Even though it's sort of been a while

[whateverthat]

The Housekeeper

A late-model Honda, piercing green in color and skirted with dirt and dust, crunched its way into the gravel driveway. Inside the adjoining home, a pale yellow light flickered and went out. “Fuck,” said the driver. “Fuck.”
She briefly considered putting the car in reverse and going back to where she had been - out, at the home of a man she’d met not that long ago, a man she never thought she would see again but would have liked to, and did. Her keys were still dangling from the ignition. She hadn’t switched off the car yet. Her house key, the only other key on the ring, hung down from the ignition, lonely and glinting in the low lights of the dashboard. She turned off the ignition, sighed, and opened the car door.
She knew exactly what she’d find in her house - a man, a little older than thirty, sitting on her couch amidst the piles of unfolded laundry, accompanied perhaps by an empty bottle of red wine which she’d left out and hardly had a drop of but had intended to. She didn’t know why he always switched off the light before she walked in. She had an idea that he felt like an invader, that giving himself away before she could even walk in the door smacked of perverseness. Just an idea, though. He probably didn’t like to feel like a creep, she thought, and anyway, being discovered alone in the dark suited him.
She turned the key in the door and pushed it open. He’d brought in the mail - strange, but for him, nothing out of the ordinary - and even recycled the newspaper that sat untouched on her front step every morning. She’d never bothered to terminate the delivery. She just let it come, day-in, day-out. And just as the paper boy tossed it on her doorstep every morning, so too did the man inside bring it in and toss into her garbage can.
He didn’t say a word as she stepped in with high heels clicking against the wood floor. She pulled off her shoes and threw her purse onto the counter next to the pile of unread mail that the man brought in. She knew he never read the envelopes. Of course, they looked unread, still tucked snugly into the tabloid-sized advertisement which seemed to always read the price of a twelve-pack of Diet Coke and featured General Mills cereals. He could have gone to the trouble of putting them back the way he’d found them before a jealous perusal, but she could tell that he didn’t. He didn’t need to. She knew he just sat there, alone and drinking, and in a way it frightened her more than any invasion of privacy would.
It was late - close to midnight, anyway - and she could have easily just gone to sleep. A nice evening out did that to her. Being with that other man made her calm, docile, no longer troubled by the worries that usually made her toss and turn at night. She couldn’t bear to think that if she did somehow manage to fall asleep in her home, the man inside would still be there, on her couch, drunken wide awake and staring at the wall. His inactivity unnerved her and made her cold inside. She knew she had to say something, and she knew that sooner or later he would leave.
“That was my last bottle,” she muttered. “I was saving it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Quit drinking my wine. You can do whatever you’d like with the newspaper but if you don’t leave the wine alone I’ll change the locks.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’ll hide the key somewhere you can’t find it.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll give him my key and you can try to wrestle it from him.” She knew he could never do this. The man she’d been out to see was fitter, more able-bodied than the fragile shell of inebriation that sat before her. He was protective and strong, nothing like the man on her couch. The opposite of the man on her couch, really.
“I thought maybe I would put some of this laundry away for you.”
“I have to sleep tonight.”
“Okay.”
“Do you understand? I have to sleep. You need to get the fuck out of my house.”
“Okay. I just can’t drive home like this.”
“I don’t care. And why should you? You don’t have a car.”
“Yeah.”
“And even though you can still barge into my house whenever you feel like it - ”
“Hmm?”
“ - I’ve only got one key for the car.”
“I remember,” he said as his hands shook, “the day we picked out that car. Sunny and warm, so warm we didn’t want to wake up.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“That’s what happy was. For me anyway. Just snoozing. That was all. A little nap.” He put his hands through his hair and straightened up against the couch.
“You really need to leave.”
“Why did you paint it green?”
“My bedroom?” She sat across the room on her small leather love seat.
“The car.”
“The car was green when we picked it out. We picked out a green car. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Was it green?” he said, accidentally knocking over the empty wine glass that sat on the table as he brought his hands from his head to his knees. “Wasn’t it…”
“Wasn’t it what?” she asked impatiently.
“Red. It was red.”
“My car wasn’t red. My car was never red - my God, how much have you had to drink tonight?”
“What if I can’t sleep anymore? Just because of that morning. Will I die?”
She was sick of him. “You know, it’s funny you mention sleep. I was going to do that sometime tonight.”
“Can you sleep?”
“Whenever you decide to get out of my house, yeah.”
“I mean, when I’m not here? When… when he’s here?”
“We don’t do much sleeping. But when we do… believe me.” She stood up and walked toward him. “We both sleep like rocks.”
His gaze seemed to get lost in her wall and she took the empty wine bottle to the kitchen and tossed it into the garbage on top of the day’s newspaper. She fetched a glass from her kitchen cupboard and filled it with water for lack of anything else to keep her from him. When she had finally drained it and returned to the living room, he was taking her laundry from the piles. She watched as he gently took her clothes and draped them on his arm before neatly folding and stacking them. He seemed so sober then, with focus and purpose.
“I can do my own laundry.”
“I know.”
“So why don’t you leave my clothes where they are?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re an impossible -” She almost said man but didn’t.
“I’m sorry. Can I stay long enough to put these away?”
“Will you leave if I say no?”
“Only, you won’t do it yourself. The clothes were here yesterday.” He looked her up and down. “So was that dress. You look nice.”
She sat down again on the empty loveseat and rested her head upon one of its arms. When she closed her eyes, giving in to her fatigue but never thinking she could fall asleep, he was walking toward her bedroom with a stack of folded shirts gathered up in his arms. She must have dozed off, anyway, because she heard a clang and suddenly the stacks of laundry were all gone and so was the man. There wasn’t an empty wine glass on the table anymore.
She walked into the kitchen where the man was quietly washing the dishes that sat dirty in her sink for the past few days. The clang she’d heard was his drunken attempt to hang the wine glass from the hooks at the bottom of her kitchen cupboard.
“Damn it,” she said out loud.
“You slept.”
“Unbelievable, I know.”
He picked up a frying pan she’d used to make scrambled eggs one morning and filled it with warm soapy water. He took a Brillo pad and scraped out the yellow-white that stuck against the pan’s surface.
“I don’t think I can sleep anymore.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’ve been trying.”
“But I woke you,” he said. “When I put away the glass, I woke you, didn’t I?”
“You’re obnoxious.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you, but my hand shook and I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry.”
She looked at the clock. It read one thirty-seven. She looked back at the man who had finished with the frying pan and moved on to the spatula. “I can’t believe you still don’t have a job. You’d make one hell of a housekeeper.”
He stayed silent.
“But I’m not hiring,” she said. “And I want you to leave so that I can get some peace and quiet.”
“You’ll sleep.”
“Here’s hoping, yeah.”
“Do you think it will be warm tomorrow?”
“It’s the middle of January.”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Hmm.”
She felt her eyes begin to droop again. Her body ached for a good night’s sleep. She just wanted the man to leave her in peace, as he usually did after a short time, but now he seemed intent on leaving her home spotless. She didn’t know what to do apart from not making any more messes for him to clean.
“When will you leave?” she asked.
The man’s eyes reflected cold and distant as they stared out the window toward her driveway and porch. The bulb which hung outside above her front door was bright enough in the darkness of the night to bathe her car in pale fluorescence.
“The car is green,” he replied. “Why did I think it was red?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s green like your eyes. The dust even gives it the same flecks of brown.”
“Just don’t wash it, for God’s sake.”
“I won’t.”
She went and sat at the small kitchen table which was pushed against the wall and tried to make herself more comfortable by resting her head on her shoulder.
“I’ll call him,” she said, her eyes closed. “I’ll call him and he’ll come over and he’ll stay all night if ask him to.”
“I know,” said the man.
“He’d come and he’d wash my dishes and he’d fold my laundry and he’d buy me a new bottle of wine and he’d tuck me in to bed.”
“I believe you.”
“And if I wanted him to leave he would.”
“I know.”
“And you would leave because if you didn’t he could kill you.”
The man kept scrubbing the dishes.
“I could tell him to break your neck and he would do it for me.”
He set a cup down on a towel on the counter to let it dry.
“And he could do it. He’s strong.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not lying. I’ll call him if you don’t stop cleaning my house.”
He didn’t say anything. He just kept scrubbing.
“And you know what? Fuck you for finishing off my wine.”
“Who bought you that wine?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Think.” She still couldn’t remember.
“I don’t know. He did, probably.”
“He didn’t. I did.” She remembered that the other man had poured a glass of white wine for her during their time together earlier that evening. “Because I know how much you prefer red to white wine. And how excited I was to know that when I went to buy the bottle.”
“God damn you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I just want to sleep.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that but you’re still here.” There was still a large portion of the dishes left unwashed. “I’m calling him.”
She left the room and looked around and then came back to the kitchen. “What the hell did you do with my phone?”
“You left it on the bed. I put it on your nightstand so that I could make your bed.”
She stomped back out and walked into her bedroom where the wireless phone sat in its charger. It was hardly ever there and it often died on her. When she picked it up now it was fully charged. She dialed the other man’s number and listened as it rang. Then a young woman’s voice on the other line and she threw the phone at the wall and the battery came out. She stomped back out into the kitchen.
“He’s coming and if you don’t leave he’ll kill you. I’ll tell him to kill you.” From over his shoulder, she saw the porch light flicker and through the tears in her eyes the car almost looked red for a moment. It stopped flickering and the light went out.
The man finished washing the last plate and turned around to look at the woman. “I should replace that bulb. He won’t be able to find his way down the driveway with the light out.”
By now she was no longer trying to hold back tears and he held her in his arms and she sobbed. “I don’t want you to go,” she said.
“I know.” He carried her to her bed and tucked her in before taking a fresh light bulb and screwing it into the porch light socket. And even though he finally went to sleep on the couch, more soundly than he had expected, the next morning was warmer than any other he could remember.

And this one I wrote for Linker


Late Coffee

Dusk was falling outside the diner. Hazy reds and browns filtered through a line of trees which separated the diner from the nearby park, while overhead a grey mass of heavy rain clouds gathered. Passersby strode lazily down the sidewalk, standing up a bit straighter and tightening their coats around them as a cool wind blew past the diner’s clean windows.
Inside, a man hung his brown coat beside the door and sat at a small table in a dark corner. He slouched in his chair, tired and impatient. The waitress walked toward him, asked if he would be dining alone, and handed him two menus. The man wasn’t hungry. His eyes were grey and drooping and his face was hollow.
He chewed his fingernails when no one was watching and tapped the table with his thumbs. Beside his plate sat a white mound of torn up napkins, growing larger with each passing second and threatening to come crashing down at any moment. The man sat up and looked at the door to watch another man with similar features walk past the unoccupied bar. In the kitchen behind the bar, the waitress dropped a pot of coffee, cursed, and motioned for the busser’s help. The new man slid into the empty seat at the grey-eyed man’s table. Outside, it began to rain.
“You’re here,” said the hollow-faced man. “It’s nice to see you again, David.”
David didn’t reply. Instead, he brushed the stray napkin pieces from his menu and began to read it. His stomach grumbled and groaned. The waitress, having cleaned up her mess, approached the two men with a notepad and pen.
“What can I get the two of you?”
“I want the parmesan chicken,” said David. “And a cup of coffee. Black.”
“Have you had the parmesan chicken before?” asked the waitress.
“No.”
“It’s not very flavorful. People have complained. Can I recommend something else instead?”
“No, you can’t. But you can tell your cook that his food would probably taste better to his customers without your critique.”
The waitress nodded, embarrassed, and looked at the other man.
“And what would you like, sir?”
“Just coffee, please. With some half and half, if you have it.”
“Not hungry tonight?” the waitress asked.
“Not tonight, no.”
“I’ll bring out your coffee right away,” she said, taking away his plate and silverware. The two men were left alone, David staring blankly at a wall and the other man at David.
“You knew you would have to do this eventually,” said the man to David. “She was getting old. She was sick, and she was tired.”
David said nothing, but instead watched the people outside as they walked past the diner windows.
“Can you believe that waitress?” David asked, finally addressing the man. “Of course the parmesan chicken is going to taste like shit, with that kind of introduction. If this were my restaurant, I’d fire her.”
The man didn’t reply, and instead continued tearing napkins into pieces. “She only ever tried to be nice to you,” he muttered.
“Who, that waitress?”
“Mom.”
“Look, Chris,” David said. “I’m as torn up about our mother as you are. Really, I am. But I’ve got a job now. In the city. It’s hard to keep coming back here without running the risk of getting canned.”
Chris stopped tearing up paper and rested his face on his hand.
“We can’t all be artists, you know. I can’t just drop my easel wherever the wind carries me and paint myself a pretty picture. I’ve got people to meet, deals to set up. I do important work now, in the city.”
“In the city,” said Chris.
“It’s an eight-hour drive,” said David. “Gas prices are going up, my car is in disrepair because I hardly ever need to use the goddamn thing. And these city women, Chris. They expect you to make a sizable down-payment just to get into their skirts.” David eyed the waitress as she wiped down the diner’s windows. “Not at all like the women here. It’s a waste of my money to come back.”
“It wouldn’t have killed you to stop by a few times. She talked about you constantly. You were her favorite.”
“She smothered me.”
“She loved you.”
“She wanted me to stay in this dead-end place. I had to get out, Chris. I had to.” David slumped back in his chair and rubbed the fatigue from his eyes. “You moved away as soon as you could, too. Your feet itched the same as mine. Can you really blame me for wanting to leave?”
Chris sat and said nothing.
“And where the hell is that coffee?”
David looked around for the waitress. Chris stared at the table.
“And so you waited until she was gone before you finally came back. Were you afraid you might see something that would make you stick around a little longer? Keep you from your job? In the city?”
“Chris -”
“At night, she would cry out your name while she slept.”
Chris stared at David, who looked down at the table. The waitress came with a plate of parmesan chicken and placed it in front of David.
“I’m so sorry about the coffee,” she said. “We had to start a new pot. Busser dropped the only hot one. I’ll bring it out as soon as it’s ready.” She walked away toward the kitchen.
“Useless,” David sneered, taking fork in hand and cutting his chicken into large hunks.
“It would have made her so happy just to see you one more time. It was the least you could have done.”
“I’m sick of talking about it,” David replied, simultaneously chewing his chicken. “The point is that I’m here now. I almost didn’t bother at all.”
Chris said nothing as David forked piece after piece of chicken into his mouth. After taking in a large chunk, he began to cough. His face turned blue. He waved his arms and pointed at his throat. Chris did nothing. Finally, David’s arms stopped moving. His face hit the plate of chicken, spilling marinara sauce around the table.
Chris stood up, reached for his wallet, and threw a twenty dollar bill next to the mound of torn napkins. He walked toward the door, put on his brown coat, and walked out alone into the rain. From outside the window, he watched as the waitress brought a steaming pot of coffee over to the table, saw David lying in a pool of sauce, and dropped the pot, shattering it into hundreds of pieces all over the diner floor.