VERMINETTE

You call me into the bathroom like it’s urgent, like there’s a fire or a ghost. I come in holding my coffee.

You point to the sink. “That wasn’t there before,” you say.

It looks like a clump of hair and something else. Not alive, but not not alive. A little wet, like it had thoughts once.

You say, “Did you shave your legs recently?”

I say, “No. Did you?”

We both stare at the thing. Whatever it is, it does seem to be imbued with some significance.

It twitches. Or the light shifts. Hard to tell.

You back away, grab your phone, take a photo. “I’m sending this to my sister. She’s good with curses.”

I ask if we should just wash it down, but neither of us moves. Instead, we sit on the edge of the tub like it’s a hospital bed.

You say, “I don’t like how it’s looking at me without having eyes.”

I say, “I don’t like how it makes me feel like we maybe forgot something important.”

We both laugh, then fall quiet again.

Outside, the neighbor’s dog starts barking. I reach for the faucet, and you stop me.

“Not yet,” you say. “Let’s just be here a second.”

So we sit. Waiting. Like maybe it’ll explain itself.

 

MOONRAKERS

We were sitting on the curb outside the 24-hour taco place, sharing a burrito that was way too big for either of us to finish, and she asked, “Do you ever think about the moon?”

I said, “I don’t know, like… sure. Sometimes.”

She took a bite and wiped some salsa off her chin. “But do you ever think about what it would be like if it wasn’t there all the time? If it just, like, disappeared?”

I stared at the sky, kind of hoping it might do something dramatic to prove her point.

“Maybe that’s how it is when someone dies. Like the moon’s always there, but then, boom. Gone. And we just have to keep walking, pretending it’s still up there.”

I thought about her words for a second. I thought about Mom and her favorite David Bowie coffee mug still standing on the shelves. I thought about it breaking, or not breaking but simply, like, being gone. Vanished from the material reality of my kitchen. Like how I woke up one day and she simply wasn’t there, along with her vintage jackets, her Polaroids taped to the fridge, her baby blue umbrella propped against the door, gone without a trace.

“I mean, the moon’s still up there,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I took a bite from the burrito. “I can see it.”

She laughed, like she was used to this. We sat in silence for a minute, chewing, the night feeling both long and impossibly short.

Then she said, “I should’ve brought tequila.”

I said, “Maybe next time.”