Pretty Lady
The room smells musty, like a pile of wet wash is festering in the bathtub.
He lies back on the bed, lights a cigarette, and asks what I’m doing.
I say nothing, pull the shower curtain back into place, and look through the en suite door.
I don’t like it when people leave shower curtains pulled all the way over the tub. When I have a pee at night I’m sure there’s something crouching behind, watching.
I peek once more at the rusted orange rim around the plughole, walk back into the bedroom and perch at the end of the bed by his bare feet.
I roll a smoke and tell him about how as a kid I was afraid of drains. I tell him about the dreams I had, about tentacles creeping up in the dark, worming their way down the hallway, down that shitty plastic runner my Mum put down to stop us from muddying the carpet. It would leave a thin trail of slime as it got closer to my room.
He takes a deep drag, blows smoke up at the ceiling, and says that my brain has always liked to play tricks.
I scoot up so I’m looking at the same patchy, off-white ceiling. There’s a fan and a light that he told me has never worked, but I still flick the switch every time.
I ask him if he wants to get something to eat.
There’s a little place down the road. I know he likes taking me there. He likes it because they say Bologna instead of Bolognese. I like it because they smile at me as if I’m a pretty lady.
He does not answer, just rolls his shoulders in a kind of shrug.
I look back at the bathtub. The smell is stronger.
Time passes. Still, he does not answer, and I do not fill the silence with more options.
The wood grain on the fan is red and contrasts against the murky yellow stain blooming around it. It’s hard watching the white be eaten away so slowly like this, so I blow my smoke up harder, hoping to fill in the gaps. The only thing I can do is hope the stain will spread until we can’t even remember what the white looked like.
He pushes the end of a cigarette into a half-filled ashtray beside his head and tells me that it’s getting late.
My skirt rides up a bit as I slide back down the bed and swing my legs over. I spot my crumpled underwear in the far corner; they’ve got little strawberries all over them. I think of all the black lace and satin slink in my drawers and wonder why I always seem to have this kind of underwear when I see him.
I tell him that I better be going.
He makes no move, just rolls his shoulders, less obviously this time, and offers to call me a cab.
I shake my head and exit the room without looking back, because I’m not sure what face he'll see.
I walk until I get to the little place and take my favorite spot right in the corner. My back is wedged under the coffee machine, and the smell is strong. I don’t drink coffee or smoke pot, but the smell of either makes my toes curl in my shoes. I breathe deep, suck the air into my lungs, close my eyes, and think of the swirling pasta and ruby red sauces bubbling behind the walls. Pale little blossoms appear beneath my eyelids, like someone’s taking photographs of my thoughts. When I open my eyes, I can’t even remember what the bathtub smelled like.
The waiter winks at me as he takes my order, like he would at a pretty lady.
– yt sumner was born in the UK, raised all over Australia, and settled happily in Melbourne. Her short stories have appeared in various literary journals, anthologies and magazines worldwide. She’s currently coaxing a motley group of them into a collection. http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com
Also by yt sumner: "The Last Bird"
