What could possibly happen at the grocery store?
“Hey I got you this.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the can opener. Sonya took the can opener and laughed. “Of course. Thank you. It is so fancy looking.” “Yeah,” he chuckled lightly. “I can show you how to use it.” “I know how to use it, stupid.” She laughed again and took it to the kitchen.
APPLIANCES BY JACKSON REZEN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 126
Sonya hammered a kitchen knife into the can of garbanzo beans.
“What? Why?” Kevin took a step back.
“It works,” she said. Her Siberian upbringing leaked out of her in a thick accent which sounded like a small man had wrestled her tongue into submission.
“Yeah, but Jesus. Why don’t you have a can opener?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t open cans much.”
A guttural groan came from the kitchen floor. Kevin looked down at a small pug with a flat face staring back at him, death rattling away as it held on to an evolutionarily unfit life.
“Your dog is dying,” Kevin said.
“No, silly. That’s just the way they are. Luna is such a pretty lady, isn’t she.” Sonya was talking to the dog whose tongue flopped out at the sound of her name. Kevin was sure he could see the rear curvature of its eyeballs.
It scurried away, its long nails clicking on the wood floor, and made its bed in the other room. The apartment was small enough that the dog’s gurgling was loud and clear from pretty much anywhere.
Kevin pondered how she lived like this. A tiny apartment in an expensive part of town, haunted by a troll.
Eating the home-made falafel, Kevin convinced himself that the extra aluminum shavings in the garbanzo beans would be a dietary supplement.
Sonya. had a ring of white sauce on her mouth and a bigger splotch on her cheek
“You have some sauce.” Kevin pointed to his face to indicate where. Sonya wiped at the wrong side. “No, the other side.” She wiped above it. “Here.” Kevin reached out and wiped the spot off.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
Being the second date he stood back in conversation and let her lead. Rule one in his dating handbook was “let them do the work”. It saved him the trouble of rejection which he was sure he couldn’t handle.
They had met on a dating app, the ultimate scapegoat.
She spent the night twirling her food and talking about the glories of the motherland. Up until she moved to America, the extent of western culture she had absorbed was the KFC in her home town that the local teens would hook up behind. True romance.
She bounced between communist politics and her pro-active capitalist mother who was probably on a list in a government binder somewhere.
She pointed out the collections of brand-name handbags and coats that she had lying around her apartment. She was going to school for fashion design and Kevin assumed these were references for projects. She corrected him and explained she was shipping them back to her parents in Siberia for them to sell since they could get around tax laws. Kevin was sure this was illegal.
By the end of the night, he realized that he hadn’t actually divulged more than the name of his room-mate and that he served tables at a restaurant in the Village.
He gave her a hug (he thought she might have gone in for a kiss but he wasn’t self-aware enough at the time to realize it) and walked out.
He let out a slight cough as he pushed the lobby door open and tasted the faintest hint of blood.