Post Block Party (from the course 'Fiction Writing II', Fall 2008)

Awake: the left side of his head sticking to the filthy table top. Beer and sweat and drool taper down his shirt like a Pollack painting. The sun comes through the blinds, hurts his eyes. Awake and still drunk. The living room smells like stale smoke, bits of glass bottles scattered everywhere as though a car wreck had just taken place in the center of the apartment’s squalor.
He hears the sound of wind chimes from somewhere outside. Wipes crumbs from his hair, unglues himself from the stiff back of the chair, peels off his sweat-stiff socks, his shirt, his grimy slacks. He stands, one hand on the tabletop, fingers splayed for support. A naked man, black chest hair curling like bits of paper in a fire.
He knows that she is outside, chain smoking on the stoop. Her pastel skirt hitched up above her knees like a frosted cupcake. She is probably fanning herself with a crumpled magazine, the smoke from her cigarettes blowing back around her head like a halo.
He hopes that this ring of mystique, this fog around her frosted, bleached hair, will distract men walking by with their moist underarms and shiny leather shoes. He hopes that the grandmothers, laboring to push stroller up the baking street will be distracted by her impossibly slender and smooth legs.
He hopes that the heat of the day will not give away what he has done in the heat of the inebriated night.
She hopes that her sunglasses, dark as the shimmering, scorching street, will hide her black eye.