Marla comes over and she slings her buttermilk sallow carcass on the fainting couch in the living room, and she purrs, "Where have you been, Pumpkin?"
Marla in her dark dress with a pattern of slow-motion roses, I look up from my Reader's Digest and the kitchen table and say, isn't Melanoma tonight?
Marla, her dark eyes and chapped Italian leather sofa lips, she smiles through her hair and says "Sometimes you're better than the support groups."
Marla, the dark purple bags under her eyes and the cheekbones poking through her skin, we're starting to look more like twins.
Brother and sister, and the thought makes me gag. How could I compete for Tyler's affection?
She stands to make her way over to me, unsteady in wedgie heels, that smile still on her thin fox's face. She sits herself down at the kitchen table and makes to take my hand before I pull it away. She looks down at the kiss on my hand.
"I missed you," she coos, and all I can think about is how Egyptian royalty married cousins and siblings. I scowl down at her and say, go, get out.
I'm not in the mood for this today.
Marla, she sighs and goes back to the couch to pick up the Styrofoam carton she left there.
"Here," she says, and the smile returns. Her teeth are yellow. "I brought you one of my dead neighbor's meals. You look thin."
Gee, thanks, I say, and roll my eyes. I'm not eating a dead woman's meal.
Marla pouts and stands again, black brows knitted together in anger. "Fine," she spits, "I'll come back when you're not being a suckass twofaced douchebag."
Whatever.
And again, I'm reminded of the way brothers and sisters fight.
Marla leaves, and I have a bad taste and my mouth.
I pull the Styrofoam carton in front of me and open it, and inside is meatloaf and a withered salad and a roll.
Well, whatever. Her neighbor's not getting any deader.