To make a long story.
Short,
this girl,
having cut her wrists
old school style,
kicked up a minimum fuss.
Stripping down,
she laid down on the bed
and dreamed of a soft serve
elevator for the hallway stairs.
Ernest Hemmingway
posed nude for me the other day.
This is not as big a deal
as you might think.
To me at least.
A photographer
takes a job as they come.
Particularly
when the fridge is empty.
Anyway,
he came in around eleven.
Hung over and under already,
he asked for his seven-fifty
up front.
"No one's buying garbage anymore,"
he said, slurring, throwing in a stray sob.
"No one loves a one note joke."
I wrote him a cheque,
for seven-forty-eight,
which he didn't seem to notice,
and we went to work.
And surprise, surprise
he was shy as hell.
First,
he refused to get
on the table set up
in my garage.
When he finally did,
he took off his matted down
shirt with the tiny bull on
the right breast and wouldn't
go any further than that.
It took four, count-em, four
bottles of hellaciously cheap
wine to get him going again.
After that,
you would've swore
I was working with Bettie Page.
All smiles and schoolgirl
poses and naughty, if not a
little scary, poses in all the
common positions of perverse interest.
Even though it took another
two, count-em, two bottles
of insanely cheap wine to keep
him giggling and moving and
lowering his already amusing
standards where morality
is sort of a concern to him.
Neither of us spoke.
Though he did manage
to drool an awful lot.
We finished up when he
fell off the table and broke
his comical third leg.
I left him there to sleep it off.
While also making a point
of taking back the cheque.
Seriously,
come on now,
the wheels are still
spinning.
Who cares
if we haven't
moved in days.
Gabriel Ricard writes short fiction, poetry, and plays. Born in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, he lives with his family in Waverly, Virginia.