Flash2
Sharing Burritos
by Mary Stebbins
For PIUS and him
Peter and I work as nude models. It's the only job we've been able to find. Easy work it's not. It's boring and tiring. I like working for photographers; at least they're quick. I've been working for a sculptor lately and every muscle in my body aches from holding the same posture for days. The photographers pay me in cash. Every day. The sculptor gives me a check weekly. My naked body keeps appearing in art galleries; it's sort of weird. Occasionally, Peter and I work together. It's a little more fun. Sometimes they want us to do something erotic. I prefer to pretend, but Peter likes it better when we really fool around. I accuse him of being an exhibitionist. He laughs and calls me a prude. We do it because it pays more than normal photography. I try out as a dancer. We need a steady income.
We've been eating lots of refritos-refried beans. Ten cents a can at the dented can store. Torn flour bags are fifteen cents for a 25-pound bag. I make flour tortillas. We live in a storefront on Seawall Street in the warehouse district. The rent is forty dollars a month. That's cheap, really cheap, but not when you have no money. Almost no money.
The storefront comes with its own bum. He's really old. He lives under the back steps. I share our burritos with him. And my income. It's meager, but he has nothing. Same baggy old brown trousers with holes. Same grimy shirt. I think it may have been blue once. A battered fedora. He doesn't even have a grocery cart like other bums. Before we got jobs as nude models, we lived on the street for a while, too. Sheltered under back steps ourselves sometimes.
I offer to do his wash for him. He thinks about it a long time and then it takes him even longer to hand out his clothes. He huddles in a blanket under the steps while I stick quarters in the machine at the corner. I try not to look at him when I bring the clothes back. He's so skinny and white and his skin hangs on his arms. I think he's naked under the blanket.
The storefront window is caked with filth. For a long time, we leave it that way. We have no curtains and it gives us privacy. But Peter has this idea he could sell things in the storefront. He makes some hippie glasses out of colored plastic crystals wired together and cleans a little hole in the corner of the window to display them on a cardboard box with a rag over it. Since we're out a lot, we don't sell any at first, but one day a spacey chick knocks on the front door while I'm making burritos and buys two pairs. I give the bum a dollar and Peter runs to the store and gets us some peppers and cheese to go in the burritos.
The spacey chick comes back in two days. Buys more of Peter's glasses. And two days later, buys all he has managed to make in the meantime. She runs a store. A hippie store. Wants him to make lots.
Meanwhile, I get that job as a dancer. Suddenly we are getting money. We can buy food, move to an apartment. I am sad, saying goodbye to the bum. He's sad too. He pulls wads of money from his pockets and presses them into my hand. "No, no," I say, "you need it more than I do." But he insists. Money falls to the sidewalk. Enough to pay rent, buy food, clothes. And more, lots more. He shoves money into my pockets. Into my hands. I can't make him stop.
Mary Stebbins
Published in the August 2004 Issue of edificeWRECKED (or see sidebar)
Cat
by Mary Stebbins
available
Another Cat
In the hot, coppery light, windows appear to have foundries within. The girls and I arrive at Françesca’s door. She has been taking care of my black kitten, Emile, and my ferret, Phiso, while we travel. Weaving through people on the street comes another, larger cat, knee-high, with the coat of a leopard, the face and ruff of a bobcat. Hard, wild eyes. Fierce. Its body husky and sinewy. It wends through passers-by toward me and stops, looking into my face. It wants me to touch it. I hesitate, then reach out. I feel a silky coat, hard muscles and coarse beard. It seems to be mine. I wonder if it is legal to keep a wild animal and if it is housebroken. Francesca opens the leaded glass door and leans out in her gown, white hair tumbling in waves into the golden light. She tries to hand me Emile and Phiso, but when the new cat looks toward them, the kitten unsheathes its claws and spits. Phiso bares his teeth. I say, a bit hoarsely, “Not yet, wait a minute,” but am unsure how to proceed. The girls stand on either side of the new cat, the windows blaze, Françesca leans from the door in her gown, and the new cat waits. We all wait. I see us from afar--like a fresco. Unmoving, flattened. Then the girls step forward, taking Phiso and Emile, the street darkens, and the fires in the windows fade. The new cat’s eyes flare, igniting foundries within.
Mary Stebbins
Friday,
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