Don't Kiss Me: Stories(11)
He asked me to cut him. I did. The blood, disappointingly, did not drip. It seeped. We gathered it with a tiny blue washcloth.
THE CORPSE:
Ahem. I believe I’ve earned the right to step in here. At least as some kind of oxymoronic metaphor for this plus this equals that. The dimple in my tie filled with blood. I was wived and I made my wife a widow. And is this really me speaking? Am I being imagined?
Somebody tarred Daddy to the floor. My ears splitting, off they went.
THE DETECTIVE:
The detective took the letter down to run its prints, find out if the pubic hair was of the male or female persuasion. He held its corner with red tweezers and it flapped along beside him. Smith cut out the whole exclamation point with an X-Acto knife and his eyes got round at all that possible DNA. He said, Hopefully there’s a root or two. His breath smelled like onions. The detective’s stomach turned. Jenny took the letter minus the exclamation point and promised to dust for prints before her shift ended. The detective noted her waves of red hair and the mole just under her nose and decided one didn’t cancel out the other.
On his way out to the car his nostrils started closing in on him. He opened the glove compartment so fast the Afrin bounced under the seat and he cursed. The body, the Afrin, he’d have to reach for both. He didn’t know why he had to look for something that wasn’t even hiding.
THE SISTER:
If there’s anything we’ve learned it’s that roses are red. I planted our man, told him the eyes are the last to go, and he believed me. Our man bloomed and died and a year later bloomed again. That’s the hope anyway. And did you know that a human head weighs more than the shovel.
Dearest, you say you understand, but if you did you’d stop crying.
We had a child. Our man named him Junior. Our man thought it was all a dream until it actually became a dream, and then he knew how real it was. And did you know blood tastes sweet like summer grass.
THE DETECTIVE:
Knuckles rapped on the window. The detective rolled it down and smoke poured in from the chief’s pipe.
She’s confessed again, he said, squinting. You better beat it.
The detective nodded, began rolling up the window, and the chief stepped back.
I’m on it, the detective said through the glass. The car started too smoothly. He had three hours and seven minutes left on his shift. He drove due south, fast. There was a truck stop he knew of where he could be alone and eat. There had to be.
THE CORPSE:
This is how I imagined being dead:
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
Idon’tknow
andIdon’tcaretoknow.
Hard to know where you are if everyone who knows you doesn’t know where you are and if the one who loves you most will never come looking for you. I’m here. I’m pointing at myself. My heart is sort of beating.
THE WIFE:
When we got married I told myself when he’s dead I’ll know it immediately. But I still can’t convince myself he was ever alive in the first place. Absence makes the heart grow fonder of absence. I shave my legs with his razor. Blood shimmies. It was always my razor.
A JOKE, PART TWO:
So this lady is in first class, real snooty-looking broad, and she’s got this poodle in her lap that yaps with practically every breath. Next to her is this real salt-of-the-earth-type guy, like the kind of guy who starts from nothing and ends up richer than anything. So the guy says to the lady, Look, you gotta shut that dog up and the lady takes offense and says, My dog is no worse than your disgusting cigar smoke. And they go back and forth like that and it starts to get ugly. So the guy says, Fine, lady, you asked for it, and he takes the poodle and throws it out the emergency-exit window. The lady is downright astonished, and she yanks the cigar out of the guy’s mouth and throws it out the window too. Well this makes them both laugh and they become great friends, and when they land, the guy says he’ll help the lady find her poodle, he’s real sorry, and the lady says no, she’s sorry, and they set out together. So they find the poodle wandering around this field in a daze, and guess what it’s got in its mouth?
THE PUNCH LINE:
The brick.
THE DETECTIVE:
The truck stop said OPEN in green letters. The detective wiped his neck with the underwear and put it back in his pocket. Inside, he ordered coffee and creamed wheat and watched the cook scratch his armpit. The waitress had a peanut shell in her hair. The jukebox played something country-sounding, of course it did, and it seemed to be on repeat.