(no subject)
Now it's raining hard outside. It seems to be louder each time she stops speaking. Her house is silent aside from the sounds of her exhales, a clock, and the rain. It smells like cigarettes, and recent cleaning.
I don't know how I got here. Yes I do. I couldn't think of an excuse fast enough, standing at the curb, covering my head with a newspaper and shoving my hand in the cold mailbox. She must have been at her window, watching, waiting for me to get out of my car.
She pulls the cigarette out of her mouth and stabs it hard into a glass ashtray. The filter bends to a 'V'. She's kept it between her lips the whole time she's been talking. I've watched it bob and shake in her parted mouth like a Fourth of July punk in the hands of an alcoholic. Her garish, orangey lipstick is caked, faded, and feathered into the fine lines around her lips, so her mouth looks all rubbed raw from use. Now she exhales hard, half closes her eyes and rolls them to the side at me. She pauses a moment to take out another cigarette and tap it on the Formica table top. Her mouth might smile any second.
She continues, "...so that night when Nels and I were eating dinner out on the patio, we could hear the whole argument through their window. So she says she's found proof he's cheating." I start to shift in my seat, and then think better of it. She gives a smug nod, "Of course, I've known this a while, his car sometimes being in the drive in the middle of the day, and his coming out the front door late at night, and you know, where there's smoke... You know."
She pulls her dry lips into a small, textured smile. The lipstick is clumped in the cracks. I can feel my cheeks pink up, sitting at her well-lit kitchen table, watching her smoke, and listening to her neighborhood gossip.
She must have been at the window watching as I pulled up across the street. She must have been watching for a long time.