By Chris Callard
“I’ve never believed that story,” Louise said. “Why bring it up?”
We were at the kitchen table. I was relating that, as a summer job in my 20s, I’d played the bearded lady in a carnival sideshow, a story I sometimes told after a second glass of wine when conversation lagged. To me it was a running gag, presented with an arched eyebrow, hoping it would tickle her. Tonight she was not amused. She hadn’t been amused for months. Repetition, admittedly, was not charming. But sometimes it was tough to find new material.
“Did they even have sideshows 20 years ago? You’re just lying.” She went and splashed her drink in the sink.
I stared sadly at my drink, then glanced around the kitchen. It was mostly yellow, with orange curtains covering the windows. The refrigerator was studded with a forest of magnets, varied images. Vacations, gifts, crap. Just magnets that held no photos or anything else in place.
She looked at the orange curtains. “Such a schmuck.”
I surveyed the profile of her nose; straight and long with dried skin at the base of the nostrils.
“I don’t know why I make you so angry,” I said.
She turned, studied my face, ears, chest, legs. “I’m taking my walk.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She started to say one thing but shifted gears. “You don’t need to.”
“I want to. Let me get my shoes.”
We lived in a large condominium complex and often walked its perimeter, along the road that fed the carports and parking spaces and garages. She was waiting, barely, outside in the chilly air. The bottom of my right foot itched terribly. I stamped it to try and stop the tingling.
“What are you doing?” Louise asked.
“My arch itches. The walk’ll help.”
We made two circles of the place at a pretty good pace without conversation. I was sweating to keep up, watching the crows that seemed to be following us, flying from tree to tree.
Back inside, Louise put a Lean Cuisine in the microwave while I poured another glass of wine and found an Audie Murphy western from the 1960s on cable.
Carrying the lasagna, she passed the living room, then stopped to say “good night” while Audie clomped along a wooden sidewalk.
“Are you really watching this?” she asked, disappointed.
I nodded like a bobble-head. She might’ve thought I was saying yes, but I was simply moving my head. “This stuff is classic.”
She left. I poured another glass from the bottle on the TV tray. It hit me out of the blue that the itch in my foot had stopped some time ago. I removed both shoes and socks, lifted and laid my right leg over my left, and grasped the foot. Held onto it, in fact, for dear life.
* * *
Chris Callard lives in Long Beach, CA, and has never blocked his number. Wouldn’t, in fact, even know how to. His poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Cadence Collective, One Sentence Poems. His short fiction has been published in Gemini Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, A Story in 100 Words, and ZZyZxWriterZ. He has had work nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions.