Eat Your Heart Out

by Dayna Ingram

  Cherry comes back over to the hub and starts filing away the paperwork from her sale. “What a pleasant couple,” she beams. “They’re having a baby and they’re completely remodeling the guest room for her. They bought the complete Shirley Temple bedroom set, mattress frills and everything.”

  “You stole Brad’s sale,” I tell her.

  “Oh, he’ll get over it. He was in the bathroom, for crying out loud. This will teach him to hold it next time.”

  “That’s not the point, Cherry.”

  “Like hell. Look, Devin, if you’re bleeding so bad for the guy, why don’t you give up your turn for him?”

  That isn’t the point either, but it does sound like a workable idea. “Brilliant, Cherry. I will do that.” I remember my newly acquired leadership role and add, “And hopefully you will learn from my upstanding example.”

  Cherry laughs. “You just hate customers.”

  “I don’t hate customers.”

  “Sure you do. That’s why you want to work your way up to management, so you can hide in the back room all day and masturbate, like Biff.”

  “Okay, A, Biff is probably not masturbating. And B, you may have a point. But I don’t hate customers, I’m just shy around them.”

  “Well, sister, if that’s all it is, I can get you over that.”

  “Can you?”

  “Sure. It’s a little trick I use to put myself at ease with each and every customer, to remind myself that I have all the power in this dynamic.” Cherry leans in conspiratorially close to my ear and whispers, “I simply picture them all with cocks in their mouths.”

  I’m stunned into silence. Cherry widens her eyes and smiles at me expectantly.

  “Cocks?” I ask.

  She nods. “In their mouth.” Her smile broadens.

  “Even the old people?”

  “Especially the old people. It’s a whole mind-over-matter thing. People use the same technique to get over their fear of public speaking.”

  “I’m pretty sure those people just picture the crowd in their underwear.”

  Cherry waves her hand through the air, dismissing the idea. “Please. How pussy is that?”

  “I don’t think I want to envision any cocks in any mouths today.”

  “Oh, come on, just because you’re this huge gaymo doesn’t mean this technique can’t work for you, too.”

  “Cherry….”

  “I’m sorry, huge lezmo.”

  “I don’t think it will work for me.”

  “You never know until you try it, right? Here, someone’s coming in right now, try it on her. I got your back!”

  “Cherry!” I try to protest but she’s unnaturally strong for a girl of such slight frame. She drags me around the desks and pushes me out of the hub. I bang my knee on the corner of a glass coffee table and look up to make sure the customer didn’t notice.

  As I near her, something about the woman seems familiar. Maybe it’s the way she is standing, kind of carelessly, shoulders humped, arms held close to the chest, knees bent, head angled to one side, inspecting the oak end tables near the door. Maybe it’s the clothes she’s wearing, combat boots, navy camo pants at least one size too big for her small frame, and over that, draping to just above the knee, a white spaghetti-strapped sundress flecked with small, light blue flowers. I’m pretty much on top of her now and I can see her white bra straps underneath her dress straps. Her lengthy dark brown hair moves over her deeply tanned bare shoulder, indicating she has turned her head and is now staring directly at me.

  “Can I help you?” That’s my line, but she says it to me. This close, she almost smells familiar, like sweat and popcorn, but not in a gross way. Kind of alluring, actually.

  That’s when I tear my eyes away from her bra and look at her face. She smirks, kind of her signature bad-ass smirk, and takes off her oversized sunglasses to stare me down with those big, brown eyes.

  “Should I repeat the question?” asks Renni Ramirez. Renni Fucking Ramirez.

  Here in rural Ohio, we might be behind the times in many areas as far as the wider world is concerned (the height of fashion still largely involves denim), but we do have a second-run movie theater in the strip mall, and some of us can afford cable. I have personally seen Rising Evil twelve times, mainly to educate my friends about the lesbian subtext totally happening between Ms. Ramirez and her co-star Ms. Zhirenkov, but also for the hundred and twenty minutes of gore-splattering zombie killing. I’d know those sexy-angry eyes anywhere, that resonant rasp of a voice, those well-toned arms normally exposed by a form-fitting man’s sleeveless undershirt (personally, I’m a fan of the sundress). You might think the three-hundred-foot movie screen version of Renni Ramirez would be more intimidating than the tiny five-foot-six version two feet away, but you would be wrong.

  The only thing that saves me from complete and utter paralysis is remembering, however involuntarily, Cherry’s perverse advice. Suddenly I’m no longer stunned to silence by Renni’s gorgeous, unreal face, because the giant penis floating beside her head distracts me. I don’t know why it’s so giant, maybe to reflect how ridiculous I think this visualization technique is. Thankfully, the penis (flaccid, for some reason) does not get anywhere close to Renni’s mouth; it hovers impotently behind her, until, slowly, as I come back to myself, it fades into the arm of an antique rocking chair.

  “I’m sorry, no. What? I’m sorry.” Well, so much for playing it cool.

  But Renni Ramirez just laughs, a Sunday morning laugh, casual and unhurried. “Don’t sweat it.”

  This is when I realize if I can sell her some type of furniture, or even just one of the lamps that are technically display-only, she will have to sign a contract and then I can have her autograph without having to stoop to some generic fangirl level and ask her for one. Genius! Carmelle would flip out, hug me, maybe kiss me, maybe more. One of our first dates was a cook-in movie fest where I made her dinner and we watched the fourth movie in the Shut Up and Drive series, or at least the first fifteen minutes before Renni Ramirez’s character was unceremoniously killed off. We consoled ourselves over this injustice by fucking heartily for several hours.

  “So you came all this way to buy a couch, huh?” I’m trying to take her cue and play it nonchalant, but my pits are sweating and the penis is starting to reform.

  “Right,” she laughs again. “You guys deliver to L.A., right?”

  I laugh, a little bit too long because her eyes start to meander a little to the left of my head, and I wonder what floating appendage she might be envisioning.

  “Well, if you really are looking for something, I could help you, or….”

  “You’re sweet,” she says, clipping her sunglasses to the bosom of her dress. “What’s your name?”

  I point out my name tag, conveniently close to my nipple, which is slightly visible beneath my requisite blue vest and white shirt. “Devin.”

  “Ah, I played a chick with that name a long time ago.”

  “Yeah.” I know! It was your tough-as-nails, “First day on the job and I gotta deal with fucking zombies?”, take-no-shit rookie cop in Rising Evil. I’ve seen that movie twelve times and I’ve made everyone I know and love watch it because I cannot truly love anyone who hasn’t seen that movie because you rocked so hard in it rocks are ashamed they can’t rock as hard as you and who the hell’s decision was it to kill off your character because I just like to pretend she survived and ran away with Jennifer Zhirenkov’s character and they saved the world together which sounds like some kind of fanfiction ’shipping thing but I don’t write that shit, I promise. “That movie was cool.”

  “Devin, you’re the first person to recognize me all weekend.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  She laughs again, throwing her whole head into it and punching my shoulder like a pal. “It’s nice! I was starting to think I didn’t rate in….”

  She struggles to recall the name of our quiet oasis, and I fill the blank for her: “Buttfuck, Ohio?” />
  Somehow I knew she would appreciate this. She laughs enthusiastically, and I laugh too, and she says, “Shit,” like I just said the best thing in the world and she can’t believe it.

  I can’t believe it. I’m building a rapport with Renni Fucking Ramirez. I desperately want to text Carmelle and tell her all about it, but whipping out the cell phone right now would definitely kill the moment. I’m already reconstructing our encounter for story-time later: And then I said….

  I feel a presence at my shoulder before the smell of damp socks and toffee hard candy assaults me. I turn to see the old man Brad had been busy with a few minutes ago, shuffling excitedly by me. He kind of nudges my shoulder a bit with his tweed arm, the stitching scratching my skin, as he ambles forward on his dual canes.

  “Excuse me,” he says to Renni Ramirez. “Are you America Ferrera?”

  There’s a beat in which Renni Ramirez’s response to this query is unpredictable. She kind of cocks her head to eyeball the old man, the shadow of a smile still gracing her lips, one hand on her hip, the other absentmindedly fiddling with a fold in her dress. Then she sweeps her eyes back in my direction, and I know this is my moment, this is when I get to decide both our fates, maybe even the fate of the old man. Whatever gesture I make now, whatever words I let fall out of my mouth, however minutely expressed, however softly whispered, will set the tone for Renni Ramirez’s response. Glib, I think, how do I project glibness?

  Finally, I take a page from all the stoners who ever tried to convince my high school English teacher that they were paying attention to his lecture on Lord of the Flies. I close my eyes to half-slits, cross my arms over my chest, and nod once, slowly.

  Renni Ramirez sweeps her eyes back to the eagerly patient old man. “Yep,” she says. “That’s me.”

  “Oh goodness but you’re taller in real life, and well fit,” the old man exclaims.

  “It’s for a movie I’m doing,” she explains. “A Midsummer Night’s Furniture Store. It’s a re-imagining.”

  “That’s excellent!” The old man and I are actually thinking the exact same thing but for entirely different reasons. Renni’s smirk takes up permanent residence on her face as the old man continues speaking. “My nieces just love your show, Ugly Confetti, they talk about it all the time when I visit. You wear glasses in that, though. They showed me an episode or two. I didn’t really get it, but they love it. I watch M*A*S*H myself, sometimes the news. I usually can’t sit still for that long. Can I have your autograph? For my nieces.”

  “Sure, papa,” she says, making me wish absurdly that I was “papa.” “Got a pen?”

  “Not on my person as such,” he says, patting down his coat, then his slacks. “I have one in my Firebird. Let me just run and get it.”

  Running, of course, is a relative term. We watch him scoot towards the double glass automatic doors, standing shoulder to shoulder, a hair’s breadth away from touching. When the glass doors slide open, he is taken aback and nearly tilts over, but rights himself and continues on his way.

  “That man has a Firebird?” Renni says under her breath.

  “That, or dementia,” I say, and Renni snorts a little air out through her nose in a way that makes me pee myself a little.

  And that is when it happens. There in the soft haze of this perfectly surreal moment between myself and someone whose image I have repeatedly masturbated to, materializes my first ever real-life zombie.

  It’s the same guy from the coffee shop earlier in the morning, who I had assumed was just some harmless drunk trying to start his day right. Now as he hobbles along the sidewalk, perpendicular to the sluggish trajectory of the old man who just left the store, seconds away from contact, I can clearly see something is far more wrong with him. His gait has become even more broken, his arms dragging along at his sides. Though one of his ankles is twisted at a very painful-looking angle, he pushes it forward, scraping it along the pavement. From his dangling hands drips a dark, slick substance that I don’t think is coffee. And his face. Fuck, his face. The skin droops down as if melting, turned some sort of greenish-yellow hue that has nothing to do with sun exposure, and his scalp is peeling worse than ever, whole chunks of dirty hair displaced, revealing the dry sores. The same non-coffee substance leaks from his mouth, splattering his befouled shirt and torn jeans.

  Renni Ramirez grips my wrist instinctively and clenches hard as the old man cuts off the drunk man, who I now think is injured or an escaped mental patient or….

  “Maybe he needs help,” I say.

  “You don’t want to go out there,” Renni says.

  The doors slide shut on her words, and on the howling scream of the old man as the drunk guy, who I’m now certain is a zombie, lurches forward with unfathomable speed and bites off the old man’s cheek.

  For a second, perhaps two, we both just stand there, her fingernails digging into the underside of my wrist, my bladder threatening to spill, my eyes unable to look away from whatever the hell is happening outside. I know what is happening outside. One man is ripping apart another man. Except he can’t be a man, I know through some place deep and buried, leftover from Man’s prehistoric hunting days, some natural survival instinct, that the attacker is something far more dangerous than a man. And because I’ve watched so many movies in this piece-of-shit, do-nothing town, and because I don’t believe in God or divine invention, and because I’ve read about the fucked-up experiments science has sanctioned in its quest for knowledge since the invention of psychoanalysis, I know this man is a fucking zombie.

  The old man out there, literally caught in the zombie’s jaws, has no hope of survival. But all of us in here—Renni Ramirez, Cherry, Brad and Biff—we can still make it through this. There is still time to run. But only if the zombie doesn’t see us first.

  I whip around, tearing my arm away from Renni’s death grip. “Cherry!” I shout. I spot her and Brad in the hub, emphatically gesturing at each other behind the registers. They didn’t hear the old man’s screams, but they see now, looking beyond me, the violence reaching a crescendo outside. “Cherry, hit the lights! Turn off the fucking lights!”

  “What the fuck?” Brad’s jaw drops and he starts toward the door, but Cherry is a smart lady; she grabs Brad by the shoulder and twists him around, marching him toward the light switches on the wall near the Serta Sleepers.

  “Everybody hide!” I shout.

  “Lock the door, lock the fucking door,” Renni calmly suggests. She’s clutching her sunglasses like they’re my wrist.

  “I can’t,” I tell her, “they’re automatic. Locking them requires a key. Biff keeps it….”

  Thwack! We both jump back at the sound of flesh slamming against the double doors. It’s the old man’s upper thigh, sheathed in blood, inching its way down the glass, streaking a crimson stain in its wake. I can’t really see through the blood splatter, but I can see enough movement to know the zombie is still going to town. The old man’s dismembered thigh slides to the ground, and when it hits the outside mat it triggers the automatic sensor and the doors swish open.

  The zombie looks up.

  I don’t look at him long enough to know if his eyes, surely lacking in retinal reception by this stage in his zombification, got a chance to register my presence. I grab Renni Ramirez’s elbow without thinking and shove her along the circle until we can dip behind a large black leather sofa. Cherry and Brad didn’t make it to the lights, but I see them ducked behind the register desks, Cherry’s manicured finger over Brad’s scowling lips. I hear my heart beating in my chest, and become aware that I can feel Renni’s heart beating against my left arm.

  I dare not peek out to see what the zombie is up to, but I don’t hear him enter. The doors will stay open for as long as the thigh remains on the sensor, which means either the zombie will reclaim his meal, find a tastier morsel somewhere else in the plaza, or come exploring.

  Over Renni’s hot breathing in my ear, I hear the distinct scraping of a twisted foot along the concre
te. He’s coming in.

  Chapter 2: Eat You? I Hardly Know You

  I’m crouched here behind this overturned table, trying to stop the bleeding from my calf, and the words I kept myself from saying to Carmelle scream out through my rapidly thinning blood. Maybe if I said it more—or at all—she wouldn’t sleep on her side every night with her back to me, uninviting. That one morning when she woke up early, careful not to wake me, and stole into the kitchen to make blueberry pancakes and chocolate chip waffles and fruit salad and smoothies, and she woke me up anyway because we live in a studio apartment, and I was irritated until I smelled what she was cooking and then I felt too guilty to eat any of it and then she got angry and left for the day and I had to clean everything up, which was irritating—that morning, I should have woken up and just said it. I’m the one who asked her to move in with me on our one year anniversary when I tried so hard to think of something special to plan but my car had broken down earlier in the week and I didn’t get that raise I’d been counting on and my gerbil died and even though I’d sent that check to the electric company weeks ago when I had the money in my account the company didn’t cash it in until that week when I had thirty-five dollars to my name and so it bounced and I never had to deal with that before so I was freaking out. When it came time to take Carmelle out, I showed up to her dorm room on my own two feet, looked at her with the saddest eyes I’ve ever looked at anyone, held a copy of my key out to her, and just said, “Please.” So maybe she has lived with me all these months out of pity, and she’s stopped having sex with me because the allure of sleeping with someone dangerously close to bankruptcy just doesn’t get her up anymore, and if I’d just say it, just suck it up and say it, without thinking about it, without questioning, just fucking say it…. Maybe then she’d say it back. But my leg won’t stop bleeding, I’m trapped here watching the red run into my sock, filling my shoe, which tightens as my foot swells.

  How did I ever let that God forsaken zombie get close enough to take a chunk outta me?