Writer. Poet. Apparition.
Lonelihood

Lonelihood

She had disco in her hips and wants to dance. Tells me her name is Sheila, but wishes it were Flannery. Naturally, I assume she’s a writer. “No, I sell shit on eBay for people,” she says.

Two Mojitos later, she tells me that back at her place, she has a Cheeto that looks like Marlon Brando.

Streetcar Brando or Godfather Brando?” I ask.

“More like Superman: The Movie Brando,” she says.

“Let’s go.”

We leave together hoping that two people are half as lonely as one.

***

Sheila takes me home in a Hummer she’s selling for some tweaker who’s facing serious jail time. The night is dark and the streets are empty. We pull into her garage, and I hear this awful metallic scraping sound.

“This thing’s a bitch to park,” she says.

I want to ask if she’s ever been in love, but I ask if her insurance is paid up instead.

***

In her living room, Cheeto Brando glows orange under a small glass dome. She’s asking eight hundred dollars for it.

“People really collect Cheetos?”I ask.

“Oh yeah, it’s a whole thing,” she says.

Her entire house is an eclectic menagerie of stuff she sells for people on eBay. Everything has a price tag. Basquiat paintings with sketchy provenance, a copy (original?) of Kurt Cobain’s death certificate. A first edition of The Bell Jar. She hands it to me. There’s an inscription inside: For Hilda + Vicky with lots of love from Sylvia January 1, 1961.

I trace my finger lightly over the handwriting and lose sense of where I’m at.

***

“Do you want to sit down?” Sheila asks.

The couch has a plastic slipcover. She kisses me. Starts to unbutton her sweater.

“Do you mind if I take this off? I’m shipping it to a woman in Schenectady tomorrow.”

***

She leads me to her bedroom. In the dim light, there’s a set of drums she’s selling for her cousin and a bare mattress on the floor. That’s it. There’s no room for anything else, except for the moonlight, and two thin lengths of loneliness.

First appeared in New Flash Fiction Review


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