That Which by Brendan Codey

Shaking hands, he will never remove the cigarette from his hand. He would never remove the cigarette perpetual lodged below the first knuckles on the pointer and middle fingers. But he lookt in the eyes, or between them, and stood for introductions and farewells.

She wore normal, read flat, shoes with scuff-marks on the sides of the heels because she crossed her legs. A sale for sale and she bit. Pairs on tables and racks. A left through the storefront and the alarm went off but she was bag-less and the security let her walk because she had no bags and she walkt in flats.

Sure she says. She says sure or it could have been yes and he could have been bitten, but he stood up when she left and he was smoking and he saw the watch and she put it back and left and he laid back down smoking.

And she's just left and he's smoking and thinks he should lock the door first, but laziness, and it stays unlockt and he goes ahead anyway, moves the covers back a bit and there it is on the mattress when the maid walks in. There were no knocks. He could swear there were no knocks at the door. Regardless. And she sees it. It is on the mattress. Now, the sane person walks out and he scurries and pants himself and leaves because he knows she's running, unlike the other one, whom he has dominated by seeing the watch and lured with allure, to the clerk. She is running to the clerk who watches soaps and soaps on tape and leaves his shoelaces untied.

The phone cord is long enough to strangle an elephant and he says hold this and pushes through the wack! screen door, running pointing mouth spittle at a starting car that peels back and is gone and a smell of awful settles with exhaust smoke.

There is a towel wrapping on the passenger seat. It rarely holds people, the bucket seat. A grin gets caught in the rearview mirror and he laughs and clicks open the Zip. He is gone, clean.

Now, she is wiping away extra mascara but it smears so she wipes away the extra and the smeared and looks again at the vanity. Uncrossing her legs to stand she looks back at the toilet and it is still there and so is the towel flung and she leaves in her scufft flat shoes for out, which is to say next, and she leaves hers on top of the toilet seat because who looks in the bathroom?

This coffee sucks. It is burnt coffee and it is too hot and it burns the roof of his mouth. His tongue will not taste a thing until tomorrow. But he's tired or groggy at least and continues. The tabs in his shirt collar are too long. He took them from another shirt at the laundry, and they are too long for the tab slots and poke him in the neck and at times in the bottom of his jaw bone, but only when he swivels his head. He is parkt outside the mart, in his car, smoking with the window cracked one inch and he thinks that soon, he might turn on the radio to cover up the ringing.

She is walking a shuffle five miles from, towards the next location. It is now 10 in the morning. She smells clean because she is recently. The towel is still wet and she remembered to lock the door. It is on top of the toilet. Casual. She is casual in bounce and stride and her right arm is a slender angle triangle and she is clutching the straps of the bag shoulder draped causally.

The maid is cleaning 228, pulling off the covers and replacing the bottom sheet. All towels are accounted for.

The clerk is back at the desk, with his feet on the desk and his shoelaces and the phone cord forming parallel gravity verticals, though the cord is longer and hits the ground and his shoelaces, while long, are not long enough and suspend.

The maid is pulling back the quilt to form the rectangle near (below) where the pillows will be. She has placed an extra roll of toilet paper on top of the toilet.

In through heavy doors, past dark windows. Eyes will need some time to readjust to sunlight when she leaves. She is in trouble and they know it. It all goes quickly. I have it. Yes, whole. Where is it? A smirk, a gaze downward and I can't tell you that. Where are you staying? She will contact them. She has it and power now. And her pupils get small too quick and her eyes feel tight and she squints and walks.

The window is down, hand crankt and he flicks away the remnants and the coffee cup and pulls away. To the phone. He catches his hand in the steering wheel getting out and jams his thumb. Sitting on the hood, smoking next to a booth, brushing dirt from the toes of his shoes. He thinks he will shave when he gets home. He will shower and shave when he gets home, almost immediately upon arrival.

The key fits smoothly. The door opens not so smooth. The cart bangs a wall. A piece of drywall is stuck on the corner of the cart. A small, read fist size, ball of dust floats. She turns the television on to the Spanish station and cranks volume. She hears it over the vacuum. She has crankt the volume. The Gideon's is missing. She writes it down so she will remember.

He pulls toilet paper from the roll. The sheet is on the side of the roll nearest to the wall. He pulls it down. He wipes, repeats. He flushes and steps in to the shower. It is too hot and then too cold. He dries himself off with a towel that he hangs on the corner of the door, so that it hangs on both sides and will dry with a part that is relatively square. He leaves the towel hanging and goes back to the television.

The Payphone rings. It is answered. It is used for a short amount of time. The receiver is slammed down because the user knows they think they know now.

The bed sags slightly because of a body laid down. The phone cord has fallen in to the drawer. The receiver is cold where the hand goes, but there are fresh fingerprints on it. Feet poke out the bottom and get real lax.

The car door closes harder than easier and then a hovering cloud of tobacco and exhaust and a blinker begins the retracing.

He hears the counter top bell. A, as it turns out, beautiful ping, like a child bike. He turns and sees. The television is on. Some one reveals themselves to be the long lost sister who has been unwittingly sleeping with her brother because he has had plastic surgery to cover up the scars from the last time that he attempted to murder their mother, foiled because Uncle Rankle came in just before she was about to go and nearly killed the brother instead. The television will stay on until someone notices.

She has heard the Spanish station on the television. She is in room 230 and pulling back thick curtains to let in some air to illustrate how much dust she has kickt up by moving back the curtains. Trash falls from small bucket to larger bucket. One of the towels is slightly falling out of its roll, and she pushes it back in to place, but it falls out again and so she replaces it. The remote for the television seems to be missing, but she does not write it down because she figures it will turn up. It won't.

He has showered and shaved. The towel from his bucket seat is wet now, on the floor, which is also a little wet. His half is in his hand, having remembered something about the best place to hide something is an obvious one, but still paranoid enough to carry.

She awakes and smirks. Her half is on her bed, inside (under) the covers, quilted triangles, squares, diamonds, stars, colors. She knows what has come to pass and in that way holds the upper. She knows that it has begun, the final stage.

The maid is wiping down a table with few second streaks that disappear within a few seconds.

The television is on and the ring hasn't rung again, so nobody knows yet.

The maid opens the door to shadow and moves backward looking straight ahead. Apparently, she has not cleaned the bathtub well enough and bending over looking when it comes and she goes.

She leaves for the final time, to wait in tortoise shell sunglasses by a blue dumpster. Her car nearby, she puts on the wig and takes position. Pulls out a cigarette but does not light it.

He walks down the front steps and says yeah sure and produces a matchbook from the front pocket of his pea coat.