Caroline Beimford
13
Fiction Nonfiction
He says I have striking eyes and he’s staying in a condo behind the Gillette building. I have normal eyes. Of medium size and average color. The shade of slush. So he lacks imagination then. That’s fine. He’s in town for business and staying with a friend, but the friend has had a baby, and he feels he’s in the way. His friend’s couch smells like baby powder. I ask: Is that such a bad thing? It is. “It’s one of those smells,” he says. “Ruined by association.” “Like air freshener?” “Air freshener, baby powder – it’s all shit to me.” He has impeccable posture and debates a third round of martinis’ return on investment. To think, I’d imagined I was done with all this. David had hunched – over bars, when he walked – creating a curved space where words were buoyed and protected, a private room. This man with his posture is like a megaphone. From behind the bar, Sal offers to call me a cab. It’s just struck two. I almost accept, but that won’t get me anywhere. “Thanks, but I think I’ll walk.” Sal eyes the man beside me and shrugs before we’re thrust into the cold. Perhaps he’ll tell David I was here. We take side streets towards the water, but by the time we want a cab, there are none around. Such a sleepy city, Boston. He has a good chin, a jaw that catches my attention. Always the angles, such predictable penchants. We haven’t discussed where we’re going exactly, if there’s even a “we” to speak of. He says he’s from Phoenix. It had to be somewhere like that, with a tan in December. I think of cacti, crag cathedrals in the desert. “I’ve never been there.”
Poetry
Under My Skin
