Flash Fiction
The Various Colors of Desire
By Phoebe Wilcox
Like a can of open tuna fish in front of a feral cat. That’s the feeling. They’re wedged between a forklift and a lofty stack of plastic-wrapped computers, and Ray is looking at her like he wants to take a bite out of her. He’s virile and dangerous and charming and well aware of all this, but she is safe--shakily safe, temporarily safe--but safe. She, he—both of them together--have fitted him with an invisible collar and leash against which he perpetually strains--restrained all these months only by the postponement of her permission—that and nothing else. Ray smiles and his eyes soften, the flesh, the color. From the very start, those eyes slipped inside her, uninvited, and called themselves home. Yes, Miranda laments internally, everything about him is convincing. She knows her supervisor—that corporate little pug dog--is hovering over the soldering table at the back of the warehouse, thinking, It’s 12:03, where’s that little temp girl? Butter barrel, as Miranda refers to her supervisor privately, would be checking the clock on the wall angrily against her watch, then stalking about on her stubby little legs with an ire far outweighing the severity of the infraction. Miranda holds grudges against her supervisor, she’s grown attached to her grudges and holds them tenderly in her arms, Monday through Friday. She can’t think of how to put them down. They leave her diminished and sticky; they are intractable. “Well? What do you think?” Ray asks, and tilts his head to the side playfully. He’s purring hard. His leash is taut. “I don’t know. We could get fired.”“No, raspberry wine coolers could get us fired! This is different!”“My Dad told me not to go anywhere with you—not even to the corner store….”“Don’t worry. We’re not going to the corner store….”The soft, conspiratorial tone of his voice makes her feel vaguely like she needs to tap his upper arm (again) or find an excuse to touch his hair (a piece of fuzz or lint, maybe?) His hands are graceful, and his hair so silky. She knows about his hair because she recently whacked him in the head with her time card. That contact wasn’t even planned. Her desires are not precisely formulated. She doesn’t really know what she wants because she’s inexperienced, but she knows she wants it. He has grease on the thighs of his pants, which it hurts her eyes to see, but see she does. The way he looks at her, standing by the stack of plastic-wrapped computers, the two of them tucked sweetly and surreptitiously between stack and forklift as if between blankets, she almost fears he could impregnate her with his eyes.
He purrs. He strains. Some things feel inevitable. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll do it….”Trying to look nauseated and sickly, she moves slowly through the warehouse and out to the foyer, the double glass doors, and Ray’s car in the parking lot. Ray has comp time he can use. He’ll tell Butter Barrel that Miranda isn’t well enough to drive and that he’s taking her home. Then they’ll spend the rest of the afternoon in the park. She’ll pet him and lead him about by his leash. And he’ll delineate every possible reason in the world that she should give herself to him. When the sun inches to the door of its dusky bedroom, to head in for the night, they’ll walk back to his car. It—what happened later, in a month or two, when she made up her mind--wasn’t inevitable. It was her choice. Choices then were few (--or many?--or infinite?)--but all of them were like the sunsets of fateful days, shot-through with the various colors of desire. Their colors, hers and Ray’s were red and mauve, and poignantly aching. She couldn’t do nothing. Because nothing had no color at all. Nothing was utterly transparent. And besides, she was by nature a fish. And he was by nature a cat. They were both hungry. And she couldn’t keep him waiting forever.
~
Phoebe Wilcox lives with her family in eastern Pennsylvania. She likes to stack and rearrange words, sometimes to see if they can reach the ceiling, sometimes to see where they fall when she pushes them over. The first chapter of her novel, Angels Carry the Sun, was published in “Wild River Review.” An excerpt from another novel in progress is archived in “Wild Violet.” Recent and forthcoming experiments may be found in “Emprise,” “The Chaffey Review,” “VISIONS,” “The Black Boot,” “Counterexample Poetics,” “Sixers Review,” “The Northville Review” and a handful of others. In 2008, her story “Carp with Water in Their Ears,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by “River Poets Journal” , and in 2009, her story, “The Librarian and the Janitor ,” was nominated for a Pushcart by Bartleby-Snopes. “Angels Carry the Sun, will be published by Lilly Press in June, 2010.
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