Free Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty by Diane Williams

BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND 6 AM
    Women were not a major ingredient in my thinking at that time.
    She was blonde, very small, and if I remember right she had big breasts. Uh, Arthur was sleeping on a couch in the living room so I can imagine there was traipsing going on. Mother had her bedroom next to the kitchen. The girl had to go through the apartment in order to get to the bathroom.
    I spent the night on the stairs, not dozing off.
    She was a bankrupt.
    As for me, I could have put more into this. Mother wants her sons to get ahead.
    It must have been very soon after that that Mother said, “ Ohhhh, Ka-a-a-a-a-y! ”

    We loved Kay better than we loved our mother. But by glancing back, as I approach middle age, the scale of things quite slowly, calmly, becomes a peep-show.
    And everybody had to share. And there was a sliding glass door into the breakfast nook—so there was a curtain over it.
    I met with some success. I took a job as a chemical mix-man—to store, order, and prepare wet and dry chemicals.
    O Kay!
    I’m only warming up. Most of my work is routine labor. There’s an element of physical danger. It is not easy to have this job. I’m not the outdoors type.
    Today I got the temperature level too high in the chemical levels in the glass plate processing room and had to get buckets of ice.
    Sometimes I’m over a barrel—my wife and I agree.
    To get anywhere in my life at this time!—rather, to get anywhere near my wife at this time!—that can take days. I have to go through the kitchen, the laundry—I have to go through hell! Not entirely true.
    I ate by myself.
    I went to our bedroom with a glass of water for her in the hopes of hearing her cheery cry.
    She’s so warm—she’s kind and she’ll likely say, “Hi!”
    Her hands were folded behind her head. She whispered, modestly.
    This will pep me up.
    From all outward appearances, there was substantial risk for lack of concentration, overenthusiastic response, unrealistic desires, emotional craving, weak discipline, pettiness, a tendency to show off, and temporary stops to take a breath.

IF TOLD CORRECTLY IT WILL CENTER ON ME
    Jack Lam sat me on the bed. He didn’t sit me—first he had to park the car.
    Then Jack Lam sat briefly himself, put his chin down, frowned. I acted as if I was biting the top of his head—setting my teeth on, not into him—not to mention the fact that I was also swallowing darker areas.
    Over the next seven years that I kept this project close in mind, I came to understand that my devices belonged to a lost age.
    I took measures.
    Jack had lost his vigor. I was unwell.

    My luggage was packed. I’d be solitary when I arrived in Tarrytown. Stella Arpiarian still had The Curio Shop. Nikos had gone back to Greece.
    I like Jimmy here. I have to face Marlene.
    I heard the dog next door making a good imitation of what my asthma attacks sound like. Everyone is sounding like me!
    Don’t forget me!

PEDESTAL
    He had chafing and I’m not having luck with anything I’m using. We had agreed to meet where they know me. The server put drinks down.
    “Hey!” he said. “I happen to have a chicken. Why don’t you come over?”
    I would say that to a friend, and it would be true!
    My anus is now irritated. My vagina’s very delicate. My stomach hurts.
    His sconces were shaded in a red tartan plaid and there were side-views of sailing boats in frames.
    I was getting to see the hair cracks in his skin that suggest stone or concrete as it hardens.

    Back out on Ninety-first Street, a man and a woman were walking their dog. The woman had turnip-colored hair. The man wore a felt hat and he motioned to me. They could have both been exhausted and penniless. No! As it turned out they were assembled there to talk me out of that. Let me think about this further. At a stand, I bought a few strands of daisies. Every bone in one of these blossoms is mended.

DEATH BED
    “Now, say good-bye to your mother,” Ruth Price says, “before you