Don't Kiss Me: Stories(7)

The man got out and shoved the candy packages down the back of his pants. He looked toward Dallas, but the tint in his glasses made it near impossible to tell whether Dallas was being looked at. You can come along, the man said, should you desire to. The man had a cleft lip but Dallas realized a movie sounded like just the thing, and he jumped from the cab and followed the man inside. The man bought two tickets and when Dallas paused by the snack counter, near bloodthirsty for a kernel of popcorn or a pat of butter, the man slapped his leg like a master to his dog. Dallas choked back a robust Fuck you and followed the man into the pleasant darkness of the theater. You sit down here, the man whispered, pointing to a row in the middle. I’m up there, he said, and we ain’t together from here on out. The man turned and Dallas watched him trudge up the steps, holding his pants where he’d stuffed the packets of candy. The rest of the theater was empty so Dallas chose him a seat where he pleased relative to the area the man in the glasses allowed him.

Dallas hoped this was a movie with some kind of monster or evil snake or something. At least featuring knives and guns or a tank or a ghost. Then when the lights came all the way down Dallas couldn’t tell what kind of movie it was. A woman looked out and didn’t say nothing. A man in a suit started his car, then sat there. A few strings were plucked for musical effect. Dallas got a feeling that he tried to laugh off, a feeling like the light coming from the screen was a spotlight on him, like the movie was watching him rather than the other way around, only he didn’t have no story to tell. Suddenly the man in the glasses came down the steps and walked out the door marked EXIT, slamming the door behind him. Dallas was alone and the woman in the film was walking toward a door in a hallway. Dallas didn’t want to see the other side of that door and he’d be damned if he was going to sit and figure out why. He ran and burst out the exit. He saw he was at the back of the building and the man in the glasses was gone.

A lady in a wheelchair was sitting near a propped-open door, smoking. Dallas recognized her as one of the ticket takers. She squinted at Dallas, called over, Ain’t that movie a bore? Her legs looked shriveled inside her pants. He wondered if she could hear the same buzz he heard, like a thousand voices and a clump of cicadas and a steady rain. He wondered if things shimmered when she looked at them as they did for him. He wondered if she felt like her insides were on her outsides all the time like he did. The woman opened her mouth and let the smoke meander out. She seemed content to just watch him and let him watch her. He realized if he wanted to he could walk over and start to love this woman. He imagined waking up and making toast in her yellow kitchen, patting her cat between its ears, reading the TV guide to her each night.

But then it seemed such a long distance to walk, from his exit to hers, and instead Dallas nodded his head at her and walked off toward the highway, another sound. He walked up an entrance ramp headed west, keeping to the shoulder and thinking of his momma and the cold cuts she always had in the icebox, and he decided right then to get off at the next exit and go home, but it seemed like something he wanted to do more than anything he would ever actually be able to do, and then the sun was setting and the sky finally colored and so Dallas walked first toward a horizon colored orange, and then pink, and then blue, and then a man driving a semi slowed and pulled over and offered Dallas a ride, and by then the lights on the highway had come on and he couldn’t see the sky no more anyway, the semi picking up speed and the man whistling a tune and Dallas putting his hand on the man’s thigh because he was hungry enough to eat his own arm or anything that was offered to him from that moment on.





GERALD’S WIFE



The smell of lumber. Bits of wood in the air. Golden motes. The day of the funeral, a stream of light through the curtains. Dust twirling like glitter. Bitsy from next door saying, She never was much of a housekeeper. Skin of a raisin on her front tooth.

You need something cut, my friend? Gerald shook his head. The wood was a comfort but he had to move on.

Aisle of shovels. Something with a handle, ain’t too heavy. Might as well pay the extra two dollars.

Lantern? Flashlight. Years ago they’d gone camping. Gerald backed over the flashlight they’d bought special. Deirdre made a quiet noise with her tongue. Gerald had wanted to yell.

Lantern. Deirdre reading in bed, making those mmm noises. Like each word was a revelation. Every now and again she’d leave that lamp on all night.

The day she died, the blown bulb. Flick, nothing. Flick, nothing. The gray bulb, the broken filament. Deirdre’s crumpled arm. The brown wet at the seat of her pants, the small pool of bile. Milk-clouded eyes. Stroke, the doctor said. Her brain broke, was how Gerald would tell it. Cloudy bulb eyes, broken filament brain.

Lightbulbs? Gerald said it aloud, said it toward the aproned black woman limping toward him. Her hand crumpled at her ribs. Mouth wet at one corner. Broke brain, Gerald thought.

Aisle thirteen, came the answer. Clear as a bell. All fixed up. Crescent wrench, x-ray, level. Scalpel, spade. Hard to know where to start. We had to break Deirdre’s hips, the man at the funeral home said. So her legs’d fit right. Obligated to let you know. In the casket the little finger she broke in the fall angled up, dainty as a princess.

Aisle thirteen. Only Gerald couldn’t bring himself. Didn’t seem like the right fix.

Ax. Crowbar? Better safe than sorry. Deirdre had wanted a gun. Better safe than sorry, she said. Phone call from the range. Your gun’s ready, the man said. Come in anytime with a certified check. Hard to shoot when you’re already dead, Gerald told him. The man laughed. He had a brown tooth, Gerald remembered. Fit his laugh, laugh like a lungful of brown teeth. Rev rev rev whee.