The Dust on the Hood

He lay passed out on the bed, legs splayed, drool darkening the blue sheet under his cheek, an empty bottle of Jack on the side table. So many times she’d come home to this. Better to find him this way most times than to find him awake, screaming at her as she came through the door, spit flying from his face. Asking where she’d been.
He knew she was working. But, by now he was so far into it his memory was starting to go. He didn’t know one minute from the next. The other night he’d kissed her tenderly, told her how beautiful she was. How she lit up the room everywhere she went. Then he’d gone out the door and slammed back through it three hours later spitting venom.
He’d hit her that night. Square in the mouth. She’d spit red into her hand, with little white pieces of her bottom teeth floating in it. He told her she wasn’t so pretty anymore now with her face all fucked up.
She should have left that night. But somehow she was afraid. And he’d come into the bedroom and apologized. Wiped her face and held her for hours. He loved her so much.
Now, with him passed out like this, she decided she was going. She hastily grabbed a backpack and put in it two changes of clothes and a toothbrush. More quickly now, lest he wake.
She went out the door and stumbled down the metal steps of the trailer and over to his old red VW Rabbit. She thought she’d miss the car more than him, really. It was a good car. She learned how to drive the manual shift on a hill in a parking lot. You just gotta get the feel of it, till you can sit there with the clutch out enough to not roll back and to not go forward either. Then you’ve got it.
She shook off the memory and used her finger to write in the dust on the hood…

Goodbye Mark