Your Next Girlfriend

Your Next Girlfriend

by Kate Simmons

Beverly is “Primary Mommy” to two cats and two dogs. Her ex-girlfriend is “Secondary Mommy” and her ex’s new girlfriend is “Tertiary”. She refers to her beagles as “Himself” and “Herself.” “Poor Himself has such a teensy weensy weenie.” “Look it, Herself has burrowed under the bedspread.” She says this too often and loudly. Her tuxedo cat she calls Four-By-Four and sings: four-by-four, four-by-four, too fat to fit through the cat door. The nineteen-year-old tabby is named Pearl. I was god-mothered in as “New Secondary Mommy” to the five animals, and remained so even after we put the butterscotch cat down.

Once I moved in with her I became aware of certain things. For instance, Bev made a lot of noise about her ergonomically incorrect chair at her new technical editing job in Silicon Valley. She made such a stink I feared she might quit her job over bad office furniture. Instead she sent haughty emails to both the department head and the Software Behemoth’s purchasing manager.

Just a week into my stay and after she got the versatile ergonomic desk, chair and keyboard; Bev suffered a partially torn rotator cuff. It happened in the park when she hurled a tennis ball at the beagles with a hot-pink plastic chucker. She screamed at me and the chucker and the beagles. Playing golf, taking out the trash, grocery shopping and diddling me right-handedly are out. Extra back scratches and massages for her are in. She marshals upwards of six pillows at bedtime; she takes the memory foam one for under her shoulder, and the rest for elevating older sports injuries.

The doctor prescribed Bev generic Vicodin and sent her home with a large blue elastic band and a paper diagram of shoulder-strengthening exercises she was to perform daily. We laugh at the dumbed-down instructions depicting an emasculated man pulling the band, complete with large directional arrows. Each morning, to my delight, I witness her executing these exercises in the buff.

“Mmm, GiGi, GiGi,” I say too salaciously, even for my own liking.

I call her “GiGi” because I am breast-obsessed and because the department store lingerie lady recently fitted Bev for G cups; after which, her daily mantra became “You really ought to get fitted too.” I watch her pinch the blue elastic band between the mirrored door and jamb. Self-obsessed, she turns and pulls the band diagonally across her ample curves. Her symmetrical, regularly-nursed G rack, with erect salmon-colored dime-sized nipple buds—which the Nordstrom’s lady surely noticed also—glides through my half sleep. This bodacious pair is Bev’s southern pride; devotedly worshipped for thirty years by many ex-girlfriends before me. Her downy pubes are the same orange of a duraflame. I never tire of watching her from bed. And when I want to see more, I use the door’s built-in mirror to view her back side.

But it’s the flaring of her nostrils and the admiring of herself and herself and her irresistible self during the pulling and releasing of ordinary prescribed elastic that really gets to me. Each morning this week is a perfect rerun of the last. I am sitting up in bed. I am rendered stupid just watching her. We are interrupted by click-clack on hardwood. A beagle has jumped down from her bed. “Well, if it isn’t Herself,” Beverly bellows. Both beagles’ tails wag at this. Bev smiles at me. Her expression inexplicably sours as she catches my gaze. “If I ever get breast cancer you’ll leave me,” Bev accuses. “If not before then. “

I go out for our coffee—order Bev a regular large French roast with extra milk and me a double cappuccino. I like to look at the people in line. There is a woman with a stroller standing in front of me and both cups are passed to me lidless over the baby’s head.

I return to the house. Beverly’s house. She bought it after her longtime ex, Secondary Mommy, bought her out of their home. So Mary kept the Edwardian and Bev got a non-descript stucco house built in the fifties but in the same neighborhood. Plus she got custody of their animals.

Beverly’s house is built on an odd-shaped lot subdivided from an old railroad right-of-way. The house is rhomboid shaped—skewed to one side so that the angles of all rooms inside are oblique. From the outside, the house is plain, adorned only with a thin wood trim around its windows. It has a tunnel entry with a black iron safety gate. She chose a Persian pink for its façade—a higher saturation of pink than she imagined from the swatch. The color vibrates against the celadon-green house next door—the harmony of the block interrupted. The original kitchen, with a deep, porcelain sink, an O’Keefe & Merritt stove, and a Frigidaire refrigerator are on the second floor. The refrigerator keeps things remarkably cool and the icebox persists. The previous owner left its manual featuring a housewife wearing pearls, an apron and long white gloves on its cover which we love to marvel over. There is no dishwasher and the countertop is too low to install one. I find I don’t mind doing the dishes.

Her cats live in the upstairs guest bedroom. Bev keeps the window cracked to help with the smell. Their plastic litter boxes sit on a wooden desk so the dogs can’t eat their shit. The beagles have their own in-law apartment downstairs. They share a queen-sized futon, a flannel-covered down comforter and a dog door which lets out onto a long wedge-shaped garden. They slobber and shed on every surface. Because her dogs and cats do not get along they’re allowed free roam of the house during alternate evenings only. Beverly has a calendar in place to give them equal time.

On my way upstairs with the coffee I hear the shower running. I open the bathroom door. There’s a circle of talc on the braided rug where she dusts her pussy with the baby powder that I’m allergic to. She slides the glass door open and peeks her shower-capped head out. Bev in a plastic elastic hair bib always reminds me of my grandmother, only without dentures on the sink.

“I got you coffee,” I say happily.

Her face twists ungratefully. “It won’t be hot when I get out,” she snarks.

She doesn’t believe in microwaves.

At work, I receive two emails from Beverly before lunch. I am fairly sure that the Software Behemoth has a pulse on the outgoing mail but Bev doesn’t care. She gets paid six figures for editing manuals. Each sentence goes through a million proper channels before approved. She finds time to write too many of these emails.

I open mail number one.

Subject: To-do list: REQUIRED! DO IT TODAY! (please.)

Call Zimmer, get contract, sign it and fax it back

Lasik surgery Dr. Dennehey, Eye & Laser Center

Dr. Linderman for teeth cleaning

Diddle your bits

I open mail two.

Subject: YOUR NEXT GIRLFRIEND

Coffee was hot… and so are you.
xx

Attached to the email is a picture of a huge dyke sitting on a chopper, wearing not enough of a leather jacket to cover her ugly tattoos.

Wednesday, Beverly’s ex-girlfriend, Secondary Mommy, comes for dinner. Bev prepares steak, a southern salad with sunflower seeds, and corn on the cob. The salad is a favorite of mine, a family recipe passed down from her mother.

Mary arrives. I open the wine immediately to deliver us from our sobriety. Following perfunctory greetings Mary pulls out a scrap book she purchased at the book fair and we busy ourselves looking at yellowed pages filled with red wax circles impressed with family crest seals. This was not a typical vintage scrapbook with advertisements and postcards. Instead, row after row of equidistant red blobs cover the pages like a mysterious pox. We all agree wholeheartedly that it is well worth the six hundred dollars the book dealer charged her. The price seems especially agreeable now after a glass of Syrah. We come to the last page. Mary returns the prized possession to her leather satchel and we make the move to eat.

Mary sits at one head, Bev at the other. I am in the middle. Bev rotates her corn over a soft stick of butter and it leaves a toothy impression.

“Do you have corn skewers?"

“No, we don’t,” Bev says.

“If you’re going to have these special corn plates you might want to buy some skewers. Right?” Mary looks to me for my thoughts on the matter. “I mean, you have corn shaped plates for the corn. So why wouldn’t you have corn skewers?”

Mary pulled her chair in closer to the table with such veracity the chair legs dig into the hardwood. She cut roughly into her rib eye.

“Beverly, this is too rare. I can’t eat it like this. For god sakes, it’s bleeding like a menstrual teen.” She stabbed her knife down in the middle of it to prove it.

I dislike Mary. Her voice is whiny and her face is ferret-like and her IQ is off the charts. I smile and offer to sauté it on the O’Keefe & Merritt. Mary nods a yes. I shoot a small pan with cooking spray and slide her steak into its center. I press it down with a spatula to make it sear faster and it makes a sizzling noise. I sip wine and glance over at the two of them. They had been a couple for five years before they split. They shared a bed and had sex in a yellow Victorian. I’ve only been living with Bev a month. I wonder if we’ll make it to five.

“You should have sliced it in the center, Barbara.” Mary enunciated every syllable, BAR-BA-RA.

“We like it bloody,” I say. I put my arms around Bev’s shoulders in solidarity. “Who’s Barbara?”

“Barbara is what Bev’s therapist use to call her, “says Mary, “because she could never remember Beverly’s name.”

“You’re kidding? Barbara is not even close.”

“No, I’m not. Her own therapist couldn’t remember her name. “

“I complained vehemently. But she kept calling me Barbara. So I told her if she called me that again, I wouldn’t pay for the session. And then smack in the middle of a breakthrough, she did it again.”

“So you didn’t pay her?” I pour Bev a new drink.

“I did not! And I never went back after that.”

I fork Mary’s well-done steak from the pan onto her plate. I watch her bite into it and feel sullen. My steak is cold and grey. The only sound is of us cutting and chewing. I get a feeling that Mary doesn’t like me, at least not with Bev, even though it had been Mary who had ended their relationship.

“I can’t stand that,” I say after Mary leaves.

“Can’t stand what?”

“The way that Mary goes on and on and on about us not having fucking corn skewers. You don’t have corn skewers?” I mock Mary. “She makes me nauseated.”

“You mean nauseous. It’s nauseous. Not nauseated. You can’t feel nauseated,” Bev says.

I’m in no mood to be corrected. This is the fifth or sixth time she’s corrected me on this. I scrape red wax off of the table with my thumb nail. Bev leaves the room and I hear her turn on the shower. Then I wash the dishes, a chore Bev won’t touch. She would rather eat from paper plates than wash dishes. With that in mind, I break one of her mother’s crystal wine glasses. I pick up the pieces and hurriedly bury the evidence at the bottom of the garbage can.

The next day I come home with a packet of eight yellow plastic corn skewers. I tear open the packaging and imagine Mary’s stomach cramping from undercooked food. Beverley told me about a holiday they had taken where Mary got so ill with food poisoning, she could not leave their hotel room for a week. “It happened in London. All of our plans were ruined.”

No one will ever complain that we don’t have corn skewers, I mumble to myself, and toss them in the spatula drawer.

We take Wellbutrin. The doctor prescribed two 100 milligram tablets per day, but Bev says she only needs one, so she gives me the other. We take them with wine. They’re our prophylactic for depression, she says.

“Look, the book came today.” She shows me the cover with the freckled, doe-eyed kid on it.

“It came?” I say, taking a sip and swallowing my pill.

The book is The Mistress's Daughter, by A.M. Homes. Bev had ordered it before its release date. She was very excited about the prospect of reading an adoptee’s memoir. First off, because she’s a big fan of A.M. Homes and second because she now has me—an adoptee — just like A.M. Homes. I do feel odd. For the last few weeks, Bev has been overly fascinated with my biological status.

Rains have come to the Bay Area and we argue more than usual. Bev says she is unhappy with the tempur-pedic —where it conforms to her body it makes her too hot to sleep. She mourns her old, worn-out mattress and polyester pillows. We don’t make love as much, and when we do it is more or less lying side-by-side taking care of ourselves. Her breasts are magnificent, but she seems unhappy whenever I call attention to them. She wants changes which she called suggestions—that I get a new job, read more literature, kiss only within the confines of her lips, and straighten my hair with a flat iron.

Monday evening Bev’s mood is particularly sour. She pours an entire bottle of wine down the drain and complains bitterly.

“It’s too sweet,” she says. “I can’t help it. I am a wine snob.”

It is a dry Riesling which Bev had told me she liked. It is from a vintner she said she liked too. I picked it out especially, and it cost twenty-six dollars. I stare at her in disbelief. Where did her joy for me go?

I slink downstairs to the guest bathroom and stare at my face. I stay in there, leaning into the sink, an inch from the mirror examining roots and lines and scars. There is a deep frown line developing between my eyes. I rub my finger along it and think maybe I should make that appointment Bev suggested with her dermatologist to botox it out. While admiring the rust spot at the drain in the sink as dynamic art, I think of how I got here —in the pale blue tiled bathroom in Noe Valley and living with Bev. More than forty-five minutes passes in circular conversation with myself before I go back upstairs. When I enter the bedroom I find Beverly reading her new book, The Mistress's Daughter.

She places the memoir down in her lap and then looks up at me with contempt.

“Where were you?”

“Downstairs, washing my face.”

“For an hour?”

I get into bed.

She strokes the book cover.

“Now, I understand you,” Bev says, and not kindly. I touch her leg with mine but everything feels prickly. I try and remember the last time I shaved my legs but cannot. I should really floss more too. My dentist says just floss the ones you want to keep. The sheets feel scratchy – are these the new ones? The high-thread count ones? Bev moves on top of me and begins kissing my mouth half-heartedly before moving too quickly down to my nipples. They grow hard involuntarily but I don’t otherwise respond. I close my eyes. I forgot to clean the litter box. I imagine sifting clumps from litter until she rolls off of me.

“What’s the matter?” Bev asks.

“Why are you such a bitch, Bev?”

Bev flares her nostrils . “I’m not in love with you anymore.” She juts her chin out and stares me down. “Plus, I really think you should move out. I should never have asked you to move in with me in the first place.” Then she turns her back to me, picks up the book and resumes reading.

What just happened? I can’t breathe. This is where I live. I get us the coffee. I clean the litter boxes. My mail has been forwarded to this address. And what about last night? Last night, you told me that I could hang one of my paintings in your living room. And I bought you a ring and let you wear my favorite boots, even though you scrape the toes. Plus you wear down one heel and I feel like I’m crooked now when I put them on.

Reeling, I go downstairs and crawl in with the dogs on their futon. There is dog hair on the pillow case and the sheets are dank. I can feel each plank framing the cheap foam and lie in misery staring up at the ceiling. The beagles move up against me. I want to cry but no tears come. Nor sleep.

There is no clock down here to tell me the time. I rub my eyes thinking about the injustice of it all until I hear the electronic garage door open and Bev’s car pulling out. Then I stuff my belongings into trash bags and fill my Volkswagen with them. I run around the house again and again, opening closets and drawers, checking for my stuff. I decide to leave her the new sheets we bought together. I write Bev a note but destroy it after.

A few weeks later, I hear from a mutual friend that Bev said after I moved out, “At least she was good with the animals.”

It’s true, I am good with animals.

I once carried the female beagle in my arms up a cliff, her black pads were burning from the hot sand on an abnormally hot day in San Francisco. I lovingly attended to one of the cat’s eyes, weeping with infection. I puréed Bubba’s food for him when he could no longer eat it solid—for several weeks before he died. Twice daily, I scooped the cat poop. I made sure all of the animals, cats and dogs, always had clean water.

A year has passed. I find Beverly on Match.com. I click her profile and read with surprisingly sweet nostalgia: Native Southerner, ex-New Yorker, confirmed San Franciscan. Essentially content but no stranger to melancholy. Sane with mild quirks and a talent for excess in moderation. Romantically versatile (which doesn't mean bi), skeptical and hopeful, with a social conscience leavened by a trenchant wit that is cleverly disguised in this ad. Partial to realistic fiction, Greek mythology, film noir, long hikes, and smart women who flirt. Enjoy music at a reasonable volume, cooking for friends, and solving world problems over drinks.

Bev’s profile pictures are particularly good. Her eyes are so blue, her hair so blonde. There is one taken with Four-By-Four on the sofa, and another with the dogs on the back porch.

I type a short email to her. It says, Yes, I was good with the animals.

I click: notify me when this message is read.

Dixie Chicken

Dixie Chicken

by Kate Simmons


Last month I took a forty-gallon tub of crawfish over to the Judge. Funny thing is, we only do chicken and sides. KJ ordered the crawfish from another takeout and when the tub arrived told me, “Just take these over to the Judge and leave them on his porch, ring the bell and be gone”. When I began to stammer something, KJ over-enunciated like you would do to a two year old, “The Judge will know who this is from.” Then he plucked one from top of the pile and threw it in the fryer. I never saw something change from green to red so fast.

I’m not surprised when KJ ducks under the pick-up counter after spotting a police car out front. The cops are only here to recover a stolen van. Still, KJ stays on rubber floor mat, rocking himself and scratching his tattooed biceps until the cops are gone. Afterwards, he skulks around muttering alternately fucking pigs and goddam fucking pigs. We give him the kitchen. He throws an entire tray of frozen drumsticks in the fryer with enough piss that a splash of oil jumps out and burns his dragon tattoo. “THOSE GODDAM MOTHER FUCKING PIGS”, he screams so loud I cover my ears.

Most of the time, work at Dixie Chicken goes smoothly. KJ cooks. One or two lines might ring in. Orders are taken. Southern fried chicken, mashers, and long beans are shoveled into Styrofoam cartons and bagged for us to deliver. We snub out our cigarettes, grab the bags, and jump in our cars with road maps unfurled. But then another strange delivery comes up. KJ hands me a small, sealed white envelope and tells me, “Honey, I need you to go over and take this to the guy waiting in the phone booth at the Seven-Eleven.”

My initial thought is, KJ, why not throw a leg into a Dixie Chicken bag and then put the envelope in there? Look idiot, ever hear of none the wiser? Then I picture my mother yelling through bars, “Who in their right mind would call for delivery to a phone booth?” But I say nothing. Seven-Eleven is just down the road. This will be over soon. And besides, I need money. I sold platelets this morning because it pays more than blood. Fifteen cash which buys me thirty in food stamps. Thighs, old mashers and beans here are gratis so I use stamps for cheese, coffee, cream and everything else. That leaves me one hundred more to make for rent and another forty for gas and cigarettes. Earlier, I sold platelets in the Lower Ninth Ward. So I am qualified to do this.

KJ on the phone says, “Expect a girl in a light blue Renault.” He gives me nothing about the man in the booth. I drive slow the six blocks to the Seven-Eleven and draw deeply on my cigarette which I am holding as a weapon. As I bring the car up alongside the booth, the man inside pulls open its door. It’s David. I immediately recognize him from the paper. He’s smeared all over the Times-Picayune—an ex-Klansman running for representative in a suburb abutting New Orleans, which, unlike, The Crescent City, is ninety percent white. He takes the envelope, carefully opens it, dips in his right pinky, and gives it a lick. Satisfied, he peels me off five twenties for KJ. Just be cool. I begin to crank the window handle. Then he gives the glass a tap before feeding a crisp new five for me through the crack.

On Friday my worst delivery is a bucket of drumsticks to an apartment complex in the center of Metairie. Finding the correct apartment proves difficult because every unit is identical. I’m relieved to eventually locate the right door, and hope that the food is still hot when I ring the bell. It’s humid, and a good-looking guy with no shirt opens up. He seems humored that his food is being delivered by a female.

“Wait here a second, honey,” he says after I hand him the bag and he gives me the money. He comes back with a dollar. “This is for you.”

Around two o’clock the phone rings and I answer, as always, “Dixie Chicken.” I grab a pen from a shortening can to take down the order.

“I need to talk to a girl there that delivers,” a woman says.

“I’m the only girl that delivers.”

“You’re the girl that delivers?”

Her voice is pinched. I can’t imagine why. KJ leans up against the counter to listen to my end of the conversation. “Yeah, why?” I say and light a cigarette in preparation for what’s coming next.

“Did you deliver out to Bellemont Terrace today?” she asks me in an increasingly agitated voice.

“Yeah, why?” And I exhale smoke into the receiver so she can hear it.

“Because I live across from number sixteen and I watched you today and after you handed my boyfriend the chicken, he went back inside and wrote his phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to you.”

“He did not,” I say. “He gave me a dollar. He went back in to get me a tip. He went back to get me a dollar.” I cannot believe this conversation, and I look over towards the kitchen at KJ and roll my eyes. KJ shrugs and goes back to the fryer. I picture her boyfriend, so attractive in his maroon shorts and nothing else. A warm smile engulfed his face when he opened the door. He didn’t seem like he was the type of guy who would go with a nutcase like the one I had on the other end of the line.

“That’s what he said,” she says, “but I saw what really happened and you better not fucking be lying to me because we just had the hugest fucking fight about it.”

“I swear it was just a tip,” I say again and she hangs up.

I tell KJ the whole story and we laugh. The phone rings again and KJ answers it for me. It’s not the nutcase again like we thought.

“No problem,” he says. “She’ll be there in twenty.”

He pulls out an envelope from inside the register, underneath the money drawer– “Take this over to the pay phone, and take care you’re not followed.”

I shake the envelope and hear a rustling sound. “Is it coke?”

“Just go,” he says and I regret asking.

I check my rear view mirror and turn onto Veterans Boulevard. Everything is unremarkable on this side of the bayou. Most of the flat space is occupied by office complexes, fast food places and strip malls. There is a huge rainbow hot air balloon suspended over a car dealership announcing their grand opening that has been there ever since I can remember. Ironically, a car passing me on the right has a political bumper sticker in support of David.

The Seven-Eleven is just ahead. I pull up to the booth, but this time a woman and a small boy are standing outside, waiting to use the phone. David is wearing mirrorshades and a baseball cap. He hangs up the receiver the minute he sees me. I pull up close, but not too close. He walks quickly over to my car, and motions for me to unlock the door. Then he gets in.

“Drive around back,” he says.

I do as he tells me. He has dyed his hair a lighter shade of blond. His teeth are too perfect not to be dentures, though I don’t think he’s much over thirty five. His skin looks salon tanned and is stretched tightly over his cheek bones. We make the exchange, envelope for money, and this time he adds ten dollars for me.

“Thanks.”

“Tax free,” he says.

I nod impassively.

He directs me to a short cut through the parking lot of a strip mall just behind the Seven-Eleven. As I round the corner I see a large red white and blue poster in the storefront window. It’s his campaign headquarters.

KJ asks me to stay late. He takes me to a King Cake party out by Lake Pontchartrain where he shows me how to suck the head out of a crawfish. I do one and then a dozen or more. We drink tequila and pass a joint around and I eat more. “You’re so skinny, but you eat like a motherfucker,” he says.

The cake is cut. KJ’s cousin Kelly got the plastic baby in her piece and I couldn’t believe there was a plastic baby baked inside.

“Couldn’t you choke on it?” I ask.

“No, we all know one’s in there,” Kelly says. “We look out for the baby. Since I got it that just means I’ve got to throw a King Cake party next week.”

After awhile, KJ clears a space on the glass coffee table and cuts up lines with a razor, carefully measuring out two for each of us. Then we all take turns.

It’s raining and the bayou has flooded over the road and I drive across a small river on my way into work. The Renault’s brakes are slow to stop and its tires are bald, so I take more care driving in rain than not. KJ is already in a terrible mood when I arrive in the lot. Just last Saturday he bought an old Triumph Spitfire and the canvas top has leaked and its interior is soaked. He’s wrapping the car in a painter’s tarp when I pull up.

“You’re late,” he says. I am due to work a half hour before we open, to stock the shelves with take away cartons and plastic utensils from the storage room while KJ checks the traps. KJ stands drenched in just a T-shirt and jeans, while I’m sensibly covered in a hooded rain slicker. I hold down one side of the tarp and he tosses me a rope over the car top which I take down to the ground and toss back to him under the car. We do this a few times until the tarp is secure, and then KJ ties it off. He holds the door open for me to the restaurant.
Inside, I hang up my wet slicker on a knob. KJ disappears into the bathroom and returns wearing only two chef’s aprons, one on normally and the other one on backwards and tied in the front, to cover his rear. I can see a few tattoos I’ve never seen before, including one of a skull and crossbones on his kneecap. He lays his wet jeans carefully across the center oven rack and turns the knob. His decorative skin is still wet and his hair is spiky from being towel dried. He is in a criminal way sexy, but I try not to find him so. I laugh at him in his makeshift dress and he laughs with me.

“Did you ever know anyone who died?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Two people—one girl from high school, and another from college. They were both on Pan Am Flight 103 when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland—when that bomb went off.”

“No shit. Two of them?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Nothing like that. Knew a few guys who got shot—but they had it coming to them.”

“KJ,” I say, “You know who that guy is I deliver to at the phone booth, don’t you?”

His smile vanishes. “You don’t know nothing, ok? Just keep your mouth shut on something you know nothing about.” He lights the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Stay cool now. I’ll take care of you.”


“Seven-Eleven,” KJ says just after the lunch rush when I am finally relaxing, having a smoke and eating deep fried potato skins. He hands me the envelope and says, “And don’t get it wet.”

David is waiting there for me. He gets in the Renault and we drive to the edge of the parking lot. “Want some?” He sticks his long pinky fingernail in the powder and then under my nostril and I do it. He licks the residue from under his nail.

“Do you know the definition of economics?"

"Economics?"

He puts his hand on my knee. "It’s the allocation of scarce resources to unlimited wants. And nobody gets to meet all their unlimited wants.”


KJ and I are getting close. During down times he will sometimes come up behind me and massage my shoulders. The first few times my shoulders tensed but now when it gets slow I want him to. KJ has begun to talk about David with me. “I’m voting for him,” he says. I’d like to see him obliterate welfare like he says. The whole fucking system is one giant scam. I’ve never voted before but I’ll vote for him.”

In excitement his head jerks back revealing upper teeth so buck his mouth can never fully close. There are large silver fillings in the pits of his back teeth. “I’ll just go down there and pull the lever.”

Bullshit, I think.

Delivery for Dixie becomes routine enough that I no longer need a street map. One Friday morning I drive to work and find the door locked. Strange for KJ to be late, Friday is one of our busier days. I wait around for an hour but KJ doesn’t show up. So I go to the Seven-Eleven for a coffee but when I get back the door is still locked. Just before noon I find out from another driver, Glenn, that KJ’s been arrested—that he got into a fight. Glenn tells me KJ punched a guy in the head at a bar in the French Quarter last night and the guy’s brain swelled up and now it doesn’t look good for either of them.

I go back to the Seven-Eleven parking lot. The phone booth is empty—its glass doors smeared with grime from the bottoms of shoes that had been propped against them. Someone put a sticker on the entrance that says Jesus is Lord. I sit in the Renault and chain smoke and hope David will come. David might know where to go.

The Left Party

The Left Party

by Kate Simmons

Nana Nazareth was only four feet seven inches when she hailed from Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Old age and cancer shrunk her by two more and then death took off a third one. The child's casket we got was too light for the pallbearers' hands on the icy steps of St Bart's. My uncles shuffled atop the frozen patches salted by the priest earlier that afternoon, but that casket blew away from them and slid down all sixty seven stairs and my grandmother's dwarf body flew out and sailed across the street right through the green door of the medical dispensary. We were all smoking and I was reading The Color Purple and my dead grandmother's mouth said Put that colored lesbian book away. But Oprah, I thought and tried to say OPRAH but nothing came out. Matthew offered my grandmother's detached head a hit and I watched in amazement as she sucked a perfectly huge ball of smoke up the glass pipe, inhaled it pro-like before she coughed her dentures out. When you cough that means you will get really stoned, Matthew informed us. My grandmother's waxed lips parted, she winked and said, Read Past Imperfect by Joan Collins. This is the book everyone needs to have in bed with them, not that feminist filth. Then she lit a cigarette and I watched the wart on her eyelid jump as she talked and I thought too bad the undertaker did not remove that wart when she was getting embalmed at which point Nana said, If you ever go to Russia, take a suitcase full of American cigarettes with you. When you go out to dinner you simply place one on your plate and the waiter will come for it and you'll experience first class service. I smoke one pack of Kools and one pack of Merits a day and some days I eat nothing at all but dark chocolate liqueurs and... Her wart lid blinked and Doctor Zhivago came on the television. I love Omar Sharif, she exhaled. Bad luck his feeble red heart. Then, by the way, thank you darling, she said to me, I look damn good for being gone. The mortician didn't part my hair on the wrong side like he did your Uncle Mark's. Do you remember darling? Jane had to borrow my comb to right part it before the wake.