Free Creamy Bullets by Kevin Sampsell Page B

vacuum cleaner is leaning in the corner but the carpet still looks dirty. We drink and she tells me her name is Brenda.
    She sits on the couch and opens a photo album in her lap. “Come look at this picture over here,” she tells me. I sit beside her and see a photograph of her standing in front of a familiar building.
    “That’s what the outside of this place looked like ten years ago,” she says. “It’s a nicer shade of blue and the shrubs look a good dose livelier.” She puts the heavy album on my legs and then straightens her posture, holding her breasts up for a second. “It’s funny how ten years can wear shit down.”
    In the photo, Brenda looks almost like a teen-ager; 20 pounds lighter, skin darker, her back straight as a board. On the opposite page there is a photo, taken more recently it looks like, of her holding a snake.
    “How old are you?” I ask.
    “I’ll be 40 next year,” is her answer. “Look some more if you want.”
    I turn a few pages, seeing photos of her at beaches, at parties, at formal gatherings, with relatives. There was one that showed a white guy with a big mustache kissing her neck from behind and pushing up on her breasts with his hands. It embarrasses me for some reason, arouses me maybe.
    An hour later, a tall young girl comes out of one of the bedrooms. She looks part Hispanic and has a word or something tattooed on the side of her neck. She makes a deep sound in her gut as she sits down in the chair I sat in earlier.
    “What kind of shit-juice is that?” she asks right off the bat, indicating my wine glass.
    “Some kind of red wine,” I say, trying to sound friendly but tough.
    She stares at it with a grimace, looks in the kitchen at Brenda, who is looking for more wine, then looks at my shoes. “I don’t drink,” she says. “I got a job.”
    I start to lean forward for my glass, but catch myself and pretend to wipe dust off the table instead. “Where do you work?”
    “Safeway,” she says, in a tone of voice suggesting I should already know. “I take groceries out to your car.”
    “Doesn’t it get boring?”
    “I do lots of shit there. It’s cool. We play the radio loud at nights when we’re stockin’ the shelves.”
    It makes me feel intrusive, but I ask her anyway: “Do you live here?” I drink the last drops of my wine and Brenda comes up behind me with another bottle.
    “I’m just staying for a little longer,” she says. “M makes me feel safe.”
    “M?”
    “That’s what she calls me,” Brenda explains.
    “What do you mean by safe?”
    The girl looks at the clock and yawns before answering. “A couple of weeks ago this big fat guy raped me in the back of a van after I took his groceries out. He was a guy I remember because he tried to pick up on one of my friends the week before at a party. I didn’t want to go to the police, so I came to M. She can fix guys without even touching them.”
    I don’t know what to say. Sometimes I get the feeling that sympathy is useless. I start to feel uncomfortable and wonder if my wife is home from work yet, if she is wondering where I am.
    “I want romance,” the girl says, somewhat out of the blue. “Guys don’t seem to understand the general idea of being decent. I think they can be decent without waving a gun around, don’t you?”
    “Nice guys don’t feel exciting to some women,” I concede. “We have to capture your attention with bravado and physical violence.”
    Brenda pours more wine in my glass and hers, then shakes her head. “That’s why magic is on our side. That’s why feminine power is everywhere. Maybe invisible to some, but everywhere—like some think God is.”
    “Men are forgettable; they don’t linger,” says the young girl. I notice that her tattoo says: Hybrid or maybe Heartbreak . The letters are written in a leaning, Victorian-style cursive.
    Brenda intervenes on the subject: “I’d like to see what men would do if the tables were turned, if we were in the