Careful Now

He said to himself, woulda, shoulda, coulda, oughta.

He used a can opener to open the Campbell’s tomato soup and inched his fingernail under the metal slit to pry it open. He was in Marjorie’s apartment, “just making lunch, huh?” spoken to the empty kitchen, the coffee gurgling in his throat.

His throat became a vacuum as the caffeine jacked his bloodstream, making his breath fast along with the ticking of his heart. He breathed in tomato paste as his hand brushed the smear on one side of the can. He set it down carefully, peering intently at how the compact bottom clinked onto the counter next to the stove. He turned on the stove and dumped the orange glop into the pot. He looked for a towel to wipe his fingers. He found it in the third drawer and wiped the smear off his hands. He turned to the sink and filled the emptied can with water and it came up gelatins with sickly yellow in the can, the color of plasma. He heard water make a hollow sound. He poured it into the pot. He watched how his blunt fingertips grasped the can, a secure circling of the horned fingers meeting onto the label’s letterings of Campbell. He noticed that the handle of the pot faced outward over the stove edge. He turned it inward and the image of tiny pudgy hands grasping the handle to yank down floated. He guessed this one did not grow fast enough. He was not fast enough. He threw away the empty can. He could remember the smell of baby powder from his fingertips when he made that “Whoops!” gesture against his face. He thought it isn’t funny. He thought it is serious. He thought, what is the name of that powder?

He tilted his head and the urge to know became an irresistible itch overwhelming enough to check the bathroom and see if he could find the powder like the one from Marjorie’s older sister and her boyfriend’s house. He backed away from the counter, holding a palm behind him. He picked up that habit recently. He moved his feet one at a time until he was out of the kitchen and navigating his way down to the bathroom. He saw a comical image of himself, an apelike form with hair over his face, against one side of the hallway, his boulder sized shoulders brushing against the wall filled with pictures of ponies’ heads and dandelions on the wallpapers and his size twelve shoes gingerly pressing down, leaving prints thin as paper on the carpet. He could hear the father that was grunting at him: “Oh God, you moron, you moron! Stop laughing, call the number, Marjorie! The goddamn nine one one, stupid! Punch in jus-”

He did not know how he can work as a roofer. He imagined the roof, his hand holding the hammer to pound one shingle in a dozen, the nail puncturing the wood, not even just denting, a dip in the brand-new skin just enough back then but now put a hole right under the head. He thought Of a Nail.

He turned the corner. He could see the bathroom, the door opened halfway into pitch dark. He reached in and felt the tiles. He found the switch and pressed it flat and the light went on. He could see a damp blue cloth towel on the sink, toilet paper on the toilet tank, and the seat on the toilet was down. He thought, yes, there’s the antibacterial soap dispenser on the other side of the faucet. He entered. He pawed at the white cabinet over the toilet tank open and took inventory. He could see the edges of the bandages filed neatly through the transparent blue box on the bottom shelf. He saw, next to the plastic box, ob. tampons, Vaseline, K-Y jelly, flesh-colored I.U.D. in another plastic box, all lined up like soldiers at achtung! He found the second shelf, a plastic jar with a cap over it holding Q-tips, Wind Song perfume, Krystal Lens polisher, and Ciba saline solution for her contact lens. He saw on the first shelf, Prozac, with the plastic wrapping still intact, and finally, the medicated talcum powder.

He muttered, “Amen’s, of course. Real clever, I get it. Making amends, real funny, huh?”

His shriveled stomach was like a dry pea in a rattled can. He remembered his soup, put the packaged powder back on the shelf, and left the bathroom after switching off the lights. He knew that the trip back to the kitchen would be like his trip to the bathroom.

He leaned against the other side of the hallway. He made shoe prints on the carpet that thankfully faded like steam on drying glass. He smelled the tomato paste and decided he could ready his meal while it cooked. He returned to the kitchen, he stopped at the cabinet by the counter and took out a box of saltine crackers. He took out a scissor from the built-in drawer under the countertop. He took out one sleeve of crackers and used scissors to snip it open. He placed the scissor back into the drawer and pressed it to shut. He knew Marjorie was clear on him not leaving one hint of his presence when he leaves her. He pried crackers and put them in a pile. He moved over and took out a saucer for his crackers and an empty bowl from the cabinet over the steaming soup on the stove. He placed them on the counter and moved the crackers on the saucer so that it looked like a cut open box with no bottom. He turned to the silverware drawer and took out a spoon, with the scratch marks that he once thought were teeth marks. He remembered Marjorie’s gleeful howls when he brought it up and the explanation that the spoon had a futile battle with garbage disposal when accidentally dropped in while running. He placed it by the empty bowl. He walked over to the refrigerator and picked a dish of used butter-like torched sculpture and placed it by the saucer. He went to the silverware drawer and took out a butter knife and placed it by the scarred spoon. He saw the soup boil. He took the oven mitt that has Garfield’s, the cartoon cat, a smirking face from the drawers and used it to turn off the stove and lift the pot by the handle. He walked it over to the bowl and slowly tilted it, orange streaming into the bowl. He might start shrieking if one drop splattered on the countertop. He put the pot back on the dulling neon coils of the stove. He placed the mitt back into the drawer. He went back to the counter and picked up the knife. He attempted to scoop a pat of hardened butter, but the brittle cracker looked too delicate. He put the knife back down. He dipped the cracker in the soup. He watched it turn puffy and drown in orange steamy ripples. He rescued it with the spoon. He leaned forward and took a bite of the soggy cracker. His stomach rumbled. He dipped the spoon in. He slurped at his soup. He saw his reflection in the liquid, a shadowed face gnomish with a little age, a blunt nose, and shoots of frizzled hair. He was halfway through the soup, slurping and eating his second cracker. By that time, the butter softened, and he was able to butter the third cracker and the fourth. He ate, soothed by the flavor and the nourishments in his body. He felt his supple throat.

He thought, maybe it would be better in a different state, come to think of it. Two of his Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers from Georgetown had recently bought a condo in Greenwich Village complex down in Pennsylvania and they said that he is certainly welcome to live in their closet. He could cobble together a bunk bed to accommodate the closet’s size and maybe even have his own space in there.

He glanced downward and looked at the droplets of soup that clung to the buttery remains of his cracker. The butter had caught a bit of red pulp in the soup, and it looked like a red vein in the fixed gelatin-throat closed involuntary around chewed cracker and his mouth spewed all over the countertop, spraying orange and white flecks. His eyes got teary. He wiped at his damp mouth with the back of his hand. He coughed his throat raw.

He started producing maybes. Maybe Marjorie shouldn’t drag him over to her older sister’s house to look at him or her so soon after work. Maybe the older sister shouldn’t plop the damn thing on him. Maybe Timmy shouldn’t have urged him to drink two bottles of Molson Ice, nodding eagerly as he chugged the first one. And the arrival, he or she did not look all there. After all, Marjorie’s older sister had remarked that she could see Timmy’s eyes and the way he thinks as she beamed right before she made that handoff, her face trusting and inviting. Maybe there is something to be said about thinning the herd.

“And maybe you should not have been so careless,” he said to the empty kitchen. He moved to the sink and washed his hands, slowly and thoroughly, as if he were a surgeon on a way to a neurological operation.

He looked out the window that faced the parking lot of the apartment complex. He saw that there was an empty parking spot. He looked about the kitchen for paper towels. He looked out the same window to see the red hood of Timmy’s truck pierce into view in the same parking spot. He watched the door in the living room fold open, and Timmy’s bulk moved by the couch.

He heard Timmy say, “Richard, still here.”

He said, “Yes, I need to eat before going. I might have to take a run at the bathroom before I go.”

He heard Timmy say, “That’s fine. We are going to drop the case suit, but we can’t have you going about here, not after what you did. We had to get Betsy in the hospital again for tranquilizers. Marjorie is still with her there. We dropped the suit because you know that you were wrong, Richard. You are dead wrong, Richard.”

He said, “I understand. There is no way a billion sorries can fix this.”

He saw Timmy’s bloodshot wet eyes. He heard Timmy say, “That’s settled then. I do not want to shake your hand. Goodbye, and don’t come back.”

Timmy turned slowly the way the earth spins on its axle, and his enormous body moped back to the door. He thought it seemed as if his neck were broken beneath the humps of his thick skin from the way his former friend hung his head. He watched the door shut and, on the carpet, the natural light from the outside slipped away.

He sighed. He went into the bedroom he had shared with Marjorie. He took two packed bags on the bed. He carried them out to his own truck and put them in the front seat. He shut the door of the truck. He went back in and saw that the splatters that he had thrown up started to harden like wax from a snuffed candle. He patted his front pants pockets for his wallet and clutched his keys. He turned and fast-walked outside as he fled. He stopped only to lock behind him. He got into the truck, started it, backed up, and drove off. He planned to stop at the gas station for a bathroom break and to gas his truck for the next destination. He wondered what Marjorie would make of what he left behind.