We looked at a sad bunch of alligators, caged in a park. Fat, ugly birds with markings like paint spills surrounded the chain-link cage. He thought they might fall in and get torn to pieces. I doubted that. The alligators looked sun-baked and slow. He said, This is the food of the alligators. I said, Why would they choose to live so close? He said, Exactly.
In the car, I lost something and fished around the debris below the passenger seat for it. An empty plastic bag, half a package of melted gum, sunflower seeds unopened, a crushed pack of cigarettes, one of my shirts, a purple one. Maybe it’s under here, he said, grabbing at my butt. It’s not, I started to say, then caught his smile. We never found and I don’t remember now, what it was.
We didn’t know what to do, so we spent the afternoon at a casino, feeding the nickel machines, watching the tiny, bright shapes line up as waitresses in short dresses with tight bodices paraded by, offering drinks. I won five dollars and he lost ten. We ate at the Olive Garden, scraping an endless salad down to the oily dregs of dressing. I woke up later in his bed, to his feet shuffling me across the mattress. The air had finally decided to cool-down. The green numbers beside his bed glowed two o’clock. I squealed when he pressed the soles of his feet over my calves.
I think of him with green eyes, but his eyes are blue. They scoured the newspaper, settled on the sports page, and wadded the rest for the fire pit. The neighbor’s dog, Melinda, sat chained across the yard. She yelped and ran half-circles at us when we came outside. When she barked, he yelled Shut up, dog. When I pass by dogs now, it comes again Shut up, dog. Shut up.
His dead mother’s middle name was Iris. He said softly, once, he’d show me a picture sometime. He never did. I imagine his dead mother looked like the girlfriend before me. So the image is really the imagining of an imagining—like the copy of a copy, thin lines and poor quality. I’m sure they both had long, kind faces. We went to a local bar once and were so quiet, the bartender bought us an extra beer each. We had to wake up the next morning and drive three hours. He did it crossly, a headache circling his brow, and we played geography the entire ride. There are not so many places beginning with the letter Y. I came up with a list days later but he knew what I’d done, called me a cheater, and refused to keep playing.
I said okay when the man with real green eyes asked me if I wanted to leave the party. My boyfriend wasn’t at the party; I did want to leave. It seemed as though this man and I could have a cup of tea. Like maybe he’d have white teacups and saucers with scalloped edges and a separate plate of sugared-lemons on the side. A tiny pitcher of milk between us. But instead we drank more and sank into the dingy light of his apartment, until we were nothing more than shadows, all clumsy and attack. Us, the black shapes, mauled each other, cast upon the wall. The man with green eyes was patient, not even short, when I cried the next morning. He said, Probably you will tell him. Then he patted me on the back and added, Probably it will change things between you forever.
Do I have to tell him, I said.
I can’t tell you what the green eyed man said after that. Later, I patted Melinda on her warm, brown head and took my shoes off outside, letting the grass prickle my feet. I brought him an alligator key chain from the gas station, the kind made out of bright, child-like beads. I have to tell you, I said. Melinda barked half-way through the shouting, after he threw something but before I shouted back. Shut up, he said, shut up. He didn’t say dog.
It took three weeks to cry. But once I did, I couldn’t stop. It felt like a grain of salt sliding down an avalanche of more salt. I could not stop, and on flowed the empty, mild whiteness.
When first I told him, he didn’t say anything. He picked his keys up off the table. Slowly, he twisted the key rings until he held only the alligator keychain he’d just added. He raised his arm, lowered his eyes, and threw the keychain to the floor. Maybe, if it had broken, we’d have known what to do. Maybe if the impact tore the leather, we would follow suit. Maybe if the beads had scattered across the floor, rolling lonely in all directions, something in their dispersing would inspire our own. Maybe if the alligator turned into a scattered pile of beads and leather scraps, we would have walked away. Instead, the alligator lay whole and quiet on the floor, watching. |
