formal glow of a big church wedding, and their nights in the cramped camper have become hours of late-night talks and lovemaking and side-splitting laughter. And in a few years when they’ve sold the property and moved to Columbia, when Jim has graduated and Rodney writes to tell Malcolm that none of his predictions came true and Frieda is begging to wear makeup and stay out late, they will talk about the Goodnight Inn and how wonderful it was to live there, the traffic a steady flow of honeymooners and college kids and families in wood-paneled station wagons bound for the coast. They will almost forget these three lousy weeks. She listens to Rodney counting higher than he has all day, his pieces of dirt soaring into the sky, and she watches Frieda swim up to one of the round hazy lights, her small hand reaching for the moon.
First Union Blues
I’m sitting here at work knowing full well that the Mr. Coffee that my cousin Eleanore gave me for Christmas is going full blast and there’s not a thing I can do about it. I knew as soon as I pulled into the parking lot that I forgot to turn it off. I knew when I looked up at our sign here in front of the bank that gives the time and temp; it said 80 F and I thought, hot, Jesus it is hot, blazing hot, and since I have a fear of fire and have my entire life since I saw the movie Jane Eyre , I happened to think of the Mr. Coffee and how I had thought I might want to drink that little bit there in the bottom after I put on my makeup and somehow in the midst of mascara and cover up, my mind wandered right on into wanting to wax my legs and see how it did. “It hurts like hell,” Eleanore has said and that’s what I was thinking right up until I parked and saw the time-and-temp sign.
I don’t tell anybody this but I’ve yet to learn the C temp and how to figure it out and so I always have to wait around for the F one. What bothers me is that some days waiting for the time to flash up is like waiting for Christmas and other good days—before you can make it out (all the dots don’t always work), it’s all changed on you. That’s how it was this morning. I don’t know who here is in charge of that sign; I’m not. I’m a teller, which they tell me is “a foot in the door,” “a base to grow upon,” and so on. A check to pay off Visa is more like it.
There’s nothing I can do about the Mr. Coffee right this second. I barely get a coffee break and I know they aren’t going to let me drive clear across town to check on something that I might or might not have done. It’s happened before that I have thought the oven was on and such, only to find that I had turned it off without even knowing. “I live by my instincts,” I’ve told Eleanore and that’s true. And so I could’ve cut it off, instinctively. All of us have done things instinctively only to find out we didn’t remember doing it. Some people spend years that way.
Eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. I can read it loud and clear, not a dot out of place, and I know that any minute now that condo I rent is going to bust into flames. It starts there at the Mr. Coffee, wedged right between the microwave and the wok: a little piece of paper towel ignites, catches hold of my new Dinah Shore kitchen rags, which are just for show and stay dry as a bone since my condo hasa dishwasher and I let the dishes air dry. It spreads from there past the condo’s miniblinds to my little oil lamp that says “Light My Fire” and that I won at a fair once for hitting a woman’s big round butt with a beanbag. I never would’ve picked that lamp but free is free and so I took it and went ahead with Larrette over to the funny mirrors, which is all she wanted to do. “Fat,” she would say and hide between my legs. She is only two and doesn’t have many more words than what she saw in the mirrors— big, little, funny , and of course, kitty and puppy . There weren’t any animals at the fair but those are her favorite words. If she
First Union Blues
I’m sitting here at work knowing full well that the Mr. Coffee that my cousin Eleanore gave me for Christmas is going full blast and there’s not a thing I can do about it. I knew as soon as I pulled into the parking lot that I forgot to turn it off. I knew when I looked up at our sign here in front of the bank that gives the time and temp; it said 80 F and I thought, hot, Jesus it is hot, blazing hot, and since I have a fear of fire and have my entire life since I saw the movie Jane Eyre , I happened to think of the Mr. Coffee and how I had thought I might want to drink that little bit there in the bottom after I put on my makeup and somehow in the midst of mascara and cover up, my mind wandered right on into wanting to wax my legs and see how it did. “It hurts like hell,” Eleanore has said and that’s what I was thinking right up until I parked and saw the time-and-temp sign.
I don’t tell anybody this but I’ve yet to learn the C temp and how to figure it out and so I always have to wait around for the F one. What bothers me is that some days waiting for the time to flash up is like waiting for Christmas and other good days—before you can make it out (all the dots don’t always work), it’s all changed on you. That’s how it was this morning. I don’t know who here is in charge of that sign; I’m not. I’m a teller, which they tell me is “a foot in the door,” “a base to grow upon,” and so on. A check to pay off Visa is more like it.
There’s nothing I can do about the Mr. Coffee right this second. I barely get a coffee break and I know they aren’t going to let me drive clear across town to check on something that I might or might not have done. It’s happened before that I have thought the oven was on and such, only to find that I had turned it off without even knowing. “I live by my instincts,” I’ve told Eleanore and that’s true. And so I could’ve cut it off, instinctively. All of us have done things instinctively only to find out we didn’t remember doing it. Some people spend years that way.
Eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. I can read it loud and clear, not a dot out of place, and I know that any minute now that condo I rent is going to bust into flames. It starts there at the Mr. Coffee, wedged right between the microwave and the wok: a little piece of paper towel ignites, catches hold of my new Dinah Shore kitchen rags, which are just for show and stay dry as a bone since my condo hasa dishwasher and I let the dishes air dry. It spreads from there past the condo’s miniblinds to my little oil lamp that says “Light My Fire” and that I won at a fair once for hitting a woman’s big round butt with a beanbag. I never would’ve picked that lamp but free is free and so I took it and went ahead with Larrette over to the funny mirrors, which is all she wanted to do. “Fat,” she would say and hide between my legs. She is only two and doesn’t have many more words than what she saw in the mirrors— big, little, funny , and of course, kitty and puppy . There weren’t any animals at the fair but those are her favorite words. If she
Similar Books
