Suck On It

here's this girl, maybe twenty two, fresh, clean, smells like powder or spring or clothes hung on a line. If pink had a smell. She didn't know I was alive until I told her she didn't look like a Sheila, she looked more like a Carmen and she liked that, sucked on that like it was a Weurther's, pulled it out and looked at it, sucked on it some more. Told me she's an orphan. Who'd leave her behind?

I married Lois straight out of high school, seventies burns and wide legs, kids laugh at the wedding photos now like we're freaks. Lois was the first girl I fucked and I married her like God couldn't give me any better.

So the orphan comes into the store I work at one day and the boss hires her to check people out at the cash, I see a glow around her like someone somewhere's highlighted her for me.

This one. Yours.

Mine? Except Lois.

After three kids, Lois's got the inch or two, let's say three around the middle, complains she'll never fit into her old Levi's, still won't get rid of them, I hate them so much I want to wrap them around a cement block and throw them in the lake. Swim with the fishes.

Plus her English sucks.

She sips green Koolaid with orange lips clutched around the end of one of those bendy hospital straws. She makes this tv schedule, says I watch too much tv, I see I'm penned in from 8 to 10.

What about overtime?

I go to the can, the orphan swims around my head.

I think I'm going to get rid of Lois. I talk about it with the guy who delivers the water every other Tuesday. The orphan passes by as she's heading to the lunch room. He makes some crack.

Have a little respect for Carmen, I tell him too quick.

That her name?

He repeats it, makes it sound dirty.

I ask him impatiently, are you going to help me out?

He says if I make it worth his while.

The orphan disappears.

 

take Lois out for dinner, sandwiches at Popeye's, she orders dessert, asks me if I'm going to give her a hard time, I kiss her on the forehead, go to the can and cry sweet tears.

I pull off the road, say I hear a rattling.

I didn't hear nothing, Lois says.

Anything.

I get out of the car. Tell Lois I got to shake the stick.

She wants to know, ain't I going to check on this mysterious rattle?

After.

Aren't.

I leave her reapplying lipstick.

Come back, she's still breathing. And I took my time.

She looks kind of nervous, though.

There was someone back there, behind the car, she tells me.

Shit.

I look around.

Be careful, she calls out.

I got to breathe at first, a couple real deep ones. Look into the night. Go to call out the waterboy's name. Realize I never asked.

Lois yells out how she's thirsty.

A skunk sprays me when I turn back to tell her to keep it zipped.

The orphan doesn't turn up at work next day. Or the day after that. When the water gets delivered the next Tuesday, it's a new guy.