A Spatial Issue by Susan Tepper

We had parted for a span of about six months.  At that time he wore a shaved head. Now he has butter yellow flanks of egg noodles to his shoulders.  A long, dark, empty narrow trench down the middle of his wig.

A place where flies sat after he came in the other night from a hard rain.  Flies perched on the hair sucking water from the trench.  He felt nothing.  I had to tell him, “You have flies drinking from your head.”

Once, I thought I could love him.  I saw us together munching from little cups of mandarin oranges, or sharing raisins while we did the crossword.  It was a dreamy little bit of my own making.  Those are the worst, most desperate kinds. They never foster love but push it away.  

Who could possibly love when the whole scenario was pre-arranged in the mind of the other?  But, I am digressing.

Before him had been a confusing time.  My inability to find love.  Lasting love.  Transient love.  Dog love.  Any love.  Even my dog turned.  Like I said, it was a confusing time.  

I fed my dog high quality dog food, walked it around the square and picked up its leavings.  I never deserted the dog even when the weather was so foul I had to walk it during my bronchitis.  

One day the dog woke up and just hated my guts.  Its rich brown eyes had flattened into dead black olives.  You might say the light had gone out of the dog’s eyes.  

Next thing, I meet a guy with a shaved head (you know who).  Sweet person, all in all.  Very caring.  Invites me to Pizza Express where it took over one hour to provide us with our salad pizza.  Which came with the hole in the middle but no salad.   He didn’t once yell at the wait-person or storm the pizza station where four guys looking very high kept flipping dough in the air despite that he gestured to them and pointed at our table.  

He came back, sat down and just ordered more pints, then more still.  Finally we left without eating our pizza.

We both knew he had me in the palm of his cold from the bottle hand.  Which, once it warmed up, no longer wanted me.

So the dog dies and soon after I bump into him again near the fountain crawling with tourists for London Fashion Week.

After we say our Hallo Hallo, I ask if he will be taking photos at the shows.  

Why’d you think so? he wanted to know.

I was momentarily speechless.  After all.  He did have on that yellow wig and I thought it might be his idea of a cool fashion statement.  We sort of picked up where we had left off though I prefer the clean smoothness of his skull.  And though I’ve yet to tell him, I’ve felt that bone stuck in my windpipe.  

It’s all I can do to look at him consumed by thirsty flies.

On Friday, I swatted at the flies with a pamphlet on his coffee table advertising Fashion Week.  It hit his aviators and sent them sailing.  The flies returned a moment later.  

Finally, I could no longer stand it.  As if a surgeon made a long narrow incision and left the rest to fate.  In our case, it was a spatial issue.  The flies merely took advantage.

In the early morning hours, with no light creeping at the corners of the window blinds, I make my escape.  I slip out of his bed and into my clothes, giving the flies one last shivery glance.  Everything sorted.  Unaware, he snored lightly.  Carrying my shoes, on tiptoe, I shut the door to his flat.

Flies are hanging around his buzzer, as if they know.

Susan Tepper is the author of nine published books of fiction and poetry.  Her most recent titles are CONFESS (poetry published by Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and the road novel WHAT DRIVES MEN (Wilderness House Press, 2019).  Tepper has received many honors and awards.  She’s a native New Yorker.  www.susantepper.com