smudged
They walked into their bedroom, red faced and smiling. He crumpled up the cab receipt in his left hand, awkwardly tossing the wad of paper into the wicker trash bin by the door. He missed. She didn’t notice. Their friends had hosted a party for the hell of it. ‘Happy Tuesday!’ read the banner hanging on their living room wall. The sign was printed on sheets of copy paper taped together down the middle – an art project one of the roommates took on while at work. As the evening wore on, and the body heat and humidity rose, the edges of each sheet began to slacken until the sign finally freed itself from the wall and relaxed, draped over the brown corduroy couch. The evening news was on in the background and it seemed to serve more as lighting than anything else. Everyone who had shown up was just as anxious for an early-week escape. A reason to be happy on a Tuesday. His other hand was pressed gently against her lower back, guiding her through the room. ‘Why do you do that,’ she asked him once. ‘What?’ ‘Put your hand there,’ she said, twisting slightly to glance over her shoulder at his hand. He followed her gaze. ’I dunno, protective, I guess.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, turning away and smiling — in part because it was ridiculous, in part because she liked it, or, at least, the idea of it. She breaks away from him and goes into the bathroom to remove her makeup. She hears the rough tinkering of his belt buckle, the slap of the strap against his skin and then a sharp inhale in response to the pain. She hears the sound of his zipper come down. She rubs a remover-soaked cotton pad along her right eye, repeating the motion a few times until smudges of violet are replaced by splotchy redness. ‘I…think I’m drunk,’ he says, flopping down on the bed. She blinks a few times to get rid of the colored spots that appear whenever she rubs her eyes too hard. ‘You’re fun.’ ‘You are.’ ‘Good one.’ ‘You’re a good one.’ ‘Thanks.’ She looked back.
One minute with Crispy
