Gracelyn Polk stood in front of her social studies classroom and cleared her throat as she looked down at the paper she held in her hands. She moved her head up, addressed the empty desks with her eyes and smiled.
“For my report on the person I most admire, I chose someone that I just met. You may wonder why that is and how could such a notion come to be… The truth of the matter is, I’m often quite lonely. I don’t have a lot of friends and my family is all long gone. I don’t really know where they went or why. But here I am, before you today.”
She paused and looked out at the empty room. She started to feel foolish but went on with her speech regardless.
“My new friend’s name is Farm Guy.” She chuckled. “No, it’s not a joke this time. His name really is Farm Guy and I know that sounds awfully peculiar, but once you get to know him, it fits somehow. He’s a very nice man and a very smart man, too. He knows a lot about life and history and how to build things… And how to make the most delicious chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had. And he’s nice to me. And in a world such as this, I suppose that’s the best thing a person could be… And worthy of my admiration. Thank you.”
Gracelyn waited for the applause that never came and then went over to the large desk at the front of the room that once belonged to a teacher. She opened a drawer and pulled out a red marker. She yanked off the cap and sniffed at the tip, careful not to get any ink on her nose. “I just love the smell of markers,” she said aloud to herself. And then she moved her hand down to her social studies report and wrote A+ at the very top and circled it twice. She held it up in front of her, smiled with pride, and then went back to her own desk.
Astron Puffin looked down on planet Earth as it spun there on its fragile thread in the cradle of space.
“It’s set to snap,” said a strange voice from behind him — a deep voice, a slow voice, like a tape recording playing back on the wrong speed.
Astron turned his head. “And then where will the world go? Doesn’t it have to go somewhere?” he asks the one that looks different but is the same — his skin an oddly green color, but richer than that of himself, the eyes the brightest blue there could ever be, strange hair.
“It will drop out of the universe like a Price Is Right Plinko chip… And there will be no prize.”
Astron let a small, haunting laugh escape from his throat. “Price Is Right?”
“Come on down,” the alien said in his slow, monotone, deep voice.”
Astron turned away to look out the incredibly large window again. The Earth was still there. “I don’t ever want to go back,” he said. “Please don’t ever take me back.”
But then Astron’s eyes were closed for him, and when he opened them back up, he was lying on his back in the middle of a cabbage field. It was a very large cabbage field, seemingly endless except for the low hills at the furthest edges, the color of green mist. The air around him smelled of good dirt. He looked up and the sky with its dying sun was there — an ocean of blue filled with the white sails of cloud ships. He stood up and looked around him, turning slowly in a circle like a searchlight. It was an unfamiliar place to him for it was not his own farm. Deep in the distance he saw something that jutted up out of the horizon. It was a house — a large and welcoming house of yellow. He decided that was the direction to go in.
Gracelyn set her bicycle down in the front yard of Farm Guy’s big, yellow house. She bounded up the front porch steps and excitedly knocked on the white door with the inset frosted glass window. It wasn’t long before it opened, and the man was standing there in a plaid shirt and denim pants. A bright smile came over his face.
“Well, well, well,” Farm Guy said. “If it isn’t the infamous Gracelyn Polk.”
“It is me. I wanted to bring your cookie container back and I have something to show you.”
“Then please come in,” he said, spreading out a long arm before him in a gesture of welcoming. His eyes then quickly darted around the outside world with a hint of suspicion before he closed the door behind them.
Farm Guy took a seat in his favorite living room chair while Gracelyn sat on a small sofa across from him. The girl looked around the cozy room that reminded her of Christmas when there was a Christmas. A fire crackled gently in a large fireplace, even though it wasn’t extremely cold outside. The heartbeat of an old clock pulsed in rhythm atop the mantel. The view out a large window was lonely. She saw old pictures of other people scattered about the room on walls, tables, and shelves. Some of the people looked strange, different in an unexplainable way.
She set her backpack to the side, unzipped a pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper. She stood and took it to him.
“What’s this?” he wanted to know.
“I did a report about you.”
“A report? About me?”
“That’s right. And as you can see, I got an A+.”
Farm Guy reached to his chairside table, fished for a pair of reading glasses, and placed them on his face. “I’m going to have to take a look at this very closely,” he said, smiling and tipping his head forward, eyes looking out from above the frames of his readers. He held the paper before him and began reading it, his eyes half squinting as they intensely glided across the words. He let out brief snorts of wonder and charmed humility as he went along. When he was finished, he set the paper aside and withdrew his glasses and looked at her.
“What do you think?” she eagerly wanted to know, sitting on the edge of the sofa now.
“I’d have to say that’s just about the finest report I’ve ever read,” he answered. “And I don’t say that just because it’s about me. Do you mind if I keep it?”
“It’s all yours.”
Farm Guy got up from his chair and made his way out of the room. He motioned to her to follow. “What do you say we take this in the kitchen. I’ll hang it up on my refrigerator. Come on. How about some peanut butter cookies?”
Gracelyn sat at the kitchen table with a tall glass of milk and a plate of peanut butter cookies set before her.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“What’s that?” the man said as he stood, his back to her, admiring the girl’s report that he had just attached to his refrigerator with a Las Vegas souvenir magnet.
“How do you have all this stuff?”
“What do you mean?”
“The milk and the cookies… And the good electricity. Everything. I mean, it’s all just like a regular house from how it was before. Where does it all come from? How does it work?”
Farm Guy turned to look at her quizzical young face, her upper lip now striped with milk. He went to sit at the table across from her and struggled to think of a suitable answer, a serious tone morphing his face. He reached for and then handed her a napkin. “Do you believe that life extends far beyond what we experience here?”
She wiped her mouth and thought about it. “Do you mean on this planet?”
“Yes. But not only on this planet… I mean all around us. Even here. Right next to us right now in this very room. There’s so much more happening around us than we ever even acknowledge.”
“You mean you get all these things from somewhere else?”
He leaned back and studied her. “I suppose that’s a pretty good way of putting it,” he said, moving his head around to look at everything. “It all comes from somewhere else.”
“And what about you?” Gracelyn questioned. “Do you come from somewhere else?”
He looked at her intently, tempting to reveal himself completely, but at the last moment pulling the punch.
“Of course, I do. I’ve lived in many other places. Haven’t you?”
“Absolutely… At least it seems that way,” the girl said, and she tilted her head to the side and gazed at him with wide eyes “Can I ask you something else?”
Why is this world so dirty? why are the lumps playing King? I look around, look around can’t see anything can’t avert my eyes to all the splashes of filth that survive
Dirty walls and dirty streets a laundromat full of dirty sheets stained with all those lovers’ dreams helpless infants, toddlers too drinking from dirty bottles with their dirty little mouths wet with the slobber of an ineloquent tongue
The dirty gravel lots lie like flattened skeletons on the grid littered with glass eyes, broken bottle-rocket lies there is no festival here this is the Kingdom of Broken Dreams where failed, exhausted lives retire and bed down in this filthy hole called: A MEANINGLESS DOT ON THE MAP
The sky is gray but bruised with some blue there’s a Latin girl walking she’s overstuffed in a pair of dirty jeans Does she see it too? with those frightened eyes, wayward and crooked eyes void of concern does she see how dirty the world really is? or will it all vanish when she crumples up nice and tight in front of her dirty TV screen before goodnight
To my far left a crumbling beauty shoppe so, this is irony a beauty shoppe left half-eaten by a bulldozer crumbling beneath this wide, empty sky the shingles reaching out from the torn edges like broken fingertips the guts of beauty torn asunder again, left to rot on a dirty lot
All these crumbling houses shelters with fractures pained monsters dwell within clutching scepters of whiskey and bashing out teeth
No scuba diving today the water has all dried up leaving us with ink spot scars on the brown land it’s all so BROWN here where is my lovely GREEN? luscious, wet green Luscious wet BLUE it’s just all brown and gray like the trees themselves spindly, gray skeletons in their slow-motion seizures prying the horizon open with their brittle, wayward branches
The desolate ranches plots of invisible earth miles and miles out into the void how do they live there? how do they breathe there? when the relentless summer sun pounds at them with its golden fist.
Author’s Note: If you’re interested in seeing the notes used to frame this chapter of the story, you can visit this POST.
The next morning, Gracelyn Polk felt well enough to go back to school.
She slowly pedaled her bike in the morning glory goodness, looking up at the yellow metal sky and its crumbling sun. She thought about Astron and what he had said — about there not really being others at the school and that it was an empty place full of ghosts. He made her feel foolish. He made her feel as if she was wasting her time.
“I don’t care what he says,” she spoke aloud. “I still need a good education. And there’s nothing wrong with having a vivid imagination. I can play school if I want to play school. Whatever else am I going to do with my days?”
As Gracelyn came upon the unsettling neighborhood of Vinegar Village, she suddenly stopped. She looked off to her left, down one of the tree-lined streets there. It was the general Midwestern place found in the great picture book of the American dream, now dreamless. The homes ran in a row down each side of the boulevard, typical two-story architectural teeth erected by lost hands inside a broken jaw, darkened square windows of dusted glass looking out on buckled and broken sidewalks pierced by immortal weeds of green.
She heard a noise coming from a place where there was usually never a noise. She tried to stop breathing so that she could hear better through the distance. The noise rang out softly in a consistent rhythm — it was a clinking or tapping sound, metal upon metal, then metal upon wood, she thought.
“Someone’s hammering on something,” she told herself. “But who would be building in this dark age?”
She got off the bike, steered it out of the roadway and set it against a shrub row at the edge of the right-side sidewalk. She looked up at a white street sign attached to a tall, black lamppost at the corner. At the top, higher up then the sign, the post had a faded white covering the shape of an inverted tulip shielding a long dead bulb. The sign read: VINEGAR VALE, and then in smaller letters boulevard was abbreviated as BLVD.
She slowly slinked along the cracked sidewalk, peering through breaks in the shrub rows to catch glimpses of empty front yards, watched upon by the sentinel vacant homes that looked like tombstones because of how they sat all in a line like that — silent and dead and merely shells for memories blasted away. The hammering noise grew louder as she went. When she got to the end of the block, she peered across the intersection and saw a man mending a fence at a big yellow house there on the corner. It was much bigger than the other houses around it, much grander, Gracelyn thought, and not nearly in a state of disrepair as the others. Someone was caring for it. Someone had never left, or maybe someone returned. She stood at the opposite curb while the man continued to work. It wasn’t long though before he completely stopped hammering and straightened himself like something had suddenly caught his attention. He looked to his right. He looked to his left. He looked up at the sky — and then he turned around.
He gazed at her for a moment as if he just didn’t know what to make of the girl standing across the street and watching him. He holstered the hammer in a toolbelt he had around his waist. He reached into a pocket in his blue jeans, withdrew a red cloth and wiped at his face.
“Are you lost?” the man finally called out to her.
“No. I’m on my way to school.”
The man readjusted the straw-yellow cowboy hat atop his head and squinted at her with a look of wonder and confusion. “School?”
“Yes, sir. School.”
The man made a puzzled face. “There’s no school here… Or anywhere.”
“I make my own school. It helps to keep my mind occupied with something.”
The man shook his head in agreement, tossed a glance over his shoulder at the house and said, “I know what you mean.” He made a motion to her with his hand for her to come closer. “Let me get a better look at you,” he said.
Gracelyn looked both ways before she crossed the street that didn’t require looking both ways and went to him without hesitation. She stopped before him and looked up because he was tall. He had sentimental eyes, Gracelyn thought, Bear Lake blue and contemplative. His face was somewhat drawn and speckled with whiskers the color of salt. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. She felt safe for once.
He looked her over and smiled. “And who might you be?”
“Gracelyn Polk.”
The man nodded and twisted his mouth in an act of considerate thinking. “I never heard of a Gracelyn Polk.”
“Oh, it’s okay if you’ve never heard of me. I’m not famous or anything.”
The man chuckled and looked around at the present-tense world he was in. “Fame doesn’t matter anymore — it never did.”
Gracelyn nodded up at the big, pretty house of bumble bee yellow. “Do you live here alone?” she wanted to know.
The man sighed with the stab of a quick, dark memory. “I do. Yes, I do.” There was an awkward silence between them and then he put his hand out to her. “The name’s Farm Guy, by the way.”
Gracelyn reached out and shook his hand. She crinkled her face. “Farm Guy?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s your name?”
“That’s my name.”
“So, your first name is Farm, and your last name is Guy?”
“You would be correct.”
“That’s not really a name… It’s more of what you are, but then again, this isn’t really a farm.”
Farm Guy laughed. He liked her. “Do you want to see my birth certificate?”
Gracelyn seriously thought about it for a moment. “No. I believe you.”
He smiled. She liked his smile. It was peaceful and comforting, like a quiet grandfather maybe, she decided.
“You know, I think I’m tired of working on this darn fence for a while. Would you like to come inside for some milk and cookies?”
Gracelyn was happily shocked. “You have milk?”
“I do.”
“You have cookies?”
“Chocolate chip. Made them myself,” Farm Guy boasted.
Gracelyn chewed at her bottom lip and looked at the big house again, trying to decide. “I really should get off to school. I’m already going to be late.”
“Well, I know school is important… But I’d like you to. Been a while since I’ve had some company in the big old house… And the milk is cold, and the cookies are… Out of this world.”
Gracelyn sat at a round table topped with a tablecloth that reminded her of a picnic she once took when she was very young — like a checkerboard, but with blue and white squares. There was a glass vase in the middle of the table and inside the vase were yellow flowers that looked wild. The kitchen smelled like good cooking. It was a very nice house, at least the parts she had seen were. It was very clean and neat and smelled like a good, happy life. She just couldn’t understand why it was here or for what reason. It didn’t fit, but it did. Then again, it didn’t matter, because at the moment she needed it.
Farm Guy set a tall glass of milk in front of her. She quickly reached out a hand and felt the cold, wet glass, and drew it to her mouth and took a gulp or two. The man set down a cookie jar that resembled a white pig wearing a black top hat who was sitting down on his rear end like a person. He had a wide smile and a big belly. Farm Guy lifted off the head by the top hat and set it aside.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Help yourself.”
Gracelyn eagerly thrust her hand inside the pig’s cookie jar guts and pulled out a big chocolate chip cookie. “I haven’t had a cookie in… Seems like forever,” and she bit into it, closed her eyes, and slowly chewed, savoring every sweet moment.
Farm Guy pulled off his straw-yellow cowboy hat and hung it on a peg near the back door in the kitchen. His head was mostly bald except for a short crop of hair around the sides and a sparse patch of mowed down receding fuzzies up top. He pulled out a wooden chair across from her and watched as she enjoyed the snack.
It was then a serious look came over his face and he said to her, “Do you understand what happened to the world?”
Her eyes were fixed on him as she bit into another cookie. “I only know the world got too hard for people to live in… Most people.”
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re a smart girl.”
“That’s because I still go to school.”
The man gave her a soft smile and nodded his head.
“But what I don’t understand,” Gracelyn began. “Is why. Why did the world get so hard to live in?”
Farm Guy took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. He reached a long arm to the cookie jar and pulled one out, put it toward his mouth and nibbled on it as he searched for an answer for her.
“I suppose in a nutshell, the answer would be that people became too hard on people.”
“You mean they didn’t care about each other like they should have?”
“That’s a big part of it. Now, I don’t claim to know everything about the world, but I know quite a bit. And what I know makes me sad as I sit here and look at you.” He sucked at his mouth and looked around the bright kitchen. “You shouldn’t even be here. Not like this. You should have a different life. A better life.”
“But I don’t mind being here with you… Like this. It’s nice for once.”
Farm Guy held a fist in his hand and looked into her eyes. “We were too hard on the world, and it turned on us. Think about a cat. What happens if you pull on a cat’s tail really hard… Even if it’s the nicest cat in the world?”
Gracelyn polished off the last bit of the milk in her glass and looked at him. “The cat gets mad.”
“That’s right. The cat will turn on you. It will hiss and screech and try to scratch at you. I know it’s a simple answer, but that’s sort of what the world did to us. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Gracelyn quickly answered.
Farm Guy sighed and got up from the table and went to the kitchen window and looked out. “I sit alone in this big house quite a lot and it gives me too much time to think about how we messed everything up. There was just too much greed, too much selfishness, and everyone’s priorities all askew… Do you know what askew means?”
“Like crooked?”
“Yes. Crooked.” He quickly moved back to the table and sat down again. “Think about this and you’ll understand more about what I mean by priorities all askew. Imagine there’s a man on one half of the world and he’s a rich man, a fat man, a fancy man, and he’s having dinner at a fancy restaurant with other rich and fancy people… And they order all kinds of drinks and appetizers and big dinners, and they all eat and eat and eat until they are so stuffed with food, that they are sick to their stomachs and can’t even finish it all.”
“They’re being pigs,” Gracelyn blurted out. “Like your cookie jar, but not in a good way.”
“Sort of, sort of like pigs. But then imagine that on the other side of the world, the same gosh darn world we share with each other, there’s other people that are wandering around in the dirt of their country and they look like skeletons because they don’t have enough food to eat… They don’t have enough to eat while the ones on the other side of the world have so much to eat, they end up throwing it away. It ends up in the garbage. Think about that.”
“It’s terrible.”
“It is terrible… And these poor people lie down at night but it’s too hard to sleep because they’re starving and starvation hurts. How can we even have a word such as starvation when there’s food just being tossed away?” He made a motion with his hand and had a look of disgust on his face.
“You know what I used to think about?” Gracelyn said.
“What’s that?”
“I always wondered this… If the people on the poor side of the world didn’t have enough food, why didn’t they just build themselves a restaurant and go to it and eat?”
Farm Guy looked at her and smiled. “You know, I used to think the very same thing.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Seems like a logical solution, right?”
“It does to me.”
“The only problem was,” Farm Guy began. “There were too many horrible people sitting in these high towers of polished glass and steel and they didn’t want the poor people to have restaurants because the poor people couldn’t pay for the food. And these horrible people who didn’t care sat at long tables in fancy rooms, and they talked about and plotted how they could squeeze more out of every man, woman, and child, until they died and left this Earth. And this was all very important to them, mind you, they took it very seriously. And instead of feeding and helping others less fortunate, they built great electric temples to house their food and their products as if they were gods, and they convinced the people they needed to worship what was ultimately useless. Miles upon miles upon miles of these temples were built, all over the world, and the people who worked in them were stuffed into a uniform and inducted into a culture of selling and serving. It was sold as an exciting career with unlimited growth potential… But it was ultimately a form of slavery. And it consumed them daily, sucked away their life just so they could suck out the lives of others… It was a tragic cycle of profit over people. That was their battle cry and that was a god damn big problem for the human race. Always was.”
He looked at the girl with some concern, hoping he wasn’t giving her more than she could handle, but Gracelyn sat attentive and wide eyed. “Do you know how I know all that, what I just said?” he asked her.
“How?”
“I used to be one of those fools in the towers of polished glass and steel.”
“You were?”
“I was… And in the end, I lost everything that was important to me.”
“Is that why you’re all alone.”
“That’s why I’m all alone… Not that any of that matters anymore.”
“But you’re not alone now. I’m here.”
Farm Guy brightened. “And I’m so glad you are.”
Gracelyn wanted to hear more. “What else about the world went wrong?”
He chuckled sadly. “Too much. More than a lifetime could tell.”
“The wars?”
“That’s right… The wars. They elevated orange fools to positions of power and gave madmen weapons of mass destruction. And countries started stepping over lines just to kill and destroy and take, and for what? For what purpose? I never understood it. Never. And nobody did anything about it. Nobody cared.” He pointed a finger at her. “The gross evil came in the fact that we invested in war and killing and destruction. Billions upon trillions of dollars to rape each other to death with guns and bombs, to rip the earth apart and cover it in blood, and for what?… And all this goes on right under the nose of some caring creator?” He scoffed and looked at her. “I’m sorry if that was all a bit strong.”
“It’s okay. I can take it.”
“How old are you?”
“11. Nearing 12.”
“You come across much older than that.”
Gracelyn looked down, almost ashamed. “I guess in some ways I am.”
“But all we had to do, was cling to love and we didn’t,” Farm Guy continued. “We nurtured it so little. In our small circles, our big circles, across the entire globe. There was so much carelessness in the simple act of kindness.”
Farm Guy grew tired of listening to himself carry on in such a dark way. He glanced up at the clock on the wall, and then back to Gracelyn. “I’m afraid you’re really going to be late for school now,” he said. “You can just blame it on me.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just look at my time here with you as an… Educational experience. I may even do a report about you.”
“A report about me?”
“Sure.”
“I look forward to that,” he said, and he stood up and went to get a plastic food container out of a cabinet. He filled it with chocolate chip cookies, snapped on the lid, and handed it to her.
“To take with you.”
“Thanks,” she said, and she got up from the table.
“No problem at all. You’re always welcome to come back if you want more.”
“You’ll be around?”
“I’ll be around.”
“That’s good. I was worried I might never see you again.”
Farm Guy opened the back door and saw her out. He watched her for a long time as she walked away, as long as it took for her to completely fall away from his sight.
When Feldon awoke, he found himself inside a very old and large church, Catholic style, luminous and grand, full of soft light and scents of heaven, high arched ceilings and massive chandeliers dangling down from the rafters, the stations of the cross played out in intricate detail, gold chalices with beams of godly sun shimmering at the altar. He was in one of the back pews, long and sweetly polished, and there was a great stained-glass window at his side, Jesus all gleaming and blessed, green and gold, his arms were outstretched, and he was surrounded by sheep of white and gas eons of blue. There were angels in the clouds playing trumpets and the sun shot forth long bands of golden light across him as if he was God or savior or some important man.
At the front of the church there was a ceremony going on. It was a wedding, Feldon deduced, from the looks of the white gown and black tux and preacher standing there with the great guidebook of life and love. Then the crowd turned around in unison to look at him, and they were all mannequins — soulless, plastic mannequins. Even the preacher wasn’t skin and blood, and then Feldon saw that it was Carl and Eve as groom and bride up front and there was a plume of death incense percolating in a thurible and then a bloodless pall fell over the entire gathering and the crowd turned back around and the preacher said in a loud, monotone voice: “If there is anyone here who objects to this sacred union of love, let him speak now or forever swallow down his peace.”
“Yes!” Feldon cried out from the back, his voice cracking. “Yes! Oh, mighty God I object!”
The crowd hummed and murmured. The preacher craned his neck to see as Feldon marched forward down the center aisle. “Who are you?” the holy man asked. “And what case do you have to present against this couple, right here, under the witness of God.”
“I’m Feldon Fairtz and I strongly object to this union. Carl is unfit to be a husband to her. He is evil and shifty. Eve! I love you! Please don’t do this!”
Eve robotically lifted the veil from her face and looked out at him.
“Can’t you see I don’t love you?” she said, exasperated. “I’ve never loved you. It’s all been a lie. The whole time I’ve loved someone else. That’s right, Feldon. It’s Carl. It’s always been Carl. We’ve been doing it behind your back for weeks now… And in your bed. You’re a creep, Feldon. Now, can you please stop ruining our special day and get out of here before you get thrown out.”
“But Eve, you can’t do this to me. It was I that rescued you from the stuffy back room of Saharah’s Department Store and gave you a home. I gave you freedom and life and this is how you repay me? You’re going to marry this jackass?”
“I don’t care, Feldon. That’s just life. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. And yes, I’m marrying Carl, right here, right now, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
Feldon’s mind and heart sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
“Very well then,” he said, trying to lift himself back up again. “I hope you have a miserable life together. And fuck you just the same, Eve. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are nothing but a heartless bitch anyways… And hell if I need that in my life.”
Someone quickly grabbed Feldon’s arm to escort him out, but he tore away.
“Let go of me! I’m leaving.”
And as he walked down the long aisle toward the large doors, he heard the preacher’s voice rise from behind him: “And by the power granted to me by God, the church, and the state of this land… I now pronounce you man and mannequin.”
There was some soft, plastic clapping and then great and triumphant music rose to the top of the cathedral and Feldon pushed through the giant doorway and out into the bright light of another day and never looked back.
It was three months later when there was a knock at the door of Feldon’s smelly apartment.
“Who’s there?” he yelled from the couch.
“Feldon?” came a meek voice from the hall.
“Who is it and what do you want?”
“It’s Eve. Could you please open the door?”
Feldon was stunned. “Is that fag Carl with you?”
“No.”
“I think it would be better if you just went away, Eve. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Please, Feldon. It’s important. It will just take a minute.”
Feldon knew he would regret getting up off the couch and opening the door, but he did it anyway.
“What do you want?”
“Can I come in?”
Feldon held the door open wide and she drifted in.
“What’s this all about, Eve? I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
She suddenly realized how different he looked. He had gained some weight and his hair was scraggly and he had grown out a beard. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“What does it matter to you?”
“Don’t be like that, Feldon.”
“Be like what? Crushed?”
“Feldon, Carl and I split up.”
Feldon snickered with a sick delight. “Really? So soon? What a shame. And what does this have to do with me?”
Eve’s head tilted slightly toward the floor.
“I’ve got nowhere to go. Carl is being a real jerk about the money and the house. He got himself some hotshot lawyer, too. I was somehow hoping you could find it in your heart to let me stay here for a while until I can right my own ship, so to speak. He left me with nothing.”
Feldon popped a cap off a beer and sucked the entire bottle down. “You’ve got some fucking nerve coming here asking me for such a favor. That’s some real fucking nerve, Eve.”
She looked away, hurt and somewhat ashamed. “You’re right. I should have never come here. I’m sorry. I’ll just go now.”
She made her way toward the door and Feldon suddenly softened. “Do you really have nowhere to go?”
She turned to look at him with sad, fake eyes. “Yes, but I’ll manage. See you around.”
“Wait,” Feldon said.
She turned again, her fabricated heart beating with hope. “What?”
“As long as you’re heading out, could you take my trash down for me?”
Feldon went into the kitchen, lifted a bag out of the can and tied it.
He went back to her. “Here you go,” he said as he handed the strained bag of garbage to Eve. She took it with a puzzled look of disgust on her face.
“Hopefully it won’t break on your walk down. I would hate for you to have to clean up such a mess,” Feldon said, laughing. He moved toward her, forcing Eve to back out into the hallway.
“Please Feldon, won’t you reconsider?” Eve tearfully pleaded. “Don’t you have a heart?”
“Not today,” he said, and he slammed the door shut and never saw her again and rarely did he care.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 