The sex had been artless and rushed, like drinking down water. But she didn’t seem to hold it against him.
Her hair was a little redder than he’d thought and wild in the morning humidity. She searched the ground floor of the time share for her purse. The purse might have been left, she thought, in a room whose door was now closed—one of the rooms where people lay sleeping.
Everyone was sleeping.
Is there anything in the kitchen? she asked.
She was going through a pile of sweaters and coats on a chair. It was strange to him, and enjoyable enough—her idea that they were in this together.
She said, Fucking A.
He asked, What do you need out of it?
My smokes.
Get you a pack in town.
My shades.
Get some of those too.
He listened to himself as he said this.
She found the small purse on top of a bunch of shoes on the floor in the pantry. The walked to a diner. The waitress didn’t look at them but left a glass ashtray as she passed. It spun and made a singing sound as it wobbled to rest on the counter.
Sharilyn, his companion said to him.
This was her name. He said it, but wrong.
She opened her mouth. Inside it, smoke nearly held still. Sharilyn, she pronounced.
Sharilyn, he repeated.
He wasn’t hungry but ordered a roll.
When they returned, the people he’d come with—his friends—were awake and looking at the woman and him. He hadn’t removed his shades.
Morning, they told him.
Hey, he responded.
He didn’t know what they were thinking about him. He was thinking they were thinking something about him, and he was pleased. It was as if he was still drunk.
Scott Garson has stories coming out in NY Tyrant, Unsaid, Redivider, New Ohio Review, and others.
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