Stories From Under the Pavement

         Neither of us could leave. We were stretched tongue and frozen pole in a schoolyard on New Year’s Day. To pass time, we’d pass pipes. Solice taught me to let smoke escape my lips slowly, like tears. In the day we’d tally the ants in the concrete cracks; give them names; ask the crawling crumbs what they thought of Spinoza and the sun. The garbage pales were giant paint cans wearing crushed top hats. Isn’t that funny? Solice asked, the last time. When she was around, it was warm. But my toes have been purple for weeks.
         “His toes have been purple for weeks!” A redheaded woman cried as she sauntered across the lobby, like a red pepper bouncing towards a little boy at the far end of a conveyer belt. Buttons do to children what candy bars do to diabetics. Four months ago, the house smelled like cinnamon and butter when her shrunken father fell from his chair during dessert. The pie crumbs followed them to the hospital. While doctors talked dialysis, the woman rolled the golden dust between her fingers, watched it fall to her knees. Her dad’s apple pies were always the sweetest.
         The sweetest time of day must be dawn. On the bus, shadows dance salutations across poles saved for clothed people. The breeze on my forehead behaves as coffee does, without the crash. Yesterday, I shaved my head—number two buzz. When a girl dumps you, dump your hair.  Others will want a touch. At the stop near the train station, a bald woman gets on and carries her suitcase in my direction, sits down beside me. Her dress pants spill over past the barrier between her world and mine. She tries to fold into herself, to avoid offending me with her curves like a loveseat’s arm, but fails. When her polyester thigh touches mine, bony and blue-jeaned, I hold still.
         “Hold still,” Frankie Sullivan mumbled from behind the pocket flashlight he held with his teeth. Under him, his girlfriend laid on her back, her jeans in a pile to their right. Red dripped past her upper thigh and through the sheets: a sacrifice to Vishnu; Yahweh; Jobs. Still, Frankie wondered about the cleaners down the road, whether they did mattresses, whether they’d question the stain. He applied antiseptic to the horizontal wound with his fingers, then the surgeon’s tape—four pieces across. Her leg, the leg he loved, butchered by hands he once pecked in welcome. He sighed. With the small tube of light, Frankie could make out the cut: how it rejected the tape, how there was too much blood this time. He grabbed the flashlight from his mouth, sat back on his heels and kissed his girlfriend’s knee.
         “Solice,” he said, “we must go.”