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Penny

Brett Milam

    With one final grunt and thrust, he edged off of me, turned to a sitting position and walked out of the room with a snide, “Bitch,” in his wake. I rubbed my throat where his hand had been. There was blood from when his fingernail must have scratched me on the side of the neck. He was limp; it wasn’t my fault, but the red handprint on my throat didn’t indicate that to him.
    I slid my hand under the covers. If he wasn’t going to get me off, someone had to. This was our nightly ritual. He’d thrust, thrust, choke, thrust, choke, yell, “Bitch,” and thrust before giving up in a ball of rage. He’d leave the room to go watch some bullshit on television and I’d finish myself off. I had a vibrator. He didn’t know about it, under the floor panel under the bed. I reached for it now. Donatello (yeah, after the turtle – don’t ask) was much friendlier to me than him; he moved sensitively down there and could last as long as possible.
    After he was finished, I put Donatello back and pulled out my sketch pad and lit the little lamp next to the bed. Nothing fancy tonight, but I felt like hearing the sounds of the pencil etching across the thin paper.
    “What are you doing?” Charles said, as he re-entered the room in only red boxers. He still had remnants of a high school six-pack stomach; he didn’t drink and he stuck to mostly steamed vegetables and cod. He brushed a strand of black hair from his eyes with the swipe of his hand – god that was sexy – and went over to his side of the bed.
    “Just drawing, Charlie,” I said, as I moved the pencil across the pad, starting in on a portrait of a soldier with his legs blown to pieces.
    “I’m going to read Middlesex,” he said, and pulled a book from the bedside table drawer.
    “What is that, some erotica?” I said, not looking at him or the book.
    “No, it’s a book in Oprah’s Book Club; you wouldn’t know anything about it,” he said, removing a bookmark that looked to be only set a few pages in. I thought the bookmark had dinosaurs on it. I had never seen it.
    For the next two hours, I sketched and he read in complete silence except for the occasional page flipped from him and the scratch, scratch my pencil made. Then he turned out the light on his side and said, “Let’s go to bed.” I had just erased an errant line that made the soldier’s nose look snake-like, but otherwise, it was shaping up okay. I put the pad under the mattress, the pencil on the table and put head to pillow. I wasn’t tired. I scratched at the reddening on my throat.
    The next morning, I made him a vegetarian omelet. I had found some recipe through Google and was following it, but I never could get the spatula to navigate the eggs right. He sipped black coffee, reading Middlesex again; he must have been at a good part.
    Fuck, I tried flipping the omelet over and half of it spilled over the frying pan. I tried to scoop it back into the pan, but burned my finger. “Shit!” I said, as I licked my finger and then brought it under cool water from the tap.
    “You have such a dirty mouth,” he remarked, not taking his eyes off the page he was reading.
    I guess “bitch” wasn’t a dirty word, then. The omelet looked like an IED had gone off inside of it, but I put it on a plate with a bit of garnish – he insisted on that part – and stepped back. He dripped barely a morsel of hot sauce onto the omelet, took a slivering bite, masticated for not even a full second and then knocked his plate off the table. Pieces of green pepper and egg intermixed with the broken black plate on the floor.
    “Clean it up, I’m late for work,” Charles said, and he scooped up his black coat and was out the door before I could say something sarcastic back.
    I didn’t clean it up until five minutes before he was to return from work. Because, fuck him.
    In the meantime, I went to a local coffeehouse dubbed the Howling Flame Cellar, which made no sense because it wasn’t an Irish Pub, but the coffee was delicious, anyhow. I sat at a corner by myself and opened my laptop. Immediately, I went to OkCupid. I wanted to chat with someone normal or at least, as normal as you could find on an online dating Web site
    I found someone named Robbie. He had done two tours in Afghanistan, had three pitbulls named Curly, Larry and Moe. Cute; I clicked and sent a quick message:
    hi, Curly, Larry and Moe don’t exactly strike me as fearsome, ravenous pitbulls, but cute. Want to chat? :)
    He was online, so it didn’t take long for a response:
    Penny? I don’t think I’ve ever met a Penny before. Well, at least one without a beard before...
    Heh, cheesy, but I’ll take it because he was good looking. He had a strong jawline like you would expect with cropped brown hair and a mole on his cheek that was kinda sexy.
    I responded:
    Usually, I get the Penny for Your Thoughts line, but an Abe joke, not bad. But let’s get down to it. I’m sitting in a coffeehouse, the Howling Flame Cellar, yeah I don’t know either; do you want to come over sometime? Grab a cup of coffee, do this or that, whatever.
    Within seconds:
    Yeah, I have some time on leave. That’d be great. Ha, maybe you can even meet the Stooges.
    We set up a time and date; I closed my laptop and was out the door and back home in a few minutes.
    I wanted to get to my painting. Nothing quite drew me in like a blank canvas. I hadn’t had a gallery opening in a few weeks, but I was hoping this new piece I had in mind would be the catalyst I needed.
    Destroyed buildings, flames still licking at the façade, body parts strewn across a bloody cobbled road, a small child weeping over her mother’s fallen body, a dog sitting perched under a street lamp, not understanding, a tank rolling around the corner, two young men exchanging their last cigarettes with blackened hands, an unused grenade rolling toward a sewer and the sun creeping up in the background, shining a light on the aftermath of a conflict.
    I was thinking Tears of a City, no, too on the nose, maybe What Is It Good For? No, I didn’t want to borrow...well, the title could wait.
    By the time I finished the last brown brush stroke on the dog’s tail – tails were always the hardest for me, worse than hands – it was almost time for Charlie’s arrival. And that fucking omelet was still mashed on the floor downstairs. I put away my supplies and threw a ravaged tarp over the canvas and ran downstairs. I scooped up the broken plate and pieces of food, which smelled worse than a foxhole and discarded them in the trashcan. I brewed coffee, poured it in his Price is Right cup, and leaned in against the counter, waiting.
    I heard as the chain of the garage door struggled to pull the maroon door open, the smooth engine of our, well, his, Cadillac, a work vehicle, into the familiar spot and the door slammed shut. In he came. He had flowers. Sunflowers, to be precise and dammit, I hated when he did this. My stomach fluttered on instinct. He kissed me on the cheek, handed me the flowers, took off his coat, grabbed his coffee and took a long sip, even though it was hot. Ugh.
    “Thanks, Charlie,” I managed.
    “Come on, put ‘em in some water,” he muttered, between sips.
    I did. I inhaled their fresh scent and smiled; they smelled as if just pulled from fresh dirt after a mellow rain shower. Or they probably sat lonely on a shelf under fluorescent bulbs in a store sprayed by a water bottle once in while from a middle-aged, minimum wage woman until Charlie happened by them.
    Later that night, the ritual had begun: thrust, thrust, thrust. He really tried hard this time, sweat dripped from his reddened face, his eyes contorted into concentration; he looked like a bald eagle about to swoop in on its prey, but I could already feel him beginning to go soft. Just like every night. This time there was no choking or bitch-yelling. He gently rolled off me, gasped for breath and twisted to his side.
    I said, soft as I could, “Maybe, maybe we should finally see a doctor about it, Charlie.” I touched my hand to his side and scooted closer.
    Within seconds, he was on his feet and had turned on me. He grabbed me by my auburn, curly hair and punched me in the mouth.
    “Don’t ever say that,” he said. He didn’t scream. It was barely a whisper.
    “But I,” I started to say, and he pulled back his bleeding fist from where it had connected with my teeth before and thudded his fist into my mouth once more. This time it felt like one of my teeth loosened, I didn’t know which one, though, because I was too busy – panicked about the trickling blood, my heart clawed at my chest, and the tears scorched.
    “God, Penny,” he said. I didn’t even hear him. He walked over to the dresser, looked into the mirror and smoothed back his hair. His shoulders rose for what seemed like the longest time and then dropped back down. He looked in the mirror again and saw me wipe the blood off my lip with the comforter.
    He came at me, but tripped over my black heels, and reached for my throat. I tried this time to resist; I scratched at his face and kicked, but his hand was at my throat, tightened. I could see where I got him with a scratch next to his left eye, but it didn’t seem to bother him. His hand sure wasn’t going limp.
    Then he stopped and was off of me. I wasn’t dead. I gasped, coughed, coughed, coughed, coughed and sneezed. Blood, snot, tears and spit. I looked at him through blurred vision. A strand of his hair hung over his eyes, but he didn’t swipe it away.
    His eyes turned to my canvas with the ravaged tarp. He walked over to it, ripped off the tarp and looked and looked and looked and looked...
    “This is shit,” he said. He left the room.
    I sat up and felt dizzy and lied back down. Son of a bitch. Then, I heard footsteps returning up the stairs. Charlie came through the frame of the door with something in his hands.
    A knife.
    He slashed at the canvas, ripped and tore, scratched, scratched. I fumbled through the comforter and flailed out of the bed, screaming at him. I grabbed him around the ankles, crying and spitting and bleeding and yelling. He turned on me and kicked me in the mouth. As if my mouth hadn’t had enough.
    My eyes slid open. I was still on the bedroom floor. My head throbbed, my mouth throbbed harder and I could feel the thick texture of dried blood on my mouth. I looked to my right and could see the pieces of my canvas everywhere. I managed to sit up and then roll to my knees. I picked up a piece of the canvas that was the damn dog’s tail. Maybe a bit bushier than I intended, but well, I need a newer brush...I threw it across the room. Goddammit.
    I didn’t go to the bathroom to clean up, like I usually would. I stumbled, bumping against the walls and the railing, down the stairs. I came into the kitchen to find him smelling the Sunflowers. Middlesex was turned over on the table, as if he had been reading it prior.
    “You have a limp dick,” I said. Wait, did I just say that? I felt the vibration of the syllables on my tongue and “dick” had a particular elongated bite about it, but I didn’t believe I had actually said anything until I saw him turn around, his eyes open wider than I’ve ever seen them, but not in rage, something else entirely, something I had yet to see from him: sadness and disappointment. But I pressed on.
    “You’re soft. You’ve never pleasured me before, ever. You know what I do, Charlie? I take out a vibrator from under our bed, and I pleasure myself after your limp dick leaves. Donatello – that’s what I call it – is better to me than you’ve ever been,” I said, and held onto the chair in front of me to steady myself. I whipped my hair out of my face. He stood against the counter, his hand still holding onto the vase the sunflowers sat in.
    “And if you weren’t limp, your dick is ridiculously small; I wouldn’t feel anything, even if you managed to keep it hard. It’s amazing you can find the fucking thing to piss. Remember when you told me how many girlfriends you had before me? Surely they faked every orgasm you ever thought you gave them because that little limp fucker couldn’t do anything for anyone. You’re a pathetic loser, Charlie. You bring those sunflowers home and think it will make me forget your limp dick in the evening and the thud of your fist afterwards? Fuck you, Charlie. Fuck you. God, that feels good to say. Fuck you, you limp dick son of a bitch,” I said, and my chest was on fire and my head was spinning. I had to sit down. I did.
    Charlie was quiet.
    He grabbed his book, noted what page he was on and left the kitchen. I heard his feet on the stairs and then the bedroom door closed.
    I must have been blacked out for a while, as it neared six-thirty in the morning. I turned on the tap and washed my face and scrubbed and scrubbed. Then I grabbed the vase of sunflowers and tossed it into the trash.
    The sun glinted through the small kitchen window; the sky filled with purple and orange hues. It was beautiful. I gravitated to the front door, opened it, turned toward the bedroom door, lingered and then left. I didn’t know where I was walking to or why or how awful my face looked, but I kept walking.

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