Don't Kiss Me: Stories(5)

At the light I eat what’s in the brown bag, a Fruit Roll-Up and seven Tootsie Rolls, a half-drunk juice box, the single Goldfish cracker way down at the bottom.

At work a lady wants her hair to look exactly like a bowl of Trix. The girl next to me helps a lady who wants hair the exact shade of maple syrup. Rich, she tells the girl, rich and lustrous. In the back we laugh at her, mime rubbing our nipples in the heat of climax, saying, Lllllustrous! A man with a glass eye tells me his hair used to be more pepper but he was glad for the salt, it’s distinguished, I nick the pink mole on his neck but he doesn’t notice. A girl comes in asking for red Kool-Aid hair but it comes out more like orange Triaminic, she doesn’t seem to care, some people like being ugly I guess.

Later on I trim the waxer’s bangs and in return she waxes my bikini line. Hold this back, she says, pushes up on my belly fat, layered blobs of tapioca pudding. Big girls gotta eat, I say, and the waxer laughs, holds her legs together like she might pee. You are too funny, she says, you are just too funny. Breathes in deep, rips the strips of paper, holds them up to show me, pube Fruit Roll-Ups. See all that nasty hair we got? See all those roots? Next time we’ll do your arms.

At lunch we have pizza, someone’s client is the manager at the Pizza Slab. For a snack we order wings from the bar next door. I alternate celery stick, wing, celery stick, wing. We smoke out back, a while ago someone wrote, You so ugly on the seat of the one chair out there, it’s a badge of courage to sit in the ugly chair, the pedicurist declaring me so ugly that I could scare the shit out of poop. Everyone laughs and me the hardest, when she’s not looking I ash into the pedicurist’s side part, go back inside.

My husband calls, the TV blaring in the background. Could I pick up some laundry detergent he asks, could I also pick up some beer, something for dinner, dessert, breakfast, lunch for the rest of the week, juice. What are you watching? I ask him. The History channel, he says, but I know better, I hear the childlike yelling of those anime cartoons he loves, I know he is at half-chub and doesn’t want to talk about it, I hang up over him saying, And some string cheeses.

At the grocery store a song about a man on a boat is playing, he feels so free. I stand in the frozen foods aisle, all the boxes are green or red, stop and go, yes and no, I get raviolis and frozen peas and chicken nuggets and a cheesecake. At the checkout I add two packs of bubble gum, the kids will probably chew three times and swallow just like always. A tabloid shows a young starlet’s cottage cheese thighs. I ask the cashier to wait while I run to the dairy aisle, I am craving cottage cheese now, I get the biggest tub there is, large curd, I laugh to myself, I laugh and laugh, big girls gotta eat. In the car I listen to a song about a small-town slut, the DJ comes on and assures me there’s more where that came from, a song about a lonely desert wanderer starts, I pass tacos pizzas chicken ice cream barbecue. The sky is pink meatblood, is a runny sorbet, the sun is a melting butterscotch, the sky is a dirty plate.





NIXON IN RETIREMENT


I had an egg for breakfast. I put too much salt on it so Pat would notice and yell at me. She didn’t. Sipped her coffee like it was tea. Smiled like the machine of her mouth was winding down. A bit of hair had come loose from its setting. Like she was molting. I was grateful to see her flawed, I can’t tell you exactly why. That egg was like eating a jellyfish coated in sand. I endured. The last time I was at the beach a teenaged girl walked over. She was fully developed, I don’t mind telling you. Mr. Nixon, she said. Not President Nixon, or Mr. President. Mr. Nixon. I could try to forgive her for that but who has the time? Her voice was like a cartoon squirrel’s. Some moptop future Democrat might like to climb all over her. I held it together. I just wanted to come over and see if it was really you, the girl squeaked. In the flesh, I answered her. The truth was I could feel every inch of my flesh, even the dark catacombs in my trousers. Could have been the sun. Could have been the girl. Could have been any girl from the neck to the upper thigh. Wow, the girl said. Just wow! Super, was my reply. Whitehead, my day man, cleared his throat. Oh, the girl said. Is this your Secret Service man? If I told you that, I said, he’d have to kill you. I winked up at her. I was wearing sunglasses. No way she saw. I had said the wrong thing, it was clear. The girl went stiff, like she’d been flashed in ice. Could have chipped pieces of her for my drink. And all right, I would have chosen her breasts. Two breasts floating in a tumbler of Scotch, softening with melt into goosepimpled skin. That’s what I call a Saturday. The girl chopped at the sand with her feet, walking backward. Thanks for your interest, I called to her. Her body a ripple of movement. From ice to jelly. Jiggling, you understand. I looked at Whitehead, that block. He looked around, turning in a slow circle. Good man. The girl had vanished, absorbed into the landscape before me, a landscape owned and operated by teenagers. The world’s future leaders. My ulcers went zap. Instead of landscape perhaps I should say channel, should say program. All of them playing a part, all of them in Technicolor. Was there any real dialogue to be had, anymore? My God, what a boredom.

Pat took my plate, clacked it to the sink. Clacked back to me. Kissed my cheek. She smelled like the air in a forgotten trunk filled with flowers. I smelled it with my throat, in other words. Words burbled forth from the pink, oiled relief of her lips. That misplaced feather of hair fluttered near her ear. Pat, I wanted to say. Pat! Time is a thing that moves. We are not the ones moving. Back in our early days in the White House I had once balanced her on my lap in the tub. We were nearly sixty. She’d come back from some dinner drunk, my favorite Pat. We went to the bath, we made a froth. Two men waited outside the door. You learned not to care about such things. Later Pat lurched from bed, upchucked into the gold wastebasket. I put her back to bed, handed the wastebasket to one of the men outside the door. In the morning I gave a televised speech. You beautiful citizens, I wanted to say, is there anything more important than having your wife in whatever room you choose? If there had been an amendment guaranteeing such a right, I’d have ratified it then and there. Instead I continued with my speech. Often, I wished for a lever that would allow me to send an electric current from my desk to every citizen’s home. I wish for that still. Did you hear me, Richie? Pat asked. Sure, I said. There came the lips. Other cheek, kissed. I palmed her breast. It was as loose and lifeless as a chicken cutlet. She didn’t notice. Clacked out the door. Her ass these days was still tight in her white pants, but was the shape of two halved apples. An old woman’s ass. Her day man followed a polite three steps behind.