Soap Suds

Her hands were firmly pressed against the sink rim as her arms braced her body, sagging, between them.  She stared uncomprehendingly at the pile of precariously stacked dirty dishes inches away.

She’d had enough.  There had been too many “last straws” in the haze known as “recent.”  First it was the mail, the forgotten groceries, the unnoticed dirt and grime.  The endless dishes that he never touched.  The wailing baby.

“Will you please get her” she hoped with an exhausted sigh.

Newborn on hip and snot-covered two year old clinging to her jeans, she found a crusty sponge and began.

 

 

A Rougher Type Of Man

In his last year in university, his father died, leaving him with money and nowhere to go. Unwilling to move to a city with his friends, broken up with his girlfriend of two years, he resolved to live like his heroes.

In a cabin near a lake he wrote copious manuscripts detailing the hard-pressed lives of a multitude. Outside, he tended potatoes. Sometimes old friends from college came to visit him, and they were amazed at his gruff manner. He no longer laughed fluidly; his visions – taken onto himself in refuge – had made him into a rougher type of man.

Perfect Strangers

“Hey, how’s it going?”

There’s something magical about meeting someone.

You were born somewhere, and I was born somewhere else, and neither of those places was here. I’ve weaved my way around these years in a way that no one else ever has, and so have you. We’ve done some stuff no one could have predicted, and both seen our share of luck.

Yet here we are, standing next to each other. Both sides of the equation are equal.

I don’t need to know your whole story – and I’d be lying if I said I remember all of mine anyway.

 

The Bachelor

Wake up and I’m wearing the same v-neck as last night. Feels like a million bucks.

Wipe my nose scratch my ass and think about the eggs I’m gonna make. Damn I’m good at eggs.

Where’s the music? I put on some gangster shit. Hello Sunday.

Who left her shoes here last night? Ooo YSL, nice, must be pricey. I wonder how she got home.

The coffee table’s got wine stains on it. That thing has stories to tell. I wouldn’t use coasters even if I had ‘em.

I pull on my beanie and make coffee. Today’s gonna be good.

 

The 600 kiwis

There were 600 furry kiwis outside my door this morning.  I stood there and tried to resist the urge to trample them into juicy pieces.  They squish squelched between my toes.  Soon the brown fuzz turned to gooey green entrails speckled with little black eyeballs that expanded to everywhere.  They spilled over the doorstep and I tracked them up the door.  Years later I would find dried kiwi scum stuck on the underside of the spare key hidden underneath the potted plant.  What do you do with 600 mysterious kiwis that just show up on your doorstep after unspoken years?

Hunger Pangs

She hadn’t felt hungry in weeks.  She ate during each meal, for sure, but asides from the fact that sometimes the taste was good, it wasn’t anything great.  Eating became a routine, nothing more.  Maybe she shouldn’t eat? And then one day, it came: the hunger.  At first she thought her stomach was growling but then she realized that there was a slight tug on her insides, like some small paw was scratching her because it wanted something.  Food!  It wanted good food!  It seemed strange that she was excited about being hungry while thousands of others were regularly starving.

Sneeze Guard (II)

When Zubair had got the sneeze guard out, he took a close look at the curling crack running through the plastic. With his nose almost touching the sneeze guard’s surface, he saw tiny globs of phlegm and mucus in all shades of brown, tan, and yellow. Revolted, he suddenly saw all the damn Americans at their tables, heads full of sludgy snot. No more glamorous belts or dresses, just sagging faces dripping sneeze liquids.

Hefting the sneeze guard like a baseball bat, he hurled it at the hostess stand. Then he gathered handfuls of broccoli and threw them at everyone.

Sneeze Guard (I)

Zubair unscrewed the cracked sneeze guard at the Old Country Buffet salad bar, careful to support it in the middle so it wouldn’t crash into the containers of vegetables, what with so many diners filing by on the other side. This particular restaurant had the latest sneeze guard model, one Zubair had designed just in the last year.

Sneeze guards for salad bars? His old mother back in Bangladesh would have called him a liar. But sneeze guards had been his life for fifteen immigrant years now, and it still dumbfounded him how little esteem Americans had for their food.

Winter’s Concert

The lights began to dim.  Hushed murmurs whispered through the audience.  Overhead it grew darker and darker until the glow from the brightness was just a faint memory on the inside of eyelids.   The conductor stood with his baton poised.  The wind instruments perked up and then they began.  It started slowly and quietly – an echo and reminder.  Then they began to build and the wind started to buffet earnestly.  A minute later the drummer was going crazy with a crash of the symbols.  The rain let loose, pounding down on the keys until everything but its music was drowned.

Blown Head Gasket by Dick Hampton

“So I’m driving along full-tilt. I don’t know if I feel a loss of power or what, but suddenly my gauge is in the red, and I think SHIT! I limp along white-knuckling it, trying to get to help, knowing every second I’m doing permanent damage. So then I find out it’s a blown head gasket! Inside there’s black sludge that smells like a purse on fire, and they’re telling me it means a total rebuild.”

“Oh my God,” Dina says. “Car repairs are so expensive! How much is it going to cost?”

“Car? Who said anything about a car?”