Someone is leaving remnants of his life on her front patio. It starts with a blue ceramic coffee mug on the plastic table next to the wicker lawn chair. As if someone abandoned his coffee to run for the phone. She's on her way to the office when she spots the mug. Assures herself it belongs to a thoughtless neighbour. She must get after her landlord about that gate lock.
Later that night she notices a newspaper placed on the table beside the mug. She picks it up anticipating something significant. But it's just the Sports Section.
The next day, when she leaves for work, she's aware that the newspaper has been folded and placed under the mug. She hesitates, then picks up the mug, gently, and turns it over. Otto's Transmissions, in fine gold print, is emblazoned on one side. A barely distinguishable coffee stain grazes the inside wall. She runs a finger across the scar, still wet enough to smudge. Then she places the mug back, cinches her trench coat tighter and scuttles for the bus.
When she returns home, the mug is still there. The paper is not. A half-smoked cigarette has been blunted out in the mug. She wonders if she should wash it out, as she fumbles with her front door lock. Perhaps she should wait. Surely someone realizes his mug is missing. Surely someone is teasing her.
She laughs. Out loud. Because she knows she has to learn to laugh at herself. And she urges her laughter to sound calmer. She thinks, then, that a silent smile would have worked just as well. Maybe better, because it is more assured. Like someone who can handle anything; more like Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa, and less Bridget Jones.
If the mug isn't gone by the end of the week, she decides she will wash it and put it back. Or maybe she'll keep it. She pictures herself at her kitchen table, drinking her milky tea from it, holding it with both hands, and blowing whispers over the steam.
This morning she finds another cigarette butt. This one stamped out near her doorway. The mug is gone. Sometime between the late evening and early morning, he came to retrieve his mug. She wishes she had washed it for him; she is a little ashamed, now. He might think her dirty. Perhaps he took the mug in the late evening, while she was lying in bed, reading Justine. If he came about 11:30, he'd have been standing there while she sucked her bottom lip in uncomfortable anticipation of Sade's nasty boys. She had put that story down several times, red-faced and perhaps more than a little moist. Has he read Henry Miller? she wonders.
She should have washed the mug. If he came in the morning, he might have been there when she woke up, or as she got out of the shower. She is conscious of her ground floor bedroom; wonders if her silhouette can be seen through the blinds. She remembers last year, comforting an hysterical neighbour lady after she saw a masked man masturbating outside her window at midnight. Could it be him? Had the masked masturbator moved on to her window? She makes a mental note to check the blinds and the lighting when she gets home. To see how much of her can be seen. And the door locks, of course. Maybe the mug has resurfaced. Maybe it is on the arm of the lawn chair, a folded up paper, perhaps the Arts Section tucked under it.
Six more hours until work is over. And then she can go home. But she has some errands first. Maybe buy a new nightie. Stop at the florist's. She bites her lip to hold back a smile.
§ § §
Tamara is a fiction and screenplay writer from
Vancouver, BC.
She participates in a film group that has just finished their third short ("A Pencil-Thin Moustache") and she is readying the promo packs for the festival season.
This is her first published fiction.
She may be contacted by email at:
tjl@excite.com.
Send the URL for this work to a friend!
GO TO NEXT PAGE
|
