clouds of gravel obscure any of our ability to see difference. The cornfields were warm and golden, and I saw so easily where Mary had gotten her hair.

Suddenly the steering wheel was the wet topsoil my mother and I crammed into Ziploc bags when I was small. I remember watching the corn grow then, from our kitchen window.

“That guy looked like a duck! Oh my God, did you see that?” Mary unbuckles, placing her legs under her and curling around my arm.

I know I’d be happy doing so again, with her.

“It’s getting late,” we say and agree to drive a little further.

Connor Beck

Image: Image by Ralph from Pixabay – Pink begonia flowers