Bodies at Rest
Tabitha telephoned Dario and asked him to meet her on the canal road for the third time in two weeks.
When Dario arrived, there at the power line pole around which an anonymous crafter had knitted an ombre band of wool, Tabitha asked him why he never questioned the purpose of their meetings in advance. He replied that he figured he would find out when he got there.
“You know it’s more of the same,” she said.
“Maybe so, maybe not,” he replied.
Tabitha’s summonses, the whole of their interaction for the past four years, were predictably unpredictable. Dario knew she would call every few days and that at their meetings Tabitha would disclose some new symptom of perceived ill health. The unpredictability was in not knowing the exact body part and complaint in question.
Today, it was a numbness between the left clavicle and fifth rib.
“So it’s your breast?” he queried.
“No.”
“Your heart.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you think it is?”
“My liver?”
“No, that’s on the other side.”
Dario knew anatomy. He was, after all, the lead donor accessioner for the medical board, where the dead surrendered their bodies to science. He talked about the corporeal form – torsos, extremities, sockets, conformations – all day long.
He continued, “You would tell me if you need to call 911, right?”
Tabitha solemnly replied, “You’re much more effective than 911.”
Dario never knew if she was teasing, hitting on him or possibly speaking to someone else in her mind. He could, however, count on her to produce refreshments from her colossal messenger bag. Today, it was a hand-stoppered bottle of amber liquid with flower buds and fruit wedges whirling about inside. She poured out the concoction into a couple of tumblers then clinked his glass with hers.
“To your health,” he said, then took a swig while eyeing her peripherally for any sign that she registered the irony.
Like every other libation Tabitha offered, this one tasted nonspecific. Was it scotch turned velvety with some alchemy of infusions? Or was it sweet tea set out in the sun too long? He hardly cared. He also did not care about what this was, the pair of them on the canal road, talking about bodies and getting drunk. They were not great friends any more than they were lovers. Their interaction could not even count as an advisory relationship. What they were did not exist until it did, and when it did, it made no pretense to continuation or acceleration.
When Tabitha folded her hands together and bowed, Dario knew their meeting had concluded. They parted and re-entered their lives of bodies and hypochondria as seamlessly as they suspended them. They would see each other again as soon as they would not.
Oxblood Portmanteau
The first murder of the new year was a crime of passion. Raylene read about it in her daily e-digest of “articles selected especially for you.” She could only half-focus on the news, however, because she had to keep an eye out for roadside assistance. The neighbor had siphoned the gas from her truck again.
Raylene had no qualms with fronting a neighbor $5 or $10 for stopgap gas, pet food, or even a Bomb Pop from the ice cream truck. It perplexed her that her neighbor chose to siphon her gas rather than ask for help. After all, her neighbor received her help in other ways, although he never acknowledged it. When, during school hours, his kids tore through her yard with kitchen knives and chopped the heads off her sunflowers, she did not report them to the truant officer. When his trash can tipped over and blew fast food wrappers from one end of the street to the other, she picked up every piece and bagged it alongside her own garbage. When the eldest girl dropped the family cat into the swimming pool, Raylene fished him out and held him tight inside a towel until he stopped shaking. She even adopted him – and named him Killer – when she discovered the hapless feline, ribcage jutting out, stalking birds at her feeder.
This was the third time Raylene’s gas gauge registered empty in her own driveway. It was an inconvenience, a disappointment perhaps, but it did not stir her ire. In a way, she even admired the sleazily premeditated survivorship of the act. She figured that her neighbor, at least, was not so undisciplined to commit a crime of passion.It was not until Raylene’s portmanteau went missing from her truck that her own passion erupted. The portmanteau had belonged to her daddy when he served in the Navy. Its oxblood leather had been so lovingly handled, rubbed, and buffed that it was nearly prismatic. She imagined it was this mesmerizing luster that caught the thief’s eye, not the single-shot Derringer nestled in the portmanteau’s left fold. In any case, she reckoned, the time for neighborly restraint was over.
Before Raylene dialed the non-emergency number for the county police, she compiled a list of her indictments:
- oxblood portmanteau
- gasoline siphoning
- parental neglect
- destruction of property
- littering
- animal abuse/abandonment
Raylene’s list was beginning to look anemic. She had, after all, taken care of #5 and #6 herself. That left only the first two entries on the list. She could always buy a locking gas cap. It was entry #1 that really rankled. A family heirloom, not to mention memories of her daddy, hung in the balance. But how would she explain to the police that the portmanteau harbored a weapon for which she possessed no license?
Raylene folded the list into the size of a quarter and pushed it to the bottom of her trash can. She picked up Killer, gave him a nuzzle, then powered up her laptop to check what news had been selected especially for her today.
Heather Fuller is the author of four poetry collections, including Dick Cheney’s Heart (Edge Books), as well as stories, plays and essays. Her work appears in the anthology out of everywhere: linguistically innovative poetry by women, the audio project Women in the Avant Garde and the #MeToo Poetry Collective. She lives in Carolina Beach, NC, and works as a cardiac nurse.