Don't Kiss Me: Stories(8)

All you’re forgetting’s your tarp! Chubby girl, curls hairsprayed to her forehead. You’re committing the perfect murder, right? Chubby smile. Chubby fist at her hip. All that flesh, so much flesh.

Yeah, get me one, Gerald told her. A blue one and some bungees. I don’t want clear.

Chubby face held tight. Quiet call on her walkie. Old man, smeared rose tattoo on his arm. This all right?

Seventy-four twenty-eight. Twenty-eight how old Deirdre was when they married. Deirdre whispered, Lucky you, I ain’t wearing no panties, right there at the altar. Turned out a lie. Minister sweating slick fat drops and all for nothing.

Deirdre always did like to lie.

Whoosh went the doors. Whoosh went the heat. Store climate-controlled as a coffin. Gerald rushed his purchases into the trunk. Safe in there, sealed like a tomb. Coffin, tomb. Beats of his heart. Coff-in, tomb tomb. Coff-in, tomb tomb.

You’re being dramatic. Deirdre’s sister. Hair in a froth. Throat asparkle. Nails like a hawk’s. Swoop, Move on. Swoop, I always did find you manly. Swoop, wet lozenge, nest on a napkin. Swoop, bloodstained beak. Swoop, Gerald played dead. Gerald refused to writhe.

There went the sun. Quick as a cookie into milk. Nothing on the radio. Man promising there’d be something soon, throat like a cave. Gerald agreed.

Deirdre buried way back. Newest part, the man at the funeral home had declared. Deandra got the place all to herself, he said. Didn’t mention the stick trees bent like burnt orphans. Didn’t mention they ain’t built the walkway that far yet. And then Gerald hating to mention how he’d rearrange the man’s acorns should the stone say Deandra and not Deirdre.

Passion, Deirdre would hiss. All I’m asking for. Gerald grabbed, one hand for the tit, one hand for the warmth down between her legs. That wasn’t it, turned out. That was far from it. A PASSIONITE WOMAN, the stone said.

Park the car. Throw the tools over. Climb. Climb down. Gerald nothing but a list now, lines on his skin, pencil in the lines.

Deirdre hands in the sink. Deirdre sweaty hair at her neck. Deirdre clap, smeared red of a mosquito. Deirdre in her yellow robe, feet bottoms black as coal. Deirdre Ain’t you going to let me in? Deirdre mmm. Deirdre mmm. Deirdre ding, Deirdre dong, Deirdre How’s a girl supposed to breathe in heat like this? Soapy water, smell of soap. Thread of dirt, black black smell.

Three months buried. Chiff went the shovel. Grass like a carpet. Dry soil, all burnt up. Chiff. Chiff. Chiff. If I ever die, don’t bury me. Denim-blue night. Burn me up, feed me to the pigs, throw me over tied to an anchor. Train whistle, baying dog, smell of rain. Okay? Okay?

Chiff. Deirdre’s hand, cold as a cooler. Mind the pinky.

Just dreams! Deirdre’s sister, feather of lipstick on her incisor. She’s dead!

Day of the funeral, throat shoveled raw. Fart, went Bitsy. Gerald turned to nudge Deirdre. Oh, he said. Oh, that’s right. Oh, he kept saying. Shh, now, came all the replies. Shh.

And here she’d been, to think. Ninety-two days bored and hot. Chiff. Married thirty-three years, a prophet’s lifetime. Can’t escape that easy!

Gerald in up to his shoulders now. Chiff. Sun at his neck like a slap. Shovel to wood, a stop. Stop went the shovel. Go went the ax.

Help you? Wet voice of a boy.

Pow went the ax. Came apart in his hands. Funeral man saying, Nothing’s coming through this sucker, not no maggots and not no ghosts. Rev rev whee. Chain saw? Gerald asked the boy.

Come out from there. Sanded voice of a man. Gerald looked up. Sky boy man. Sky like the water in a tub. Chain saw, Gerald said. Deirdre and all this nothing to look at.

Can’t help you there, came the man. Time to come on out from there.

Dirt on his tongue. She’s in there. Dirt in his eyes.

That ain’t her no more, said the man.

All that dirt in her breaths. Deirdre and the candy pink of her toenails. Deirdre and them dirty feet. Tiptoeing across the porch just the night before. Ruined blade in his hands, shimmering useful as a fish. Gerald at the chipped white kitchen table, night after night these ninety-two days. Crackers cheese beer, all that silence and chewing, the television and its noises. Loneliness a nightly death, bed a burial. All this dirt, all that wood. The sound of her voice, even that gone? Gerald’s cremated heart, Gerald’s aching burned-up heart. Nothing but urn left now. Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, thinking how most of the time he hated her, that mean mouth, he missed that hate, its absence a hacked-up emptiness, Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, Gerald saying, I’m alive and I can’t breathe.





ME AND GIN


Me and Gin play Lips. This a game where you see how long you can touch lips before you need to scream. Gin always the one screaming first, I guess not always, sometimes I scream first cause I don’t want to seem like no weird lips lover.

Me and Gin’s both girls. See.

Me and Gin go over each other’s houses, mostly hers though, cause my daddy don’t like wearing shirts always, and Gin says he got flabby baby boobs, and when I tell Daddy this he cups what he got and says, That bitch just can’t handle her fiery attraction, and I laugh cause it seems like the right thing to do, and Daddy digs out the last of the Skoal and places it tenderly.

Me and Gin decided it ain’t cool to call each other bitch. I nod and nod at her, I want her to know I agree, but inside I am forlorn, I will have to find another word that sounds so powerful. Bitch like a bull stamping its hooves, bitch like a broom after a crow.