Hello, Beautiful

Bright colors cloud my vision, subdued only by the excess quantity of black leather and soothing pattern of animal print. Italian poser-rock stars are everywhere and of every kind and hair color. Drinks float above their heads constantly, preparing for a crash-landing. Strobe lights confuse my vision inside, but I know its night time, that’s when the show begins. Girls in mini dresses run inside, shivering, too cheap to check their coats inside. Bodies revealed, hormones spilling out of the too-tight fabric, they make me look down and question. My hips still squared, thighs un-shaped, and feet still uneasy and uncomfortable in high heel shoes. Their stilettos don’t even click against the cement floors. Too covered in litter, the magic is gone. But look up, and you’ll find it. Swirling around passively in the twenty-foot high speakers, biding its time before it’s unleashed into the room.
My cousin and all of her friends, just clones of everyone else around, dance aimlessly. Drinks held high and egos even higher; they are on top of the world.
The music lessens to a high-pitched gargle underneath the yelling, clinking of glasses and grunge from the musicians setting up on stage. Every once in a while a sound bite from someone else’s conversation would float my way. But the air bogged me down too much to pay attention. It was as if every molecule were two parts whiskey, one part sweat, and one part smoke. Sure, the smell was both sickeningly sweet and appealing, but while it clogged your throat, it also left you thirsty. My glass rested cold against the pads of my fingertips. Much too cool for comfort, but too numbing to put down. I’d never drank before, I’d never even sipped from my mom’s wine glass. But tonight was different, I was in Italy and the rules of the game were beginning to change. The foreign feeling of tight leather groped every inch of my legs, both provoking and teasing a sense I’d never known.
I supposed my cousin and her posse knew this whole sensation quite well, maybe they even chased it by fleeing to crummy holes in the wall at midnight when it’s below freezing. They all varied from mimicking one poster I’d seen in my dad’s music closet to another. Leather gloves cut off at the fingertips, band shirts ripped into tank tops, and chains pulling it all together. It was an endless un-penetrable bubble of teen angst and caffeine…until he broke into my semi-permeable shell of preserved air. With the simple extension of a drink and a hand on my hip, I felt myself swing forward, too quickly, but so enticing. With what I found to be a silly and childish, not sexy, accent he sputtered the words, “Hello, Beautiful.”
Zip Faster, ringleader of the Empoli underground rock scene, was about to become the most influential stranger in my thirteen-year old life. I had no idea what was coming, but that’s the thing about innocence: it doesn’t mean being shielded from experience, it means never being aware that you need to put a guard up at all.
His huge, Italian eyes melted down on my face while his glass strategically slipped into my small hand. His arms ripped through a homemade Motley-Crüe tank top, they seemed manly then, strong and full, but from the pictures I know they were just extra beer flabbing out of the too-tight arm-holes. Frosted pink fingernails gripped around the condensated exterior, my own drink weighing down on my left hand as I brought his to my lips.
“You will like. Swedish beer, very good.” The words seemed to clunk out of his mouth awkwardly like lego vomit all over a lace cloth. Of course I took a sip, but the metallic liquid struggled against the walls of my throat the whole way down. Maybe that’s why he sounded like such an idiot, too much beer still wringing the life out of his mouth. But that smile kept me distracted, and his hand on my bare skin showing between the top of my cousin’s leather pants and her best friend’s jean zip-up vest I wore felt more like a pinch, screaming for attention, sucking blood to the contact zone, distracting the nerves everywhere else.
The band began to slip into their pre-made alter egos and the background music toned down. My first concert ever, I felt like the sound waves were feeding directly into my adrenaline receptors. The instant I felt I could no longer tolerate the spinning feeling in my head, eyes peeled wide, his arm pulled me in, pulled me down, back to the filthy cement floors.
We spent the rest of the night dancing to the Poison cover band on stage, the opening act. Zip’s band, Hogan’s Alley was next on the bill. But, before he left my side, his now-familiar leather cut off gloves grasped my arm, tugging me in to his side. With his head tilted low, he lured me in for a kiss. One simple kiss on the lips and the anchor sunk, my head spun, and I was forever stuck.
That was my rock star up on the stage, my man. I was swelling with so much pride, I probably looked more like a two year old on Christmas morning than the guitar player’s girlfriend, but I didn’t care. For the first time that evening I felt like I fit in, like I finally belonged in this mixed up world of Italians, musicians, and fashion queens. He gave me my place, he made me a part of something bigger, and he made me myself.
At the end of the night he stealthily turned towards the bar, slid over a napkin and scrawled out a note, sealing it with a kiss. Slipping it into my left hand, he held me by my right as we stumbled out of the Sunset Pub back into the streets of Empoli. I can still see his wink flashing by the window of my cousin’s car as we slipped back into the Italian night, away, to another place I wouldn’t know.
I spent the whole next day by the phone, waiting for a call back, confident Zip was asleep next to his, ready to wake up to a missed call from his little American. It never came. My trip was winding down, only one more day before I was to jump onto that jet and fly back to sunny California. I wasn’t even stirred, something inside of me grabbed hold of that one night in my memory and never let it go. I was his, he was mine. Why else would he have held my hand in front of his friends, kissed me on the lips, and called me beautiful? The same question that runs through every thirteen-year-old girls mind, a question that is less of a mystery and more of a statement that everything is okay.
He called. 4 o’clock on the afternoon before I would take off at exactly 5 o’clock the next morning. My heart swooned and of course I left my grandmothers house blind as to what it means when a boy calls just early enough to drive you away but too late to actually get to know you.
We hopped into his car and drove off into the Tuscan hillsides. With the wheat all freshly cut, the never-ending landscape shone golden under the setting sun. His rudimentary English attempted to make the word drive sound like a magical adventure of fairy tales and happy endings. And I definitely bought it.
I still have flashbacks any time a boy graces the back of my neck, or the bare patch of skin between my jeans and my top. I can still hear his words slipping out the wrong direction, like breathing bile directly into my mouth. But in that moment the whole world was different. I slipped on my rose colored glasses as my innocence, youth, and virginity slipped away. The car became a swan boat, and the sound of cars passing by on the highway to the right became music to my ears. Nothing had ever felt so right, he loved me. He must.
When he dropped me off he handed me a box, a small blue box with a ribbon on top. Inside laid a pendant on a chain. 24 Karat white gold. It was your typical heart with a crack down the middle, one half with an M and the other with a Z. he slipped his rough fingers into the silk packaging and pulled out the charm, holding half between his index finger and thumb he held it out towards me, I grabbed the half etched with a Z, attached to the chain. This was it. This was when I knew that he loved me, and not the kindergarten “lets-get-married!” love. This was real.
He signed his initial as a Z, evidence to me now that it was his stage persona in love with an American girl. Not a boy in love with a girl. His name remained a mystery to me, along with who he really was, or if that person really even existed underneath the black bandana around his brow and chains around his waist.
I never saw him again, he never called, and I’m still not clear on what exactly happened. There are memories still trapped in my thirteen-year-old mind that my now eighteen years of experience either still cannot explain, or purely chooses to block out. As far as my consciousness extends, my trip ended with the words “Hello, Beautiful.”

Mood Swings

The grass tickles down my spine, nothing but my thin tank top to playfully fend off the blades. It's warm now, warm like it never was. With nothing but a stone cold soldier behind me I feel the sun play upon my face. And I know that feeling of hands tiptoeing the contours of my features, I can almost feel it now. But heat is denser than air, but nowhere near as tightly bound as the molecular structure of human contact. Still, the grass blades beside me begin to bend. In honor? In fear?

But I can tick back the clock thanks to my moleskin full of photographic memories and poems meant to be told aloud. The air is electric now, blades contagious with life. The sun isn't feeling me at all, its celebrating. The statue is gallantly posing and its as if the whole world is spinning around this one spot at this one frame in time. Do what you will, turn me into your next stop-motion project and you will see. Smile plastered to my face, restless hands no longer empty. Remember this. Record this, because these moments are fleeting.

I feel the suns rays reaching back out to full the gap, and I know it's gone.

Now its happening, something is coming. Ants pour out the folds of their leafy green battle fields, and the sun is not just reaching now, its groping, pulling at every inch of clothing it can spare because then the eyes set in, and they begin to flood ot only the hollow beside me, but my own cavities as well. Drowning in this puddle of sorrow and regret, I look back at my stone-cold soldgier, and he's changing as well. No longer posing, he towers with a smirk as to say "I told you so" and a glint in the eyes to match. Well, maybe, or its the sun again.

Where I'm From

The cement floors chilled m toes as I would pad across the infinite room heading as quickly, clumsily as I could to my electric blue Little Tykes swing my daddy had hung from the rafters, a million years above my head. One lopsided hop and I could sit at my throne overlooking the only glass wall suspended before me. With my legs pumping and arms pulling ages before muscle tone would set in, I could adjust the frame on my view of where I am from.

Trees would beg for water but not know which direction to look, branches squinting in the head of the LA sun they would be suffocated by smoggy air and cigarette smoke from woman stealing away the last breath of light in the tree's shade. The woman would smile at no one looking and say, "At least I got here, at least I came."

Her view eye-level at a storefront window would never glimmer in the light or shine in the never-coming rain. Not in her eyes, nor in mine, from up above on my throne, no matter how low i would adjust my shutter speed or how much artificial white light I could spit from my pre-pubescent mind.

"Bienvenido," a dim sign read, its hard manmade material standing strongly before both of our eyes. Manmade, she would remind herself as her dry hands materialized around the plastic rosary that clung to her chest.

With just an inking of something and a dash of pain, she would gaze up past the scrawling branches through their cries, and her eyes would meet mine through the shiny glass window a million years above her head.

This is where I'm from.

Clove Cigarettes

It was my fifteenth birthday
But all my friends were about nineteen
A little girl still wearing a training bra
Thinking it was time to start dying, time to start breaking laws

You saw right through me
Straight into my glass house and knew me
I remember where we were standing
I remember how it felt
Two little kids
Testing the morning fog
Half way through the break and yearning
Half way young but learning
In the sand we discover
What we’ve got left to burn
And its half way gone away
All the way back home.

It wasn’t just a mask, maybe
Because now look at me baby
I suck those cigarettes down, like they’re sugar cane
The crinkle of wrapping paper
And air like peppermint winter
Habit is like pleasure,
A desire you can’t tame

Bernie

“Well, my ol’ friend Bernie just came back today,” he grumbled out of the working half of his Bell’s-Palsy, leather face. Extending his marbled right arm to his scotch, fingers clutching, gut wrenching, but eyes thirsty for that first five o’clock drink.

He’d just gotten back from visiting my grandma at the home, finally relaxed back in his crap-out chair, deep-sea fishing on TV, when he started the story.

Bernie was a bit of a strange fellow all along. He’d come into the bar too early, leave too late. He was one of those weirdos. He’d buy us drinks, so he became one of the boys, you know? Even still, he always kept his eyes down to the corners.

Anyways, Bernie wore a wedding ring, standard gold number just like mine. We’d never met his wife on Ladies’ Night Thursdays, I don’t think she’s ever come. We had some decent wives. Iris was a good dancer, Lena cooked some amazing potatoes, and Dotty kept to herself, being the youngest of the bunch, but damn she looked good in those tight red dresses. Sometimes one of the boys would offer up his gal for a dance at least, get the poor thing off his barstool for a little bit. But, he’d always decline. That really pisses me off when someone turns down some man-to-man hospitality.

Matter of fact, I don’t know if he ever even introduced himself to my wife. Poor thing, its not like she’d even remember.

So, we are all sitting in the main room one night, it’s a Tuesday, so we’re playing poker, and all pretty drunk. You know how the Elk’s Lodge always pours with a heavy hand. Its’ me, Bill, Bernie, Clark, Dan, and Jim, and the tables hot. Dan’s throwing down more cash than I’ve ever seen in my life, and Jim is hot to trot too. Bernie’s eyes turn to laser beams, he was looking right at Jim, and we’d never seen him look so damn nuts before. It was like he was trying to burn right through Jim’s head, each twist of his mouth from the dull tap-tap of Dan’s fingers to the music cranking the laser up more and more.

But Jim didn’t mind too much, nah, he was busy. He kept his stonewall face the whole game, you never knew if he was on the up an’ up. So we keep playing, and the bets are just soaring out the roof, not like anything I’d ever seen before. Each of them win one hand, and it just keeps going around in a circle. I don’t know what was up. But Jim’s still sitting there with his stone cold face, Dan’s just hooting up a storm as always, and Bernie just cant seem to take his gaze of damn Jim.

So I look on over across the table myself trying to figure out what the hell Bernie’s looking at so hard. Its something close to the table, waist-height. But, nope, its not his waist, that’s just big as ever. It’s not his shirt, we hadn’t eaten yet. His left arm looks normal, wearing the same gold watch his dad gave him back when he was a boy. The only new thing is this weird skin colored thin as a rubber band rope-kind of thing around his right wrist. Totally seamless, almost looked like it had a few layers too it. I didn’t know what the hell it was though. Some kind of new jewelry people wear these days.

So the heats rising in the game, steam all up in the boys faces, red in their cheeks, hunched over their cards. And BAM, Jim wins it all! Every last dollar had been in the pot and he was taking it all home. Damn that lucky son of a gun. So he pushed his chair back, right? Just standing up in celebration, you know, trying to look all tough. He slowly pulls his right hand up to the left size of his face, fingers massaging his scruff while he just looks down in a slant, down at Bernie, grinning as all hell. Just like we all do, when we win.

But Bernie, man, Bernie just snapped. Like some kind of crazy person, you know how they just snap into their loony brains sometimes over nothing? He threw back his chair, arms thrusted right in the edge of the table. And the chips flew everywhere, the cards fluttered all around all of us, the whole table even tipped up and over, almost hit Bill in his bum knee! But Bernie stood right up and glared back at Jim with as much force as he could get out of those old man eyes. Without even a huff he slowly turned, and walked right out the front door like nothing had even happened.

I thought I should go check up on the guy or something. That’s what pals do, you know? But there was something itching at the back of my gut that told me it was bad. Something was wrong. It was that look in his eye, and just how damn weird he was. He does strange stuff all the time. He must have just gotten some bad scotch or something. No big deal.

So we sat around the club for another minute or two just trying to wrap out pea-brains around what had just happened. Jim just cleared up the floor and started sorting out his cash. Bill’s an ex-cop, you know?

Yeah, he was a cop ever since he was a boy. He was a decent cop, as decent as they come. Cops, these days, now they are the real issue. But BillyBoy helped us out all the time. He’d sign off a ticket, make the trip down to the club and clear things up so no real cops would ever come, and he was good at keeping things on the hush hush. Especially the drinking.

So Clark, and Dan, And Bill, and Me, we trusted him, figured if something was wrong he’d know and figure out what to do. But Billy-boy just looked around a little bit and started helping Jim out with the rest of the clean up. Well, it was all gone soon and we were all pretty drunk, drunk enough to go home at least.

Jim goes and shakes all of our hands out in the parking lot, thanking us for a good game. Heh, its not like he ever does that bullshit when he loses. And when he shakes mine, there’s that damn thing around his wrist again, it almost looks like a teeny tiny fishing net to me. But whatever, I blow it off and drive home.

The next morning, I turn on the news from the crap-out chair, and what do I see? City all, all black and smoky. Someone had burnt it down in the middle of the night. Some crazy man stalked right into city hall, all masked up and dressed in black like the criminals on TV, and lit the Damn Christmas tree on fire with a bottle of Jack and a match. The sick-o even made a display for the cops, and draped panty hoes across what was left of the metal-framed main entrance. But the things were missing a foot. We’ll sort of. If was cut off on the end, and safety pinned back on, like someone’d cut the ankle out of ‘em.

Anyway, sorry sometimes I mess up my stories. I’m old, you know. Pretty soon I won’t be your grandpa anymore, Ill be some other sack of bones in the ground…

So, we didn’t see Bernie for a good two years. We wondered the first few months or so, and we talked about him some nights when we got drunk and thought about the past. But nobody minded much, the sucker was such a loony-toon. Then, all of a sudden, yesterday, Tuesday night, poker night, there’s Bernie!! A little more crumpled up and hunched over, sure, but still was him! He had them eyes again too.

I never got around to asking Jim what that thing on his wrist ever was, and he wasn’t there last night. Hopefully tomorrow night he’ll be back dancing away with Iris.

I still don’t think my grandpa ever questions what happened that night, or the lead up to it. He probably wouldn’t even believe it if we explained it to him. But rest assured, someone in there knew what was going on. Maybe Bill even, maybe them all. They might have all even been in on it. Poor guy, what was he supposed to do? When you’re living so close with the man that’s playing puppets with your life, what are you going to do?

I’ll tell you one thing for sure, it definitely wasn’t a coincidence they called him Burnie.

Bearnie [prose]

A fire burns from within that darkest room,

but the flame is elsewhere,

a place where the fuel and spark can find their oxygenous lubricant.

The victims know that behind their muffled cry there is something else. Something

more than them, that is truly suffering.

Voices scratching from inside this crimson cocoon lose their grip.

One simple act of gluttony is nothing more than perfect,

but it's the repercussions that reverberate silently through the thick air,

electrifying every last fiber of skeleton holding you together.

So far from good

that they do not know evil.

I will soak in every last occurrence,

and lick succulently at the ashes of reason,

left beneath my boots.

The still frames of

his jacket sleeve,

her curled toes,

my clenched jaw,

are all that will remain.

Spoons

Spoons

By Mia Germain

He waddles across the crawling dining room to the too-small table, his body threatening to conquer the overly priced modern plastic-chic chair. I’m picking at what’s left of my manicure, with my head down low, so I don’t see him before I can hear his heavy bulldog-breathing. The woman at his side could catch anyone’s eye, if the diamonds in her ears weren’t enough to blind you, the one on her left ring finger would knock you out. She was an average-looking woman, really, with nice clothes and heavy makeup, the kind that crinkled like wrapping paper with every forced smile. I sat there, counting each breath from my chapped lips, wishing I hadn’t forgotten my lip balm. Burt’s Bees, I swear by the stuff. I stop looking at my gnarled nails to pick at the dry creases, frosted with white flakes, and she gives me the look.

He had finally settled himself into his seat, taking up an amount of space that should have been split among three people, when I noticed that her attention had fleeted. If she had ever had a real date, the poor guy probably would have left in a fury before caviar. Anyways, she’s sitting there with that bright red smile smeared on her face, but her eyes are darting around all over the place. Chandeliers, businessman at the next table, my nubby nails, the empty wine bottle, his dirty tie. She didn’t even notice how uncomfortable it was, but you could feel the energy in the room change, frequency up to hyper-mode. My grip goes for the clutch and my teeth take it up to a higher gear, leaving their mark yet again on my nubby nails. He even attempts to have a conversation, words sputtering out of his clumsy lips, his eyes huge behind those thick black glasses. You could tell he knew it was all for the money by the way he didn’t even try to dress himself, but he never forgot to lay the credit card out on the kitchen counter every weekend. When he was young he was probably the guy everybody thought would make it, he was always just one click off from normal. She was his redemption, the dead wife was his true love, but she’d always been a bit of an eye-sore. This younger, more hi-tech model was exactly what he needed to get invited to restaurants like this. The waiters are staring as she uncrosses and recrosses her fishnet-clad legs, but it’s the man across the table that slips his gnarled fingers up her thigh in excitement. Sweat builds up on his brow, and his breathing gets tight, this is exactly what he’d worked so hard for. This kind of love was cheap, as cheap as it gets when you’re buying it with your black card.

The restaurant had this super modern décor—almost Bauhaus, but slightly wrong—that made you feel like you shouldn’t touch anything or it might shatter into a million fiberglass pieces. I can’t be certain, but I have a pretty sure feeling that the guy that designed this place has never actually eaten here. All of the plates were “expressive” too. The salad bowl came first. The waiter plopped it down in front of me like he knew it was inedible, and I could feel my eyes bulge out of my head in hopes of magnifying the miniature amount of leafy green. But it was the bowl that was wrong, not the food. It had five sides, but it wasn’t a regular old pentagon, more like a star that hit earth a little too hard. If the silverware wasn’t even weirder I would have thought the kitchen had made a mistake and given me the outcast plate. It was beyond modern—it was post-modern, fictional reality. Mumbo jumbo.

My nubby fingertips find their way over to the fork, scratching against the starch-white tablecloth. Smooth metal cools my touch as I slip the handle into my grip. Before I get the chance to stab into my mixed greens she interrupts my moment of peace. Her scream really pierces your eardrums; it’s not overly loud like a man or high-pitched like a child, but it definitely strikes a chord ripping your attention away from whatever it is you were doing. Her eyes are open wide enough to eat a New York steak, I don’t know why she’s even bothering with the fork. But it’s the way she stares at it that’s truly impressive, concentration fixed, the rest of the room shut out: a truly magical moment, that is if shiny metal silverware is what gets you off. But it didn’t last long. She must have realized that her husband and I were both staring.

“Beautiful. These are truly beautiful,” she declares to the table, carefully balancing the fork on her porcelain hand.

Ridiculous. You are truly ridiculous, I thought to myself as the crunch, crunch of lettuce drowned out the man’s damp wheezing from across the table. It’s pretty obvious that he can barely control his excitement. That was my biggest problem with him, I think, he could never hide how horny he was, the dirty old man.

He really wasn’t to blame though, when you’re his age and your wife can have any twenty-year-old model wrapped around her finger, there’s always something to get excited about. She was just so easy to please too; he never had to deal with communication problems, opinions, or thoughts at all, really. Like I said, he really isn’t to blame, if he has the money to keep her happy that’s enough to make up for whatever it is she might have found. He’s got one foot in the grave and the other between the legs of a woman less than half his age, some would even say he deserves a pat on the back. Like I said, he really wasn’t to blame.

We had finished our miniature “salads” and the waiters were hovering around like bees to take the dirty leftovers. Polite as can be, their little penguin arms stand out against the white tablecloth and then grab whatever edge of the odd-shaped plate they can get their hands on. She nods, they nod, and the plates float away.

This is where the story gets scary, some whom I’ve told have disagreed, but it sends a chill down my spine every time I remember it. There’s a lull in the evening as we each stare at each other from behind our blue eyes, not talking, and thinking over our own private thoughts, as complex or simple as they may be. With nothing else to entertain myself I’m back to picking at my lips, not sure if I’ll get scolded for rummaging through my pockets for my lip balm again. I’m picking with my mini lobster claw fingernails and she’s tap tap tapping her pointed toes. It seriously feels like nothing could pass the time. The whole restaurant is breathing molasses when the penguin waiters finally trickle back in through the crowd of suits and up-do’s. It’s soup time, garden lentil. You can track their eyes watching the liquid sway from one edge of the bowls to the other with each step. Odd shapes, once again. They drop in front of our place settings, followed up by a spoon.

Her eyes glimmer and you can see her face light up even under the caked-on complexion-corrector. Every millimeter that the cold shiny metal spoon slides out from the waiter’s white-napkin sleeve her temperature soars and her foot taps quicker. The more she stares at it the more its odd shape is exaggerated. Perfectly resembling a tongue, the curved end is elongated and thinner than your average spoon, designed for your soup-consuming pleasure. I can hear the gears turning behind her doll-face, and I can feel it all making sense to her man. This is the way things fall into place in this family. Animalistic instincts for “want” take over.

“Oh! These spoons are just darling! Oh, daughter, look how cute they are!” the words seep through her red lips with that same shrill voice as before. She slowly turns her head to her right as her eyelashes flutter at an alarming pace. I can tell what’s coming and my nails are back between my teeth. There’s nothing more disgusting than the way he shrugs when she makes another demand on his shriveling, yet swollen body.

“Dear, there’s nothing I’ve ever wanted more! I can’t possibly leave the restaurant without them,” she’s oozing at the wrinkles, her attempt-at-charm perfume clogging up the air at the table. He chokes through the dense air, but before he can get the chance to open his pouty lips, she takes control. With a flick of her finger and another batting of her nylon lashes, penguin number one slides over to her side.

“Excuse me, but could you please bring me all of your spoons? I assume you have them in all sizes. Soupspoons, dessertspoons, saltspoons. Yes, please bring them all.”

He’s getting a bit misty, and now my foot is tapping. My own spoon like a gun in my hand: heavy and hot. The frequency rising, and her pulse is racing, fingers itching at the table cloth for her spoon-fix. She needs the spoons, she wants the spoons, and how could she ever live without the spoons? He knew quite well that she didn’t need these spoons. He thinks this is beyond materialistic desires, this is a conspiracy, and he wont let her embarrass him here, not this restaurant, her job is to raise his social standing, not squash it.

“Pookey-poo, get me the spoons, pretty please?”

“No, I will not buy you those spoons.”

“Of course silly, now they are all on the table, just slip them into your pocket, easy as pie dear. You like pie.”

His glassy eyes roll around glancing over her perfect form as his wrinkled hands slide back from the table and drop to his lap. Chin hung low, he cant help but look up as she twirls her finger through her curly hair, and the glittering rock on her ring finger perfectly catching the light and throwing the glamour right back at him. She knows exactly what she’s doing the instant doubt creeps over his face and she slips her fishnet foot out of her seven inch Louis Vouitton pumps and up his grey pant leg along the side of his varicose-marbled calf.

This was more than another expense he would have to explain to his twenty-something accountant, this was beyond price and necessity. My foot has stopped tapping and my hands have resided back into my lap. The intensity drops because the decision has been made. Order set in stone against his shriveled brain’s grey matter, but the action not taken just yet. This is not a lull, this is the absence of a game. Its already been won.