Don't Kiss Me: Stories (6 page)

The shears—or was it a razor?

The blade. The blade looked like a blade and cut like a blade. It happened how it should.

Our man’s eyes were a thin shade of blue. We mashed teeth when we kissed. If you see my sister tell her to give me a ring.

THE DETECTIVE:

The chief’s cigar dangled. Put her in a lineup with the others, he said.

THE WIFE CONFESSES:

Listen. She thinks I’m not listening. If she says he’s dead he’s probably dead. When we were young we buried things.

We’ve got a man on the case.

THE DETECTIVE:

The detective thought about smudging:

Description: earless body, man, blood

into his fogged windshield. The woman in the backseat whined. The highway drifted on and the detective got bored with counting lights.

Tell me, the detective said.

When I was twenty I fell in love with a houseplant, she said. When I was fifteen I murdered my mother’s fancy soaps. She said, I’ve always hated shells. Something about the shape.

The detective noted the gap in her front teeth, the brass in her hair. Maybe, he said, it’s the halving you hate.

The woman rolled onto her back and kicked the window.

The detective shook the Afrin bottle. The familiar swish was gone. He was out. He pushed the nipple up his nose and held it there. Tell me everything, he said.

Just one last thing, she said. Her voice was low and she sniffed wetly. The truth is I’d like to go home now.

The detective smelled popcorn. Wine dregs. Something warm. She’d wet herself. I’m not buying it, he said. His patience was waning. He had one hour and forty-three minutes left.

THE CORPSE:

I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.

THE WIFE AND HER SISTER:

The station boiled. Men wiped foreheads with damp handkerchiefs. Ties were loosened. In the kitchen the lone female officer pressed an icy gallon of milk to her thighs. The station pulsed. Breath was exchanged. The night wound.

The wife identified her sister. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s her, she said.

Her sister stepped forward and bowed. Her hair cascaded in a horrible wave. Bits of it clumped with blood.

The chief blew smoke rings and shot the moon. That’s our girl, he said.

THE CORPSE:

Two ears. Not even the eardrums. Cartilage, lobe. And the room bloody with blood.

The question is, is there enough of me left over for proof that I’m dead.

And should I be taking her word for it (I don’t know).

THE DETECTIVE:

The detective stopped at a druggist’s. Pulled the woman out by her ankles and righted her. She wobbled in and squinted under the fluorescents. Near the diapers he uncuffed her, noted her interesting bone structure. Some cheekbones, he told her.

The detective cleared the shelf of its Afrins. Turned to offer the woman a chocolate sip, but she was gone. He watched the flight of her hair. Into the dark mouth of the parking lot.

The detective got wistful, told himself she’d find her way.

The car smelled like brine and white sugar. The car smelled like her. The detective rolled down the windows and let the wind knife in. The clock said what it said.

THE SISTERS:

Stop crying.

I will.

You can touch me.

Where is he?

He’s everywhere. He’s just everywhere. Hold my hands. Feel how cold.

THE SISTERS:

The sisters watched themselves. The room was silver with mirrors.

At the end of the day Jameson, the chief said, and his head was blurred in smoke, we’re all just looking for ourselves. And where’s Tin Ears?

The sisters held hands over the table. Their eyes locked on their eyes.

The listening room shrugged.

THE DETECTIVE:

The detective parked at the station, crawled into the back, did the Afrin. Pushed his face into the piss-filled seat. It was no longer warm. He spotted a Tootsie Roll in the floorboard and left it there. He watched Jameson walk to his car.

A small boy wrung his hands in front of the station. The detective thought how much the station looked like a yellow lightbox. The boy said,
Somebody tarred Daddy to the floor
. His eyes were small green almonds.

The detective said, Yeah, yeah, what floor? His head made bright exclamations. He could’ve breathed lava. He took the boy by the shoulder and pushed him into the light. He thought about the cuffs.

The fat officer at the desk eyed the boy through dark slits. The detective told the boy to have a seat. Walked back to his desk and wrote
Cheekbones
on the report. He wrote it sloppy enough so that it could be anything.

In the bathroom he ran the panties under the tap. Scrubbed his face pink. He wondered if the boy had any chalk. In the mirror he glared at himself hatefully.

THE NIGHT ENDS:

The chief said, At the end of the day, Tin Ears, the ransom note was the thing.

No body no death.

’Sright. Punch out.

Who wrote it?

Somebody else. Punch out.

THE DETECTIVE:

The detective wondered about death bloody with absence. How enough blood makes a dead man.

He took the back door. Drove a horrible length, parked at a grocery store. The day’s sky was slowly spreading itself. The sun was a dazzling orange in a pool of mucus and it hurt his eyes. He had a few minutes to go before it opened. Jelly rolls. Lunch meat.

The detective thought of the boy waiting on the bench. How he might like to pick a mother out of a lineup.

He found a fresh Ziploc and some coins in the console. Anything brown would do.

THE END:

So that’s it?

PLANS

I kissed a teacher once. It ain’t as bad as you think. It was in Shop. He was showing me how to use the band saw and I was in the crook of his arm and we were pushing a two-by-four together and he had the windows open and there was a breeze and I just turned around and passed my tongue through his lips, easy as pie, his mouth tasted like menthol and something else, something like vinegar, something that wasn’t from food or nothing, something like maybe want. Want is bitter like that is what I mean. Right after I thought of the Cheetos I had in my bag, while he looked at me from behind his dinged-up glasses, while his mouth worked like we was still at it, I just leaned back against the table and thought how I’d eat the Cheetos on the bus home, how I’d suck the orange from my fingers.

Well, he said, when his mouth finally quit.

Yep, I said. He pushed up his glasses and I could see the grit under his nails, his knuckles knobbed and leathery.

I had been planning this for a while. This man, this teacher, he was like something whittled in reverse, moving slowly back to the block. All his edges was dull, if he had any edges left. I thought about putting my hands on his belt and so I reached out and pulled at his buckle. It’s easy as that if you want to know the truth. Just think something up and then do it. That’s all.

He pushed at his glasses again, both hands this time, and I felt his pants get tight. All right, I told him, but he backed away and turned from me and went into his little office and closed the door.

That was that. I ain’t one for pushing it. I got my stuff and wandered the halls till the bell rang and it was time to get on the bus. I ate all the Cheetos, even the little bitty ones, and I saved my fingers for last.

I thought it was funny that here I was finally with my Cheetos but all I could think about was the man’s eyes behind his busted-up glasses, the nicks and scratches making his eyes look smeared and splintered, like something he would have given a low grade to: needs sanding, needs varnish, needs attention.

Anyway. There was a rough bit on my chin from where his face met mine. If you’d seen it and asked me about it, I’d have told you I fell, told you it just needed a cool cloth and some Noxzema, told you I let a football player. Cause it’d have been none of your business.

*   *   *

I stole a coral lipstick from the grocery store while my momma was two aisles over with the frozen dinners, her hand to the glass like that’s how she could read the labels. The lipstick was on a can of refried beans, still in its package, I pictured some desperate woman realizing she needed the beans more than she needed the color and placing it there when she saw no one was looking. I picked it up and worked it out of its package, a thin boy in an apron watching me from the end of the aisle, and me watching him back, me taking that lipstick out and sliding it into my jeans pocket and the boy worrying his pimpled chin with his thumb and forefinger, the boy shrugging like I had asked him and me turning to walk the other way, running my finger along the cans and boxes and bags of food cause I figured he’d be watching, but when I looked he was helping an old man reach the powdered milk and I had to touch the lipstick in my pocket to make sure I had ever been seen at all.

I wore that lipstick one night when we all met up to swim and it was so dark I let a boy take off my bottoms, the lipstick smeared and greasy all around my mouth and its crayon smell all over the boy, and then I put a ribbon on that lipstick and gave it to my momma for Christmas.

*   *   *

I went over to a boy’s house one night when my momma had the TV on so loud it rung in my teeth, so loud she didn’t look up from her program when I shut the door behind me. I watched her from the window, holding her glass in the palm of her hand, flexing her toes, and if she heard me she didn’t feel like doing nothing about it.

After all that loud, after all that laughter and applause and ding ding ding and welcome and good night, the quiet of the evening rushed in after it and filled me up with a fizzing, that’s all I can tell you, I was all fizz and crackle and burst.

This boy went with a girlfriend of mine. But sometimes that’s just tough shit.

I threw pebbles at his window till he came down, told me that was his little brother’s window, told me his little brother ran and told him some queer bitch was standing in the lawn and he better do something about it.

Show me your truck, I told the boy, and we went for a drive.

The boy told me after high school he was joining up, told me his favorite food was meat loaf, told me he put the transmission in his truck all by hisself, told me he had a dream about me two nights before where I sang like a canary bird and fed him a pizza.

And then what, I asked the boy.

He laughed too hard, covered his mouth with his fist like he could cough. Where we going? he asked, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t give him no destination cause then we’d have gotten there. And then what.

He turned us down a dirt road, parked us alongside some trees. Well, he said.

Well, I told him, come here, and the boy did, pulling himself across the bench seat and me under him, the door handle at my neck and that was good, I like to remember it ain’t always ideal, and the boy kissed me, his tongue fluttering in my mouth like it was a wounded butterfly, I realized this was his technique and I was touched at the effort.

You need to tell me something, tell me anything, the boy said, holding himself up, he was breathing hard, I thought of his girl, how she gave me some gold hoops for my birthday, how they turned my ears green but I never said, how she snorted when she really got going.

I can’t sing, I told the boy. And I ain’t no bitch like your brother called me. The boy lowered himself back down upon me, that weight and that heat making me feel all exploded, I was like to breathe him all up and in, Yes you are, he said, I could feel his breath on my face, yes you are a bitch, I could see up close how he was freckled, he smelled like grass and dirt, his heart like a mallet, ain’t you, he said, ain’t you?

YOU AND YOUR CATS

You got the cat you came to know as Milton the day that Indonesian man phoned up to say he wouldn’t be meeting you at the Sizzle Steak because your new hairdo reminded him of a hive of blood beetles, which was a bad omen, and while he was at it your perfume reminded him of his momma’s deathbed breath, and finally he spluttered how you make him sad, and that was really the thing of it, this put you off so much you didn’t deign to ask him what a blood beetle was, even though that was the best part of the Indonesian man, the exotic facts he could drop into a conversation, like that time he mentioned in passing that he boiled his shoes every week, and was a blood beetle an annoyance similar to the house roach or was it a horror similar to a flying ant, you don’t know and now you never will, you daubed some hand soap on your pulse points so you wouldn’t smell like breath no more and you went to the Pets ’n’ Friends and walked straight to the kitten bucket and pointed, a little boy said, Uhl, that thing got a noface, and you told the boy, Better than too much face, biglips, and you named that cat Milton and you tried not to look directly into its face, cause you remembered the Indonesian man saying how cats can hypnotize you into digging out your own internal organs and offering them up as an afternoon snack.

Then you got Posy cause Milton had gone, you came home one day and he was nowhere, and he was nowhere the next day, and you didn’t waste much time after that cause you found yourself thinking of the Indonesian man, how his mouth was just a line, how his eyes were the color of moss, how his jacket smelled like an old onion, which you now realize was likely his body odor and not some secret passion for cooking he would reveal after you had taken him into your bed, which you imagine happening after he had fought off a rapist he found in the alley, but you don’t have an alley, and you ain’t got Milton either, and you got tired of standing in the fridge light to sniff an old dried onion from the salad drawer, and so there you was at Pets ’n’ Friends, pointing again, this one you named Posy cause of her little bud nose, and let’s face it cause she had a prominent pink butthole, which she seemed proud of or at least comfortable with, in a way that made you start thinking maybe your hivehead and breathneck weren’t ugly things, they just were, and maybe you was all right in the long run, you had nice fingernails after all, and sometimes when you was tired your eyes didn’t boggle quite so much, and Posy loved life the way you wish you did, you caught her sitting in the sink so she could watch her own face in the mirror, and she was always rubbing her sides on things, like contact with the drywall was a pleasure sweet enough to be repeated daily, you tried it once but there was nothing there for you.