movie with red plastic cups and a stoned quiet. She�s all jumping up, �Let�s make
pancakes!�
He finds himself on a countertop using blue-button Easter egg eyes to watch the fun.
Whisking and laughing and the music of their childhoods thumping and threatening to rip
through the walls like rice paper. Sitting with a spatula and wanting to cry a handful of
blueberries.
�I have to go.�
Can they even hear him over the stove hissing? Outward and shivering and rememorizing
the streets. He is embarrassed and standing outside when she comes falling out of the
door and sliming along his scent on the ground until she stands in front of his collarbone
crying.
�How come you didn�t tell me where you were going?�
He swallows thickly.
�You got a cigarette?�
Smirks through her pierced eyebrow, in ownership of herself.
�I always have a cigarette.�
She reminds him a little of the deadly warm taste of a cigarette, the long elegant slimness of her.
�I think I�ll call you cigarette girl.�
�Now don�t advertise.�
Through the smoke she looks a lot less like a criminal, a lot less like a thick red noose
around his ankles. They draw in�and he knows that he quit smoking in the hot dry
brightness of the Arizona air, but he needs the red tip of the cigarette to cut through the
confused darkness of home.
�It�s Emma�s birthday.�
�Wasn�t it yesterday?�
�I was so worried when you left that there wouldn�t be anything left of you to come back. I�m glad you didn�t become another person.�
Three drags.
�Lucky you.�