time while Room Service Boy squishes his soles back to the mat. With milk, he remembers, this soup is an excellent source of calcium. His lips move slightly when remembering, but not enough to cause a stir. He brims over all of the six possibilities put together, the six possible ways a Safeway shopper might be helped out of Safeway with a single can of tomato soup.
1 Banana Tray Hair pays for the soup.
2 Banana Tray Hair carries the soup to the hotel.
3 Banana Tray Hair opens the can of soup.
4 Banana Tray Hair cooks the soup.
5 Banana Tray Hair pours the soup in a bowl.
6 Banana Tray Hair delivers the soup to Room 32 without spilling it.
Of Room Service Boy’s six possibilities for being helped out with the soup, he deems Number 6 least plausible, since she would probably spill some of the soup, marring his impeccable record of food delivery. ‘The grilled cheese must be golden brown and cut to corners,’ he says to himself. ‘It’s my job,’ he repeats for assurance. The Cook doesn’t notice Room Service Boy’s lips moving at all.
§
The Tooth, the Whole Tooth.
Paper Boy woke before the sun warmed the room. He smelled of minty, waxy peaches as he writhed on the carpet in his blue underwear, all flossed up with nowhere to go.
Rick and Serge were sawing themselves to sleep.
He picked and frayed and broke the floss, along with one of his good straight teeth. A bottle opener freed his ankles, then his shaky fingers collected a thin line of red-and-white string. He found his pants and jacket beside the toilet. His soppy T-shirt was fit for the tub. He didn’t look in the mirror, and he didn’t look in the mirror of the Checker Cab he called from the lobby. He tried to erase the lines on his wrists. Silly doodles in red pen. Tracing gums with his tongue, he realized he’d swallowed part of a good straight tooth.
Paper Boy let out a crinkle, paying the cabbie slightly less than was due. Dollar bills, quarters and nickels. He felt thin and shy. Parched.
‘That’s enough, buddy. Don’t give me all your damn change.’ With a paternal glint, the cabbie continued, ‘Go wash your face, and maybe you should sleep some. It’s supposed to rain today anyway. Christ, boy, you don’t look so hot. Should I take you to the hospital?’
Paper Boy hid his wrists with the cuffs of his jacket. He left the cab door open behind him, and his voice box seized up. A broken crank. Without a thank you, he spat blood to the curb.
He was missing his watch, a good Timex, with a band that buckled. His rubbery muscles sprang and sprung toward the river. The Demerol in his veins numbed his legs from the knees down. After the cabbie stretched his strong arm behind the front seat to shut the open door, Paper Boy turned around to wave, to check if his wrist still worked. An elastic band waiting to snap a question. A pensive palm bent slightly.
‘You can’t wear a watch now anyway,’ he said to his wrist.
§
Hangnail for a Wink.
Between the creases of her pillow, Miss Lamp picks the sleep from her eyes. An itch on her cheek brings her left hand out from under her side. Congealed blood, skin and toilet paper drag along the polyester bedspread. She sucks in her cheeks like a lemon. Pins and needles tickle her immaculately shaved underarm, sewing themselves into the lapel of her collarbone. Her eyes blink wet.
‘That was smart,’ she says. ‘I need a band-aid.’
Leaning over the side of the bed, she reaches into her carry-on, beams at her manicure kit and zips slowly around its corners. It’s full of shiny picks, files, clippers, tweezers and scissors. ‘Security is blind,’ she says, pondering the possibility of hijacking an airplane with a pair of well-sharpened nail scissors. Just a glimpse of an emery board and her finger throbs like an eardrum at 10,000 metres.
She roasts germs from the tweezers’ steel limbs with her cigarette lighter. When the handles get hot she stops the flame with a lift of thumb. Hygienic. Wiping away the soot, she picks off five minutes’ worth of paper, skin and nail. Almost to the moon. Running her finger under the tap eases out a wince. ‘Water take me home,’ she sings, almost in key, dancing her blue toenails beneath the bathroom sink. Two of four Hollywood-style globes snap and hum.
Turning the cold tap left, she lathers up the one hotel soap cake not already in her travel bag and puts her finger in the bubbles. The sting brings a squint. The squint brings wrinkles. She holds the squint for certainty. She holds the squint to tally a census.
Fourteen. Six under the right eye and eight under the left.
The winking eye has one more wrinkle than the last time she checked. In a hotel room similar to this one, with a north-facing balcony, waiting for Campbell’s Tomato Soup, she counted thirteen wrinkles. Now it’s fourteen. It makes her twenty-three look twenty-three. Her winking eye deserves rest. With eyes barely visible in the bathroom mirror, she decides to not wink at Room Service Boys or pilots or dentists or judges or children anymore. Children can’t wink properly anyway. Miss Lamp weathers the damage of the wink. Cut down a tree and count the rings around its drying heart. Miss Lamp lets her face drop. It’s her mother’s fault.
§
Half-Pint.
Young Young Miss Lamp learned to wink at age eight.
Grandma drank vinegar. Grandma yelled at Abby for using Windex and paper towels for the windows instead of old newspapers and white vinegar. Grandma belched, ‘One part to two, Abby dear. One part to two. Don’t use malt either, white is best.’
Sliding her bum down the wooden steps one typically sunny morning when there was no school bus to catch, Young Young Miss Lamp saw Grandma chug half a pint of white vinegar, pouring the rest in the window bucket. Stuck for words, she climbed her bum back up the well-worn stairs. Abby was making the beds, folding hospital corners, sheets still warm.
‘Mom?’
‘Yes, dear?’ Abby pulled the sheet taut.
‘How do I talk to Grandma?’
‘Is she drinking vinegar again?’ Abby folded over the bed covers with ample room for the pillow.
‘Yes, Mom.’
‘Well, wait till she’s finished the windows, then wink at her.’ Abby replaced the pillow, fluffing it up in one, two, three. ‘She likes winks.’
Then, with one hand over the other, Abby’s finger rolled out in a tremor. Malpracticed nerves.
With a furrow in her brow, Young Young Miss Lamp helped Abby pat wrinkles out of the bed. ‘How?’
‘How what, dear?’
‘How do you do a wink?’
§
Dreaming of a White Christmas.
Abby and Grandma bitched about the wonderful Christmas snow falling beyond streaky hotel windows as Young Young Miss Lamp cut a dozen oranges with a plastic knife. She ground all twenty-four halves to and fro on a glass juicer. Happy juice. She didn’t bother filtering out the pulp and seeds and bits of peel. Grandma didn’t appreciate the juice.
‘This tastes like shit!’ Grandma slammed the glass down on the dining table so hard that a splash jumped out, hitting Young Young Miss Lamp in the left eye.
Irrepressible juice.
‘I’m doing a wink, Mom … Mom?’
‘Don’t listen to your grandmother, dear. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. The juice is lovely,