Assistance – Catherine Forrest

“Yeah,” she said, “Why not?”

“To your mom’s place though? We could have gone to mine.”

“What?” Enid flicked her eyes up at him from the depths of the messenger bag where she’d been fishing for another cigarette. “This is my place.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“How old are you?” she retorted.

“Twenty-six,” he said, as though that wasn’t completely ridiculous. She let out a harsh cough of laughter.

“I’m forty,” she said. He eyed her suspiciously, as though to figure out if she was telling the truth. As though she’d lie about being forty. “What?” she asked.

“You’re not old enough to live here if you’re only forty,” he said.

“The fuck does that mean?” she gave up digging for her lighter and waved the unlit cigarette around, then mimed a gimme gesture. He handed over a Zippo.

“This is an assisted living building,” he said while she flicked the Zippo to life and sucked the flame to the tip of her cigarette.

“Yeah, well,” she said, handing back the lighter. “I need assistance with living. You don’t have to be elderly for that.”

 “Oh,” he said, considering. “Are you disabled?”

“Are you here to fuck? Or what?” 

#

 

Afterward, she lay on her back in her narrow double bed with a lit cigarette, not smoking, but watching the smoke curl up toward the ceiling and dissipate. He had offered her his vape pen, but she declined. 

“It’s weed,” he’d said, but she obviously knew that. She was irritated all over again. The anger never lifted for long. Every medication she knew about that didn’t come in pill form just took the edge off for a bit. She didn’t want to be irritated with him. She had no alternative.

“So when they look at themself in the mirror,” he started up again, “They’re expecting to see their birdself but they see their manself. Get it? Do you see how that works? Because of the time travel.”

“Oh my god,” she muttered. She was trying to tolerate him, trying her best, but he wasn’t making it easy. He was making it impossible. He didn’t even interpret her expletive correctly.

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  1. Stephen Myer says:

    Dialogue and gestures are first-rate. A fine read!

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