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Wild Braided Flyer
186341
"Well in college I was a Sociology major," you say. "And sculpture minor, if you'll believe it."
"Mmm?" Polyphema takes another forkful of brain.
"Yeah. My friend Anika kind of forced me into it. And then there of course was my older sister, majoring in Neuro and doing it effortlessly while I'm covered in clay every night. I, um."
Polyphema has stretched her leg out to rest it between yours. She must have taken her heels off at some point. You feel her toe rubbing the top of your shoe.
"Sculpture?" she says. "Very artistic, Zack."
"Yeah." You clear your throat. "By the time I graduated I was focusing almost as much on my minor as on my major. By the time I graduated I had no idea what I wanted to do. I got a job in a gallery for a while, and that was enough for an apartment in Brooklyn, but it closed down after a while."
"That's so sad." Polyphema's foot is moving up your leg. She rests it on your shin. It's very warm. "A gallery closing is like an old genius, passing away. Even if the work survives, there's something we all lose. Was it the war?"
"The war, the economy." You barely notice your food has arrived. Polyphema doesn't stop staring at you as she takes her next bite. She leaves the fork in her mouth and sucks on it for a few seconds. "Um. Then I wandered for a while. I came into some money from my grandma passing away and my sister wanted me to get out of my funk, so I went out west with some friends. We sort of roadtripped out to the west coast. There was a thing in Utah where I accidentally kicked a priest."
"Retsina?" asks Polyphema.
"What?" Her foot is absent.
"Wine?"
"Oh, sure."
Polyphema pours you a glass. "Go on," she says, settling back.
"Anyway I ended up in Anchorage. And there was this moose. Have you ever seen a moose?"
"Only in pictures," says Polyphema.
"Well let me tell you: pictures don't capture how huge moose are. They're really just gigantic. We were driving and it was right in the middle of the road, and my friend Alan leans on the horn, but, uh."
Her foot's back. It traces along the inside of your calf. You catch a sliver of wine-red tongue licking the bottom of her fork clean.
"But it's not moving." You take a sip of Retsina. Polyphema takes a significantly more substantial one. "It just looks at us and goes like: Woooooon."
You break out your five star moose impersonation as Polyphema puts down her glass. She laughs so hard some of the wine goes up her nose. "Oh, god." She covers her mouth.
"And Gary, who is big into this thing parkour, says: I'm going to ride the moose."
"No."
"He gets out, and he needs to stand on top of the car, this is how big that moose is." Polyphema has recovered. Her foot moves very slowly up and down your leg. You haven't touched your quail. The banana is lying next to it.
"And he leaps," you say, ignoring your boner, "and his arms are around this thing's neck, this huge thing, and you should never ever try this, this thing is as big as a minivan on stilts and its neck is huge and it has huge horns, and it bolts. Gary's holding on for dear life, and we're like, shit, oops, I shouldn't say that in here, and Alan floors it, and we're chasing this panicking moose down the highway with Gary on top of it, screaming his head off."
"How did you save him?" Polyphema's foot is right on top of your knee, her toes tapered and graceful against your thigh. You can almost see it under the table.
Thank God you have the napkin in your lap.
"We didn't. We were like, you have to jump! You need to jump on the car! Trying to pull up level to this giant moose, and he's going no no no no tell my mom I loved her and then all of a sudden the moose just stops. In its tracks. Bolt upright and entirely still. And Gary falls off of it like a rag doll, and just curls up on the ground. And the moose just looks at him, I swear, and goes Wooooooon."
Polyphema cracks up again. The foot drops.
"And then it's gone. Into the forest."
"Can I just say," says Polyphema, "that even if I wasn't in danger of getting it permanently stuck up my nose, it is very hard to seductively eat brains."
1]] Laugh.
2]] Well you managed it.
3]] Were you even listening?
4]] Pass the Retsina.
5]] Tell another story.
6]] Your turn. Tell me a story about the Other Side.
7]] Oh, look! The banana's here.
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