Birdmen and Teacups Named Florence
by Steve Duno
(Continued)
She lays a fork down for him then goes to get him a beer. She puts it down onto a coaster on the coffee table.
"Get out of the way."
"It is a commercial, Anton."
"It’s Ed McMahon!"
She goes outside to hose off the sidewalk. Some of the pigeons are still eating. She sprays them with the hose. They fly up to the roof and roost on the television antenna. She stares at them then rolls up the hose and goes in to fix her own dinner.
He comes into the kitchen. She picks at a plate of steamed carrots and rice. He drops his dish into the sink, gets a beer out of the refrigerator, stares at her for a few seconds then leaves the room. The refrigerator door is wide open. She sniffs the air and makes a face, starts to say something but stops herself with a sip of tea. Then she gets up and pours the tea down the drain.
The dish in the sink has chipped. She cuts a finger on a shard while trying to fish it out of the disposal but doesn’t know it until she wipes her hands off on a clean white dishtowel hanging above the sink. She runs the towel under cold water and pours Ivory Snow onto the blood stains, lets it soak in the sink, then walks into the bathroom to tend to the cut.
He walks into the bathroom and stares at her, leaves, comes back in and says "I want a divorce" then walks out of the bathroom.
She removes her glasses and looks at her eyes in the mirror, turquoise-blue with gray specks. She remembers what he had said on their honeymoon, how her eyes were like robin’s eggs set in stone. She smiles and nods and stares into her own beautiful eyes, like fractured tunnels back in time. She sees him there now and thinks she should have known better. She nods and decides that it is all her fault, that it could have been avoided. It’s a relief to admit it, she thinks. It feels like forgiveness.
After she is done looking at herself in the mirror she goes into the kitchen to clean up. She throws out the chipped dish and wipes the rest dry, puts them up into the cupboard then pulls out the bottle of peppermint schnapps from behind the window cleaner under the sink. She fills a white teacup with it then puts the bottle back. The cup has "Florence" written across it in bold black letters. She goes into the living room and eases herself down into her recliner, leaning back until the foot rest pops out with a groan.
The schnapps is syrupy and sweet. She sips at it and looks at him slumped on the sofa, asleep, open-mouthed, snoring, the stained bag of seed on the coffee table in front of him. Some seed is scattered onto the table and in his lap. She thinks he has been trying to eat it again. She muffles a giggle with a long sip.
She doesn’t want him to wake up. He will sleep there all night as long as the television stays on and she keeps quiet. She will get up and cover him later if she remembers.
She had forgotten to cover him up the night before, and he awoke in the morning screaming. "I’m frozen to death, stupid!" he yelled while she slept in the recliner, the sticky teacup still in her lap. She started and let the teacup to fall to the carpet. He’d already made his way outside with his bag of seed.
Jeopardy is on. She doesn’t know any of the questions but admires the reception, crystal-clear since they’d gotten the new antenna the week before, the biggest one in the store, with rods sticking out every which way. It could be pointed in any direction just by turning a dial on the remote. She stares up at the ceiling and thinks of the pigeons roosting on the antenna for the night, then climbs out of the recliner, plucks the antenna remote from the coffee table and sits back down. After a few more sips she nests the cup down into her lap and carefully turns the dial on the remote. The TV reception gets worse and worse; then she turns it the other way and watches Alex Trebec get clearer and clearer and she grins and keeps twisting the dial back and forth, "Alex, no Alex, Alex, no Alex," she whispers.
After a while she puts down the remote and finishes the schnapps. She looks at her sleeping husband with tired eyes and promises herself that, tonight, she will try to remember to cover him up. After all, she thinks, it is such a simple thing to do.
Steve Duno has to date authored eighteen non-fiction books, scores of magazine and web articles, and numerous short stories. He was a top-ten finalist in the 2003 Glimmertrain Short Story Competition, and a finalist in the 2005 Perigee Arts Fiction Contest, receiving an Honorable Mention award in that competition. Formerly a teacher in New York City and Los Angeles, he currently lives in Seattle with his family and an ever-changing assortment of rescued pets.