“You’re a little shit, Miguel. He’s going to pick you.”
Juan always had a mouth on him, but to say something like that? It was too much. He hadn’t even managed to brush the dust off his shirt before my fist crunched into his lip, sending him down again.
“Stop,” someone shouted. Hands grabbed me from behind, pulling me away from the other boy. Someone knelt by him to make sure he was alright, but I didn’t get a chance to see who it was.
We had a day out last Saturday. Well, when I say a day out, I mean we spent a lot of time going from one flea market to another. There are plenty of them in this town, let me tell you. Don’t get me wrong, I like flea markets, but then I don’t mind where I am just as long as it’s with Sandra. Not that she asked me to come along, just took it for granted really, but it doesn’t matter since she always thinks I shouldn’t be let out on my own.
When the 1st mate opens the door to the crew’s lounge and mumbles something at me, I slide The Universe and Dr. Einstein snugly between the pages of Penthouse. He mumbles at me again, but the only thing I hear is “boy.” His incessant use of boy rankles me worse than if I were 14. I remind myself that I’m 24, then hide behind the cover of Penthouse and read “…the heartbeat of a person traveling with a velocity close to that of light would be slowed.”
In my father’s building, there was a daily ritual. The old ladies from the building would gather in the lobby and wait for the mailman, saying things like, “I hope he doesn’t come as late as he did yesterday,” or “Remember that Thursday in October when he didn’t come at all?”
I was so used to being scared and running by then, I don’t know, guess I just always seen it coming. We spent a lot of years running, Ma and me. Start out seeking something better, that life we never had, just to hightail it in the night when that life went and turned its teeth on us.
Country living, living in nature’s bountiful bosoms, being a country girl, pastoral delights and splendid nights with stars shining bright.
Don’t, just don’t shovel that hot, rancid, fly infested, maggot breeding horseshit in my direction. I been there and done that. I sat on that milk stool. I swam in that polluted pool. I slept on the straw mattress with the rats and fleas. I churned butter, collected eggs, slopped the hogs, fed the chickens, shoveled the shit, planted the garden, weeded the rows, gathered the crops, canned, and sewed.
And, I cooked, cleaned, snapped beans, made beds and did the laundry in my spare time.
My country, the country that I lived in, was more than a place in space and time it was an evil disposition of heart and mind.
Reader Advisory:
The Union of Pennames, Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters (UPIFFC) now requires the anonymous employer of an associate penname to give the latter a yearly performance review. This event usually occurs in the sort of establishment where the wait staff all have the personalities of unpurged butter clams. As it goes with PR’s throughout the observable universe, the employer typically leads off with the employee’s strong points as a method of Trojan-horsing in darker observations. Sadly, for the employer, the penname has access to each and every of the former’s thoughts while the employer remains as clueless about the penname’s wicked ways as ever. To put it plainly, the whole thing goes to hell from the get go, and the only thing that I as Leila Allison’s employer get from our conversation is a tingling headache and bewilderment over the fact that my alias has the social graces of an irked thirteen-year-old child.
However, I may have gained something useful from this year’s face-to-face. I now present the missive that my penname scrawled on a stack of cocktail napkins not long after she dropped the pretense of pretending to listen to me—But I’ll give her this much: she writes awfully damn fast. Unfortunately, my headache has prevented me from reading it; and it may also be true that I only wish for it to be known that I have had nothing to do with its construction, just in case it too goes to hell from the get go.
Respectfully,
Ms. Allison’s Employer
The Eastern sky lit up for hours this time. Smoke billowing out of whatever building had been bottle-bombed and the stench of charred meat reaching for the wind. Cajoling it to carry the warning to every survivor still making their way towards a pre-recorded radio message or following hopeful, dusty signs carved into tree trunks and telephone poles.
Her fingers dripped with sticky syrup. A warm breeze blew in from her kitchen windows and she closed her eyes for a moment. One perfect moment. Opening her eyes, she sucked one finger after another, savoring the tart sweetness, then dipped one finger in the pot for one more taste. The plum jam was perfect, as she knew it would be.
The croissant had just the right crispness to it.
” Yes, they brought the towels and thank you for doing that, but I need soap for the sink.”
The views from the 22nd floor were stunning. From the East you could see the Silver Cup Studios sign and from the other side of the atrium you could see the Empire State Building already lit up red and green for the holidays, vibrating amidst a vast New York Cityscape.
