Don't Kiss Me: Stories(25)

5


By now our high had leveled to the point where the world was a disappointment. Hardy lit a cigarette and another after that was done and then another and we passed them back and forth until the car was filled with smoke. We weren’t taking no chances having the windows down. Hardy said, If we ever make it there I don’t want to hear it from you when I drop you off. I hate it when he tells me how to act, and I was miserable enough to put the cigarette out in the tender flesh of my inner arm, but instead I rolled down my window cause Fuck it, see?





6


Hardy had wipered the shit off the windshield before it could dry and in its wake was a crescent moon of smeared clarity. Even so it was that time of night when you understand that the light of day is just a trick, a illusion, dumb as you are believing in it as you go about your grocery getting and your errands and your cheerful petting of a strange dog. I knew if I hadn’t left that blade stuck in that lady’s arm I’d have held it to Hardy’s throat right then, all my high gone and the Lipton bottle dry as a bone, but see after the part in my imagining when I held the knife to Hardy’s throat I couldn’t figure out what came next, it just seemed like it’d be a lot of work, whatever it was.





7


I had fallen asleep finally and when I awoke the sun was flashing like a coin in a white dish, so bright I had to close my eyes again, I watched the ghost of the coin dart around my eyelids for a while, it helped with the deciding and it stayed there when I yanked the wheel, even as we started going over there was the coin, the car turning in the air, my heart in my throat and then in my stomach, Hardy with that roller-coaster-bitch screaming again, and all the while I made sure to keep my eyes closed, cause I needed the dark, see, for the courage or whatever, and then we had come to a stop and I opened my eyes and we was upside down and the blood oozing out of Hardy’s ears like red candle wax, slow and thick, I thought he was a goner but then I saw him breathe so I pushed my way out the window and climbed back up to the road and flagged you down and let you drive me, and all right fine, to answer your question I left him there cause he wasn’t finished being there yet, I don’t know what else to tell you.





BIRTHDAY LUNCHEON


Your brother’s pregnant girlfriend got her leg up on the desserts cart, thrusting her hips over the lemon meringue, your daddy’s favorite, you can see the words Sweet Bitch in glitter script in the front part of her undies every time the cart rolls a little, which it does a lot, she dancing so thoroughly her shoe fell off a song ago, she bent to get it but the bending didn’t fit with the beat of the song so she let it be, and you felt like maybe that meant she was smarter than you gave her credit for, and you thought that even when she dipped her toe in a lava cake and then tried to lick it off till she realized she don’t bend that far and did a sloppy, arcing kick so she could brandish that toe in your daddy’s face, your daddy with that paper cone askew on his head, that elastic cutting into all that flesh at his jaw, your daddy with his small black eyes and his big wet mouth and that nipple of mashed potatoes on his shirt, your daddy who once asked you, could you come here, come closer, and belched your name right into your face and asked you to guess what he ate for dinner, your daddy who told your brother ladies’d get wet over a cocktail wiener if it was wrapped in twenties, your daddy who told you if you went to the Walmart past ten at night you’d be raped by a gang of blacks in the lightbulbs aisle, and later it changed to a gang of Mexicans, your daddy who punched your brother in the mouth the night he told about getting his girlfriend pregnant, your daddy who called that girlfriend a slut Oreo on Christmas Day, your daddy who could surely read the words on your brother’s girlfriend’s panties crotch despite his cataracts, your daddy who swatted that foot out his face like a poisonous insect, your daddy raised up that fist, that hammered clump of knuckles, and pounded the table so hard his little sippy cup of tea and gin fell off the table, your brother saying, Well, Pop, and your daddy saying his meanest, something beyond words, something close to Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, gums wet and pink as something just birthed, and you just watching that tea and gin spurt out your daddy’s straw and onto the crazy quilt of a carpet they had in this place, and when you looked up the old man from the next table was behind your brother’s girlfriend, slapping her thigh and bouncing on his toes like he was playing at riding a horse, and your brother’s girlfriend moving slower cause it was a slow song now, both her feet on the ground, eyes closed, and the old man not getting it, riding his horse out of time with the beat, it was unsettling, it was rude, you found yourself muttering, Are you serious? Are you serious? like you was tasered or something, your step-aunt leaning across the table and salad-mouthing, Serious bout what, hon? and your brother twitching like he’d just come to life, your brother saying, Serious bout your face mole, and your step-aunt dabbing at her face with the corner of a napkin, that mole the color of Thousand Island dressing, ringed in red now from being dabbed at, your daddy’s dead wife’s sister who your daddy had to stay the night every now and again, they was a pair, your daddy in his wheelchair and your step-aunt in her scooter, your brother told you they just rammed wheels and tallied that up as sex, the jostling was enough he said, and now when you get the chance to have some yourself you think of it as jostling, Jostle me, you want to say into a man’s neck, Jostle me good, your brother’s girlfriend walking the old man back to his seat now, limping on her one shoe, the old man’s family eyeing your brother’s girlfriend with red faces and slit eyes, the old man’s daughter saying, All right now, your brother’s girlfriend saying, You welcome, sug, stopping on her way back to the table to pick her undies out her ass, your brother arranging the cutlery around her plate like it was the return of the mother of Jesus, your daddy eating his meat loaf like a slice of pizza, your daddy didn’t take no puree, I eat sholidsh, your brother mixing your daddy another sippy, your brother’s girlfriend cutting up that dish of meringue into little pellets for your daddy to maw on, your step-aunt fluffing her bangs with one hand and worrying that mole with the other, your daddy’s legs poking out his shorts like something veined and obscene, your daddy who you told when you thought they was goblins in your closet, your daddy who said, Got that right and snapped off the light, and now you thinking how you ain’t hungry for dessert, you thinking how you don’t know what you hungry for, you eyeing that carpet and thinking how there was a time when a spill like that’d remind you quick just how much a man your daddy was, all teeth eyes belt and fist.