Cold Soup
I’m up on the top deck of this double-decker, stopped at a light, staring down through the piss-streaked window into a restaurant with red tablecloths and napkins folded like origami sculptures. waiters running plates, patrons shaking off the rain like wet dogs, umbrellas dumped in the corner dripping into one big grey puddle.
and my gut growls. maybe some oysters. maybe a steak so rare it bleeds when you stick the fork in. yes, maybe — after payday, who knows, fate’s a bad landlord, she’ll get to it when she gets to it.
the bus just sits there like a drunk outside the liquor store. I’m drooling over langoustines swimming in white wine and garlic, a cold beer sweating beside the plate. so many things behind that glass, and all of them warm, and all of them two feet away and a whole yard of window out of reach.
then I spot her. corner table, mouth half-open, saying something to the guy across from her. and she’s part of it now — another warm thing in the lit window, the wine and the bread and the woman all the same want, the same heat I’m on the wrong side of.
she drags her chair closer to him.
I wipe a hole in the fogged glass with the sleeve of my coat, and there they are—tits pushed up under a thin blouse, little lace edge peeking out like it’s daring me. Suddenly I don’t give a rat’s ass about dinner or wine or beer or the cold that crawls up my legs every night.
I stare at them like a starving man at a bakery window, soft, round, maybe the size of small peaches if peaches were worth dying for. She laughs at something he says, and I think, Christ, what I wouldn’t give to be that lucky bastard with that cleavage right there, two feet away, warm and breathing.
then the bus coughs, lurches south toward Milton Road, and the moment’s gone, flushed down the toilet with the rest of the day.
home at last, one dented can of tomato soup, and bread hard enough to break a tooth. I eat it cold, standing over the sink, listening to the rain piss down on the roof like it’s got a grudge against me. same as always.
langoustines, oysters,
a warm woman, warm bread, wine—
one cold dented can.
