Meeting at Night

“Sure, we can shake uglies against the stall wall, but only if you take me home for a shower afterward,” she’ll say, and drag you inside the fourth floor library restroom for twenty minutes, then she’ll follow your car to your apartment. Three days will be spent mostly naked, snugged in bed or in the kitchen cooking. She’ll tell you, “You can’t cut cheese with a bread knife.” You’ll slide a bread knife from the wooden block, search the fridge for sharp cheddar. Three nights of dishes overflowing your shallow sink. Thursday’s pasta pot, lid closed to “soak,” will film over and belch fetid tomato breath if you jar the lid while probing for a cleanish utensil. Hardened beef fat will rim the cast iron skillet, remnants of late night burgers (your idea). Slimy yogurt spoons, serrated knife edges, all sizes of plates, a dingy baking pan for frozen pizzas—nearly every dish you own will jut in jagged juxtapositions, terrain fit to frighten even the most adventurous night vermin. Your scr...

It's midnight on July fourth. The only reason I'm parking my car at the all-night CVS across town is because my girlfriend keeps complaining about her back, a bruise and scrape caused by a drunken slip on the pool deck at a party earlier. She laughed it off then. She cursed me out when I left our apartment. She wants Advil. Name brand. Not generic. I am buying the generic. She will not bitch. I won't let her see the bottle. I'll cup two pills in one hand, glass of water in the other, give her both, she'll slurp 'em down, go to sleep none the wiser, and that'll be that. Unless she looks close at the pills. Then I'm fucked. * There's a lumpy white woman talking into her flip phone, face worn as a crusty towel. “Where are you?... Me? The same place I was fifteen minutes ago. Standing out front of CVS... Come on, I got cold food... Because you said you'd be right back when you dropped me off. You're the one that asked for the damn R...

At three years old, Cheyenne loved McKlusky Beach Park, which was really just a place to park your car and walk down to the beach. Mornings, before we left for preschool, she'd beg to go there in the afternoon. More often than not I relented. On those days, before picking her up, I'd shove the swimsuits and folding chair and beach toys into the trunk. A purple plastic bucket and a matching plastic spade, but it never took long before she just rolled around in some sand, tossing clumps in the air or at birds. Those were the best days to be a mother, because the sun and salt air and breeze weren't just for her, as so many things a mother does are. One day something unfortunate happened. I sat where I always did, book in hand and leaned back in my beach chair—not far away, but not so close she constantly felt my eyes. Some collection by Welty, a story about a slow girl filling up her hope chest to marry a man she’d only met the night before. She asked a few old ladies to g...

When people make fun of me for buying cereal in a bag, I say, “All cereal comes in a bag. Mine just doesn’t have a box. I’m saving trees. What the fuck have you done lately?” Cereal is a serious matter.     An interchange like this typically marks the first and last time a girl will be in my 300 sq. ft. studio apartment. I haven’t had much luck since moving here.     But last night, you were different.     You saw the Cheerios that aren’t called Cheerios in a bag on my one by two counter and you didn’t smirk or say anything snide. You sat on my not-old-enough-to-be-saggy-but-still-is Big Lots futon before I did and asked me to sit down next to you and that made me smile, especially when you patted the cushion, a handmade invitation. When I came out of the bathroom knowing you just heard me peeing through the papery walls, you didn’t look disgusted: you just looked happy I was back. When you asked what I watched on TV and I said I can’t afford...

The year, 1964. The place, a beat up country road that looks the same as every other old stretch of highway in the U.S. The car, a ’56 Chevy, blue paint faded from criss-crossing the east coast every summer since it left the lot. The man in the front seat, Joey Samuels, All Pro linebacker, ten year veteran for the Baltimore Lords, made the game saving tackle to ensure a Big Ten title when he played in college. The suit on his back is the same one he wore yesterday and the day before that, only with a fresh white shirt, of which he carries three. The briefcase in the passenger’s seat is full of paperwork. In the backseat is a vacuum cleaner along with all the attachments a housewife could ever need to keep her cozy, little nest clean for her husband, kids, and the occasional dinner guests. The business cards in Joey’s suit pocket read ‘Joey Samuels: Hoover Representative’.     Despite being one of the best players in pro football, during the hot months of the off-season ...

It's hot, boiling, a standard day in a Texas summer. My Bugle Boy slacks and OshKosh button down feel damp the moment I step out of my grandma's Cadillac, the newest one out: every five years for the rest of her life, my grandma will always buy the newest Cadillac. The tombstones sticking out of the freshest dirt, surrounded by green-yellow grass, look to me like unfamiliar things you might find at a playground, next to the jungle gym, near the curly slide. Just as strange to me, every bit as foreign as the idea of dumping macaroni shells into a bowl of milk and calling it cereal, are all these people. They all know me, or my name at least, 'cause they keep saying it, patting my head as my grandma leads me from one patch of people to another, holding my hand, even though I've been able to walk on my own for quite some time. She says she'll stop holding my hand in public when I'm ten. I always say, Isn't eight old enough? Other boys and girls here, t...

Today is the day I do it. I will say something to Tall Coffee, Black.     I will tell him something. That he's cute. That I like his choice. That he smells like home.     Something to start a dialogue. To show him I exist. To make myself an option for him.     It will happen today.     Okay, he's walking up. Do this, do this, do this, he's only one man, one guy is all he is, one guy with divine brown hair expertly parted to one side and held by just a touch of gel, one male with a voice smoother than vanilla ice cream on your throat in summer, one man with the smile I see every restless night when I can't sleep, he's only that man, the one.     “Morning. Tall coffee, black, please.”     “Yes sir, coming right up.”     I get his coffee, look at his face while he looks somewhere else, hand him the cup, and, again, for the 56th day in a row, I am silent, saying nothing o...

Alice was always very kind to me.     She and granny shared a house together for as long as I can remember. She had been friends with my granny since they were in grade school. They even went to college together in the late '60s. When we learned about bra-burning protests in history class, I thought of them.     Alice didn't come from money, but her husband had made quite a bit before he died. He had invented one of those things that no one knows about, but is used in half of the stuff we buy, some space-age polymer or revolutionary chemical protein.     So Alice did things for me.     She knew what my favorite candy was, Sour Patch Kids, and since I was nine she'd always have a bag for me when I came over. When I was twelve, she bought me a new bike, shiny and red with 18 gears, and she even bought me a new, soft, silicone bike-seat -- “That seat that came with it looks like a pain in the butt.” When I was fifteen, A...

Mary liked the song. It was slow and brooding, like something Clapton might’ve done in the sixties, before cocaine became his master. Outside the hip little bar, people were sipping wine under big umbrellas even though it was dark out. Inside, there was no haze of cigarette smoke, and Mary didn't like that. She had seen all the old Bogart movies where the bars billowed with gray clouds.  Mary sat at a table near the small stage, alone, drinking. Nothing girly for her: tall glass of scotch, no ice. She fidgeted with her black, curly hair, but made sure not to touch the green bandana she had very carefully woven in to make her hair look messy. Before leaving the house that night, she’d looked in the mirror. Low-cut black shirt, skin-tight jeans, a touch of eyeliner, a dab of lip gloss, and cowgirl boots from a trendy thrift store where the clothes cost more than new ones. The word that came to mind when she looked at herself was “compromise,” but she wasn't sure anymore what ...

I wake up in a funk, some amazingly sad Radiohead song spinning through my head. I turn over. She’s not there. I look at the clock: “Ugh…” I pull the covers back up and close my eyes. The baby is crying: “Ugh…” I get up and cross the bedroom to her crib. Her little arms are flailing about, tears mixing with snot as she begs for attention. I pick her up, clean her face, and hum the song stuck in my head. She quickly falls back asleep. What do you know: the kid’s got good taste. I lay her back down and search for my wife. She’s not in the house. The car is still in the garage. There is no note on the fridge. I peek out the curtains of the back window. She’s in the backyard, bundled up, sitting on the bench. It’s January. I look at the thermometer: “Ugh…” I put on my coat, slip my feet into my boots, and brace myself before opening the door, half afraid of the cold, and half afraid of “why?” She hears the backdoor open and looks up, then right back down: bad sign. I tr...