Three Shorts

THE MASK OF POLITENESS

There are whispers about the new young architect; They say he’s brilliant! They found him in Boston. There is a congratulatory Dim Sum lunch the day he arrives.

My fingers flail around the keyboard, botching letters, legal documents. He likes me, hovers near my desk, says he hates his new Los Angeles view. Doing anything Saturday? he asks.

I’m open, I say.

He arrives at my apartment, roses and apologies, acting late even though he’s early. I show him the dump I live in, babble about my crazy roommate who takes photos of me asleep.

I show him my tiny room.

After dinner he takes me to his parents' home in Torrance where he lives for the summer. He admits that he’s sitting on his father’s credit card; it’s giving him a sore right haunch.

Nothing about the house he grew up in stands out—it’s one in a row of plain beige houses with manicured front bushes. When we walk in, his grandmother smiles, is giving herself insulin. She is older than anyone in the world, bent over, tiny as a bonsai. The rest of them turn toward me as if I am a piece of sharp bone that made its way into the dinner soup. He sticks me in his bedroom, tucks me under his coat, and runs out to explain.

The divorce is in the works, but it takes a long time. I can hear them whispering angrily. I feel like a prostitute, eating Saltines on his rose colored sheets. I open the prim dresser, touch his perfectly folded shirts. Everything about him is threaded, counted, purposefully sewn.

Once we’ve escaped to a hotel by the beach with the shades drawn, the mask of politeness is gone. Underneath is a starved beast. His skillful fingers erase all the partitions between our clothes.

Laughing, I run and hide in the empty coat closet. He has to collect me, make love to me amidst the screaming coat hangers.

FLATFISH

Rollicking at night under the waning gibbous moon with Freddy, the dogs bark continuously. One has laryngitis. When they bark continuously, they're just like people.

I have strong opinions.

No I don't. I just mesh with what I'm given. Say you run away with a trickster, a con-artist. Say he's your step-father. Say he asks you to do things you like at first for thrill but you know are wrong. You will only sop up so much, then your long stalks come out. Halt! Don't parcel me out!

Freddy is so gentle he hides behind his hair like an endangered species. Say he sits on a weed, flattens it, apologizes.

It's all about the wispy days of knowing that all you can stand to watch is Animal Planet. That's when you have to leave. Not good. Animals are so much better than we are. Smarter too. When I run away that's what I want to say in my note. Ma has stripped her throat so many times yelling at me that it is dangerous. Worse than that. Freddy knows.

Flatfish are born with one eye on each side of their heads. One of the eyes begins to move until both are on the same side so they can lie around on the ocean floor and see food. Say this is about how smart nature is.

I'm hiding behind his hair. I'm learning how.

THEM

You would hate it if you knew how many times I apply lipstick now that you're gone. I'm putting it on, like, every five minutes to get through the next fifteen, though I know they use fish scales to make it, and it's like killing fish to put on lipstick for no reason. Nobody usually sees my champagne-grape stained lips except myself, and two adorable medical professionals.

If I had been a cat you probably would have kept me forever, even though I have an incurable disease. I think about that every time I clean the litter pan, especially late at night. I clean it too often because it makes the cats love each other more, and also because I can smell how sad I really am in the unpleasant odor of their piss, which I've read glows under black lights.

In bed, my eyelids behave more and more like cheap polyester drapes, unable to keep out the light. I wake from dreams about us together again, walking nowhere, covered with butterflies. I can taste you with my feet the way butterflies taste leaves and flowers. Without you here, I notice too much about how the town is changing, new money moving in, teenage girls with their rubbery, flat stomachs. They walk around cold-eyed, like billboards about nothing. I drive to the Taste It where they use organic bags, trying not to gawk at stomachs like I used to try not to stare at perfect front lawns. If I had a flat stomach, and a perfect lawn, and were not dying, or crazy, you would be here getting fat on my sofa, drinking beer and burping to mark your territory.

I'm a sloth, it's what we have in common, (and the fact that my left eye feels much more connected to the intuitive part of my brain than my right eye does). And you know the other thing, we talked about it when we made love the first time—bulls are color blind and nobody wants to accept it (red has nothing to do with a bull's rightful anger). We agreed that just having to cope with a cape being waved at you by some short murderer dressed up like a kid on Halloween, (even without drunk people jeering) would anger anyone or anything.

The young doctor took my pulse this morning, prescribed yoga. He had stubble on his shin, and Teva sandals—like you. This guy, this doctor, made me blush when he said he liked my cockroach tattoo. He walked out to get the nurse, held her hand and brought her in to see it. She had a cute hair cut, neon blue eye shadow. She laughed, said random. I told them why cockroaches fascinate me, that they can live for weeks with their heads cut off. They looked at each other, seemed to connect without touching—as if this was all about them.