Writing Exercise 5 (Beloved)

Cream and Sugar

*( )= italics, sometimes they don't make it through pasting

"Sugar, hon?"

"No." (Not since..).

"Cream?"

"No. Thanks."

Chuck could not drink creamed coffee since the cream kernelled. Chuck despised this. Despised not knowing what to despise, the source of thwart or its efficacy---(Give in and drink, the inaccessible, otherwise, cache it holds--oh---not just the…that, that---not just that---Christmases! carafes of cream and crystal cups of sugar on white clothed tables----wet, wet, wet gray blotches encompassed by ruby fingernails)---No. No. (but before that too: brunch! the cups at brunches---give in and drink to them. )

The waitress was nice; Scandanavian: big, blonde ribbons hanging down behind her ears, pins slid in, tightening hair to the sides of her head. Her walk was making its way to waddle, the wide hips of a graduated mother, kids out of the house, caring less for tips than company. She was nice. She was the one who served them the night when the rain fell invisibly and brought whole trees to crash across the highways and off-ramps---towering white spruce, birches bent like Frost's hair-drying girls---exits 6 and 7 were blocked. They came here to drink coffee and wait out the storm. They sat by the fireplace in the cracked leather chairs and watched the fire trucks trudge silently by, fish shimmering through the tons; the elastic pink lights seeping over the profiles of the couple facing each other in front of the window; the pink lights instantly stripped away, dragging off the faces and across the condensation on the window.

Renea and Rex, stepping outside to smoke, listening to the chain saws, the smell of burnt rubber and gasoline twining with pine, the rain gorging air until it fattened to gray sleet that withered to flakes and powdered the slush. The irretrievable pride of watching his friends return, laughing, through the heavy oak door, jangling the bell fastened to the hanging plant hook that was still there. They all fell asleep, all of them and actually, with teas in hand until awoken by this waitress when she was locking up. Everything was blacked out driving home, the cities shut-off. They sat and drank peppermint paddies in the dark and the lights didn't come back on for two weeks.

Two kids with wide, black pant-legs were sweeping by outside, silver studs glinting everywhere from their shoulders up; dragging leaves and feet. When they got past the clean-cut oak stump and began crossing the street, Chuck could see the headphone wire V-ed between them. They each had an ear. A school bus filed by. He was early for a meeting with a customer at Samsinov's. He was in his second month as a salesman for a metal-fab shop, a small family owned enterprise out of Tremont, the Cremptons. Not his first choice, nor his second.( Rut. Rut. And here again. Happened upon.) But they were good people. The( thrashing song, )he thought, was similar to what he assumed the two boys who just walked by were probably listening to---(over and over and over, for three days, the thrashing song, )while the (smell )thickened, the (cream kernelled,) the texture of the ceiling loosened and dusted( the blue feet ). It wasn't the music, wasn't the games, not even the callous that swelled and washed away the fingerprints on his thumbs. The (black cord, ) wrapped once about the ankle, the (white granules )fallen from the ceiling. (The blue feet. The blue ) and (yellow )feet.

The waitress never stopped. She folded hand towels, replenished the straw bucket, sorted the silverware, carried dripping racks of it out the kitchen doors. The smell had to be stuck in her; a mixture a thousand years in the making, precise in its threads, olfactory dread-locks, never to be forgotten, and many, many knew it, but how many smells does one miss, how many smells live with nothing attached to them? Her eyes had less purple in their cups than the other waitresses working, less, possibly, than any other waitress working anywhere that day. She didn't know what she did and did not serve, the tentacles that crawled out the buckets that collected the secretions of utters, the infinity of spikes that little crystals wielded in their prismatic multiplicity.( Today, I am to sell…yes, a contract for the 4"x3.2" conductors, from June of this year through June of 2016. Today. )

He was delighted at her return. Simple. Norwegian? Tall.

"Thinkin' about pie?"

"Whadda ya got?"

"Pecanfruitsofforestcranberry (shaking her head no) chocolate, like mousse pie actually---kid messed it up but reallygood---and apple."

"Mousse pie?"

"Ya, you know, like what they serve in martini glasses."

"What's the crust made out of?"

"Crust. I'm gonna get ya' slice of that one. Trust me."

He needed to go. He didn't really want pie. He wanted something sweet that wasn't so rotten on the other side;( but not in a cup, not sitting there, all stupid looking, swirling, the cold handle, the blue feet---thick, thick, thick----on the walls, crawling up them, shaving the sealing, little flakes, around the black cord around the ankle, in the black hairs on the ankle like fat lice---follicle soil---soil soil soil…)The industry plate hit the lacquered table.

"Give it a whirl."

"I will."

"Have you been in here before?"

"A while ago."

"In the storm? With that pretty girl? And that otha' fella? Little shaggy, hair growing outta…"

"Yeah, yeah. That's us."

"Rubber and pine. Best Christmas I ever had. No phones. No TV. No videogames. Just me and my boys. That's rare for eighteen year olds. Being at home with their mothers. Weird blessing, weird ways. They're working now. You're probably the same age as them….maybe a little older."

"How long 's it tyake to get to Samsinov's from here?"

"Ooohhh…that pie's gonna taste worst soon, then, huh?---seven minutes. You want your check?"

"Sure."

"Nine-sixty-five."