Good for Cake

A man with large brains stepped out the building and opened his umbrella, as it was coming down very hard. She wasn’t anywhere he could see, although she’d be sure to show up later, either in or just outside the bar. Never quite alone, she always suffered hangers-on, of which he dreamed of shaking her, as an umbrella can be shook of rain.

She’d professed her love to him the week before, in a private room during their lunch hour. As the sounds of chitchat and fumbled cutlery pawed the walls and door, she spelled herself out in clear terms, with her soft spiraling voice and hands that orbited each other. Her pleasantness repulsed him. Her skill at knowing what she wanted made him competitive. He diced up her proposal with all the rejoinders and angry sighs he’d been taught back at school. He was able to convince himself right up to the point at which she exited the room. As she joined the rest of the cast and crew at the desert spread, he frowned. Immediately, he began to pine for her rather badly.

“Men are rude, right,” she explained at the bar, to somebody else. Only a wall of badly drunk people kept him from being seen. He wondered if she’d spotted him through similar blockades, back when she still lusted after him without his knowledge. He took a drink with a dark look; he felt very jealous of himself back then.

“He likes me! I’m sure of it. But he’d rather put me through this. And watch. He’s going to tell me he likes me right once I’ve gotten over him. By then he’ll be so sweet and sorry. He’ll jab me with a hypodermic needle full of kindness. It will take every ounce of my wits to tell him off. I’ll be left in such a hole. God, I wish I could just skip it.”

A woman in a small green dress passed him at that point, over on her way to friends. To those at the bar observing him, it appeared that he was smiling at the sum of her tits. He was smiling at what had been said.

He imagined himself in that little conference room, back on the day she’d told him the truth about her feelings. He imagined himself, saying all the same things, incorrect things about how he could not return her affection, how it would never work out, but this time he was taking off her clothes and pushing her up against the wall. He could feel her belt coming loose in his hands.

He couldn’t help it: he started giggling uncontrollably into his scotch. He was too charmed. How amazing to be that powerful, to sweep her up in every way. To do all things to her: sticking his finger in her affections like a rotary phone, using her ear to frame his mouth. Tipping her mind, as dark and near as the scotch, so that it poured helplessly towards his attention.

He brought the glass up again to drink, but could not stop his laughs like painful hiccups. He started spilling on his shirt and, subsequently, got wet wherever he forgot to button.