Twenty-first of September, the first day of fall, and light and shadows were in a frenzy, competing with fickle breezes, and the sky, not to be outdone, cleared itself of every cloud. “The sky is blue and clear … clear as a clean piece of paper.” How could she have remembered that line … a line she had said from a play she had performed in over forty years ago! How like the day she had been way back then, all bellied over with hopes, boundless and new, light reflecting from every part of her body.

Her pace quickened until she caught a reflection of herself in a glass window. Jesus! She was even bigger than when she started this stupid diet four days ago. Long Beach diet she kept calling it, instead of South Beach, as if she had become one of those lost suburbanites in Long Beach, looking for what’s missing in their lives and sure to find it
with a thin body. Another week and a half to go … she struggled so and today was only the fourth day. She was determined to continue to lose the weight, the weight of boredom, disappointment, letting go of a profession in which she had been successful but no longer interested her, the loss of a dream of making a difference in life for more then a moment, the weight of all that, the ice cream, the wine, the fig newtons and the mountains of sushi and pasta.

He was starving. “Dammit! This place is taking forever,” he thought. ”Out of place here with my work clothes and everything. But they’re probably not being snooty, just busy … never used to be this fancy when I worked on that job up the street.” A tall sliver of a waiter appeared, almost out of nowhere as if he had been blown in by the playful wind
and landed just on that spot. “What’ll ya have,” fell from his mouth in one word. Startled by the suddenness of the waiter he quickly decided on the pasta of the day. “Gotsya” said the waiter. “Oh shit, that wasn’t what I really wanted!” he thought to himself. “Probably shouldn’t have come all the way down here from the job in Midtown. But the food is good and it don’t cost a lung to eat here. Most of all had to get away from those guys I work with…a bunch of gorillas…driving me crazy. Whew, fuckin’ lonely is what I am and they make me feel lonelier, especially today, so pretty out. Something new like this day is what I need.”

The corner café where she hoped to find the chef’s salad required for the diet’s fourth day lunch was crowded. All her favorite seats by the window had been taken. The only available place was a communal table across from a man sitting alone. She sat down at the empty seat facing him and immediately wished she hadn’t. He started shaking his
leg nervously, nonstop, the way bad boys had done in school, boys way in the back of class, and always she had associated it with something sexual. “I better take out my notebook or something and start writing so this guy doesn’t think I’m coming on to him,” she thought. A distracted waitress appeared. She faithfully ordered what was on the South Beach diet for Thursday. She sensed he was watching her.

“What’s this,” he thought. “Probably a school teacher, nice voice, soft … could use a little softness in my life. That screeching tattooed girl at home is driving me nuts … should never have let her move in with me.” His pasta arrived. He unscrewed the top of the cheese shaker and smothered his pasta with cheese. “Look at that sweet mouth she has, this one…looks like you could have a conversation with her too, without hammering the ideas out.”

She pretended to be writing in her notebook, but all the while she was thinking about how out of place the man was. In spite of the jiggling , he had a craggy, quiet demeanor. “Handsome, Eastern European,” she thought, “probably lost, just wandered into this cafe, oozing with NYU professors, smooth rosy students, studied creative souls. Twirling their tresses while deep in thought. His hair is bluntly cut. Is he wearing a uniform?” His cellphone rang. As he quickly answered and shut off his phone, she noticed a New York accent form one of those small-lawned boroughs . A pen was clipped to his breast pocket, crowed to the side by cigarettes and an eye glass case. “Oh God,” she sighed to herself, “just like all those men from the small hometown I fled from, with their stuffed breast pockets … the kind with all that abortive longing, abusive men who stored their reason in dusty banks of platitudes and spent only force, using power to beat away any vulnerability in others and in themselves. Oh fuck! Why am I so judgmental? Probably because I’m starving to death on this damned diet!” She looked around for the waitress.The sun fell into a cloud and a wave of quiet paused the noisy cafe. She stole another glance at her table companion. “Odd, “ she thought. “When he eats, he appears so differently from how I first imagined him.” There was an appealing pensive quality, a sensuousness in the way he ate, so slowly…as if he were really present, tasting, kissing, almost making love to his food, taking small bites to make the pleasure last. Why were his lips so moist, so deep in color like the lips of a young boy, resting slightly open. “Oh Lord, careful,” she thought. ”This kind of man is dangerous for me, I know this man, how he believes sappy love songs, defends ignorance, and how he has the power to make me disbelieve there is a world of the mind.” Her salad arrived.

“Look at that, she eats like a screwy little chipmunk,” he smiled to himself. “No makeup either. Bet she thinks she’s too fat, nice to look at woman with a little flesh for a change, without a face on her like a Barbie doll.” Just then, she dropped her pen. It rolled under the table. He picked it up and smiled. His eyes were so blue that she thought she
was looking through his head to the sky. “Thank you,” she said, as he handed her the pen. She accepted it so gently that it fell from her hand into his pasta. They laughed and then they talked and then they laughed some more. Like the day outside, they made light and shadows. All was new. When she got up to leave she knew for the next three or four Thursdays she would come back to this cafe hoping to see him again.

---

Kathleen Widdoes has been an actress for many years in the theatre, television and film. She received a Tony nomination for Beatrice in ‘“Much Ado About Nothing,” three Obie awards for Off-Broadway performances, in plays by Dumas, Chekhov and Brecht. She was Edith Wharton in PBS’s “Looking Back” and received four Emmy nominations as Emma Snyder in Daytime Soap, “As The World Turns.” She was Joe Papp’s first Juliet and all the dark ladies of Shakespeare at The New York Shakespeare Festival. Some films include, The Group, Masha in The Seagull, and Courage Under Fire. Kathleen’s writing has appeared in 12th Street journal and is now an honors student in the Riggio Writing & Democracy Program working towards a B.A. at The New School.

Excerpted from Eric Huang’s novel-in-progress

In the morning, I send off Candace. We stand by Jack, who is going through a full reorg. He grunts in approval, ties the bag handles together like shoelaces. One of us will message the other midweek, as early as Tuesday.

The departing train reminds me of our brunch reservation, 1400hr for three at Neighborhood Hot Pot and KBBQ. I pat my pants pocket in case my phone is there while looking over Jack’s shoulder for the time. 1348hr. It is not morning. I take a seat. Seven people wait cross-platform, disappear behind the departing uptown train. Never before had I done this on purpose. I did not know if Otto or Jacster were running late, if there was a last-minute venue change, when the next train would be. I found myself delighted by the uncertainty, the implicitness of the reservation, the unspoken sanctity, a chivalrous aspect like the offline arrangements in square, technicolor films. I move from this seat to one on board, pat my pockets, then watch the whirring dark of the opposite window, the downcast faces of the half-filled car. All of them, consumed by what scrolls or plays. The flicking thumb, the small images and lines of text, the slight panning nod of the head. I do not borrow equity from their mild enjoyments. The nonmotion is terribly unprovocative, too passive to be stimulating.

I can smell star anise and peppercorn and grilling meat halfway up the station stairs. My hands feel moist when I pull the door. Jacster talks to Otto in the waiting area. Without reminder, here we all are, at a single location at this hour in this vast city. They greet me with open arms. We could have been anywhere. Jacster takes our photo. We all remembered.

“Sorry I’m late guys. Forgot my phone.”

“S’all good. Table’s ready. They’s just waiting for the full party.”

“I’m famished.”

Otto nods.

“Me too. Yes miss, we’re all here. Booth please, if you have.”

The chivalrous foreplay makes it all the more worthwhile. There is already productivity in our successful meeting. No contingency plan needing activation. It casts the afternoon in an invincible mood.
“The ayce grill package for all three of us,” I tell our server.

I told them to peruse the menu if they’d like, but not to worry. I call the server over, who hunches to my cupped whispers, Jacster and Otto silent across the table.

Our waters came. Cutlery next, metal chopsticks and one long spoon and a round rectangular plate for each of us. Our sauces arrive next, ssamjang and salt pepper sesame oil and sour soy in a triptych of adjoined square dishes. A server unstacked the cold banchan dishes into a ring around the grill another server set a clean grill plate on and lit. It was circular and chain-linked and polished and gold tinted, almost godly, like a polished diving suit cover. Kimchi, dressed bean sprouts, dressed spinach, radish kimchi cubes, cucumber kimchi, japchae. All the dishes round a smooth white ceramic. I gestured at it all with an open hand, then whispered more at neither server in particular. More cupped whispers, another open hand gesture to refill the banchan before it depleted. They were absorbed by what arrived, ate eagerly, with clinks and clacks. I did not want them to worry. Whispers carried all the way to the kitchen. I did not want them to worry.

Frozen brisket arrived. I assured them not to worry, requested the tongs from the server, began fanning the frozen red curls of meat onto the grill. Chadol sizzled and deflated slightly and curled at the edges and aerated a wondrous primal aroma. A small circular dish of potato salad arrived, same as the banchan. They set corn cheese to an edge of the grill to heat, become bubbly. They brought kimchi jjigae and steamed egg in stone pots, unpacked more accompanying square dishes, sheets of translucent ssam, pink daikon slices, perilla leaf, a basket of butter lettuce. Each slice stuck tenderly then parted when flipped, revealing grates clean and shiny from beef fat. It was a satisfying, cleansing sensation, like removing plastic from new screens. Jacster and Otto watched the charred side wobble as the fresh raw side gave up moisture and beef fat, transient flamelets appearing where tallow caught fire. Raw garlic slices, jalapeno. I scattered raw garlic slices and jalapeno with my hands onto the grill, tucked them between rendering beef and the oiled grates. Smoke and steam came off in oscillating waves into the hood above, the table’s lights embedded within. Two large brown bottles of beer arrived. I unclasped the tongs and drew an entire quadrant off the grill and onto Otto’s plate in one motion, a technique I had seen thrice on video. I could tell they were impressed. My eyes motioned at Jacster, then the beer. He set into motion pouring them. I slid the plate to Otto and reached for Jacster’s dish. No brisket stuck to the exposed golden grates, now shimmering with beef fat. Servers brought sliced enoki, rounds of onions, slices of bell pepper, squash. Long thick slabs of pork belly arrived, rolled into medallions. I helped myself to brisket with the same casual/elegant efficiency. I grew more daring, more bold, attempted something I had seen once in thumbnail preview only, stacked onions and squash and oyster mushroom on one grill end, then fanned them in one motion across the glistening surface. Small orange flames quelled beneath. I whispered for thirds of fish cake and kimchi in forecast of current consumption rates. They did not appear to be slowing, had already picked the unassigned quadrant of brisket off the grates and made lettuce wraps from them. More of the pickled radish wrap and ssam and bib lettuce too sir? the hunchback asked. I nodded gravely. I unrolled the samgyupsal across the grill. Five discs of marbled beef came on a dark plate in the shape of a fish. I gestured at it and held up one finger, and he departed to make it a clean six. Scallops in shell with small pats of butter came on a fish plate too. I worried the first round was not impressive enough. My spirits dampened.

I asked for the menu in the back pocket of the departing server. The unctuous aroma of pork radiated out. I pored over the menu. The lighting downcast from two overhead lights seemed to overlap over the grill and give it an even more lustrous sheen. I whispered and was heard. Pork cheek arrived as I set the scallop shell side onto the grill. Short rib arrived. Perhaps my peevishness was due to hunger, I thought as I flipped the pork belly. I had not touched a single item on my plate. The brisket’s gleam now dull, charred vegetables beginning to wrinkle as they cooled, shrank. I took the paper cover off my spoon. I put a piece of brisket in my mouth. Added a tear of lettuce, a slice of pickled daikon, kimchi I swiped across all three sauces. I held the cooked pork belly over Jacster’s plate with the tongs and cut pieces from the bottom with scissors onto Jacster’s plate. He consumed it at the rate it fell, an incredible rate, once pulling the falling piece from the air. Otto held out his triptych of sauce, caught his samgyupsal there. I gestured for a new grate. Dishes arrived as we waited, sirloin, beef tongue, bulgogi. Raw meat existed in heavy imbalance to the edible quantities. The server was coming with more meat. We formed an assembly line. Otto dealt with the surplus, set arriving dishes to the grill, partitioned it by animal and cooking time, discs of meat at the center, slices surrounding them. Jacster ordered as soon as the plate was cleared. I was in charge of serving, skimming the top, pressing the button, general operations. The responsibilities were tremendous. We barked orders at each other, let one another know about ready food, depleting raw goods-supplies, imbalances in stock. Even Otto spoke, quietly, hush like the steam we saw each other across the table through. That’s done. This needs more time. We need a new grate. It lent an even greater urgency to the affair, a clairvoyance to our operation to bankrupt them within ninety minutes. My spirits lifted. I ordered quail eggs, more pork jowl, chadol. I imagined our server some Buddhistic anti-Christ, delivering animal parts with a thousand arms. They replaced our blackened grill. I perused sections of the menu I had no interest in, admired their selection of offal, tripe, large intestine, marinated egg, and ordered them anyway. They replaced our blackened grill. The food ceased to sear and caramelize, began to cauterize. We swabbed our sauce clean with crispy intestine. Squeeze bottles were left at our table, for self-replenishment. We ate on, no matter what was set to cook. We were part of a greater machine. I could just make out the peak of my plate’s unconsumed items at the bottom of my vision. They cared not that I ate. Traditional correlations dissolved in the steam from the grill. I began to feel full for others. To feel their fullness in turn. I felt filled out. Chivalry had taken new forms. They are what they cared not for, perhaps in this new chivalry, perhaps caught in the momentum of the course, in deference to it, or out of a day’s hunger. In the ashes coating the blackened grate, which speckled it unevenly in some seeming pattern, I saw the night ahead, ablaze in endless pleasure, and what I wanted to order for dessert.

When the check came, I set my card down, told them not to worry; I would charge them later.

---

Eric Huang is Canada born and New Jersey raised. He’s currently working on a novel while pursuing an MFA at The New School.

---

The theme of October 2017 prose of the month is "Food & Costume." 
This story has been excerpted from a longer piece by the same name. 

 

The Burgett Hotel’s lobby was a grand, high-ceilinged room with marble floors and naked angels in the ceiling. Healthy standing plants and buttoned green velvet couches lined the walls. The staff, all men with cat licked hair, waited along the walls, satin hands behind their backs. A young harpist in a glittering sheath played “Every Breath You Take” on a tucked away platform. Rose paused for a moment next to the entrance before walking through. It was an older crowd, for sure. A sea of glossy heads populating the tables at the entrance café. Smooth skin in soft sweaters, unscuffed shoes and tortoise shell glasses on each side of candelabras. The smell of gardenia powder and steak. No one spoke above a whisper.

Rose planned to beeline to the elevator, her head down, as she held the sides of her skirt, thinking that might dampen the conspicuousness. Her dress’s corset amplified her bust, flattened out the front of the rich black velvet skirt, merely the centerpiece to a larger operation: a six-layered petticoat, a mountainous largesse of the crinoline, an itchy bouquet of sleeves that ballooned at the shoulders, and, not to mention, a doily-pin headpiece.

When Rose stepped forward, a white-blonde haired man in a sailor’s blazer, standing with his wife and an extensive leather luggage collection, looked up and said loudly, “What the hell?” She thought there was hush in the crowd. She was beginning to get dizzy. Was it possible, she wondered, that people were not thinking how strange she looked, but instead how magnificent? Even over the static of her gown in friction with the carpet and leveling a vase of pussy willows. She heard a woman’s voice chuckle out in superior tone,“Good Christ, Harvey, it’s cos-play.”

 

Was it possible, she wondered, that people were not thinking how strange she looked, but instead how magnificent?

 

Rose reminded herself of the twelve hundred dollars and the possibility for tip. It would pay her rent for the month and then some. In just a few hours. We will not touch or engage in any physical / sexual contact, Collagio’s email said after they connected on Seeking Arrangements. He just wanted her to dress up in a Victorian ballgown and eat with him. Talk to him “in character.”

She had promised herself she’d keep her apartment come hell or high water. Her wages as a hair washer were barely, barely keeping her fed and in transit. She reminded herself that she needed this. She didn’t have any other options.

She prayed it would just be her on the elevator but on the third floor two men walked in. She tried to catch a glance but was unsuccessful. Both had exceptionally precise haircuts. Neither had any interest in Rose or her dress. Was this a New York thing? Rose wondered. Walking about in period clothes?

Rose admitted that part of her wished they would ogle her, giggle, stare a little, give her some kind of encouragement. She thought of the time, as a child, she lifted her skirt and pulled back the crotch of her Chip and Dale underwear, revealing her vagina lips to her little church friend, Owen. She stretched them out so the dark grapefruit interior, the ridged sail of her clit, gleamed proudly like it was saying “Hi!” She expected him to be as thrilled to see it as he was to show it. Instead, he cried.

When the elevator arrived at the suite, opening its golden doors to the pearl expanse of what appeared to be a massive apartment, Rose’s hand hovered with the key that could have sent her right back down to the lobby and out into the streets, all the way back home. Her heart was in her mouth, pounding. She thought of her mom and that fucking Ron guy, how they were probably warming up some yellow rice and watching CSI Miami. How her mother would laugh if she knew where she was.

 

✕          ✕          ✕          ✕

 

When she had been sitting alone on a bursting pink tufted couch in the suite’s sitting room for almost fifteen minutes, Rose finally gave in and reached her hand into the crystal bowl of fresh figs sitting on the mahogany side table and bit one in half. The flesh of it tugged stubbornly before the jelly interior and hard little seeds burst and crunched into her molars.

The man who had greeted her and instructed her to wait was nowhere in sight. He had introduced himself as Rusty. She wondered if Rusty might be reporting to Collagio about her, warning him, “She’s a lunker, sir.”

Rose stared down at the little lines of red her shoes were etching into her feet. An antique Turkish rug of cream and blue sprawled out before her, four worn horses jumping towards a centered turquoise sun. It was bleached, likely due to the natural light from the two tall walls of windows. How do they keep such a rug clean? Rose wondered.

“Madame?” She heard Rusty’s voice and shot to attention but couldn’t see where it was coming from. Though she noticed the wall opposite her had opened, right where the portrait of a young boy in blue pantaloons with an Irish setter had hung. Rose rose and swallowed her anxious laughter. It was warm. A hot, single stream of sweat ran from her hairline to asscrack. She smelled peanut butter, the scent of her own body odor.

It was too dark to see the dining room’s outermost perimeter, but Rose saw the lit, silver-dressed dining table for two covered in linen that special shade of old blood. The table at which Collagio now sat and ate. Had he been having a first course while she waited in the next room?

Collagio saw Rose and stood, placing his napkin to the side of a shallow bowl of mint green soup as crumbles of bread tumbled down into his suit coat. She observed immediately how clumsily he moved.

“Mr…Collagio,” she surprised herself. Her voice came out soft and breathy.

“Madame Karen.” She had given him a fake name. Collagio gave her a very slight bow gesturing for her to sit. His arms gestured like a Muppet. Like someone else was in control. Perhaps it was Rusty, she thought, who now stood unblinking next to the table, his face lit like a crypt keeper by the chandelier made of actual candles.

“You look…” Collagio’s voice was feathered and painfully gentle. He quivered and could not, for the life of him, finish his sentence.

“Thanks.” Rose lowered herself into an awkward, slow curtsy, shuffled her dress to sit, and took a long, long sip from her water goblet.

“Would you like a beverage, Madame Karen? Some wine?”

Rose cleared her throat. She tried to keep herself from squinting as though she were trying to decipher an abstract painting or one of those Magic Eye posters. While he was a large, tall man, like she imagined, he hunched his shoulders down gently and to the right just so, as though to intentionally make himself appear smaller. He wore a wrinkled blazer with a T-shirt of a Degas ballerina underneath, light wash jeans, and grey, brand new New Balance sneakers. She couldn’t place his age. His skin was soft and poreless but it drooped over his bones like a longtime acquaintance of gravity. His wet acorn eyes blinked, glossy and rapid, behind spectacles with gargantuan rims. His thinning brown hair gathered in the back in a low ponytail, crisp strands escaping behind his ears. The aspiring hair stylist inside her would have liked to deep condition and chop it. He fidgeted like a kid.

 

She couldn’t place his age. His skin was soft and poreless but it drooped over his bones like a longtime acquaintance of gravity.

 

“Some champagne would be gorgeous — much thanks.” Much thanks? What she actually wanted was a strong Ike Turner, what her mother drank. She yearned for the tang and taste of something familiar. She watched as Collagio nodded to Rusty, who walked backwards towards what Rose could only imagine, or hope, was the kitchen. And then they were alone together. In silence. Collagio cleared phlegm from his throat and she gripped the sides of her chair, feeling waves of nausea and the forshadowing of a nervous shit.

“The food here is exquisite, Miss Karen, and please, if you want something that isn’t on the menu, they will make it for you.”

“How generous.”

“Have you been enjoying your evening so far?”

“A beautiful evening.” Although she was intending to stay in character, Rose became hyper with questions. She wanted to know how he grew up, if he had children, hobbies, lovers. And what was it about sitting opposite her while she was dressed like this that excited him so? She wondered if it was actually the costume and the dirty talk, or simply the fact that he got a woman, a stranger, to do these things, to make herself up in such a laborious manner for him. Did those other women need to do this like Rose did? Or did they want to?

“I’m glad it’s been to your liking.”

“Indeed, yes, indeed it has been.”

“Have you stayed at The Burgett, before?”

“I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure.”

“It’s one of the finest.”

Rose tried to gauge, looking at him, if the way he spoke was at all suggestive, not knowing at what point things might veer sexy. Rose pictured Collagio hovering above her on an expansive four poster. Busting her out of her corset, eating her breasts like he was diving face first into a layered cake, tossing her petticoats towards her head in fevered waves. Could she enjoy it?

Collagio’s head was still hung in a bow, but his eyebrows tried desperately to drag his gaze up to meet her eyes. He took a sip of his wine and somehow sent a butter knife spinning to the floor in the process. His other hand, peppered with white and tan speckles of pigmentation, lay stretched and flat on the linen. It really was a big hand, Rose noticed. He could likely wrap his fingers entirely around her neck. His middle finger would touch the crown of her head if he palmed her face.

 

✕          ✕          ✕          ✕

 

While Rose declined a meal, considering her corset, Collagio’s salmon came in a tower hovering above a vegetable collection and a crayon yellow glaze Rose couldn’t discern. She watched his mannerisms change as he ate. Attempts at decorum or reserve fled the moment before a bite, when Collagio opened his mouth in a way that made Rose think of a goblin. Smacking as he chewed, his lips were as wet as if he’d put on deep red gloss. When he took a sip of his drink, she noticed he left a milky thumbprint of perspiration on the glass when he set it back down.

“Would you like a taste, Karen?” Rose adjusted the sides of her skirt, which were working their way up on either side like two smiling mushrooms.

“Oh, no, thank you. Thanks, no.”

“Another drink?”

“Absolutely.”

Rusty materialized, placing another flute next to her. She wondered what the relationship between the two of them was like when no one else was around. She had a rather obtrusive vision of Rusty giving Collagio a gentle sponge bath, taking a sopping washcloth to some bacne.

“Can I ask you what you do, Mr. Collagio?”

“Just Collagio.”

“Collagio.”

“I’m a publisher of books.”

“Anything I’ve heard of?”

“I would think so.”

“…so you like to read?”

“I do. Do you?” He looked up at her, finally full on. His eyes gave her a dull, dark stare. Her show of curiosity had shifted his discomfort to annoyance. Rose dug her fingernails into her palm. She guessed that he wouldn’t be interested in her extensive knowledge of graphic novels or Science Fiction. She exhaled slowly. She turned her chin slightly up at him. She looked at him with a purposeful blink, hoping it came across as flirting.

“I’m in the middle of Middlemarch.”

“One of my favorites.”

“One of the greatest novels of this or any age.” So people say, thought Rose. He smiled in agreement with them.

“You must spend hours reading in your parlour.”

“When I’m not doing needlepoint or singing for father, yes.”

“You’re an artist, then.” He took the remaining bite of his salmon, and Rose watched a piece of fatty silver skin hang off his fork. “I would very much like to eat at your house.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far — “

“No need to be humble around me, my lady.”

“I suppose I have…artistic tendencies.” Rose batted her lashes once again. Realizing that she wouldn’t have to sidestep questions about herself, that he didn’t care about her family, her search for work, the trashy town she hailed from, how she quit school three credits shy. It began to relax her. She thought about how only hours before she was in her apartment, in dirty jeans, dissecting a Hot Pocket with a knife and fork while watching old House of Style episodes on YouTube. How she smoked six menthols that day and had a can of Coke as the rented gown hung on the back of her door in a plastic dry cleaning bag like a prom dress. But for all Collagio knew, she was a woman born rich who wore gowns and had servants and a stable of horses. Someone who read the Romantics.

“And your old father, do you cook for him?”

“I can barely cream my tea, good sir. We have servants.”

“What does the cook make for you?”

“Lots of meat. Big cakes.” Rusty showed up just then with a crystal ramekin of vanilla pudding, a single glazed raspberry at it’s center. Rose imagined the inside of his mouth, the alchemy of taste those foods must be making.

 

Rose imagined the inside of his mouth, the alchemy of taste those foods must be making.

 

“Scrumptious.”

“I’ll call on you as a guest.”

Collagio cracked his neck with a quick snap and filled his wine glass all the way to the top. We’re certainly getting braver, Rose thought.

“I have one stipulation to my accepting.”

“Of course.”

“Make sure your father is gone.” He swallowed a heap of his pudding and laughed with a feral look, white cream at the edges of his mouth, and it prompted Rose to laugh, too. Her legs began to tingle slightly. They felt numb and ashamed. The way she did when she felt turned on by a scene in a film that wasn’t sexual, or when she was touched on her neck, even by an animal or a strange woman on the subway, unexpectedly, accidentally, and became aroused on impact.

“Now tell me how you put on that dress you’re wearing.”

“Oh, this?”

“Yes, that.”

“Well, first I put on the white stockings, all the way up to my thighs.”

“And however did you get that waist so tight? All by yourself?”

“You’re making me blush, sir.” Rose’s heart started to beat faster. She enjoyed watching him as he became aroused. The look on his face! His eyebrows knit together, the flush of heat and sprinkling of sweat across his forehead. She sucked in her bottom lip and bit down hard.

“My dresser helps me tie up sir. She’s very, very good at it.”

“And does she ever accidentally… touch your breasts, Miss Karen?”

“She does touch my breasts, sir.” Rose cleared her throat. “But I don’t think it’s by accident.”

“Why is that?”

“Because she massages them with ylang ylang oil.”

Rose watched Collagio’s chest grow. He let out a strong breath and put his spoon down on the table. She couldn’t tell if the pleased sound that accompanied this exhalation was for his dessert or for her. Collagio ran his palms over the greased hair on his scalp, then dropped his arms to his sides and closed his eyes. He fell silent. For a brief moment, Rose worried he was having a stroke. She thought of Owen again, as Collagio sat there, unspeaking, whimpering slightly, looking for his words.

She thought of her father, too. When the two of them used to play in the yard together before he died. How he picked her up above his head one night and kissed her crotch, twice, three times, once with a flick of his tongue, over her underwear of course, but with the sound of lip smacks, like he did when he kissed her forehead. Something Rose knew, as she got older, was inappropriate, but something she did, if she were honest, remember with fondness.

“You might have guessed I’m an unusual man, Miss Karen.”

“No…”

“I don’t have much family left.” Rose’s heart started beating hard, wondering where this was going. His voice had changed suddenly.

“No cousins or anything?”

“Just Rusty, my assistant Genevieve. And my—”

“I’m sure she’s great. Rusty seems great.”

“I spend a great deal of my time alone.”

“I get that, sir.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I do, too.”

He smiled at her. “I have something else to ask of you, Karen.”

“Ok.”

“When we are finished with our wine, and after you have a bowl of this incredible pudding, I would like to take you upstairs.”

 

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He held the door open for her when they arrived at the suite’s bedroom, bowing before she crossed the threshold. He poured her a drink before he sat down in a much oversized white chair, one that dwarfed his giant frame.

“Take a moment for yourself, please, Karen,” he said, and she did, going into the bathroom, reapplying her lips, removing her headpiece, letting her hair down. She wondered if he would mind her hairless crotch, if he was the kind that wanted a wild, plentiful bush like that famous old painting of a French vagina.

Where the mirrored walls met in the corner of the sink, Rose could see the familiar effect of her image repeating, this version of herself getting smaller and becoming itself forever. She swallowed and her throat was dry, unlike her hands. She had made this choice. Every step of the way. She had chosen every moment leading up to this one, leading her to exactly where she was. She knew the others never did this. Which must have meant there was something particular about her, that he wanted to try this, that he wanted her differently. She told herself she was doing this poor man a service.

“Do you mind if we put on some music, sir?” Rose asked him when she came back out.

“Of course, Karen.”

“Play ‘Body’s In Trouble,’ ok?” From an artist her mother turned her on to. By the time the song was over, she would forget what she was doing.

“Now. Slowly, very slowly, I would like it if you could,” Collagio hesitated. “If you could undress yourself, Karen. You can lift the layers of those skirts and show me what you have underneath there.” His voice seemed suddenly drier, deeper. Rose flinched and closed her eyes, turning her back to him.

“First – tell me what I’m doing to you, Karen,” Collagio said, as the song began. Rose stretched her neck to each side and rolled it. She imagined the scenario for a moment before she told him.

He would grab her from behind and eat her neck. He would lift her body with one hand like a shot put and toss her across the room onto the bed, knocking over figs, the room service cart, the glass bottles of Pepsi and sparkling water on the nightstand. Maybe she would hit the headboard and her forehead would start ever so slightly to bleed. Neither would care.

 

He would lift her body with one hand like a shot put and toss her across the room onto the bed, knocking over figs, the room service cart, the glass bottles of Pepsi and sparkling water on the nightstand.

 

He would pull her thighs and her ass and her hip carriage to his lips and nibble it, the beat of his breath on her clitiros and the tiny pinches of his teeth on her vulva lips. His fingers going in to spread inside her like he was holding a ripe orange, stretching her wall muscles until they ached.

“Oh, sir, you’re scratching those long…”

Before Rose could finish her sentence, she heard him yell out. Suddenly paralyzed, she could feel the heat of her heartbeat in the cartilage of her ears. Anything erotic she felt evaporated in a cold snap and turned to panic. She turned around and the sound continued, the heaving, the guttural moans, sniffles. He was crying.

“Sir?”

“She’s dying.”

“I’m sorry — what?”

“My wife is dying, Karen.”

“Oh, god.”

“She’ll be completely gone in the coming weeks.”

Rose stayed perfectly still. She sat in the chair, facing him. Collagio had collapsed into himself, curled like he’d been punched.

“I wanted to see a woman’s body in the flesh, in perfect health,” he gasped for breath. “But I can’t.” Rose paused.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not that healthy. I’m a smoker.” Thank god, he let out the small breath of a laugh from his nose.

“Oh, Karen.”

“My name is actually Rose.”

“A beautiful name.”

Rose was unsure if she should touch him, find a hanky. She wanted somehow to make him stop crying, to make him feel better than he did.

“How about we do something else, then sir? ”

“I can’t Rose…like what?”

“How about I wash your hair?” She waited for an answer. “I’m a professional.”

 

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In the bathroom, Rose turned on the faucet and made the water the perfect temperature. She pulled a bathroom chair over to the deep thumbed bronze sink and covered it in towels. She removed the tiny black elastic from his thin ponytail, and attempted to give a little life to the strands. Collagio closed his eyes, relaxed, but throughout her cleansing, he continued to weep. Rose gave him a long and careful shampoo. When she finished, she took a warm washcloth to his face.

“This feels so nice, Rose,” he said.

She told him to towel off in the room, that she would rinse out the sink and then brush and cut his hair. But before she was done preparing, she heard a quiet click of the door, and knew he had left without saying goodbye.

When she came back into the empty room, Rose looked out at the city through the split in the linen curtains. The buildings were lit, and she noticed, after being in New York for only a few weeks, that it was never really dark enough to sleep well. Just like everyone said. Rose imagined kicking off her mint kitten heel through the window and hopping from roof to roof on those lit up buildings, like a raptor or a frog. All the people in the streets or in the windows of offices or penthouses would watch with their mouths catching flies, screaming, pointing and afraid of her, or happy for her, or both. Who is that girl? They would ask. Where is she going?

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Annakeara is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. She is currently getting her MFA in Fiction from The New School.

Featured image via Pxhere.

Every year on the anniversary of Tim’s death, my mother hosts a family dinner. After seven years I no longer feel sorry for her.

Oh kiddo, my bartender, Karen, says to me, though she isn’t that much older. Her bar near Washington Square smells like bleach.

My father told me people thought my parents were selfish when we were born. Manhattan was no place for children, but the reality was they couldn’t afford to move. Karen tells me those days were rough. I wonder what days she means.

A few witnesses told the police that a man on the street asked Tim for money. Some witnesses said Tim was drunk, or he was laughing. No one tried to intervene, the police said. There are two flights of stairs in the Lexington Avenue stop at 125th; Tim had probably broken bones being pushed down them. He was beaten to death at the bottom, his face so swollen and disfigured that the medical examiner warned my father, who came to make the ID. Maybe you should’ve done it, Karen once said to me. I didn’t go back to her for two weeks.

After Tim, Mom started saving newspaper clippings. The clips seemed to have no commonality. She stuffed them in white envelopes and lines the inside of her desk in the study. She ordered in all the groceries and called every deliveryman “Asahd,” an inappropriate racial epithet that she claimed not to remember when my father and I confronted her. She read only memoirs or the non-fiction pieces in The New Yorker. She began an active hatred for The New York Post, sharing this distaste with passers by on the street. It’s trash, it exploits people, she tells them, poking the cover.

Over deli sandwiches on the fourth year, I asked Dad to talk to Mom. He said to me, Your mother hurts.

I slouch over to Karen, who serves me Pabst Blue Ribbons with a shot of whiskey. Around one I slide off the barstool, the two wet fives too generous a tip given the student loans I live on.

At night I wrap myself tight in my bed sheets, even if it’s hotter than hell outside. I imagine the sheets are a thousand arms. I am the surviving daughter, the sister of a ghost.

In one of our last conversations, Tim told me about packing up his room on the day he moved out. Our mother had begged him to stay with tears in her eyes, and he told her to relax, he’d be back next week for dinner. “You’d think I killed her,” he said to me. He smiled as he spoke. “You would think I killed the old lady, but really I was doing her a favor.”

Two weeks after Tim told me this, he lay in his own blood for twenty minutes before EMTs arrived. She still sets him a place at the table.

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Wynne Kontos is a licensed masters social worker and editorial assistant at Teachers and Writers’ Magazine, currently receiving her MFA at the New School. Her work is featured in the anthology, Love Sick: Teens Reflect On Growing Up with a Parent Who Has Cancer and Moonlit Wing, with interviews on the New School Blog and the One Story blog. She has performed her work with the writing collective Lost Lit and at the 25 East Gallery in Manhattan. She lives and works in New York City.

Featured image via Pixabay.

I used to live in a building that belonged to a Pakistani family.

“Welcome,” I was greeted once, after class, by one of the owners. “What’s your name?”

“José, from Guatemala,” I said. Before coming to NY I had spent a week in Miami with other international students so I picked up the habit of adding my nationality whenever I introduced myself.

“Hussein?” she asked, she looked baffled, surprised, almost in shock. “Are there a lot of Husseins in Guatemala?”

I get this pretty often. Apparently there’s a phonetic likeness between the American Jo-sé, or Jou-seh, and Hussein.

The building was in the middle of a deep renovation, so a lot people –mostly Hispanic– came and went. Every once in a while, out in the hallways, there were heavy sacks of concrete or sand, or the pieces of a new armoire.

Aside from the construction workers, cleaning ladies engorged the Latino population of the building. Often I found them laughing hysterically. They all had that unique Latin carcajada: loud, huge, and grandiloquent. “Gud mornin,” they’d say, or “jelou,” or “buenos días,” they’d say even to the English-speakers.

It was with Valeria, from Puerto Rico, whom I talked the most. Valeria, or Vale, was from San Juan and lived in the Bronx with her two daughters. She was 47 and had come to the US in the mid-nineties with her husband, “un desgraciado” she said.

Often I found Valeria munching on some peanuts, crackers or raisins. She always kept a bag of chips in her cart.

“You like to cook a lot, right? I see you a lot out here?” she said to me one day. I shared the kitchen with four other tenants.

“Not really,” I said while I organizing my collection of dishes and frying pans. “But I don’t like to store things in the fridge.”

“I see. Are you going to finish soon? I have to clean.”

Another time she asked me when had I come to New York, if I liked New York so far and I told her I did. “And what do you like about Nueva Yol’?” she said, with an L at the end of York. Boricuas often replace the R for an L.

“Well, the rhythm of the city. The art, museums, parks.”

“It’s your first time here?” I told her it was. “Right. And have you gone to Puelto Lico?”

“No.”

“You should. You’re from Nicaragua, right?”

“Guatemala.”

“Right, right. Well be careful here, acabo de mopear,” she said, like that, ‘mopear’, conjugating mop as if it were a Spanish word. Mopping or trapear in Spanish became one tropical, heavily seasoned word. Mopping became mopear.

All my meetings with Valeria were like that, brief, incidental and, somehow, always memorable. Sometimes she’d say hi over the loud tronazón of her cellphone, sometimes she’d have Shakira on, sometimes Diego Torres. We never had an actual meaningful chat, but it was nice to speak Spanish from time to time.

One day, while I was reading at the basement, Valeria walked passed by with a heavy basket filled with fruits, vegetables and canned food. She said hi first.

“¿Te gusta la pinabora?” she said. “Do you like pinabora?”

“No,” I said, although I didn’t know what it was.

Pinabora, I said to myself, I had never heard such word. I repeated the syllables in my head, pi-na-bo-ra. That word seemed so distant and foreign, but at the same time it didn’t. What could it be?

I thought Valeria must’ve been talking about a fruit. In Spanish fruits have colorful names such as carambola, rambután, pitaya and guama. I imagined that pinabora was a mix between piña and caimito, maybe. Perhaps it was a traditional Puerto Rican treat, a San Juan delight, a dessert that Valeria might have had as child. I thought about my grandmother, and how she’d often buy me figs at the local mercado.

“No,” I said to Valeria. “Well, I don’t know what it is,” I added.

“You don’t know what pinabora is?” she said.

It has to be a fruit, I thought. Valeria had the same fanatic indignation my friends show whenever I tell them I don’t drink coffee, that I don’t like coffee.

“No,” I smiled.

Among the variety of products Valeria had in her basket, she took out a plastic bottle and handed it to me. “Try it,” she said. “You’re going to like it.”

It was a bottle of peanut butter. I was still confused so I said “pinabora” out loud, or rather, I asked.

“Sí,” Valeria said as she walked away.

I flipped the bottle and read some of the ingredients until I understood and smiled by the amazing flexibility of Spanish, by Valeria’s rhythmic Spanglish.

It was a bottle of pea-nut bu-tter, or, written phonetically in Español, pinot boter, or, according to Valeria’s accent, to her Puerto Rican: pinabora.

“¿Te gustó la pinabora?” she said a few days later. “Did you liked the pinabora? I still can’t believe you hadn’t had it before.”

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José García is a second-year Fiction student at the Creative Writing MFA program at The New School. Born and raised in Guatemala City, where he has worked as a cultural journalist for over eight years. He mostly writes about social issues, family, racism, and migration. He is currently working on a short-story collection that spans the last 70 years of Guatemala, alongside his family’s history.

featured image via Anna on Flickr.