Edrie

SOOOOO I got this cute little story published

So read my sotry and let me know what you think. Someday I might write this as a novel. What a summer that was.

Recently this woman from work read it and she was like...

Who are you again? LOL gotta love that kind of reaction

Here is how it appears

It was Shear Madness Alley

A wok full of heroin dominated the tiny but spotless stove. The kitchen was a wall at the end of the living room, separated from the rough carpet by a thin strip of scuffed beige linoleum. The whole of the apartment could be seen by standing in the corner of the kitchen. The living room was finished in an "early 90s student" sort of way, and the bathroom sat small and red behind the secret door. There were bedrooms too but that wasn�t where the action was.

Gogo laid naked on the couch in the living room in front of the large windows. She listened to the CD player that played the song that filled the apartment and played off the street sounds of Shear Madness Alley a few stories below. They were the 2am sounds, the still-partying-on-a-Saturday-morning sounds, the we�re-all-in-this-together sounds.

Slinkster was naked as well. He radiated the heat, but the ocean was responsible for the humidity. In his modesty he had donned a brown corduroy suit jacket with velour patches at the elbows. He paced the apartment with a pipe in hand, puffing rings of cerebral smoke, which hung like fine-spun cotton candy around his head. I listened to him talking, and could smell his cannabis thoughts from my hole in the bathroom. Dark and cool, the hipbath surrounded me like a slick red womb. Up to my neck, I felt like I was emerging into the world but hadn�t gotten very far. Slinkster walked into my dark layer. Through the haze he stared at his bare reflection in the mirror.

"I can�t remember, am I a dead fish or a monkey?" He looked down at me while my own pair of dead fish bobbed in the water glowing white against the red.

The French song was on repeat in the CD player. I idly wondered whether they realized it had played 47 times. It comforted my OCD; I always knew what would be and what had been. I was beginning to understand French; I was the woman in the song, a lazy 1920s diva with a cigarette holder and dainty cigarettes who expected a light from insanely beautiful young men. Gogo started to sing the love song to the Egyptian who was on the street below. Her voice husky from the haze that Slinkster was leaving everywhere. I suddenly knew that the diva wasn�t me. I was more the suitor and I longed to run from the bath to light her cigarette. But the water kept me still, chill and comforted, holding my body in place. I was too late anyway. Slinkster had heard her call and wandered over to offer her a light. Even though I could not see them, I know they gazed at one another with love and unrequited want. They knew they should fuck but never would. It wasn�t in the schema.

This summer sublet was granted through karma. I tend to browse bulletin boards at school and hanging there was a sign. Two bedrooms, furnished sublet, no cats, students welcome, Shear Madness Alley. Fate began there in that living room next to the kitchen in the wok.

Gogo�s singing blended with the French Diva�s. I could no longer tell them apart. The Egyptian was yelling from the street. Inviting her to visit his homeland. Did he come every Saturday? Perhaps he was a customer of one of the neighbors whom we heard working mostly at night. They did a big business in lonely Egyptians.