Three Secrets

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Did I ever tell you it's always the cheap suits that make me the most remitted? I will find myself spending a weekend in meetings full of attractive associates, all adorned in fine-fitting forms of business-appropriate perfection. Meanwhile, I sit fidgeting, wishing I'd spent more money on shoes and had better fitting pants, wishing they could see the cuffs of my shirt outside of the sleeves of my jacket. I tremble, my stomach spins into stabs of self-doubt and I want out and away. I slip privately into a crisp fall afternoon where the sharp chill mandates another body to cuddle and keep warm. I daydream about overcast skies and low temperatures while blabbering bits of well-dress information spill over me. I dream of leaving to bowl alone or watch a movie, pretending that I listen, sitting fully erect with a shotty pride in what I am wearing, in who I am. I have to. They have all the other advantages.

*

Did I ever tell you once, stepping onto the porch to grab the chunky Sunday edition of the morning paper, I found a murdered tabby cat hanging limp from my brass door handle? The cat's wispy white fur matted against its rust-stained skin in places, and the dangling paws wobbled hollow in the breeze. The horror and general shock of the moment stunted the easy morning, and the scene lingered, twisting in me. My eyes welled and reddened with the threat of tears for a tardy and desperate catharsis, but I remembered I didn't have a cat. The murdered tabby simply wasn't mine. I remembered I had never had a cat at that house. Nor a dog. And the morning started moving again.

*

Did I ever tell you I buried a sack of Brazilian voodoo bones in the backyard? The pearl inlay was fake, but the magic seeped into the soil somehow. On that day the grass blurred and hissed, and the rose bush your aunt loved so much withered and bloomed in loop for a full week after. I buried the bones because I was afraid, after stealing them, that the proper owners would want them back, find me with them, and shrink my skull, leaving it as a morbid souvenir for brave tourists. Somehow I thought the ground might hide the bones like it does corpses. But these were Brazilian voodoo bones, and those tricky spirits die hard in this soulless American soil.

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