Feast! Pure Slush Vol. 9

by Susan Tepper

  “It says here you make many excuses not to eat.”

  “They’re not excuses. They’re reasons.”

  3.45pm

  New Haven, Connecticut, USA

  Birthday Dinner

  by Paul Beckman

  At three forty-five Martin hung up the phone and at four on the dot Martin’s kitchen counter was clear and he left home and quick-stepped to his car and drove off to Hanami, his favorite Japanese restaurant. His take-out was ready and he handed his credit card to the cashier, who saw him every Friday. Knowing he was in a hurry she swiped it and handed the receipt for his signature. Today he tipped generously. After all, this was his birthday dinner.

  Yesterday he had brought them an oval platter and asked to have his meal set on it. He ordered extra ginger and wasabi but no salad or miso soup. He deserved a nice cold bottle of sake for this special occasion.

  He drove to the temperature controlled storage unit he rented and set up his dinner on a series of cardboard boxes. His end unit on the second floor had a window.

  Martin arranged the tripod and binoculars to look into the gym and shower room in the next building.

  He checked over his maki rolls: salmon avocado with cucumber, rainbow roll, out-of-control roll with shrimp, breaded and fried, scallions and jalapeños, and a triple delight, lobster, salmon and redfish wrapped in thinly sliced cucumber and rolled in salmon roe. And one extra special birthday piece. He opened the sake, poured some into his porcelain sake cup and set them both down neatly.

  He took out the chopsticks from the paper holder, poured the soy sauce into the small rectangular sauce holder that came with the set and dished the wasabi and ginger into their own saucers. He added wasabi to the soy sauce, mixed them together with a single chopstick, and then with the other chopstick added a bit of wasabi onto each piece of roll. After that he draped each piece with a ginger slice. As he did that he realized that he was making a kind of Japanese sandwich.

  He opened the window a couple of inches so as to hear the music from the class. Martin then sat in his swivel chair, adjusted the field glasses and turned on the nightlight, shining a shard of light onto his meal. He pulled a string and turned off his overhead light and sat in the darkness thinking thoughts of sushi and women and toasted himself a happy birthday with a few sips of sake.

  At five thirty the teacher came in and was soon followed by four other women and then a fifth, Marci, the one he was waiting for, straggled in. Betty Ann and Mandy were all ready there and waiting. This was a free form dance class. He watched as the women shed their street clothes in the locker room and left for the adjacent gym to work out in their skimpy shorts and tops that left their bellies exposed. Martin really liked this part.

  He patiently watched each woman and their instructor who led them in tribal dances. At times they bent at the waist and swung their heads around, hair flying wildly. The music was mostly drum beats and Martin reached over and took a piece of roll with his fingers, sneaked a quick peek for the soy sauce, dipped and popped it into his mouth. He did use the chopsticks for extra ginger slices but only when there was a break in the dancing. For a half hour this continued and the drum beats and exercises intensified. Sweat dripped off the dancers’ bodies. Finally the instructor stopped and turned off the music and clapped for her students. Martin clapped along with her. They clapped back and hugged each other and ran off to shower and change.

  Martin had good views of Mandy, Betty Ann and Marci and of course the other women who he didn’t know and didn’t have time to get to know in the locker room. They disappeared into the windowless shower and Martin poured the last of the sake and put his treat on the table in front of him. In a state of arousal he undressed and stood waiting.

  The girls came out of the shower all jiggley and talking and then Marci walked over to the window in her altogether and looked out directly at Martin’s window. She was soon joined by Betty Ann and then Mandy. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and began swaying side to side and Martin was mesmerized by their gorgeous bodies, smiling faces and swaying boobs. He was at premium arousal.

  They began waving to Martin, blowing him kisses and they bent down and each picked up a piece of cardboard with one word – HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARTIN. They held the signs just below their breasts.

  Martin, surprised beyond belief, but for some reason not embarrassed by his nakedness, reached up and turned on the overhead light, and waved back. He waved with one hand and then two, arms flying back and forth. Then he toasted them with his sake and they clapped their hands and he popped the sea urchin with raw quail’s egg into his mouth and washed it down with the remaining sake, dribbling a little of the quail yoke and sake down to his chin. The girls waved goodbye and left to dress as Martin turned off his light and went back about his business while looking through his binoculars.

  The drum music began again, only louder this time. Martin poured soy sauce over his hands, standing and swaying to the drums, and began to pleasure himself and never heard the key in the lock or heard the door opening. Banzai! Martin yelled at the exact same time the lights came on.

  He looked over and saw the dance instructor pointing at him and two policemen standing beside her. Still gripping himself, he slumped satisfied back onto his chair.

  4.45pm

  Acton, Massachusetts, USA

  Smart

  by Michael Webb

  I could tell from the growing silence in the house that drunkenness and fatigue were taking over most of the adults as the day slid into evening, so, like it or not, Chandler was my charge until one of them came to. Which was fine. 4.45pm’s TV options bored him, so he had happily watched a Spongebob DVD on my laptop, and then some long documentary about trains, while I sat studying his rapt face, wondering what he thinks of this long day full of nothing. At the end, he yawned big and wide, then climbed off me to use the bathroom.

  He returns, one finger of his left hand parked in his mouth, which tells me he is getting sleepy. I didn’t intend to become the shepherd of lost children, but it is the most graceful way to get away from all of the noise and expectations of family.

  He settles down again on the floor between my thighs, the laptop calmly displaying my desktop in front of us both. He leans into me, his head on the muscle below my shoulder, his breath hot on the bare skin above my breastbone.

  “Auntie Tay?” he says. I’m not his aunt, but he has been referring to his female relatives as “Aunt” lately. It is simpler not to correct him.

  “Yes, baby?”

  “Do you know not scary stories?”

  “Not scary stories?”

  “Yeah,” he says, his speech garbled and lisping by the finger he won’t remove. “I no like scary ones.”

  “I don’t know a lot of stories, Chandler. Did you bring any storybooks in your backpack? I can read you one of those.”

  “OK,” he says softly. He crawls on all fours to his blue backpack, and extracts a slim volume, then reaches again and pulls out a plastic bag, and then crawls back into place, resting his head against me. I set my laptop aside. He opens the bag, which contains two sad looking animal crackers, what looks like an elephant and a giraffe. They could have been in his backpack for a month. His tiny hand withdraws them.

  “Want to share, Auntie Tay?”

  “No, thank you, honey,” I say. “You can have them both.” He stuffs the brown shapes into his mouth.

  I begin to read. After a few pages, I feel him growing slack, his weight against me more profound. It’s pleasant, the pressure, the gentle heat, the trust that lets him relax. I want to warn him that I’m not trustworthy, that he can’t depend on me, that I’m broken and vulnerable and full of need, but he only sinks deeper against me. After the first book is finished, I ease him up onto my bed, intending to get out another book and continue reading.

  “Lay down wi’ me,” he mumbles, and I can do nothing but comply. I lay prone beside him, and he picks his head up and lays it on my shoulder again,
above my breast, his breath on my skin again. He puts his hand on my belly, where it rises and falls when I breathe. I feel him relaxing again, almost melting, his breaths coming even and slow. I don’t mean to, but I fall asleep as well.

  I awaken to the sun casting low, sharp shadows on my floor, Chandler still relaxed and sweaty against my side, and my aunt, her face red and blotched, looming over both of us. I look up at her, and watch her expertly scoop her son into her arms, where he stirs and then breathes deeply again. “Thank you, Tay,” she whispers. “I hope he wasn’t any trouble.”

  “Of course,” I say, my own voice thick and soft. “No trouble. We watched a video, and then a story, and then he fell –”

  “In the future, hun,” she says, cutting me off, “just so you know, we don’t sleep with him. He has to learn how to sleep on his own. When you have babies, you’ll learn. You’re always so good with him, such a smart girl. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.” She steps to my door.

  I feel stunned, and then anger flashes. You know what? I think. How about you not get drunk if you don’t like how I watch your kid? How about that? I measure the possible repercussions of speaking out, then think better of it. There are some fights that you never win.

  “Goodbye, Tay,” she whispers. “Thanks again,” and then shuts the door.

  5.00pm

  a small town, upstate New York, USA

  Bread without Crusts

  by Susan Tepper

  Several hours later, I take the loaf of white bread from the cupboard. I decide to make it a little extra special for his dinner. For dinner I will cut off his crusts.

  I take the wooden handle knife and quickly slice the crusts off. The bread, without its crusts, looks naked. This makes me shiver. Maybe I should have left the crusts on. I think of them together, naked, doing all the things he used to do with me.

  “Fuck this shit,” I say.

  But I keep staring at the naked white bread. I can’t stop staring. It’s a lot smaller without its crusts. It looks ragged. Pathetic, actually.

  I hear him coming up the basement stairs. We both know our days together are numbered. I figure by the time the loaf is done, we’ll be done too.

  “What happened to the bread?” he asks.

  “I cut off the fucking crusts.”

  He hitches up his shorts. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Aren’t you cold in those fucking shorts?”

  “Not really.” He coughs. “I don’t feel much of anything.”

  Oh! Obviously the way he didn’t feel much of anything for me or the marriage.

  “Yes, well I can understand that,” I say.

  “Can you?”

  “What do you want on your dinner sandwich?” Again I’ve got The Baby clutched on my hip.

  He moves toward the window over the sink, staring out. “There’s a deer,” he says.

  “You want deer meat on your sandwich?”

  He turns around looking confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I figured if you want deer meat you can go outside and kill that fucking deer the way you killed me.”

  “Jesus!” He yanks out a chair and sits down hard. So hard the wooden chair bangs the floor. “I’ve had enough,” he says. “It can’t go on like this.”

  “Oh, really?” He looks weak. It bolsters my spirits. I go to the refrigerator taking out the jar of mayo.

  “Is there some ham or roast beef?” he says. “Why do you have to hold her like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like she’s not a baby worth holding with both arms.” He pauses. “Like you’re holding a ham.”

  “You saying The Baby looks like a ham?”

  “Look … well sort of! Her face is always red and you hold her like a food product.”

  “Oh, really? Maybe it’s because you want a ham that you see a ham in The Baby. Did that ever cross your fucking mind?”

  “Do you have any ham in the fridge?”

  I can see the hope flicker in his eyes and it only makes me more furious.

  “Nope. Only this fucking mayo. Unless you want to cook The Baby.”

  He jumps out of the chair, screaming, “You bitch!”

  Ignoring his tirade, I grab a spoon and ladle mayo onto the white bread in globs.

  “You’ve gone too far!” he’s screaming.

  Now the baby is really off the rails. “Look what you’ve done!” I jiggle her on my hip. “There, there, Baby.”

  “I’m giving her a name. I’m calling her Julia,” he says.

  “No you’re not. I’m her mother.”

  He finally looks me in the eye. We’re in a dead heat. “And I’m her father.”

  “Maybe. And maybe not.” Of course he is the father. But I’ll use every weapon in the arsenal. “By the way, you know what they say about people who don’t like mayo.”

  He shakes his head looking weary, beaten. “What do they say?”

  “That it’s sperm aversion. You or your girlfriend ever heard that one?”

  He shrugs.

  “Well, I hate mayo. As you know,” I say. “I hate it like poison. But I don’t have sperm aversion. Remember?” The Baby is yelling at its worst. Julia. It’s not a bad name. “Fucking strange, right? So fucking strange.” I hand him the plate with his globbed on mayo sandwich. “Enjoy!”

  5.10pm

  Oakville, Ontario, Canada

  Legs Like Stilts

  by Cindy Matthews

  I push a metal trolley filled with plastic food trays through the corridor of the medical floor. After I managed to get Bob so upset, my boss reassigned me from psych to this floor.

  “Last chance,” my supervisor, Chad had said. “Get your shit together, man.”

  I have to work until 7.00pm and this day feels like it just won’t end. The medical floor smells of soiled bedding, antiseptic, and minty banana. My throat clenches and I gag. I blame my cranky mood on the pimples that earlier erupted all over my chin.

  I pass a large family. They’re arguing.

  “I swear, Daddy. Visiting hours don’t start until later. You didn’t even bother to read the sign. You’re going to get us all into trouble,” says a young woman, her short body draped in a sari.

  “Your grandmother expects us to come now and I cannot disappoint her, can I?” says an older man who spits the words out like he’s biting them in half. The young woman inherited her father’s large nose.

  I shoot a glance out a corridor window before leaning against a wall. My legs feel heavy. I notice a peach-coloured vase on the windowsill holds a wilting bouquet of roses that remind me of how fatigued I am. Raindrops ping against the glass. Indigo clouds dance on the roof of the insurance company across the way. I’m not certain but it seems as if it’s rained every day this April.

  Each supper container on my trolley is labeled with a number and letter corresponding to a patient’s bed and room. Easy, I think. Can’t screw this up.

  In half an hour I’ve distributed trays to every room except Bed 2 in 807. I’m near the end of shift and the day has been a trying one. Truth is, I’ve learned a lot and have managed to escape emptying a single bedpan. All I want is to frit away the last couple of minutes playing Candy Crush in the utility closet.

  Instead I head to the nursing station to inquire about 807’s dinner. My feet squeak to a stop on the floor. This is an opportunity for me to shine, to demonstrate myself as a responsible self-starter. After all, I had a dismal showing early this morning on the children’s cancer floor. How was I to know that the letters NPO were Latin for nothing by mouth? To be fair, the hospital did not properly cover that topic in the one-day staff training. My afternoon didn’t fare much better with Bob, the crazy fool who set fire to his home.

  After I dump the contents of a tray into a trash bin, I scrounge around the other food trolleys for uneaten food. I will redeem myself by finding 807 something to eat. The majority of patients have slurped down the mush the kitchen staff prepared. On one food tray I
locate an unopened container of diced peaches, the kind that parents pack for their kids’ lunches. On another tray there’s a Styrofoam bowl of beef broth. I sniff it. It smells homemade but I know it’s most likely from a can. A sliver of cheddar with a toothpick hat has begun to curl. I push a sleeve of unsalted crackers into my pocket.

  I carry the tray into 807. The satin edge of a turquoise blanket is folded under a woman’s breasts. Her eyes are closed but I know she’s not asleep because she’s humming. Her shoulders and back of her head lean against the headboard. A pillow has slid under her mid-back so her stomach sticks out and the position looks uncomfortable. She hums again, a little louder, like she wants to find the correct pitch. It sounds like some Broadway hit – maybe Cats. She opens her eyes. They are bloodshot and moist.

  “Hey, aren’t you the kid from this morning?”

  I square my shoulders, bristling at her use of the word kid.

  It’s the woman with the cigarette. From the sidewalk this morning. I still recognize her from somewhere else but damned if I can remember where or what. All I know is she’s the one with legs like stilts. She’s wearing a nightgown from home, not the dull blue, institutional ones that look a tad drabber than the uniforms we orderlies wear. Hers is the kind grown-up kids buy their moms. It’s a light green thing with muted yellow flowers. There’s a dash of lace on the collar.

  “Yes, we met earlier. Outside, I believe,” I say. She’d caught me ogling her. She points at the tray in my hands.

  “Food – for me? Finally. Because I’m closer than I’ve ever been to starving.” Her eyes close for a moment before she says, “No one has been around to feed me all day. What’s the matter with this place?”

  Her eyes lock on me like she’d sooner gnaw the green plastic food tray in my hands than wait another second for the real thing.