The Cloaca by Andrew Hood Read Free Book Online Page B

pane.
    We cut this deal like mustard, Kim and I: for one year he works while I do whatever my heart desires. Then we turn the tables.
    Jump back. Fall ahead.
    Inside of me I eventually see Belly on the ledge, pawing, going tack tack tack on the window. Like a teacher tapping chalk to the right of an equal sign, pleading and impatient.
    Like, Come on, kids. You know this one.
    What I would say if Kim ever said boo, is that it’s difficult for me also. It wasn’t supposed to be difficult, this year was supposed to be a productive breeze, but there you go. His free time is the only time I have to be with him, otherwise I’m alone. He has too little time and I have too much.
    Run a tap hot on your hand and it will become freezing to you in time.
    I open up the back door and cluck for Belly to come. She stops pawing and looks at me. Her eyes flare spooky green. She turns back to the window and asks again.
    â€œBelly,” I say. “Come on.” But she keeps at the window, so I open it. She falls inside and saunters towards her food bowl. I close the door and leave the window open for her to go back out.
    I will sit with Kim, not bothering him, until it’s time. He will kiss me and split. I will go back to bed and sleep until ten-ish. I will wake back up and have no idea how to get out of bed. I will think about how late in the day it is already, and that to start anything now is pointless because anyway I have to make lunch first. And maybe afterwards I will have to run out to the store for toilet paper, for anything. By the time I get home it will be time for the Sassy Judge Show that I like. It is the gift I give myself for all the hard work I do in a day. After which Kim will be home in an hour from his job. I will make him supper because he works so hard.
    A year, and what?
    I am no better at the drums, though I can twirl my sticks in a way that would make the ladies in the front row wet, the men hard.
    Mr. Dumbface, my dummy, can’t talk without me gritting my teeth in a horrible, threatening way that would scare the children at the birthdays I was hoping to perform at.
    There isn’t a play in my head that doesn’t take place at a bus stop or a TV pilot that doesn’t take place in a living room.
    The pair of socks I’m knitting stay heelless.
    A year, and that. And my time’s running out, the breadth given to my heart’s desire shrinking.
    Full, Belly plods to the door and rises up on her hind legs to ask.
    â€œBelly!” I scold. When she sits back down and looks at me I point at the open window. She looks at it, then back to the door. And then me.
    Belly always looks at me like she has no idea what I’m talking about.
    Kim has gone.
    What’s that joke about the broken clock again?
    The stream of eye goo runnelling along Belly’s nose catches the kitchen light and shimmers like a knife come out of nowhere in a fight you didn’t think was that serious.
    Kim warns me not to give too much of a character to Belly. Like he tells me that trees don’t and can’t cry. Animals don’t think anything, he explains. They don’t mean anything. Or at least, they don’t think or mean anything that we can understand.
    It goes even a broken clock is right two times a day.
    There’s this rap.
    Behind my kit, I’m holding my sticks like a fork and knife, waiting for a late meal to be served finally. Even though lunch has just been smoked.
    No dishes.
    I’m brilliant.
    Three of them. One has a black eye. The other has a scab shaped like an overfed lightning bolt on his shin. The third has corn rows and a basketball at his hip.
    All four of us are roughly the same height and have roughly the same mix of masculinity and femininity to our features but only three of us are rough.
    â€œKim home?” they want to know.
    â€œI’ll play if you want.”
    Sour, their pusses.
    â€œTwo on two,” I offer.
    â€œYou any good?” the