FLash in recent anthologies
THE KISS
No one can guess so she finally tells us.
Actually Mona doesn't tell, she sticks out her tongue at us and there it is--a gold ball the size of a small pea, sitting in the creased rose lap of her glistening tongue.
We all lean forward from our pillows on the floor, seven of us, the wrung-out remnants of a grad party in the low-candle stage. Inge asks Mona where she got it done (Cambridge as an undergrad), Raphi our host asks her why (she likes something in her mouth), my boyfriend wants to know what it tastes like (no taste). We're still peering into her mouth so she lifts her tongue slowly, the rosy tip pointing up toward her nose. There on the silky downward slope is another gold ball.
"A bah--bell," she says, her tongue still showing off. And it is. A tiny gold barbell piercing her tongue. We settle back into our pillows and she closes her mouth.
My boyfriend, a chef at Valentino's, is probably wondering which tastebuds sit in the middle of the tongue and if they are affected and how. Inge, the etymologist, is mouthing the word tongue, no doubt marveling at how the tongue loves to say that word. I can tell we're all wondering something. Our tongues feel heavy in our mouths, empty except for the privileged gold fillings and ivory bondings of the middle class.
It occurs to me that Mona's not able to enjoy her barbell. Enjoy the way the tip of my tongue visits a rough molar, soothes a canker sore moistly healing on its own, or wetly licks the hairy friction of chapped lips.
I say I wonder what it's like to kiss her?
Everyone shifts and nods as if they were wondering the exact same thing. We turn to the man Mona came with who shrugs and says he doesn't know. They just met three hours ago at Huddle's Pub.
Well, who's going to kiss her Inge says.
We all look first to the man she came with and then at the other eligible male. No one counts mine, which disappoints him and he lets it show. The man she came with weighs thirteenth century Inca bones after reducing them to ashes in an autoclave the size of a toaster. Raphi, our host, is a religion major--the Hellenistic culture--who thinks the world is fast approaching a non-religious end. "I'll kiss her," he offers, then defers to the man she came with.
"Wait a minute. Maybe not," Jorie says, holding up her hand. She and I are in gender studies. "Don't you think we should run it by Mona first?"
We all turn belatedly to Mona.
"Oh," she says, "It's all right with me." The gold ball doesn't show when she talks. I wonder if it makes a dent in the roof of her mouth.
The man she came with says "I'll kiss her." Neither man is looking at Mona.
"You choose," Inge says to Mona.
Mona shrugs and points to Raphi. "You offered first."
He grins.
Oddly, in perfect synch, they both stand up.
"No do it here," we all say, "here in front of us." But we needn't have worried; they had no intention of leaving.
Mona and Raphi face each other above us. They are the same height. Mona's hands rest on the hips of her black jeans, her elbows jut out claiming space to equal Raphi's greater weight. He has his hands deep in his pockets. We are all aware of his hands in his pockets.
They stand inches apart--two inches apart. She tilts toward him first, just her shoulders and head, and then he catches her tilt, catches her mouth with his mouth. They kiss. They kiss tenderly and well for two people who have just met. Their heads glide with their mouths and their shoulders move ever so slightly. I imagine his tongue filling her mouth, sliding toward the ball, searching, pressing, perhaps turning it, rolling it; her tongue letting him. I imagine their hands aching to touch the other person but refraining as if to abide by some set of rules. No one looks away.
Minutes, but probably seconds, later they stop. "It's pretty far back," Raphi says and we all swallow with him.
Mona turns and sticks out her tongue to show us she thinks not, and we see it's not so far, really. Perhaps an inch and a half.
She turns back to Raphi and they kiss again and we all watch them kiss, even better the second time: harder, deeper, her tongue and his tongue, her generously letting him, that slight tilt, their scrupulous hands.
They pull away. We have all been holding our breath.
Well?
They settle themselves cross-legged and facing each other. I imagine another night such as this for them, moving away from the kiss toward the questions and answers of getting to know someone, and that moment when they invite their hands to join their kiss.
We listen as Raphi describes to Mona the amazingly hard muscle of her tongue, the cool surprise of the tiny gold ball, the flick past the ball underneath. They tilt toward each other.
Raphi's hands talk.
Mona is smiling that smile. She's got what she wanted.
The man she came with leaves first.
My boyfriend leaves with me, but we go home separately. We all go home with something missing on our tongue.
help
The music decibel is at an all-time high, and the bar-back went missing earlier tonight, so her boss, Benny, gave Denise the job of sloshing the glasses clean. He’s pulling beers with a heavy flourish and even though this is only her second week, Denise knows it means he’s feeling pissier than usual. He hates college kids but he hates yuppies even more and Denise is surprised that he bothers telling them apart. It’s not their age he insists, it’s the way they slap down credit cards. “Yeah?” Denise ventures close to a question. Benny’s eyebrows crawl together, but he won’t say more. Upside down mops is what the washer for the glasses looks like. Denise lowers a glass onto a soapy mop, turns it around then puts it on the rinsing pad. The job sucks, but she’s taking the semester off to save money for textbooks and art supplies. Benny doesn’t know this. He elbows her arm. “I’m timing them,” he tells her, his gaze locked on ‘Gents.’ He says, “The girl went in first and he followed two minutes later.” He picks up one of Denise’s cleanish glasses and pulls another Bud. “The girl in the short pink skirt?” Denise says. She feels like she’s screaming. “Three minutes, maybe five, they’re doing dope,” he says. “Any longer, and its sex. No respect for whoever else has to take a piss.” Minutes pass. Too many. Denise pictures the girl’s pink skirt hiked up into an archway, panties tight around her ankles. “Watch this,” Benny says and muscles out from behind the bar and through the crowd. He’s got a door wedge in his hand and Denise doesn’t have to see to know where he puts it. He’s back and serving more beers. Denise and he are the only ones who can separate out the thumping beat of the jukebox from what are no doubt fists pounding on the wooden door. “You hear that, don’t you,” Benny says to her, grinning. His splayed fingers deliver more dirty glasses. She nods she hears it. She was once locked in a ladies room. Not locked, really. Something had gone wrong with the door. She remembers calling “Somebody.” It sounds stupid to her now, calling “somebody.” But finally somebody came.
FIrst published in Five Points.
letting go
I’m standing at the south rim of the Grand Canyon taking photographs of florid purple striations, of undulating rock that sinks to alarming depths. Soon I must stop. It is almost checkout time at my hotel, and I want to take a tub and use all their emollients, a habit my ex deplored. When a young couple approaches to ask if I would please take their photograph, I want to say, do I look like the Park photographer? This happens to me everywhere—in the Boston Gardens, at the Band Shell on the Charles, among the Cape’s dunes. Always a couple in love—like this couple in their multi-pocket hiking shorts and sturdy Clarks. I let my Nikon dangle from the beaded lanyard round my neck, and take their fancy smart phone, heeding their instructions. “You were always a good listener,” my ex once said, “but sometimes you have to let things go.” I line the couple up in front of the Canyon’s distant north rim, its bronze wall aglow. I wave them to the right a bit. Joined at the hip, they sidle right. As I nod and press the button, they are probably thinking I am a good photographer. Then I motion for them to step toward me for another photo. Unaccountably, they shuffle two steps back—and disappear with scrabbling sounds and tiny shrieks. Then no sound at all. I whirl around for help but there is no one in sight. On my hands and knees, I peer over the cliff’s edge, but it hides the floor far below. As if to assure myself that they were once here, I look at their photographs. They are young, expectant, with squinty smiles against the morning sun. There are two backdrops, then a blur. Breathe, I remind myself. I set the phone on a wooden bench for someone to find. It is the only evidence the three of us were here.
First Published in New Flash Fiction Review.
Ponds
This summer we’re renting a cottage not in Maine, but in a new place on the outer Cape. And just like past summers, you’ll pack your own suitcase, not the one with pajamas and shorts andswimsuits, but the pink suitcase with Ishbel, your fuzzy bear, and games, and books from your shelf. You will have a room all to yourself, mysteriously, and we’ll make sure it is close to our room for when you call out in the night, which you have almost stopped doing. Yes, you can stay up as late as Danny used to—how do you remember that—and you won’t have to think about the ocean. Tides and riptides are words we will not use. The ponds are round and calm, home to tadpoles we will watch grow into frogs, and you will marvel about how things change—like tadpoles and caterpillers—and be sad that some things don’t.
First published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.
anthologies: Stories & Flash
