Free Making Nice by Matt Sumell Page A

on cave walls.”
    “Antelopes and shit.”
    “What?”
    “On the cave walls.”
    “Anyway. The big lie of the television age is that we’re better informed, when really what we’re shown is what we’re told is important, and we think it’s important cause it’s what we’re being shown.”
    “Right,” I said. “How does Carey look?”
    “She looks great.”
    “You’re an asshole,” I said and hung up on her. Then I walked around the block, twice. I noticed things. Cars have wheels. The wood on that house is painted red. That fire hydrant is there in case there is a fire nearby. I haven’t had a girlfriend in two years. Trees.
    On Biltmore there was a sprinkler sprinkling an arc of water onto the street and a squirrel on a birch branch. It jumped to a pine branch. It ran up the branch, down the trunk, out another branch, and jumped to a split-log fence post. It ran along the fence, then down the fence, then jumped to the ground. It ran around a little, then stopped and stood on its back legs, looked around. It ran and stopped and looked, ran and stopped and looked. Ran some more and stopped some more. Looked some more. Ran into the street and almost got run over by a red car. The driver didn’t even slow down. My tooth started to throb. I walked to a bar.
    There was a paper sign in the window hanging from a piece of string, swaying and spinning, rocking back and forth in ceiling-fan air, advertising nothing in particular, just: LUCKY DAY . I liked it. I went inside and had a few drinks and then a few more and then spotted a girl down the bar to my right. She had pale skin and pink ears that she tucked her black hair behind, wore white on her eyelids like in the fifties. Each time I looked at her my chest hurt in new and exciting ways. I kept drinking and looking and considering approaches:
    Stare at her. Keep staring at her until she notices. Wave.
    Write her a three-napkin love letter. Begin: Dear Lady, I really like your hairdo, and your makeup is great. Then use words that show you are nice.
    Wait by the ladies’ room. When she walks by, stop her and say, “Sorry buddy, that’s the women’s bathroom.” She will feel less confident.
    Wait by the ladies’ room. Follow her in. Kiss her with force and passion. Tell her her lips taste delicious and pin her against the wall. Take her clothes off and pinch her nipples, lick her nipples, suck one like it’s a lemonade cigar. Drop to your knees and hike her right leg onto your shoulder. Ask, “That a birthmark?” “It’s a mole.” “Oh.” Kiss her pussy, lick her pussy, finger fuck it like you’re mad at it, like it’s on the other side of the room and you have to tell it a secret, your index finger curling c’mere c’mere c’mere. Stop, ask her name, how do you spell that? Spell it with your tongue till she comes. Take your dick out, jerk it off a little, make a noise like an injured cow, stand up and fuck her. Get her pregnant with twin retards, pull your pants up and run out. Walk back in and tell her you might love her but probably not, wash your hands with soap, check your hair and your teeth, run back out. Go to 7-Eleven and buy a snack.
    Instead, I got very drunk and don’t remember speaking to anyone that night, or leaving, and I woke up on my kitchen floor next to an unopened box of fish sticks. My tooth was ringing. I stood up and tongued it. It kept ringing. I moved to the bathroom and picked up a cap-less tube of the stuff with fluoride and the sonic toothbrush my mother had given me for Christmas a few years before. Brushing didn’t help. Mouthwash didn’t help. Floss made me bleed, and didn’t help. I spat in the sink and the brown-red blood on porcelain was roughly in the shape of South America. I turned on the faucet and watched it spin down and away. I took a piss and flushed, watched it spin down and away. I ate aspirins and called the dentist, said it was an emergency, and they said I could come in the following morning at