“You anemic?” asks the waitress, on her way past once more, with a pot of steaming coffee.
“Not anymore,” says Missy, popping another scrap of raw gristle cut small into her mouth, and chewing it, hard, before swallowing.
And as she finishes eating my heart, Missy looks down and sees me sprawled upon the floor. She nods. “Outside,” she says. “Now.” Then she gets up and leaves ten dollars beside her plate.
She is sitting on a bench on the sidewalk waiting for me. It is cold, and the street is almost deserted. I sit down beside her. I would caper around her, but it feels so foolish now I know someone is watching.
“You ate my heart,” I tell her. I can hear the petulance in my voice, and it irritates me.
“Yes,” she says. “Is that why I can see you?”
I nod.
“Take off that domino mask,” she says. “You look stupid.”
I reach up and take off the mask. She looks slightly disappointed. “Not much improvement,” she says. “Now, give me the hat. And the stick.”
I shake my head. Missy reaches out and plucks my hat from my head, takes my stick from my hand. She toys with the hat, her long fingers brushing and bending it. Her nails are painted crimson. Then she stretches and smiles, expansively. The poetry has gone from my soul, and the cold February wind makes me shiver.
“It’s cold,” I tell her.
“No,” she says, “it’s perfect, magnificent, marvelous and magical. It’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t it? Who could be cold upon Valentine’s Day? What a fine and fabulous time of the year.”
I look down. The diamonds are fading from my suit, which is turning ghost-white, Pierrot-white.
“What do I do now?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” says Missy. “Fade away, perhaps. Or find another role…A lovelorn swain, perchance, mooning and pining under the pale moon. All you need is a Columbine.”
“You,” I tell her. “You are my Columbine.”
“Not anymore,” she tells me. “That’s the joy of a harlequinade, after all, isn’t it? We change our costumes. We change our roles.”
She flashes me such a smile, now. Then she puts my hat, my own hat, my harlequin hat, up onto her head. She chucks me under the chin.
“And you?” I ask.
She tosses the wand into the air: it tumbles and twists in a high arc, red and yellow ribbons twisting and swirling about it, and then it lands neatly, almost silently, back into her hand. She pushes the tip down to the sidewalk, pushes herself up from the bench in one smooth movement.
“I have things to do,” she tells me. “Tickets to take. People to dream.” Her blue coat that was once her mother’s is no longer blue, but is canary yellow, covered with red diamonds.
Then she leans over, and kisses me, full and hard upon the lips.
Somewhere a car backfired. I turned, startled, and when I looked back I was alone on the street. I sat there for several moments, on my own.
Charlene opened the door to the Salt Shaker Café. “Hey. Pete. Have you finished out there?”
“Finished?”
“Yeah. C’mon. Harve says your ciggie break is over. And you’ll freeze. Back into the kitchen.”
I stared at her. She tossed her pretty ringlets and, momentarily, smiled at me. I got to my feet, adjusted my white clothes, the uniform of the kitchen help, and followed her inside.
It’s Valentine’s Day, I thought. Tell her how you feel. Tell her what you think.
But I said nothing. I dared not. I simply followed her inside, a creature of mute longing.
Back in the kitchen a pile of plates was waiting for me: I began to scrape the leftovers into the pig bin. There was a scrap of dark meat on one of the plates, beside some half-finished ketchup-covered hash browns. It looked almost raw, but I dipped it into the congealing ketchup and, when Harve’s back was turned, I picked it off the plate and chewed it. It tasted metallic and gristly, but I swallowed it anyhow, and could not have told you why.
A blob of red ketchup dripped from the plate onto the sleeve of my white uniform, forming one perfect diamond.
“Hey, Charlene,” I called, across the kitchen. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” And then I started to whistle.
LOCKS
We owe it to each other to tell stories,
as people simply, not as father and daughter.
I tell it to you for the hundredth time:
“There was a little girl, called Goldilocks,
for her hair was long and golden,
and she was walking in the Wood and she saw—”