July 9, 2006

• Something I saw on Friday and wrote about today. Enjoy!

  Pigs and Cherries
  © The Author, 2006

  A woman dressed solely in black—skin-tight pedal pushers, a curve-hugging tank, and six-inch platforms—boarded the subway with a sack full of cherries. Lipstick pushed up over the natural line of her mouth; smooth crescents of shimmering burgundy threatened to invade her nostrils. The woman’s shiny bob-ed hair matched the cherries with a precision that if not planned, was a welcomed, stylish coincidence. She moved briskly to an available window seat and impatiently, wantonly, tore the plastic sack open with claws the color of a man’s pulse. The woman glanced around at her fellow passengers, making certain she had their attention before she tilted the pale line of her neck back, parted her sex-soaked lips, and dangled a ripe cherry by its stem over her hungry, outstretched tongue.

  A mummified Asian man, watching through the overgrown strands of his eyebrows, stripped her bare with his eyes. A stingy white businessman in a travel-rumpled suit licked his thin lips. Two corn-fed teenage Puerto Rican girls in miniskirts giggled and a young black man listening to a headset stage-whispered, “Damn!”

  The woman bit into the fruit and chewed with vampiric violence. She spat the pit into her palm and eagerly dug into the bag for another cherry. On and on she went, sucking and shucking and spitting and wiping thin strands of dark, sticky juice from her fitful mouth. Her hunger was fevered. The bag was endless.

  The famished seductress was reaching the climax of her consumption, a slight “mmmmm” rolling kittenish in the dark, berry-stained space of her throat, when the train stopped at Addison and opened its doors to a slew of rowdy Cubs fans, freshly sunburnt and stewing in the beer-yellow fizz of afternoon intoxication. Boarding with them was a toffee-colored gambling man wearing a referee’s shirt and an unfortunate Jerry-curl. “Guess ‘em, guess e’m, guess ‘em!” He cried, whipping a cardboard slate, three Pepsi caps, and a fuzzy red ball from behind his back. “Guess which cap the ball is under and win what you bet!”

  The yeasty stench of desire thickened as the attention of the passengers, loosely packed onto the swaying train, was now torn between the prospect of sex and the prospect of money. Swiftly taking note of the conflict and unable to match the seductress’ personal appeal, the gambling man held a fat stack of crisp monies over-head. Thick as three steaks and fresh as a newborn, the hard copper smell of cash cut through the musty reek of rutting.

  “Whatever you put up, you win. Got $50? Make it into $100. Let’s play!” A steely skinhead solidified the victory of greed over lust when he peeled $50 from his wallet.
  “You’re on,’” the skinhead snarled. The seductress looked as if she’d bitten into a rotten cherry; her face soured and bitterly, she spat out the last pit into her palm.

  The gambling man, smelling sweetly of peppermint hard candies and Old Spice, welcomed the crowd that gathered around him as he slipped the ball beneath a Pepsi cap and shuffled the caps around with the flourish of a talent-show magician. In two tries, the skinhead won $150. A round-assed black woman with a gold front tooth put up $50 and lost it. “That was my grocery money!” she cried, stomping her sandaled foot.

  The gambling man consoled her, “Hey lady, you bet, you loose. Try again.” A light-skinned gentleman won $50. He gave his winnings to the grocery-less woman selflessly, suspiciously.

  The betting continued down the length of the train car, the gambling man’s hands getting swifter with each game, creating more losers than winners as he moved to the opposite side of the cab. There, by the doors, a thick-necked teenage girl clung to the slim waist of her window-gazing boyfriend, watching the gambling man with gluttonous interest.

  The thick-necked girl was pink as a pig. Her oink-ish upturned nose sat arrogantly upon her porcine face. From beneath her baseball cap, wet, curly pigtails jut. She wore a loose fitting Cub’s jersey and from kaki shorts, her hammy legs protruded. The boy that this pork-parcel clung to was lanky and cherub-faced. Still growing into his wide blue eyes and apple cheeks, the boy would soon be handsome. But his current boyishness and sweetly obvious virginal status made it possible for him to overlook his girlfriend’s barnyard aesthetic. The gambling man approached them, his gold wristwatch flashing as his hand flitted the caps to and fro.

  “Where’s the ball, where’s the ball, where’s the ball?” The gambling man demanded.
  The girl pointed her hoof at a Pepsi cap.
  “Show you got the cash and I’ll turn the cap over.”
  She raised her snout to the bewildered face of her boyfriend, pleading with him. Blushing, the boy’s shaky hands dipped into his wallet for $50. The gambling man smiled and turned over the cap to reveal the gaping absence of the ball. The crowd of passengers resounded, “Snap! Your girl missed it! Sorry dude!”
  “No fair!” The piglet squealed.
  “Win it back, win it back, win it back,” the gambling man cried, his mercurial hands shifting the yellow plastic caps.
  “It’s that one! It’s that one!” The girl snorted.
  “Show the money, show the money!”
  The boy broke away from his fleshy companion. His wide eyes scanned the crowd and lowered in embarrassment to find all of the passengers looking at him, shouting at him. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it man!”
  “Daniel!” The beast sounded, her beady eyes fixed upon him, silently informing him that his betrayal would have dire consequences.
  The boy swallowed back the acidic rush of bile flooding his mouth. He opened his wallet yet again and plucked his last $100 from its folds. The gambling man lifted the Pepsi cap. Nothing.
  The passengers exploded, “Loose her, man! That bitch don’t treat you right. She ain’t worth it!”
  Color drained from the boy’s cherub face. He looked out the window as the pig burrowed herself into the scrawn of his chest.
  “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry,” she mouthed.

  The boy remained motionless, moneyless, empty. After a time, he let his eyes lift to see the cherry woman rise languidly from her seat as the train approached her stop. Slowly, intentionally, the cherry woman opened her fistful of gleaming red pits and let them fall, ravaged and forlorn, onto the sticky floor of the rocking train.

  • 4:24 pm
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