What's Important Is Feeling: Stories Read Free

zookeeper with Grim Reaper. I couldn’t wait to show the band.
    “Work is calling, Big Daddy. No more poetry—time to wipe some tables. Dinner rush is almost here.”
    We were getting to the end of June. School was over. The heat brought out hibernators, folks emerging from cave-homes for oversized sundaes. I was constantly mopping the sticky floors, wiping tables, washing bucket loads of glassware. My fingers were wrinkly, suds-softened. I smelled like milk and Windex.
    “Yes, boss,” I said, and crumbled the paper. Wyatt wasn’t gonna let me off that easy.
    “Hand it over, Big Daddy, let lil’ ole Madonna get a look.”
    He grabbed at the napkin, managed to rip off a corner.
    “Never,” I said, and stuffed the rest in my mouth and chewed. Claire sidled up to us, placed an arm on Wyatt’s shoulder. I spit the chewed napkin in the garbage.
    “What tastes so bad, Benny?” Claire asked. “That fruit plate in the kitchen? Because I think Ernesto left it out overnight. I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”
    “My, my, it’s the bitter taste of young love,” Wyatt explained. He puckered up and made smooch sounds. “Bless his beating little heart.”
     
    Kendra was waiting by my car when I got out. She looked different under streetlight, less affable, as if posing for an album cover. She stomped a cigarette, leaned up against the car.
    “Here to break my kneecaps?” I asked.
    “Something like that,” Kendra said.
    We drove through the residential areas, past Sam’s and the cul-de-sacs, past Roland’s apartment complex, through the north side and around the lake, out to the quiet byway that connected us with the next town over. The area was mostly woods, the undeveloped limits of our municipality. Soon Uncle Marion would kill these trees too, build mansions, make more money from the ugly.
    Kendra flipped through my CDs, found something acceptable.
    “Are you tired?” she asked.
    “No,” I said. I wasn’t. Work had worn me out, but I was eager. The long run of it—life—looked mostly unhopeful. I would go to the JC, stay on at the restaurant, siphon from my parents until they cut me off for good. But tonight was open-ended; it would be hours until sunrise.
    “I’m tired,” she said.
    “Long day?”
    “Just tired,” she said. I knew enough to let it slide. Kendra turned up the music. She opened her compact but didn’t apply any makeup. She studied herself.
    “The thing about cars,” Kendra said. “Is that you’re going somewhere, but you also are already somewhere.”
    “Totally,” I said, and took a left.
    “But that place you are isn’t a real place. I mean, it’s moving. You haven’t arrived yet.”
    “Right.”
    “I don’t want to arrive,” Kendra said. “I don’t ever want to arrive.”
    “I’ll need to get gas eventually,” I said, an attempt at a joke. Kendra didn’t laugh.
    “Park somewhere,” she said.
    I doubled back to the women’s fitness center, found a spot in the sequestered lot. It was late but the lights were on in the center, the tennis bubble lit white. Kendra and I stared at each other across the car’s console.
    “Hi,” she said, and gave a thin smile.
    I leaned in for a kiss, but Kendra pulled away.
    “Not that,” she said.
    She opened her door, stood outside, lifted her dress over her head, and dropped her panties to the ground. Clothed only in Doc Martens and a couple of bracelets, Kendra stood with arms at her sides. My headlights were off. Kendra’s black hair blended into the dark. Her body looked like a child’s; the skeleton seemed uneven, south-sloping. One breast was bigger, about the size of a golf ball. The other was almost completely flat. Her bush was dark and wispy and trailed up to her belly button. Her legs and belly were bruised in places. For a moment I thought she might disappear, fade into nighttime, vanish in a slow roll of gray smoke.
    She got back in the car, fit herself between my body and the steering wheel. Objects