muriel makes a mistake
a restaurant hostess with a violent side tries to get to the club on time (short fiction)
Muriel wedged her thumbnail under the loose acrylic on her pinky and waited for the men at table twelve to leave. Three finance types were having the time of their lives over steak frites and economic small talk in a sea of empty tables. She shifted from stiletto to stiletto behind the hostess stand and plotted the trilogy of their murders: The Small Guy had a narrow throat that would clog easily with the help of a wadded-up bread roll. The Big Guy would take too long to dismember, so she’d pour him a tall glass of drain cleaner with a wedge of lime. The Loud Guy could use a vodka shower, topped with a kiss from their table's tea candle; his hair plugs looked especially flammable. She tucked these thoughts away neatly and pulled harder on her acrylic until the cosmetic glue broke with an unholy pop, taking a flimsy piece of nail off with it.
Saturday night glistened through the front windows of La Blah, the trendy French-American spot where her roommate, Darcy, had gotten her a hosting gig. Darcy, whose parents mailed her rent check to landlord on the 31st like clockwork, hosted mainly to find elbows to rub and a downtown scene to be a part of. Little by little, Muriel had gotten in the habit of replacing Darcy’s name with her own on the whiteboard shift calendar every so often and lining her pockets with wages meant for her friend. After Darcy figured out why her hours were disappearing, she had yelled at Muriel about human decency in their kitchen, pink in the face and sloshing wine out of her glass onto their chipped laminate counter. In that moment, Muriel had decided she never really liked this person, anyway.
Across the room, The Loud Guy was hiccuping his way through some vague point about the stock market, tracing peaks and valleys in the air with a serrated knife. His cheeks were flushed as he tried to find a firm landing. “Market volatility in a political climate like ours is to be expected, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be feared, you know?”
The Big Guy next to him nodded and chewed the toothpick he’d grabbed from the tiny bowl by the entrance three hours ago. He jutted out his square chin, bored. Muriel wondered how long it had been since the kitchen had sharpened their knives.
“Whatever, not like you’re pressed, right?” said The Loud Guy. “Heard that incentive package you got was nuts.”
“Fucking stacked,” confirmed The Big Guy. He bumped a half-empty glass of water with a stray elbow, and The Small Guy caught it cat-like with both hands.
“Careful, man,” said The Small Guy, nodding his head towards Benji, their server and Muriel’s only work friend. Benji hovered by the bar station dead-eyed, his arms crossed over his serving tray in a neat X. “That guy already hates us. Look at him, looking all sad and shit. Old Yeller motherfucker.” He slipped the straw out of The Big Guy’s glass and held it between his teeth like a dog with a bone. The Loud Guy howled with laughter.
Muriel wanted nothing more than for her and Benji to crack their knuckles, muscle up to the table, and flip it over in one clean, cruel motion. She wanted to butter these men’s faces like bread rolls while Benji pinned them down, so their smooth MedSpa foreheads could break out in angry red splotches.
She shook her head at Benji from across the dining room. Benji shook his head right back and snuck a puff of his vape from inside his stiff white sleeve. He snaked his way through the graveyard of low-tops with a lithe grace that came from years spent on sticky club dance floors. He clasped his hands behind his back and gave the table his best Michelin smile. “Is there anything else I can get you, gentlemen?”
Muriel watched the men sit up a little higher in their leather seats, as if Benji had just challenged them to an arm-wrestling contest. The Loud Guy uncrossed his legs and cleared his throat. “Yes, actually. That haricots vert thing I had earlier? Another one of those, to go. I want it for lunch tomorrow.” He hit the dish’s consonants so hard she almost rolled her eyes.
She murmured along to Benji’s words as he said, “Unfortunately, our kitchen is closed for the evening.”
“Well, then who the fuck is that guy?” The Loud Guy demanded. Everyone turned towards the kitchen window, where Dan, the chef de cuisine, was chopping chives with a nine-inch Kiritsuke.
“That’s our chef, Daniel. He’s prepping for brunch tomorrow.”
“So your kitchen is open, then,” said The Big Guy. He looked at the toothpick pinched between his fingertips as if it were a particularly vexing puzzle he was trying to solve. Behind the bar, trainee Rick stopped polishing the same coupe glass over and over with the same white cloth and eyed their table, smelling conflict.
“Technically, no.”
“Well, I see a kitchen. I see a chef. I see a fridge, which probably has food in it. What do you think, guys–you think that fridge has food in it?” The Loud Guy raised his eyebrows at his friends for approval.
The Big Guy rested the toothpick against the side of his scotch. “Unless they’re storing bodies in there or something.”
Muriel watched Benji’s shoulders tighten up. She knew he was already on edge. The two of them were late to meet Benji’s current beau (what was his name again?) outside The Brink. He said he could get Benji and Muriel green room access for some Norwegian electronic artist she’d never heard of. They were supposed to be on the train out of here ten minutes ago, fishnets on and makeup immaculate. Muriel didn’t care about making small talk with some graying DJ over limp crudités in a cramped room; she just wanted to dance. She cracked her neck from side to side and listened to her vertebrae pop.
Benji cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, our appliances are powered down for the evening, so the chef won’t be able to prepare any hot food. Have you had a moment to take a look at the check?”
“Okay, then how about cold food?” asked The Loud Guy. “I bet your cook could handle a bowl of crème glacée…”
The humiliating sound of breaking glass came from behind the bar. Shame flashed across Rick’s face as he dipped down to clean it up. Table twelve clapped sarcastically.
Muriel flipped her hair and went to help, eager to have a reason to move. She tried not to get her heels caught in the holes of the rubber mat as she bent down next to Rick, knees folded to keep her dress from hiking up.
“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled. He picked up the largest pieces of glass with one hand and rested them in a sad pile in the other.
“Don’t use your hands.” Muriel reached behind the ice machine for the dustpan. “Blood is a biohazard.” She thought of her mom’s cleaning van back in the day, packed with its boxes of colorful spray bottles and jugs of toxic chemicals wrapped in cheery labels. Her mother would regale Muriel and her sister during car rides home from school about the gore du jour: person-sized red puddles seeping into the shag carpets of broken homes, corpses of squatter raccoons under porches that now belonged to the bank, the scent of rot baked into the walls from a shut-in who’d decayed in an armchair for weeks, alone. She’d check her makeup in the rearview mirror and gab to her daughters about how bleach still leaves behind traces of human protein that glow like ghosts under UV light (it’s so hard to get a good clean these days).
Rick tossed the shards into the pan. They tinkled like a broken chime. “Sorry. Rite of passage, right?”
“Not really.” Muriel patted the front of her dress, feeling for creases. “The ice machine was open when it broke, so you have to drain it before you go. Unless you want a customer to order a Bloody Mary at Sunday brunch and slit their throat from the inside.”
Rick looked at Muriel as though she had grown a second head. People always assumed her to be a nice person, empathetic, squeamish when she was supposed to be squeamish. The realization that she was not usually hit them hard. She felt that this was, ultimately, not her problem.
“Hey, do you know if I can get out of here soon?” whispered Rick as he tilted the dustpan into the trash. “Maybe? They haven’t touched their scotch. I don’t think they’re going to order another drink.” More laughter erupted from the table. She saw Benji dart through the swinging kitchen doors with his tail between his legs, ready to pretend to ask Dan if he could make three bowls of ice cream.
Rick reminded her of a guy she had taken home not long ago–a nervous law student with uncertain hands who wouldn’t stop asking her if this was okay, if that was okay, if she was okay. “I’m not your manager,” she told him.
“Hey. Ponytail.”
Three pairs of eyes bored six holes into the back of her head. She faced table twelve, her pristine hair swaying to the side like a white flag. The Loud Guy was grinning at her, his face all pink and screwy from the liquor. His spread knees took up all the space under their four-top table. “I know you.”
“Is that so?” she said. The Big Guy and The Small Guy assessed her like a rare bird. The tip of her heel caught on the rubber mat, and she gripped the bartop to steady herself. She had no patience for clumsiness, especially her own.
“You’re Emmy Jorgenson’s little sister, right?” The Loud Guy asked. “I was a couple grades above you at Pemberton South. Heard a lot about you. You used to date Frankie DiPasquale, right?”
Frankie, Frankie. Muriel felt the blood drain from her face. She imagined herself gutted on a hook, her warmth leaking into a bucket on the floor.
“I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.” She tried to sound sweet but couldn’t hear her voice. She pictured the tip of her stiletto lodged in the center of The Loud Guy’s forehead, a thin red trickle running down his face. She could see it so clearly.
“No, no, no.” His chair let out a scream as he pushed himself away from the table. “My brother played lacrosse with Frankie. Good kid. Heard you two were really cute together. Until… you know…”
Muriel glanced towards the kitchen. One of Benji’s platform loafers was propping the door open while he waited, listening.
“Well, you know what it’s like in high school,” she skirted. “Puppy love never works out.” She studied The Loud Guy but couldn’t place him. His Neanderthal eyebrows and performative baritone reminded her of every guy she had ever gone to school with. She pictured a line of faceless jocks, all staring at her. “Is there anything else we can get you all before you go?”
“Yo, you don’t understand, this girl was crazy crazy,” he dished to his goons. “She stabbed her fucking boyfriend. For real. Right in the leg, in the backseat of his Jeep. With a pencil, right? But the doctor said that shit really got in there. Like a whole inch. Frankie was out for what, like, two weeks?”
He looked at her for confirmation, and Muriel looked up to the mirrored ceiling for guidance. Her reflection stared back down at her, warped and smudged in the wonky tiles, almost close enough to caress her own cheek. She saw the shimmer of sweat on her forehead and wondered which version of her should handle this.
“Three weeks,” Muriel corrected him. Her reflection smiled. “And it was a pen knife, actually. I remember because I hit bone. It was weird… kind of like when you hammer a nail into the wall and hit a stud.” She watched a wave of confusion slap The Loud Guy. He let out a microscopic burp.
“You know, I’m pretty sure I remember some things about you, too,” lied Muriel. “But the girl made me promise not to talk about it. Few girls, actually.”
The Loud Guy got to his feet so quickly that the dishware clanked. “Melissa was a complete…” He hiccuped. “...a compulsive liar. Everyone knew that.” The Small Guy stood up in solidarity and swayed from side to side as though the restaurant were at sea. His gelled hair catching the ambient light.
Buoyed by their anger, Muriel lost touch with the gravity of the room. She assessed the beginnings of their bald spots from above and felt no fear. Her reflection looked down on her with pride. She felt her stiletto slide off and drift down to the floor like a snowflake. From head to toe, she felt nothing at all.
“Who’s Melissa?” she called down to him.
There was a whoosh of kitchen doors swinging open, and then there was Chef Dan, wiping his knife with a rag and frowning. He was rarely on the floor; she was surprised his tree-trunk arms could even elbow their way through the door. Benji peeked out from behind him, nervous and nosy. She felt the floor beneath herself again.
Dan squinted at the men and tucked his blade into the front pocket of his apron. “It’s time for you to leave. We closed an hour ago.”
The Loud Guy’s arms were stiff at his sides, a gastropub cowboy. “You know, I was going to leave a fat tip tonight, but none of you seem to be very thankful for our… What's it called? Starts with a ‘P’...”
“Our patronage,” finished The Small Guy, who was white-knuckling the back of his chair for support.
“Yes. Our patronage,” said The Loud Guy. “Did you know that word comes from the Spanish ‘patron’? Meaning ‘boss’? Kinda fitting. ‘Cause Gordo here, he just got himself a big-time promotion–which is why we’re here, you know. Scotch and steak for my good buddy, who just became a boss!” He clapped The Big Guy on the shoulder so hard the liquor sloshed out of his glass. “Proud of you, my guy.”
“I know you are,” muttered Gordo, patting his friend’s hand.
“–And so all I wanted to do was do a nice thing for my friend, you know? And here we are, getting thrown out onto the street at, what, midnight? Jesus, this city has no nightlife. If we were in Spain, everyone would just now be sitting down...”
Dan assessed him like a butcher picking which limb to start with. “We’re not in Spain,” Dan explained. “We are in an overhyped urban district in an American city with no late-night dinner service. If you have a problem with that, take it up with City Hall. In the meantime, it looks like my friend Benji was kind enough to leave you your check right there, next to those drinks that Rick was kind enough to pour. Please pay and be on your way. I’ll wait right here.”
Dan and The Loud Guy sized each other up, almost brow to brow. Muriel thought of a video she had watched once on the train where two rival rams had headbutted each other so hard that their gnarled horns got permanently locked together. The rams spent the rest of their days trapped with each other, sidestepping their way down the cliff face in a drunken pub stumble. One eventually bludgeoned the other to death, then died of starvation because he couldn’t drag the heft of his dead enemy far enough to find food. She remembered staring at the image of their conjoined skeletons on her phone, spellbound, until a prim woman holding the rail behind her had pointedly cleared her throat.
Gordo started rifling through his pockets. “Let’s just go, man” he said, pulling out a wad of paper from the back of his jeans. He plucked out three bills and laid them out in a neat fan on top of the check. Dan tucked the bills into the holder and offered it over his shoulder to Benji, who snatched it and sped to the register.
“Thank you for your patronage, gentlemen.”
The three men put on their jackets to varying degrees of success and started towards the door. The Small Guy held up a hand in farewell to an overwhelmed Rick as the trio did their processional past the bar, imparting, “You’re a good kid, but a light pour!”
“Get home safe,” muttered Rick as he clocked out on the touch screen behind the bar. Behind him, Benji was already tapping furiously on his phone. She pictured the rest of her night unfolding the way she’d hoped: making nice with what’s-his-face for whatever color wristband he had for them; kissing the door guy on the cheek and asking how his daughter’s soccer game was as he let her side-step inside; making a requisite appearance in the green room to steal a bottle of whatever cheap liquor the DJ had put on his rider; snaking through the crowd arm-in-arm with Benji to dance under the stuttering lights. She thought of all the jam-packed hours between now and tomorrow morning, when she’d have to tiptoe through the front door of her and Darcy’s apartment and keep pretending she didn’t exist.
The Loud Guy traced the edge of the bar with a sweaty finger as he headed to the door. She counted the pores on his nostrils as he paused in front of her.
“Have a very good night,” Muriel chided. She became aware of the stiletto in her right hand.
“You as well, Little Jorgenson,” The Loud Guy mused. Up close, she could hear her hometown accent on his breath. He tapped the bar with a clenched fist, then smiled and slinked towards the door with his friends–Gordo looming above and The Small Guy, three bears. Hand on the door, The Loud Guy flipped up his collar and glanced back at her. “Try not to stab anyone, okay?”
The bullseye on his forehead was so bright, so inviting. She sent her shoe soaring towards his temple in a graceful spiral. She prayed it would pierce his frontal lobe and rob him of his speech and that the alcohol would thin his blood so she could clean him off the floorboards later without much fuss. Like her mother used to say, “Some people are better off as biohazards.”
But the Loud Guy had ducked, and now The Small Guy was wiping a red smear off his cheek from where her heel had grazed him like stray shrapnel. The men of table twelve were scrambling, yelling; she couldn’t hear them. Dan was yelling back at them, a hurricane of white cloth and greasy hair.
“The fuck is wrong with her?” The Small Guy spat. Dan tried his best to muscle the three of them out the door before their rage could fully catch up to their bodies. Rick threw down his rag and hopped clumsily over the bar to help squeeze the three of them out into the rain. Through the thicket of struggling arms, Gordo reached for another toothpick from the hostess stand, muttered, “Pardon,” and walked out into the night alone.
“Out, out, out,” chanted Dan to the other two, mindful of fingers as he and Rick managed to shut the door and turn the lock. The Loud Guy and The Small Guy banged on the glass, barking muted obscenities: something something bitch, something something lawyer, something something Yelp. Everyone in the restaurant stood still until the two of them tired themselves out and retreated into the rain.
Dan, Benji, and Rick all turned to Muriel. She knew this was her cue to explain herself–to clarify that this was out of character, that she’d normally never do something so unprofessional, so improper. She knew she was supposed to feel embarrassed, ashamed, anything at all. Instead, she turned to Benji and slipped her phone out of her pocket to check the time. “If we leave in fifteen, we can probably still make at least, like, half the set,” she informed him. He swallowed, uncertain of her, and his Adam’s apple did a little dance.
Dan shook his head and bent down to scoop up her forgotten shoe. He pretended to blow dust off it and offered it to her with open palms. The patent leather had a long scratch down the side, and the heel was starting to split from the sole. “His cheek broke my shoe,” she joked. No one laughed.
***
Dan pulled the keys out of the front door of La Blah with his butcher’s yank and slapped the window for good riddance. Muriel huddled under Benji’s umbrella to protect her outfit, and Rick shivered in his leather jacket. Freedom didn’t feel as sweet as she had expected.
“Are you going to tell anyone?” Muriel asked. She was looking at Dan, but Rick and Benji knew they were now also part of a shared, shameful circle. She thought of losing her job. She thought of the black hole in her checking account, of the listing for a studio apartment open in a tab on her laptop.
“I don’t know yet,” Dan admitted. His eye contact stung. “But it’d be nice if you said you were sorry that you hit a customer with your shoe.”
“I’m sorry that I hit a customer with my shoe,” she said to the middle of his forehead.
“Yeah, well. This is what I get for working a shift with the Mickey Mouse Club,” muttered Dan as he dug around in his pocket for his car keys. Benji took another hit from his vape and wrapped the four of them in a viscous cloud of cotton candy. “Get home safe. Or wherever it is you’re going”
Dan headed down the block towards the overpriced parking garage up the street. Muriel let herself exhale. She looked down at her trashed shoes and performed shame: eyebrows in a humble V, lip quivering, like she used to practice in the mirror. Maybe if she could turn Benji and Rick into favorable character witnesses, her manager, Tina, would be less inclined to kick her to the curb tomorrow. Tina, who demanded excellence but also had clocked out early tonight for a “personal emergency," which Muriel suspected had something to do with the lace La Perla nightie she’d seen peeking out from Tina’s purse when she’d left it by the bathroom sink. She imagined Rick and Benji huddled in her tiny office, assuring Tina of Muriel’s pure heart in hushed tones.
“Thank you, Ricky, baby.” She peeked out from under the umbrella to kiss him on his cherubic cheek. He smelled like that one deodorant brand that every guy his age seemed to use. “That was really cool when you jumped over the bar like that.”
“Oh, I mean, no big deal.” His hand drifted to his cheek to trace her lip gloss. “Happy to help.”
Benji sent a text message and sighed like an old Hollywood star. His skin was perfect in the glow of his screen. “No offense, but can we go?” He linked his arm through hers and hugged her tighter. “Alexei isn’t texting me back, so I don’t think green room’s happening, but whatever. At this point just get me out of here.”
“None taken,” said Muriel. “Let’s still do The Brink, though. I need to dance.” She gave Rick a wave, wiped under her eyes for wayward mascara, and swiveled her and Benji towards the train station. With each step away from the restaurant, away from her mistake, she felt lighter.
Benji still had Frankenstein shoulders from bartering with table twelve. His fingers tapped the plastic handle of his umbrella. Benji was full of tells: He’d scratch the back of his neck when he lied, drop five-dollar words when he was trying to impress someone, and fidget when he had a question. She already knew what he was about to ask. He checked his metallic eyeliner in the window of the empty Hermés next door and said to Muriel’s smeared reflection, “So did you really stab your boyfriend?”
Muriel eyed herself in the window and adjusted her ponytail that didn’t need adjusting. In the rain, her reflection’s expression was hard to make out, just a phantom stamped on rows of unsold technicolor scarves. “Define ‘stab.’”
“Ha.” He used his finger to swirl the damp cowlick on his forehead into a perfect Superman curl. He looked up at her and pondered her blank face, before tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “There you go. You’re missing a nail, by the way.”
She felt the roughness of her fingernail and remembered the satisfaction of ripping off her acrylic. She considered the small shreds of her it had taken with it.
“You okay?” asked Benji. Muriel made a fuss of fishing for her phone. “Don’t get me wrong, full support on clocking that asshole. Heroic display of feminism.”
“I’m fine. A lot of shitheads started rumors about me in high school. My family… my mom used to work in biohazard removal for, like, crime scenes and stuff, so everyone thought I was creepy. Like it’s my fault my mom cleans up after bodies, you know?”
“I don’t,” admitted Benji, twirling his vape. “But are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Creepy."
Muriel’s right heel snapped like a toothpick. Having defended her, her stiletto had earned its final rest. She stumbled, and Benji caught her arm. She ran the calculations for how she could still somehow make her way to the club with him, all lopsided and scuffed up. She ripped off the dangling stiletto to put it out of its misery and tucked it in her bra. Its sharpness made her feel safe. “Well, fuck. Gonna swing back home real quick, I guess. Grab another pair of something cute. You go ahead.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come with?” His fingers trilled the umbrella handle again. Benji worked best as part of a pair–always braver when he had someone by his side to duet a karaoke song, to put a rude guy at the bar in his place, to help him contest a shortchanged paycheck. Alone, he seemed lost.
“I’ll be quick. I promise I won’t bail.” Muriel checked her phone, already doing commuter math: 10 minute ride to the apartment, 5 minutes to grab her pair of go-go boots and curl her wet lashes, 15 minute ride to The Brink, 90 seconds at the door, two minutes from coat check to the DJ booth. The night wasn’t young anymore, but it wasn’t over, either.
“You better not. But wait, one sec…” Benji rested his phone on the Hermés window ledge. Its trio of lenses stared at the two of them, unblinking. He slipped into the subconscious mannerisms that always popped out when he filmed his outfits: a coy sway of the hip, a hand tucked in the pocket of his knee-length pleated skirt, the warmth in his eyes replaced with high-fashion iciness. Muriel obliged. She kicked her right foot up behind her to show off the fresh stump on the bottom of her shoe. She tossed her ponytail, tugged at her choker, looked bored. Behind them, cabs sped by in white blurs, and a soapbox preacher carried on about salvation outside the shawarma shop across the street. After a few seconds, Benji let his face go soft again and cradled his phone to immediately watch it all back. “Can I post? The ones with you always do better.”
“I don’t care.” Muriel air-kissed him on both cheeks. “Be safe, babycakes.”
“See you soon.” Benji twirled towards the station, holding the umbrella with one hand, rapidly editing his video with the other. The rain pattered against the crown of Muriel’s head. She was finally alone.
She stared at the crushed quartz melted into the sidewalk and considered her mistake. If Tina found out that she’d assaulted a customer, she would be fired. If she were fired, she wouldn’t be able to scrounge up rent. If she couldn’t make rent, Darcy would eventually kick her out. If she got kicked out, she would have to move home. If she had to move home, and create space for herself in her mom’s supply room that was once her bedroom, and wake up every morning with her nostrils stinging from enzymatic cleaner, she’d shave her head and take a vow of silence. If she took a vow of silence, maybe she’d finally give in and give herself to God, like the preacher across the street was loudly recommending. Through the fogged glass behind him, Muriel watched a cook in the shawarma shop shave delicate swatches of lamb off a spit with a knife the size of her femur. A row of patrons sat at the counter, dipping pita into flimsy containers of thick white sauce and trying to get a grip on their gyros. A pair of lovers fed each other bits of baklava, while the burly guy next to them scowled at his phone and ignored his fries. He was fiddling with something between his teeth that took her a moment to place: a toothpick.
Muriel waited for a lull between swerving rideshares and felt herself cross the street, her pace broken and awkward from her missing heel. She lumbered to the door, and the street preacher regarded her with dilated pupils. She felt his eyes on her face, her neckline, the hem of her skirt, and tuned into his rambling:
“Do not envy a man of violence, and do not choose any of his ways, for the devious person is an abomination to the Lord, but the upright are in his confidence!” He got louder as he noticed she was laughing at him. She curtsied at him in her leather skirt, pictured what his skull might look like a few decades after he died, and shouldered her way into the shop.
The room was stuffed with sweaty half-drunk people eying the menu and bargaining with the cashier for extra hummus, but Gordo noticed her immediately. He took out his toothpick and rested it against his tray of fries like he was still lounging at table twelve. Muriel squeezed onto the barstool next to him, rested her chin on her hand, and counted the veins on the side of his neck.
“Where’d your friends go?”
He squinted, unsure of her. “Out. Where’d yours go?”
“Out. Probably a different ‘out,’ though.” She thought of Benji making small talk with the dominatrix bartender over vodka cranberries. She thought of The Loud Guy at some other club, mouthing off to a different hostess, one with a better poker face and unbroken shoes.
“Probably. Trent’s got bad taste in bars.” He took in her post-work outfit, the humid mess of her. “You’ve got a helluva arm on you, by the way.”
“Yeah. Bad aim, though. I was trying to hit your loud friend.”
“Makes sense.”
Gordo dug around in the basket for a soggy fry, fingers red from sumac. There were four prominent veins on the right side of his neck, plus another two that popped out when he clenched his jaw.
“Your name is Gordo,” Muriel said.
“No, Nick,” he corrected. “Nick Gordon.”
“Was Gordo like a frat name or something?”
“No, Trent just likes to call me that,” said Nick. “Not all finance guys are former frat guys, you know.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Back in the day I actually protested my college’s Greek system for their insane hazing. At Dartmouth. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe young men shouldn’t have to human-centipede their way into brotherhood.” He sounded like one of those posts she always scrolled past, the kind with flags for profile pictures.
“Very progressive of you.”
His outfit was polished and out of place: blazer and button-up and church-friendly khakis, a pair of leather Oxfords. He looked too clean to be here. Muriel, fingers sticky and heels blistered, was right at home. He was on her turf now.
“Can I have a fry?” she asked, already pinching the corner of the soggy paper tray. He waved it towards her. She pulled out the biggest one, dipped it in a sinful amount of tahini, and ate it with glee. The fry was the only food she’d had since lunch; it was the greatest thing she’d ever tasted. He watched her chew, and she watched him become fascinated with her.
“Can I have your shoes?” she gambled.
“My shoes?” Nick laughed, trying to find the joke.
“Mine are broken, and I have a long night ahead of me. So I want your shoes.”
“And what’s in it for me?”
But they both already knew. He offered her his phone. She put her name in his contacts, typed in Darcy’s phone number, and handed it back to him.
“‘Muriel (Hell of an Arm)’” he read. “Alright. Fair is fair.”
He bent over to untie his laces. They looked expensive, like he polished them regularly with one of those little cloths, or maybe paid someone to polish them for him. He slipped them off and handed them to her. His socked feet rested shyly on the floor like two nervous animals.
“They’re not going to fit you, though–” But Muriel was already stuffing the toes with wads of brown paper napkins from the dispenser. She slipped out of her heels and into his shoes, tied them tightly with red fingers, then threw her retired weapons into the fragrant trash can next to the door. She stood up to test the fit: snug enough to stay on, forgiving enough to dance in. She counted her commuter math again: 10 minutes to The Brink, and then she’d be under the lights, anonymous, just another body.
“You’re welcome,” said Nick. Stranded on his stool, he looked helpless. Muriel pictured him calling a car later and tiptoeing shamefully into some Escalade or BMW, scoffing to the driver not to ask. Then he’d go home, nod at the doorman, and take a too-fast silent elevator up to his luxury unit, where he’d order himself a new pair of expensive shoes exactly like the ones Muriel now owned. She wondered how much they cost. She realized she might hate him.
She pinched another fry from his tray. “Congrats on the promotion,” she murmured with a full mouth. “See ya.”
“Real quick. Before you go.” Muriel paused; she could already hear the question. She debated walking out before he could find the words.
He leaned forward over the counter. “Did you really stab your boyfriend?”
When she was little, her mom used to lull her to sleep by counting vital arteries in the human body–pulmonary, coronary, brachial, shhh, radial, go to sleep now, baby–back when she thought Muriel would be some kind of doctor, some kind of person who could help people. That night in the Jeep with Frankie, when she’d tried to break up with him and he’d threatened to kill himself, he sank his car key into the middle of his thigh two inches from an artery that could have made him bleed out in under a minute. As he had wailed, all she could think was femoral, femoral, femoral.
“Yes,” Muriel lied, and let the door scream shut behind her. On the train to the club, she trilled her ruined nails against the handrail and daydreamed of rare steak.
***
She got back to her apartment as the sky was lightening from black to blue, reeking of spilled beer and holding Nick’s shoes so she wouldn’t wake Darcy. After first trying to unlock the door with her mail key, she struggled her way inside to find every light in the apartment on, and Darcy crouched on the kitchen floor. She was shaking like a kitten left out in the cold, her hip bob tousled unstylishly and her satin pajamas rolled up at the sleeves. Her eyes snapped to Muriel with relief. She pointed wordlessly to an upside-down cardboard box by the oven.
Muriel closed the door quietly behind her and stared at the box, wondering briefly why Darcy was so afraid of her recyclables, until it twitched and moved an inch to the left. She heard the telltale squeak, the desperate skittering of tiny claws.
“I didn’t know what to do.” Darcy wiped a tear out of her eye. It was the first thing she’d said to Muriel in weeks. “I was doing my skincare and then he came out of nowhere and ran across my foot and then I chased him around and I felt so bad cause he seemed so scared and then I trapped him and now…”
The box shook again. Muriel dropped her purse and his shoes and slunk across the kitchen. She considered the box. She could hear the little mouse scampering in a circle like a tiny tornado. She caught her own reflection in the gloss of the packing tape: She looked happy.
Muriel nudged the box with her foot. Darcy sniffed and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “Are you going to, like… take it outside?”
“Of course,” said Muriel. “This little guy’s going to be just fine. But you should get some sleep. Don’t want to get puffy.”
Muriel knew it wouldn’t take much to send her away; Darcy was used to people taking care of things for her. She pulled herself off the floor and took in the sight of Muriel with her foot on the box, disheveled and half-drunk and christened head-to-toe with someone else’s glitter. They were strangers to each other. As Darcy softly shut her door, she dabbed her fingers under her eyes, feeling for bloat.
Now it was just Muriel and The Little Guy. She grabbed a pink paper plate from the counter, shoved it under the box, and flipped it over. She lifted the plate and watched The Little Guy squirm and squeak and try to explain his side of the story. She considered her options: A repatriation to their building’s shabby courtyard garden? Nap time in one of Darcy’s favorite bags? A quick trip down the garbage disposal? She made shy eye contact with him.
As she leaned over, Muriel felt a stab in her chest–something sharp, wrong. She went fishing in the left cup of her bra and pulled out her shabby stiletto heel, one end frayed from her yanking it from her shoe, the other end scuffed down to a lethal point by the pavement outside La Blah. She thought of all the men she’d spared that night, how charitable she had been. She felt proud of herself. She petted the box with a tenderness she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Later, as she wiped The Little Guy’s little guts off the kitchen floor with the enzymatic cleaner she always kept under the sink, Muriel hummed along to a song from the club that was stuck in her head: something about falling in love, or maybe falling out of it. She made a note to ask Benji for the name. She rested The Little Guy’s shish-kabobed corpse neatly on the top of their full trash can and hummed the chorus, wishing she could remember the words.
This made me squirm in the best way possible. Loved it! Can’t wait for the next piece