treatswords

Gapped teeth always reminded me of him. The space between his two front teeth big enough I could slip my pinky through.

When I first saw him, I didn’t like the gap.

It made me feel sorry for him, like his parent’s hadn’t loved him enough to get him a decent dentist. But the more I got to know him, the gap grew on me.

It was that creaky floorboard in the attic, that door handle shaped like a lion head made from rusting brass. It was the ceiling crown, geometric shapes in white paint from the 1800’s.

Character.

His gap was his.

We served spanish rice and pork enchiladas on colored plates.

Coral, aqua, tangerine orange. I felt the plates belonged in a beach house somewhere with long, white drapes, cozied in a cupboard, collecting dust.

If shattered and spread across the sandy beach, they would be mistaken for sea glass.

Smooth and cloudy.

He loved gold margaritas and would have three for lunch. Two limes squeezed in with an overly salted rim. A white line left above his lip after finishing them.

A salty kiss.

A Mexican restaurant located in the center of an icy town, layers of cold white keeping everyone there.

“I once tried to leave town, but my tires slid, the snow like banana peels and I came right back.”

Even in the summer people didn’t leave because, “Well, the summers are the best here, just too beautiful to go anywhere else.”

Neighbors were middle school friends, the  dentist was the honor student from junior year and the bus driver was neighbor Steve who had always left brown, grainy dog treats out for the neighborhood pets.

In an ice box filled with familiarities, I met him.

He was from Maryland, the big city. He loved the sound of traffic, frustrated drivers spilling their morning coffee, break lights like candles in a church, leaving a red glowing path during the early morning commute.

He loved the sounds of chaos.

He lived in the basement of an old church and he had a tuxedo cat with a black nose. His tv sat on a pillow on the living room floor. His Target sheets pilling from his thick white socks shifting over them, unable to sleep.

“Why do you wear your socks to bed?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, maybe because I’m always cold.”

He would wake up in the dead of night, sweating, screaming something horrible. Beads of sweat dripped from his chest down his arms. I imagined his black tattoos melting together like oil paints, a little too much water on the brush.

He dreamt of a red man in the basement. He would be hovering over bodies covered in sheets, the cotton fabric tucking over arms and legs, curving over arches of feet. It’s red hand would pull back the sheet to reveal a young face of a child.

“Did you know the child?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think it was me.”

In the mornings he would make tortillas and eggs. He would sprinkle yellow and white cheese from a plastic bag over finely cut tortilla strips. Yellow egg yolks fluffing beneath his spatula.  Hot sauce dashed over the concoction, his eyes wet from slicing onions.

Before I started spending the night there, he didn’t have kitchenware. I came over one day with a box filled with dollar store kitchen supplies. Plastic spoons and bowls. One time he left the spoon too close to the front burner, red plastic melted in between the metal curls, hardening like candle wax. Smoke would come from that burner, so we quit using it. His microwave didn’t have a fan.

He mopped his floors every Thursday with a soapy wash he got from the dollar store. It came in a gallon size, liquid squeezed into blue plastic. He would fill a bucket with hot water and splash a few drops into it. It smelled sweet, like blue berries. He would dip the mop head into the bucket and splash the soapy water across the wooden church floors.

“When did you buy a mop? I asked.

“I didn’t, I borrowed it from the restaurant.”

When he finished the room smelled of blueberry pie and fajita smoke.

One night after the restaurant closed he locked up for the night and poured whiskey cokes into two thick margarita glasses. He garnished them with lemon. I kept opening the metal chip warmer door to pick out the red salty chips. We removed the tin Queso warmer and poured leftover salsa into it. Red chips dipping into red sauce.

My cheeks were warm of whiskey.

He kissed me. His big lips sucking mine between his teeth. He fucked me over the kitchen line, my back bent over the counter, the buttons on my shirt scratching the metal surface. I pulled my pants up and finished my drink. His green eyes lingered over my face, his right eye winked.

The next day I awoke and attempted to tangle myself in him. I wrapped my arm around his cold shoulder, the skull tattoo smiling at me with boney teeth. I ran my fingers through his wiry beard, black hairs breaking off into my fingers. If I collected enough of them I could scrub the floor. I imagined black beard hairs, covered in his dollar store soap, me on my knees scrubbing until my finger tips bled blue suds.

“I’m going back to Maryland.” My ear was on his neck, my finger caressing his chest.

“Why?”

“My mother is sick and it’s time I leave this icebox, I feel time is frozen here.”
“What’s wrong with your mom? I asked.

“Her body is no longer absorbing potassium.”

I pictured his mother with her white sharply cut bob on the kitchen floor.  A bushel of cold, wet blue crabs on the counter top, waiting to be steamed and served with a side of melted butter. I imagined her peeling banana after banana, her body refusing the white sweet flesh. Yellow peels scattered everywhere, even between the couch cushions.

My heart hurt. It felt like someone was pushing it deeper and deeper into my chest. I waited for the snapping sound of my rib, cracking like crab legs.

I wanted to become a tattoo that could remain on his skin forever. My black ink filling his large pores. The name Maria was in cursive across his neck. His mothers name.

As much as I tried to fight it, I knew he didn’t belong here.

The snow came down softly the following week. I walked him to his green truck he planned to drive five hours to the airport. His Oreo cat meowed at me, her yellow eyes asking me to come with. His hood was pulled tightly over his shaved head. Bare and shiny. I imagined my hand rubbing over it the way it did when he kissed my chest. My palms sticking to his skull.

He leaned in and kissed me. His gap teeth waved goodbye against my lips. He tasted strongly of mint and soap.

I wondered if he asked me to come, if I would’ve said yes.

Maybe in a different life.

The restaurant without him was cold. It was like the heater quit working the moment his snake skinned boots no longer clicked against the cement floors.

I imagined him somewhere in Baltimore on the ocean side, picking crab flesh from his teeth, finishing his third salty margarita.

A woman also covered in tattoos sitting across from him, the skirt of her blue sundress blowing in the warm East Coast breeze, just high enough that he could peak her underwear.

His plate emptying, his fork moving milky coleslaw over to the side, revealing a coral colored plate. Seahorses carved in the porcelain rim.

And just for a moment, I  imagine he thought of me.