Paramourn

Turning On Red-1

Turning On Red

VASHTI

My wife just came in with the laundry, and man is she pissed. I’m sitting here at the counter trying not to look like a death row inmate eating his last meal, she’s got that splotchy red anger thing happening with her cheeks, and nobody else in the diner gives a damn about us. She sort of hesitates in mid-stride like she might say something, then continues on her way hefting our Biggie-Sized laundry basket. There’s this pulling under my eyeballs from watching her disappear into the adjoining room without moving my head—I’m being slick about it, see? Looking out of the corner of my eyes. But my wife, she doesn’t bother to look back and see my casualness, damn it. Or my headache from eyestrain.

My head tilts toward the grease and protein in front of me and I rub my eyes. Did the cook heat this meat up enough to kill the parasites? There’s always parasites. It’s just a matter of wiping them out.

Some parasites, they lodge in your muscles and make their home in a big fleshy cyst. Others burrow down through your scalp, chew up and s**t out your spongy brain tissue, scrape against the inside of your skull. But this kind of parasite, this one I have, it disturbs your sleep and your meals and your s*x and your work. Every day it chews away a little more of your willpower. Probably it’s a worm but it feels more substantial, like a rat with razor claws.

In this case, the rat is named Vashti. We went to high school together, but didn’t hang out or even run in similar crowds. The fact that we shared a lot of the same classes has turned my mind inside out: the day in, day out proximity that was never taken advantage of. Crushes are supposed to be for kids. Well, this couldn’t be called a crush exactly—it’s more like being brushed in a trash compactor.

So now the wife sees how it is. Or she noticed the calmness at home, the contentment, and came here to confirm her suspicions. Her husband gets his extramarital carryout at Wolf’s Head Laundry & Good Eats. Which, by the way, must violate some kind of health codes. The sound of organic matter burning and the syllables of banality sizzle in my ears. The moistness of hash browns and cheap perfume clog up my nostrils. There’s an undercurrent in the air of vvmp-vvmp-vvmp and detergent, but mostly you can ignore the laundry side of things.

My wedding band is at home. No need to drag that reminder around. Besides, it’s best to wash your hands before eating, and the ring always interacts with soap spreading a lumpy red rash around my finger. In fact, two weeks ago when Vashti bumped into me my eyes were trained on those angry little lumps.

Her hip clipped my elbow, let’s get that straight. What started as me eating breakfast all of a sudden became some kind of high school reunion for two. We sat here reminiscing and catching up and saying more to each other than we ever did those dozen years ago. Who knows how long all that took, but after a while we realized we were just sitting around staring at each other. She was all: “Wow…seeing you again, you just look so…wow.” My attempt to reply was bumbled as badly as her own comment.

Me, this body puts me in “big guy” territory. What is that the equivalent of? Put it this way: it’s about ten back pains tall, or you could stack up two petite women and pretty much get the right size. And as far as…”size” goes let’s just say I’m built proportionally. Interpret that as you will.

Vashti, she’s for sure on the small side. Her father was Pakistani and her mother from Kiribati, endowing her with vibrantly pigmented skin and the blackest hair. She was always the kind of girl to be at the periphery, bland with no makeup, earth tone clothes, hair unstyled, sitting in the corner. Guess we were both semi-rejects back then. We always had the same classes so we ended up in workgroups together because, well, nobody really asked us to join the other groups back then.

So two weeks ago we talked over breakfast. Everything was friendly, no flirtatious games, just a mellow time. It occurred to me I hadn’t talked with anyone that way in forever, especially not my wife. Seemed like Vashti needed some conversation just as bad. At one point she told me society is a melting “pot,” sure; alternately it burns you and gets you high, and in the end you’ll always get kicked out of the frying pan into the fire.

That was some severely negative stuff coming from her. “Whatever happened to the sweet little thing I used to sorta-know?” We laughed. She told me to prove her wrong but, after several false starts, there weren’t any strong retorts forthcoming.

“Don’t you ever feel like we’re all just out here feeding off each other?” she asked.

“Sure.” It was easy enough to admit, sitting there fingering the pale ring of skin where my wedding band should’ve been. “It crosses my mind every day.”

Lately, so does she—driving or walking or dreaming, it’s all her. I’m talking about love here. You’re a foam cup and just thinking of someone fills you up with scalding coffee, burning away all thoughts, doubts. Just you and that tingling spreading over your thighs and hips, your heart punching your breastbone. The deep, involuntary sigh. How every single thing drags that person into your mind’s eye, starting the process over again. All because of a chance meeting.

We talked for two hours. She was late for work. Me, it was my one day off and breakfast at Wolf’s Head had been nothing more than a whim. She managed to work in the fact that she eats at Wolf’s Head every morning, nine sharp. The last fourteen days it’s been hell keeping myself from dropping everything and coming here at eight-fifty.

And here she is today, much more subdued. “That lady, she gave you this look like she knew…was that your wife coming through the door a second ago?”

“Yes.”

“But isn’t that…I mean…isn’t she from our school?”

“Yes.”

We sit and stir our drinks for a while. Vashti feels really bad about things, just terrible, but who knows why. What have we done? Eat breakfast together. Gas prices have doubled and here we are worried about sharing conversation over food. Somebody selects a bunch of old Alphaville singles on the jukebox and that lightens the mood somewhat.

She has our server clear away her plate. “Look…I really like you a lot, okay?” Hell yes that’s okay! “But I need some time to sort things out, and…” She suffers a fit of self-consciousness and gets flustered. “I better go check my laundry.”

Off she goes to the other half of the building. The toast is sour today, but it gets eaten regardless.

LAURA

Someone pops around the corner from the laundry side, and before their face even registers their butt cheeks are warming my thighs. Hell…is it really her? It’s not possible to have this kind of coincidence going down.

As surprised as me she says, “Oh! I thought I was sitting on someone I knew.”

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she says.

“For a second there I was worried that was a stranger’s elbow in my side.”

She laughs and grinds her elbow into my ribs even more, then steals a veggie sausage link from my plate. Her skin, the color of unfinished pine, doesn’t crinkle when she smiles. Maybe that’s because the smile is mostly in her eyes. This is Laura. Who also went to the same high school. Who kind of actually knew me. Who hung out with me at a few parties over the years, who works at an art gallery over near the dry cleaners, who I gave a lift to one night. Well, her and two of her friends—it was raining, so what could I say?

Laura’s parents were Korean, real hard-liners. Back in school she was one of the first girls to develop extremely noticeable breasts. Or, one of the first not to hide them. She was a bohemian hipster chick walking the fringe between “art crowd” and “cool crowd.” One time, tenth grade, she asked me to buy cigarettes for her because I was so tall and she was so short. It worked; they didn’t try to card me. Now instead of a cig between her lips she has that stolen veggie sausage.

Noticing my expression she asks, “What?” Eyes smiling, teeth grinding. Trying to explain my erotic thoughts about veggie sausages doesn’t seem like a good idea. “Whatever. So, you know Ash? Didn’t think you two hung out.”

“Ash?”

“Ash. Vashti.”

“Oh. We don’t, really. I ran into her here a couple weeks back, and then again today.”

“Right.” Then, “I’m sorry—is this, like, uncomfortable? I was aiming for that other chair but missed.”

“Uh, no. It’s cool.”

“It’s cool?”

“It’s cool.”

You know the score: the way she makes me feel is like when two people discover themselves in the same space on the melting pot’s lip and fall off into primordial stew. Pheromones launching in attack formation, each looking to invade the other’s senses. Innards boiling alive like rejects from some cold war nightmare cowering under mushroom clouds. Disoriented, like mushroom eaters. Every microscopic hormone in the bloodstream turns into a magnet propelling you toward flesh that’s burning with equal desire. Laura is an irresistible object stirring my cauldron of insecurities and desires and sure, this dude will play her stew beef—she can masticate me all day and night.

The remainder of the sausage is wedged in the corner of her mouth like a cigar. “You want this?”

“Want what?” She wiggles the sausage around. “Oh, sure. If you’re done with it.” Anyway, wasn’t it mine already?

She sticks it in my mouth, then laughs about the sloppy string of saliva that follows it. “Whoops! Sorry about that.” She brushes her mouth-slime off my chin.

Is there anything better to do with my time than take her hand-me-downs? And what happened to Vashti?

“Don’t let me forget I owe you some meat.”

“But it isn’t meat.”

“Uh-huh.” She slides onto the empty seat next to me, lays her legs heavy across my lap. Her blue jeans are riddled with ink and paint stains. The Converse All-Stars on her feet have been tie-dyed ten shades of gray by the streets. They better not get anywhere near my food.

“Aren’t your eyes a little bigger than your plate, or plates?” she asks.

“Nope. I like having a lot on my plate.”

“My God. How can you eat all that?”

In front of me there’s a platter, two small dishes, and one tiny plate, with two glasses, a mug, and a ceramic thingy full of creamer. “It’s more than a snack, I guess. Should hold me ‘til lunch.”

“I hate you. How much do you weigh?”

“Two-sixty-five.”

“Get out!”

“Get out? But I’m not done yet.”

She slaps my arm playfully. “Look at you. Not an ounce of fat. If I ate all that they’d have to roll me to the emergency room.”

On and on it goes. She’s only nighty-five pounds. Nineteen inches shorter, but you can be pretty sure she was adding an inch to her height, like most people do. Placing my hands around her waist my fingertips can touch, but maybe that’s because she’s sucking in her belly like a mofo. Her two hands only reach around half my thigh.

Why are we playing these dorky kid games? What about Vashti? And what about my wife? s**t, are they in this other side of this building fighting? Yanking each other’s hair, knocking into the washers and dryers? I’m going to be thirty next month; maybe it’s time I had some excitement in my life. Okay, let them fight.

Laura steals some of my juice. “Well, it’s been really cool catching up. I’ve got to get my laundry, but maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Sure thing.”

She gives me an exaggerated handshake and leaves. My coffee has grown cold, but what the hell—there’s still some life in it. And me apparently. What’s next? If I go home, will the cheerleader squad be waiting in my bed?