Check Writing #4

Check

She's at a yellow table. Yellow. Inevitably. It's four o'clock. The time of rolling out carpets for storms. Kansas. Yes. Kansas. Wichita. The brown and yellow canopied gyro shop. She asks for her sauce on the side, the cucumber sauce, because she knows I'll take the other rather than pay the quarter for an extra cup. She's ready for me. The gyro will be cold. The roll soggy. She doesn't know the check finally came. This check. Right here in my hands. This check. I told her it was coming. I've been telling her for a long time.

She's not even out of her running clothes; shirt still tied around her waist, grey tang top--- tight---yellow too, like the beige table. A tress of hair swooped and static across her face reaching just below her lip. Nicoli comes to take her order, striding over to with his little white towel, thin and creased. Black mustache. Yellowed. He's talking with her---I know he is---talking to her long time, how he'll say it---long time. A glass...ah..(blushing) vino (laughing) wine, wine on house? A glass of wine on the house. Long time.

I can see her switch the leg she crosses over the other, the shadows, or sweat, the sweat blackening her dryer faded spandex up her thighs---laughing, laughing. Down into herself. Looking at her wrist. Laughing. The tress of hair unlooses from the electricity of her lip---swung back---laughing--- and lingers in the air a little when she levels her chin again. A little foolishly. Girlish.

The sun has moved off of her. She's pale. The window pane is silhouetted on the blood-wood wall. Plywood. Swirls. Dark and rippling. It's the heat. Nicoli's wiping the bar. There's a woman slopped over herself at the far end of the bar. The sun light caroms off the blood-wood and blondes her thin mustache. Her eyes are droopy. She wears thick blue corduroys. Why? Yes. Why? That's what she wears and they are rolled, light blue cuffs at the bottom climbing up her faded black socks. White, Velcro shoes. She lifts her empty high ball and wavers it, sloppily, slowly. The floating glass in a limp hand.

She's disgusted by this. She checks her watch. I'm supposed to be there. I'm on my way. She doesn't know I have the check. She's ready to sigh at me. Ready to push out her lower lip and blow the tress of hair out of her face. A little foolishly. Girlish. Her sweat has dried and she's cold. She's up, gazing at her own lower body before unknotting the North Face around her waist. Sciatica. The seam in her tank-top, down her ribs, following it to where all is. Skin. A few light hairs stand. A tiny mole, barely visible as its pushed into the valley of her spine while she twists. Nicoli watches her. I watch her. I punch Nicoli. I will walk some more and walk in happy, waving my check, waving my check.

The cook pushes through the rodeo door from the kitchen. He's fat. Perhaps he's diabetic. He's fat. He lights a cigarette. Comedians look like him, stubby, sauce dappled fingers, a broken nail, what's left, half of it, black. He bites it off. Spits it at Nicoli. Nicoli the pansy he says: punta the cook says, viciously, sternly---punta. I like the cook and buy him a drink. He says: I take care you--- friend? Buena---punta----Nico…

We get along just fine. He's watching her stretch, her right arm reaching into the sunlight, the expanding square that swells on its way to the wall---wooompf---suffuses. Lake. Her arms in the lake. The light blue veins of her wrist that revolves beneath her unmoving watch band. She checks it again. She finishes putting her tight North Face fleece on, stretching through it. Navel. The woman's glass is still in the air. She's out. One Velcro shoe dangling. Light blue cuff. Her illumed leg. The black stubble. One last, nasty, long drag by the greasy cook. Nicoli folding his towel. Punta.

She's going to leave. She's going to leave. I will not see her. She will not walk this way. I am coming from somewhere else. I am coming from where men with money come from. From….from….her best friend's house. I practice the coy smirk. The eager secret. My check is rumpled and wet in my hand. I let it alone in my pocket so the ink doesn't run. She's getting her water filled. Laughing again. Guzzling it down. Its dripping out the sides of her mouth. Nicoli stands by with the glass pitcher like a manikin. She chugs down her third glass and stands up, pulled up by the gulp of the small lump of her esophagus. She's taller than Nicoli---face to face with him---vino? the house---for you---punta.

I burst in. Casually. It is my steps that burst, burst puntas, tremble the rodeo door to the kitchen. Creak. Creak. It’s a saloon now. The woman is shook awake. Her glass falls. High ball. Heavy. It doesn't shatter. It lands and then cracks. Like a flower. Like the earth. Yum. The pitcher falls. There's glass everywhere. Puddles. Wedges of lemons shriveled by the intense sun yellow on the floor. Dimmed lemons and spectral glass shards. Beach. My shoes are off. Bruce Willis Die Hard. The first.

The cook comes out with a plate of steamed calamari, dazzling tentacles, wreathing four oysters, a nipple of Tabasco sauce on each one---wet lemons, kept in the dark, shining like they wanted to. She has sat back down. Her fleece is off. She's hot. The water has wet her tang top. A rivulet is yet dried. Remnants of an estuary on her sternum. My fingers are moving through her sweaty hair. Moist. Moist. Sticky I smell her armpits and slip my hand in the wet pits. I kiss her forehead. The cook is standing beside the table, bowing, on one knee on the broken glass holding out two steaming plates. The one with oysters and a paella. Fat prawns. Archipelagoes of prawns.

I've slid the shoulders down on her tank top. She's feeding me calamari. Moaning. Ice and glass crunch beneath my feet. The cook walks past the window like a cloud. I'm eating whole prawns and spitting the shells ten feet at Nicoli, sweeping up glass with a little pail and hand broom while her tongue is hard, stuck out, tracing the bones right above my ribs. There's a little blood---vermillion on her shins. She's on her knees. Hey---

Hey---The cook. You need?…who?...who? Eyes widening. Anxious. Sweaty. Fat. The restaurant is empty. You need job? My guy ….he go.