Queen Wendy

When she told me she had red sheets, I mistook her glassy pointed
Gaze as something aimed beyond me; “And furthermore,” she said, “I’ve never
Gone in for fat girls before.”
Also she gripped wee Allison with hands and long fingers so thin and ever-
Reaching that it seemed to me they’d never leave the dance floor while
Tom Waits was being played.
When she told me that the hole in my Guess Jeans t-shirt allowed her eyes
Easy access to my assets I was pretty sure she was being mean, in a superior
Kind of way.
The afternoon I arrived there with waftings of roasted bean scents pushing themselves
Through my nostrils, she was sitting there alone at a table for the
First time ever.
Her foot knocked a wrought iron chair away from the table’s edge in a truncated
Message of offering me her company while making sure I understood that
It was all a big favor.
I placed myself in the seat beside her and somehow she managed to scrutinize me
Without once ever casting her gaze on me, and furthermore she offered to
Buy me a lager.
When the beer came she laid her fingers to the side of the glass and pushed the beads
Of condensation to the table; and there on the plastic table cloth she drew lines and
Swirls as I watched.
I didn’t know what to say to her except that perhaps she was the most beautiful
Creature I’d ever laid my eyes upon and that her mouth had been on my breasts
Countless times, sleeping.
So I measured myself against my past lovers but there was no way for me to compare
Their useless proddings and pokings and scratching faces against my tender white flesh
To her gentle breath.
As I imagined this she took the lager in her hands and in a moment that shocked me
She swallowed it all, a great huge sour glass of lager, and it ran out of her mouth in thin lines
Because she didn’t like beer.
“That was for you, and you didn’t take it,” she said when the glass touched down,
“I can’t waste what I give, and I can’t waste the time, to beg you to drink it;
That is a metaphor.”
Well, I pushed my hand through my hair and wondered stupidly how the café had
Emptied itself when by all rights it was just like any other day here, with the rain
Smattering outside.
And I wished sadly I had drank the lager she had ordered before her urgent need
To waste not want not had forced her to drink something she regarded poisonous
And possibly fatal.
I watched as her face went white and tinged green around her lips and under her eyes
She was regarding me with the same urgency she had downed the amber liquid, and said,
“Get out of here.”
I stood immediately as I knew the audience with the Café’s queen had come to an end
And I’d arrived a slack-jawed impertinent with the brains of a cow-monkey and
Intuiting nothing.
Leaving empty-handed while she sat there in the corner with her heart so obviously breaking
She was tired of making the move and her thrones, all of them around her, empty
Her t-shirt clung.
When I swung outside with the cold metal of the door handle imprinting my palm with
Waffle marks I heard the iron legs of her chair squeak against the floor and her steps
Were heavy and quick.
She pushed me out the door and the street was dark and drizzly and her hand pressed
Into my hand and she guided me roughly past the front window of the café and pushed me
Hard around the corner.
“Have the lager or don’t have the lager,” she grunted into my upturned face; her height
Was what made her regal; the fragility of her slender body beneath her inappropriate clothes
Made me weak.
“But don’t prance here, not here,” she shook, her long hands pinning my arms against brick.
“You are playing here in a place that isn’t about frivolity and I resent you using me like this.”
Her chapped lips burned.
Again I could hear “Heart Attack and Vine” cue up inside the café and my back cried out against
The friction of the wall and guilt filled me so sour and intense that I looked at her, misty,
And shed tears.
My head cracked against the brick as her face met mine in an embrace so explosive the rain
Was deflected, momentarily; I felt my lips split open, between her teeth and my teeth, silky
Sandwich filling.
Her breath reeked of the beer she had consumed and I knew I smelled of cigarette smoke but
Still we kissed and the aura of heat that shimmered off our bodies in the smoky black air filled the alley
Like $8 perfume.
She grasped my breast and I could not find the strength in me to lift my hands and reciprocate
And besides this was my first real girl kiss and the lips I’d felt at first as pain became something
Achingly beautiful.
“I’m Wendy,” she said into my mouth, “I’m Wendy. I’m Wendy. I’m Wendy.” And kissing and
Kissing and rain bouncing crystal against the pale skin of her nose and cheeks, refracting her lashes
“I have red sheets.”