OCR Text |
Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 80 He said he couldn't bring himself to throw the teeth away, he couldn't know for sure when he might need them again. The day he joined the band Popsicle woke at the ungodly hour of twilight, sucked a glass cock, and scavenged the kitchen for breakfast. He lived in a low-rent weekly that shared a cement courtyard with four other buildings as a backyard. He dipped stale potato chips in cocktail sauce and tested an expired quart of milk. After regurgitating, he looked out the window above the sink and saw a woman sitting on the back porch. She sat with her knees to her chest and her elbows on her knees. Her head rolled between her knees as if nauseous. She wore a peach dress and had stringy dark hair. Popsicle tapped on the glass to get her attention. She had washed-out eyes without irises-just whites scored with black pupils-and a vacant face. Her lips were as colorless as her eyes, and her skin had a tone like jaundice and bleach. She had some kind of skin rash that abraded her right cheek and cracked the skin down her neck into the scooped neckline of her filthy dress. She looked back at him without moving. He tapped on the pane again and said, "Get out of here!" But she dropped her head back onto her knees as if suffering a dizzy spell. Popsicle pounded on the door at her back and threw the window above the kitchen sink open and yelled at her to get the fuck off his porch. She looked at him blankly again, and this time he could see she had been eating something held between her knees. She dropped it on the porch, stood, and walked in no great hurry across the courtyard and down an alley. |