I laid on his chest listening to his heart click. I heard a leaf blower outside, the words of a friend saying, \u201cThe world\u2019s ending and leaf blowers are what we\u2019re left with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re very quiet,\u201d he said. I looked up at him. I thought puppy eyes, I thought eyes are the sewers of the soul, I thought look away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was waiting for you to say a miracle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He collected his things, his gadgets.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cI have a lot of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went into the kitchen. I curled into a ringlet on the bed. I listened to him microwave his coffee, test it, microwave it again. Outside with reverse vacuums there was whistling, men communicating like birds.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We smoked outside and talked about rape fantasies, tenuous sanity, the sex appeal of a cigarette. She looked cool, American Spirits in her breast pocket. She tied up and pulled down her hair, tied it up again, worked quick magic on the shape of her face.<\/p>\n
She told me she had fantasies about being a milkmaid. \u201cFarmer\u2019s wife,\u201d I said about myself. She laughed.<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cIf these were the fifties we\u2019d be depressed homemakers.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shook her head. \u201cWe\u2019d be plump then underwater.\u201d She pinched my nose and tugged me side to side.<\/p>\n
We were sitting at a little wooden table the color of cinderblocks. Last year I found it curbside and lugged it six blocks to my apartment. I broke the bottom bit of a leg I was so beat, full of splinters, hot and angry. Now it\u2019s not safe to leave laptops, tea, full bowls of soup.<\/p>\n
It was warm for May. The seasons had turned on one another like nervous dogs. It was muggy, the air like the inside of a mouth. I was whining about what humidity did to my hair.<\/p>\n
\u201cLicked,\u201d I kept saying. We were splaying our legs like it was a competition.<\/p>\n
No one was ready for another summer in the Central Valley. We made cracks about big industry, men in power – Chevron pumping liquidized dinosaurs, Bolsonaro hacking the Amazon to toothpicks. Someone somewhere was sucking all the rainclouds out of California. Maybe it was plastics. We didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
I scolded Nina for being an addict. I told her that the Thai printed black lung onto every pack of cigarettes. She told me how smoking was in Europe. \u201cIntimate, social. It\u2019s different in Europe.\u201d Nina\u2019s dad was Norwegian. A silence passed in acknowledgment.<\/p>\n
Above us, crane flies fucked abdomen to abdomen in the twitchy hall lights. Mosquitoes ate our shins and left love bites. In the interior of the complex a woman kept yelling \u201cBe a bitch! Be a bitch!\u201d<\/p>\n
I ashed into my Christmas cactus. \u201cWhat\u2019s the horse you\u2019ve got over there?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m gonna need you to be more specific.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Norway. Freud ponies?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d she coughed. \u201cOh, I wish.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We made cracks about big industry, men in power\u2014Chevron pumping liquidized dinosaurs, Bolsonaro hacking the Amazon to toothpicks. Someone somewhere was sucking all the rainclouds out of California. Maybe it was plastics. We didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[3937],"class_list":["post-21389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-www-laurenhwangfink-com","writer-lauren-hwang-fink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21389"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21478,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21389\/revisions\/21478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}