CHAPTER ONE
Page 1
After the second day the smell permeated her clothes making the highball pungent as she raised the tumbler finishing the last of the scotch. Tipping the bottle to her lips a single drop oozed out and helped the pill slide down her throat.
“Now were out of booze, you son of a bitch, can’t even keep your wife drunk.” She said as the empty container shattered on his forehead. “Here’s the glass too.” With a round house throw the glass smashed against his chest.
“And you my dear stink.“ A crochet blanket was within reach. She tossed it at him and said, “Forty years dragging this blanket around- I’ve always hated this thing, and your mother too… son of a bitch.” She stumbled over to the kitchen table. “The mighty Mr. Jones- aren’t much of a man now, are you.”
The chrome toaster on the table mirrored her reflection as she sat down. Lifting it to her face she giggled at what she saw. The ruby red lipstick she put on the day before left a wide swath from below her nose and to then around her lips. “ Glad I didn’t go out yesterday looking like this, what would the neighbors say.”
Dishes broke as the toaster bounced off the counter top landing in the sink. Pepper and salt littered the floor with shards and bits of lead-crystal strewn about from an earlier pitch. The top of the pepper grinder was in one piece. She reached down and picked it up. “Remember this,” tossing it up and down in her hand, “My father had class.”
Pulling the blanket off him she softly wiped the remnant of the pepper-mill clean. “He’d tell you. Class. Show some class. And you, shit, class? Big-wig bastard. Mr. Jones they say to you. Mister. Huh! Mr. Son of a bitch.”
She hurled the broken crystal shaker-top across the room into glass-framed family pictures on the book shelf. “Guess it’s time to go to the liquor store. I’ll be back, you stay right here.”
Her foot slipped and she fell on her butt dirtying the dress filled with the strong odor. Cussing mad she tried to push herself up, but her hand slid across the floor landing her bosom flat against the linoleum. Her tangled web of uncombed hair whirl around from the back of her head to the front, resembling a mop and like a mop she wrung it out over the sink after she stood up.
“Your nothing but a pig. Look at me. This is your fault.” She picked out a broken dish under the toaster and flung it at him, but missed and the projectile skidded off the table embedding into the wallpapered wall. “Now I have to take a shower first.” She said.
A blue-flowery pattern sundress and a silk slip laid across her bed. A round gold-plated hand mirror, red lipstick, and an ornate ivory hair brush were meticulously lined up on her vanity, like tools of a mechanic might look on the garage floor while repairing a busted part, from left to right as needed. An ashtray held two lit cigarettes of various length, both ringed with a thick layer of the red lip paint. A set of long false eye-lashes resembling a fuzzy black spider were balled-up but still worthy of use.
Out of the steam filled bathroom she came, dripping water and soap, un-toweled, naked, craving a puff of her smoke which smoldered at the filter and used to light a fresh one. Sitting down before a large oval mirror she starred at her sagging breasts and bloated belly. Her mascara dripped in an ice cycle pattern down to her cheeks and the smeared red lipstick looked like a bloody drool beading on her chin. The bead dropped and splatter on the vanity.
“Look at me now, you bastard,” she yelled toward the kitchen, “I could have been someone.” Arching her back and folding her soap filled stringy hair to the side she said out loud to her reflection, “You could have been her.” Cocking her head back admiring the image through an exhaled pillow of smoke, “You were beautiful.” Cupping her bosoms and raising them as if still a young woman, she smiled.
“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue-,” She sang then released her breasts taking another draw of her cigarette, “Oh Judy- It could have been me.”
Wet but not dripping, she guided herself around the bed to her dresser finding the one bra two sizes to small and wrestled with the clasp. Dressing, she first put on the slip, then the summer dress, her shoes were mismatched. She returned to the vanity.
With the tip of her finger she wiped off the smudged eye-liner and used the back of her hand to rid the lipstick from her face. Then as a man would wipe-off his hands on a pair of blue jeans at a ribs and chicken barbecue, she cleaned her hand on her dress.
Applying her red lips outlined three times larger than what they were, then her black the eyeliner, finally she painted on her eye brows unevenly as Picasso might have imagined. Adjusting her bra with a firm yanking lift, she bent forward admiring the cleavage it created. “You still have baby, don’t let them fool you,” she said to her mirrored image. As she left the bedroom it didn’t occur to her that one shoe was white, one was cream, one had a one inch heal, the other none.
Opening the front door she stammered, “I’ll be back.”
No comments:
Post a Comment