Nick settles on a hue then a shade then a location on the painted over canvas. A brush in his hand, he smells the tip to keep himself focused. If he admits that he’s hungry, he’ll have to stand up and walk away from his work. Not the worst thing to do, but he’d rather finish before rewarding himself. Besides, at this time in the morning, if he waits till he’s finished then he can have breakfast around the time when most people normally have breakfast.
He stares past the easel and at the wall. At a scuff that’s eye-level with him sitting down. By staring at it he can zone out without having to close his eyes and get confused in the blackness of his lids. With eyes open he can choose what to drown out. But darkness is another sort of canvas that he’s not the painter of. All kinds of visions appear, brought to life by the unskilled hands of one’s subconscious. Too random and the colors used are too bright. One can get lost or worse, fall asleep.
The painting he ignores is almost finished. He’d been working on it for the past week in the breaks between the shop and his bed. And at night he’d wake up to dreams of brushstrokes and scenic memory pulling him back to paint.
As he stares away, he’s suddenly dowsed in smoky aromas of bacon searing and bread toasting hard.
“Hey! Watch what you’re doing! I don’t want that burnt smell in my house!”
Behind him, running footsteps out the bathroom and across the living room to the fogged kitchen. A click. The pop of a metal spring.
“Shit! We can’t eat this…”
“Is there any more bacon?”
“Plenty…”
“Great, more time to work.” With a laugh, he brings the brush back under his nose and sniffs. Focuses.
The sound of ripping paper. Clink and clanks dropping on a ceramic bowl. Another rip, more clinks and clanks. A deep sigh that can be mistaken for a gasp exhausted. Then a scratch.
“Careful!”
“Sorry, Henry…”
He walks over to the living room and gives her a stern face.
“What are you putting on?”
“Paramore. I like the record ‘cause it’s so pretty and the record’s white!” She holds up the record, glossed white and grooved.
“No chance. It’s too late. Find something softer. Middle shelf.” He points to the tall wide bookshelf to the left of the player.
“Put on Al Green or Elvis. Or Sade. I think she’s in there.”
“You’re the king…” She returns the record to its sleeve.
Back in the kitchen, Henry scours the back of a box for direction. For time.
“It says 3 minutes for one of these things. Do I just double it if I put two in one bowl?”
No answer.
“Thanks! I’ll just double it.” Another sigh, heavier than the last.
“I hate instant food. We can’t eat this shit!”
“Well I can’t cook and you won’t. We have to eat that shit!” She giggles.
“If this doesn’t work then I’ll cook—if this doesn’t work.”
In bed, Chloe sleeps on her stomach, her black slip lacey and curling unevenly just below her straying legs. She dreams of nothing and wakes a little every few minutes and searches sleepily the mussed bed sheets. The groove to her left, where her hand lies palm down, is losing warmth and her palm is sweaty.
“This bed’s too big for just me…” she whispers to the pillow north of her hand.
“Come back!” She’s not sure how loud she yelled, but after a few minutes the door remains closed.
She turns on her side, readying to stand up, but gives up. She won’t be the one to compromise. She picks up a thin silver watch she eyed shiny on the floor beside the bed.
“2:59?” She rolls back over on her lithe body and hides her mussed hair under a pillow.
People do it differently. Find an edge and lightly tap out a circumference. Or just bash it against the edge. Others use a tool like a spatula to make a good crack to start. Some use two hands and split the two halves away. Some just one with their fingers along the whole length. Catch it in a bowl. Or drop it straight onto the pan. People do it differently but they’re all doing the same thing. They’re making eggs.
How many variations are there? Benedict, Ranchero, Over, or Over easy. It’s amazing how many incarnations an egg can accomplish. Different styles for different people. Different ways to make it. But it all begins with the same act. Done differently in different houses all over Portland
Audrey opens the foamy top of a full egg carton. It doesn’t matter to her which one to take, they all look identical. So she takes two from one end.At the same time, she breaks the eggs on opposite sides of a skillet and opens them onto it, dropping two slimy suns onto the black greased surface. She turns her head over her shoulder and shouts.
“I’m making mine first! How do you want yours?”
“Omelet. Two eggs. Are there peppers? Can you melt cheese over it?”
“What kind?” She bows into the refrigerator. The cold makes her nose itch.
“…!”
She pulls her head away and sneezes.
“I didn’t hear you!”
“White American!”
“That’s kinda funny…” She giggles to herself. The microwave dings.
“The Easy Mac is ready!”
If Sade were water, she would be a stream pouring soft from a bath’s silver faucet. Into a perfectly oval pond rising through your straight lain body, ever floating.
“No one sings like her…” Henry whispers to the faraway kitchen.
He kicks out his feet, his legs out, knees unseen slightly bent.
“What’s this called?” He hears through the wall.
“By your side.” He raises his tumbler, half filled with bourbon, swirling three ice cubes so they ding the round glass walls.
“I like it.” From afar.
“I love it.” He stops swirling and raises the tumbler to the light, fixing on a crack on the other side of the glass.
“It’s all cracked…”
“What?”
He looks toward the kitchen and sees her head slanting out into the living room.
“I said, I love this song.”
“Oh. The macaroni’s all hard and the cheese is burnt solid…”
“We can’t eat that shit.” He downs the bourbon, catching the ice cubes in his teeth.
“You said—”
“I’ll cook.” He chews the ice into melted fragments.
Chloe hears a snore and wakes up. It sounded like a tiger choking on a bone fluffed over with peanut butter. She searches the bed and finds only her palm-down hand next to her. She groans.
“I never snore!” She yells at the door.
“You’re keeping me up! This stress is making me snore!” She yells louder.
The door opens to a figure smiling in the shadow. Without her contacts, it could be anyone walking in on Chloe.
“If you can’t sleep, then you should get your silky ass out of bed!”
“Argh.”
“Come on!”
“Ten more minutes…” She rolls back onto her stomach.
Nick sits back down with a nectarine, holding it in his hand with the paintbrush still in his fingers. He bites down then pulls away, licking his lips like sore wounds.
“Damn that’s sour!”
“What did you say? Don’t get full off of that thing!”
“I said you’re really sour!” He yells towards the kitchen.
“Blame White America
Henry walks out of the bedroom with a clean white t-shirt. He spilled whiskey on his other shirt when he chugged from the cracked tumbler. He slips into it as he walks down the stairs and throws the stained shirt into the garbage bin in the kitchen.
“That’s fucking wasteful!”
“It came in a pack. It costs nothing.” He frowns at the burnt smell coming from the microwave.
“So, what’s the plan?”
He bows into the refrigerator and pulls away with a carton of eggs and a carton of milk.
“Grab me a bowl, the wisk in the bottom drawer next to the stove, and the salt and pepper shakers in the far right cabinet above the counter.”
“Is there any bacon?” She opens the freezer.
“Nope.” In the living room, the needle falls off the record.
Nick turns the lamplight off in the corner where the easel stands. He walks away, leaving the unfinished painting in the dark.
“This isn’t what I wanted.” He mutters to himself between the living room and the kitchen.
“I made it just as you said…” Audrey looks at him confused and a little sad. She holds up a plate half covered by an omelet with bits of pepper wading in the melted white cheese.
“Oh, I was talking about something else.” He looks at the plate. “Wow, that smells great!”
She smiles. “The bacon’s almost done. Bring everything to the table.”
Audrey stands, one leg bent, over the frying bacon. Her hand over the pan, turning tongs repeatedly all over. Nick busies himself with the table, setting places, placing forks and knives on napkins, and dropping plates around the plates of eggs and bowl of Easy-Mac in the center.
“Hey, Nick? You know my lease is up next month.” She begins removing the red strips to a napkin-ed plate. “I don’t know if I’m gonna stay where I am. But if I move, can you help me?” Nick stands in the open walkway of the kitchen.
“You don’t have to ask.”
“I know. I think we can fit most in your truck and whatever’s left can go in Sally.”
“Absolutely.” He crosses his arms and watches her work the tongs.
“I don’t know, though. I still have a month.”
“…”
“But if I do move, I’m thinking about this four storey in the Pearl
“As long as I can move in with you!” He walks up behind her and reaches around her waist, resting his forehead on her hair.
“…”
“I was just kidding…” He turns her around and she looks away at a scuff mark on one of the kitchen’s walls. “I’m sorry, Audrey, I shouldn’t—”
“I left Henry. Before I came over tonight.”
They kiss.
“Candy?” Henry looks up from his plate, across the table at Candy dissecting her omelet with a fork.
“How did you make them so fluffy?” She holds up a skewered piece of fluffy yellow.
“Milk. Audrey taught me. I was saying something.” He leans his fork down on the plate.
“Sorry, yes?”
“Stop wearing that perfume.” He takes a sip from his broken tumbler.
“But I love it…”
“I don’t want that smell in my apartment. Or anything else that’s mine.”
“Fine. You’re the king.”
“Stop saying that.”
They go back to eating. Silent on opposite ends of Henry’s table. Henry walks over to his bar to refill his tumbler. From outside, a little morning light sees through the living room window. Henry holds the cup to it. He wonders at the cracking light reflecting through his cracked glass.
Chloe rolls over on her side and finds the silver watch.
“4:57…” She whispers to the open door.
Standing up, she looks around for underwear and finds a man’s boxer-briefs. She slides her legs through it and stops it around her hips. From the bed she grabs a white t-shirt and almost puts it on before realizing she’s still wearing her slip.
She pulls it from the lacy bottom, reaching her hands up to the ceiling with the fabric pinched in her fingers. From between her breasts a little red ribbon crawls up her neck, tickling her face before it floats over her hair.
Inside the t-shirt, she starts for the shadowed hallway beyond the bedroom door.
They sit down on opposite ends of Nick’s table. Between them, plates of eggs, and tender crisps of bacon, the bowl of Easy-Mac, and a jug of Arizona Sweet Tea. Fractured light through the window beside the tan table.
“So, us?”
“Us.”
“I’m anxious. But happy.” Nick smiles crooked.
“I need you to know that I’m not sure of anything.”
“I understand.”
“But I’m happy too.” She reaches for his hands across the table.
“This’ll be good.” He looks down at the food. His eyes watering.
“I’m pretty good at cooking.”
“This, Audrey,” he squeezes her hands, “the two of us. I mean—”
Audrey laughs.
Chloe walks into the living room and sees Nick and Audrey holding hands, laughing.
“I’m stressed. I’m sleepless. And now I’m pissed!” She scowls at the diners making sad faces from the table.
“Sit down! Eggs, bacon, and we know you love Easy-Mac!” Audrey makes an offering of the bowl of melty orange. Chloe gasps.
“You’re fucking beautiful, Audrey!” She sits down at her place between the two, and leans over to kiss Nick. “I love you.”
“I love you too, bed-head. You look gorgeous in my underwear.” They poke at each other teasing playful. Audrey clears her throat.
“I haven’t forgotten you…” Chloe leans towards her and kisses her sweeter. Nick fixes his face into fake envy. He clears his throat loud.
“Ok! Enough! I’m sleepy and I’m hungry, let’s eat!” Chloe grabs the bowl before anyone else can. Audrey begins pouring the sweet tea.
“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the sleepy, and the hungry…”
“Wow, Nick, that was hopelessly profound…” Everyone laughs at Audrey’s sarcasm.
“It’s from The Great Gatsby. I changed the last part to fit our little group.”
“What made you think of it?” Chloe asks with cheesy lips.
“I don’t know.” He says. “Henry,” he thinks to himself.
Audrey and Chloe stop eating and look at Nick.
“We’re waiting.”
Nick sighs. “Everyone’s the same in that one way. That we want the same thing. So we’re either pursuing or we’re being pursued. The only time we’re neither is when we’re sleeping or eating. Right now we’re eating—so stop looking at me.” He picks up his fork and makes for the bacon.
“Agreed.” Chloe follows with her fork.
“Sorry I laughed.” Audrey gives him a guilty grin.
Now the room is lit up from the morning outside. Miles away, Henry closes his front door behind him. He walks over to his record player, Sade still on it, and sets the needle to a groove on the black round. Soon she’ll be singing “By my side” again. Henry will have another drink. He’ll find his bed after it’s over. Alone, he’ll sleep away the rest of his Sunday.
“We should have a picnic at Laurelhurst Park
“We just ate…” Nick rubs his belly, pushing it out bloated.
“Come on! It’ll be our first official date.” She begs.
“I’m feeling uninformed.” Chloe says in between sips of sweet tea.
“I left Henry. We can finally be together.” She strokes her cheek dramatically. Chloe giggles. She looks at Nick with a helpless look.
“It’ll be our first official date!” She mimics Audrey’s pleading.
“Fine, but we need to sleep a little first. I’m a little woozy from huffing paint all night.”
“How is it? Is it done?” Chloe pets his hair.
Nick looks across the living room, lit up morning. The easel still in shadow, the painting veiled in the dark corner. He looks back at the two women. The feeling of happiness. The anxious feeling. The unfinished painting. Audrey unsure. Chloe naturally comfortable. He thinks of Henry alone.
“It’s not done yet… It’s not really turning out the way I planned.”
photo1:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/2225393091_db32ecf9d7.jpg
photo2:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2591/4005869626_ae6167df79.jpg
photo3:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2024/2176551037_3457e2b866.jpg
photo4:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3050/2496064973_f34ecaa988.jpg
photo5:http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3122/2357914981_08df9395b0.jpg
2 comments:
lovely...i like the title and its candid appropriateness to the story... :)
thanks devangini! you're a very astute reader :D
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