Old fragments #3.

From a story titled, “When Calvin & Hobbes Went Away”.

“… so that’s why it’s my favorite word.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“‘Coitus interruptus.’ Is my favorite word. Jesus, don’t ask a question if you’re not going to listen to the answer.”

“Shh.”

Daniel taps her on the elbow with his beer and points up at the makeshift stage, where the evening’s host waves one gaunt white finger at the crowd and the next performer tumbles out of the crowd, nervous and thrilled, his blond beard twitching.

“I hate her fringe,” she whispers.

Daniel glances at her with just his eyes, keeping his face forward in the hopes she won’t notice. Her round face the color of caramel tightens and he knows she knows he’s looking at her but doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He wonders what a fringe is, and studies the host to see what it might be. He decides the only candidate is the flap of black hair that dangles over her forehead, what an American would call “bangs”, but Padma was born in Chennai and raised in Edinburgh, so her English is littered with foreign vocabulary. He thinks maybe he likes this about her, but he hasn’t decided if he likes anything about her yet.

“Coitus interruptus is two words,” he says.

“Shh.”

The man with the blond beard, asea in the spotlight, begins to tell a story, and most of the crowd appears to be listening.

“My mother used to live in this town in Wisconsin —”

He tells a joke. Laughter bursts across the room like starlings erupting in their thousands from the wires above an abandoned lot.