She longs to be my friend, she says Christine Butterworth-McDermott and invites me to dinner, a posh meal deal to solidify what is mere air between us. I see how she positions herself among the tines of the forks. This is battle. The way she speaks is the concave side of a spoon against a wine glass, a clang bang. Her smile, an ice cube that floats in water, but fails to sink in. The wheels in her brain churning up the right responses. All orchestration and arrangement, nothing organic, although the lilt of good people bless her heart masks judgment with flowers. This charade she plays eviscerates me, whatever goes outward is wounded and I fold inward like a napkin, hide my hands, expressive as they are, under the tablecloth as she drops names like breadcrumbs. She turns her faux-lashed eyes toward the waiter, and orders the chicken blah blah blah but with only a dollop of cream, it’s so fattening—a glance at my bare arms. I skipped the gym to come here and be flayed. I smile anyway. The waiter nods when I say martini (make it a double his eyebrow suggests). I want to escape with him, his white apron a buoy, bobbing to the open kitchen door in the back. Imagine a sashay in the parking lot. Imagine a rhumba to dumb down this incessant patter. Quick quick slow. This is only temporary I tell myself—this cadence of insults that goes up and up as she builds a house upon every four syllable word she’s ever learned, need and greed oscillating. At home later, I mix another drink, say the word fuck several times for pleasure, and imagine her stiff self on a twin bed, lonely doll, accessorized with blank achievements, flat stomach growling for sustenance and affection.
91.
