good etiquette

short fiction

I found her hunched mantis-like over my dishwasher, rummaging through food-crusted kitchenware.   

I stopped in the doorway, setting down my groceries with a Why me? sigh of inconvenience. It wasn't worth getting my panties all in a bunch; decades of city slicking have inured me to such tomfoolery.

I rooted around my purse for my phone, keeping an eye on her. She was a lanky young thing—rail-thin and tall, clad in an ill-fitting one-piece bathing suit, her little breasts lost in the crinkly obsidian fabric. Her skin was nubile yet subdued, chalky with moth wing dust—pure talcum save for the bits of dirt and gravel smushed into her saggy gluteal folds.

Her brass blonde hair, rolled and moussed in a bygone Marilyn coif, jiggled against her forehead as she marshaled yolky utensils business-end up, color-sorted my tea-stained mugs, and transmuted IKEA dishes into regal Terracotta warriors, all facing strict center with a sullen downward tilt.

She appeared lost in an ecstatic trance, unaware of my existence, hellbent on order. I hung up the phone and started the waiting game, tracing bits of dandruff flying off her scalp as she relocated saucy Tupperware to the upper rack. Little motes dislodged and orbited her bony face like paper moons before a greedy breeze vacuumed them into the noonday sun—Goddamnit! I thought, just as the sirens began to inch through midtown traffic, This is what I get for trying to air the place out!

I caught a whiff of sour milk and saffron as they perp-walked her out. She had her mouth puckered up like a belly button, and her eyes were placid and doe-like. I thought of Mother ogling her pruny reflection in the blank TV, heckling imagined The Price is Right contestants.

I gave the officers my statement and declined to press charges. After all, I was the fool who left the window open.

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A couple months later, it happened again.

It was a scorching summer day; I was sweaty and fit to be tied. I threw the groceries down and confronted her, tomato-faced and screaming, my arms windmilling for emphasis. I jabbered on about private property and common decency and etiquette—inquiring if her mother intended to raise such a rude, impish swine.

She couldn't care less. She kept working undeterred, assuring all dishes had equal claim to the washer jets, her slim fingers caking with week-old tuna.

I threw up my hands, pacing around the kitchen akimbo, muttering you can't reason a pig outta shit! before calling the cops.

I collected myself in the threshold, lulled into relaxation by the chiming cutlery. I breathed in her air of innocence, becoming embarrassed by my outburst. I looked at her, noticing her swimsuit seemed to balloon with a burgeoning beer paunch, and apologized. 

After the officers walked her out, they came back and interrogated me:

Do you live alone? Yessir.

Has this happened before? Yessir.

How did she get in? The window.

Window?

I understood these questions to be police-speak for: "A little old lady like yourself shouldn't be living on her lonesome and rolling the dice with an open window in this part of town!"

I offered them tea, knowing full well their kind prefers coffee, and showed them the door. 

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Her visits became more frequent, and the officers stopped coming. I had no choice but to relent—turns out life's easier once you convince yourself to look forward to what once inconvenienced you. Truth be told, I'd grown quite fond of her; excitement flushed my face whenever I heard her pawing at the window.

I'd brew some tea and sit at the kitchen table, watching her tame the chaos in my Maytag. Dare I say, I'd come to consider her a friend, or, at the very least, a mute American Girl I could talk at or vent to. I'd read her the Times and set a baloney sandwich near the dishwasher in case she got peckish.

When she finished, she'd freeze—her surgical hands floating over the systematized dishes like a reiki nutjob, cheeks puffing in and out, observing her handiwork from every vantage point.

Occasionally, she'd make microscopic adjustments in the angle of a plate or the spacing between adjacent forks. Once satisfied, she'd hoist herself onto the counter, slither through the window, and descend the fire escape. 

I'd get up, brew some more tea, and start the dishwasher, leaving the ignored baloney sandwich to sweat on the counter.

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It went on for a while like that, becoming a near-daily routine at one point. Then, come fall, she went AWOL for a long stretch. I thought she'd gone for good, but she surprised me on a late winter Sunday.

I was sat at the table attempting the crossword. I heard her fumbling with the latch and greeted her as she climbed in. The air on her heels stunk like the grey hours before a biblical snow.

I might have gasped when I saw her; I can't recall. I only remember the fuzzy shock in my chest when I saw her belly had grown into an eager ovoid dome, her breasts now docked blimps, sloshing and utter-like.

She assumed her duties at the dishwasher like any other day, moving with her usual grace despite the creature stirring within, willing an abdominal protrusion so vulgar it burrowed the poor one-piece deep into her crack.

I sat, lockjaw and loose-lipped, staring into her 8-ball belly, fighting the urge to get up and rub it. I placed my hand on my own empty belly, remembering the odd miracle of motherhood, closing my eyes, suddenly craving my own kiddos' faces—cupping my hands to dredge their cooing mugs from the well of memory, only to look down to find pixilated mouse pups pulsing in my palms like pink wasp abdomens.

I closed my eyes tight, but the haze thickened. I grew frustrated and faceless, opened my eyes, and cleared my throat. I took a shakey sip of tepid tea and turned to smile at my prodigal friend, meeting her expressionless gaze and imagining her getting fucked missionary in an alley somewhere, staring up at raw fluorescent streetlights with those little taxidermied bunny eyes.

When she finished, she checked her work and climbed out. I dashed to the window like a magnet, watching her bare legs skitter down the fire escape. The moist kisses of her soles on wrought iron lips ping-ponged off the menagerie of shut sashes; I felt them pecking at my cheek.

I watched her coif wiggle as she negotiated the narrow steps, limp hand draped on her belly. For the first time in Lord knows how long, I thought of Dolly, the family cat. Dad and Mother were out in the driveway, stuffing the childhood home into a rusty U-Haul. Through my bedroom window, I watched her swagger with great purpose towards the tree line, her primordial pouch etching Nazca lines in the leaf rot. I yelled after her, Dolly! Dolly-girl! Come here! She didn't falter; she marched on, steadfast in her desire to find a quiet nook to implode. 

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That was three years ago now, I believe; it's hard to say—everything bleeds. My friend never climbed through the window again. I sit, dishwasher overflowing and window open, peeling my eyes from the crossword now and again, hoping to see her spilling in. When I’m out for a stroll and hear an infant wail, I whip around, praying I'll see her dressed in clean white linens, cradling a radiant child as it suckles wastewater and Busch from her chapped teats.

She'll beam at me as her body starves the babe's mind into reality. I'll smile back and shuffle towards her, pleased we finally have something to discuss.

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