|
[continued from page 2]
“I should be doing work,” I say.
We stab, stab, stab the cake.
Dave says, “This is therapeutic.”
“We should do this with all the pastries that come in. Let’s not eat them. Let’s kill them.”
And then my knife hits something. I stop Dave from poking. I touch his arm, and he looks down at me touching his arm but not in a horrible way, in a kind of sweet way. I section off the area where I hit the treasure and there it is.
I scream with exclamation points! I wasn’t expecting to scream. I’m not sure why I’m so excited to find a little plastic Jesus baby in a kind of cake I’ve never heard of before ten minutes ago. Dave tosses the knife in the mangled cake box. “Congratulations on your bundle of joy.”
The baby is the size of a small grape. It’s curled in the fetal position, and it has no face. I wash it off and take it back to my desk. I try to sit him on my shelf, but he keeps tipping over. An hour later, Dave comes over with a crib he fashioned out of a piece of copy paper and staples. He drew lines to represent bars. We put the baby in it, and Dave reaches out with his finger and rocks it slightly. Dave and I stand together, and Dave smells good, like good soap.
“You smell clean,” I say.
Dave, still looking at the baby, says, “I take showers.”
“Standing up or sitting down?”
He turns to me for a second, and says, “What?”
“Nothing,” I say.
The faceless baby moves from side to side in the makeshift crib in a way that would cause serious damage to a real baby.
* * *
At my boyfriend’s apartment, he is on the couch watching a Ghost Hunters marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel. There is a pile of weed on the table, and he has his eyes on the screen while his fingers remove the seeds. The seeds go on a candle holder. The candle in the holder smells like apple pie. It’s my candle, and my candle holder. I brought it over to mask the smell of the pot. I put my bag on the recliner with the torn headrest and sit down next to him. He pats my knee and asks me about work.
“I have a baby,” I say.
He is rolling a joint. He lights it, sucks it up, and then holds it.
“A baby,” I say. “I have one.”
When his face starts to turn colors, I tap his knee, like, maybe you should blow the smoke out. The cloud hangs over us and then moves into the other room where it will settle into the carpet and drapes.
He coughs for a long time. It’s a throaty, bronchitis cough. He falls back on the couch and wipes the tears away from his eyes. “That’s so good,” he says.
I lean back, too. I shift my body so it’s facing his and bring my face close, so close I can smell his pot breath. I whisper, “A baby.”
Next page
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
|
