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Category: Writing and Poetry
Riley Vaughan is miserable. Riley Vaughan is miserable and cold. Riley Vaughan is miserable and cold and pale and tragic and still tired. Riley Vaughan does not want to get out of bed.
That's the narrator in my head; a running voice providing commentary in my life, verbalizing the words I imagine the world wants to hear, but nobody asks for. The voice is saying, Riley, (imagine this as very serious voice, not a creepy, grainy movie voice) Riley, do not get out of bed, Riley.
The voice tells everyone, Riley won't get out of bed because it's below freezing today in Chicago, just like yesterday and the day before and all the days since it was the first week of October. The voice tells anyone, Riley will hate getting out of bed until sometime in mid-June, when the frost finally melts and her feet cease to be numb.
I also know, because of my acute sense of hearing that getting out of bed will just piss me off this morning. I heard Grotto hacking up something not at all solid during the night, and I know that no matter how hard I try to avoid it, some portion of my foot will be planted firmly in cat sick before I can pee. I know it and the imaginary voice knows it, but I don't need to hear him say it. I can't bear the thought of the voice telling the world that my cat has thrown up, I knew it, and yet I was so tired I decided I'd deal with it later rather than leave the comfort of my bed last night.
Riley is in the familiar position where she was last night. Riley is miserable and cold and won't get up to clean the cat puke, but eventually she must remove her person from the bed and face the puddle of Meow Mix and freeze until she gets to the shower. Riley knows it won't go anywhere and avoiding the situation will prolong the situation but Riley does not care. She's far more content worrying about the situation than she is getting up and freezing and scrubbing and possibly sliding on the puke, careening into her dresser, falling, breaking her leg and crawling to a phone where she'll have to call her mother and tell her that her lazy ass has a broken leg, so can you send like a thousand dollars, she may need a doctor and some hot cocoa? Sometimes the voice gets carried away.
I roll away from the edge of the bed and stare out the broken blinds, through the frosty window and watch the gray morning turn grayer with each passing second. I swear I can feel the cold through the wall and instead of just radiating frigid into my apartment, it's coming to get me. The cold, pervasive and strong, totally bypasses the agreed upon boundaries of my blanket and pokes at my body with icy fingers, like a funny uncle who refuses to stop playing, 'come search my body for candy.'
Yeah. That was probably something the voice should have said, but it's that kind of uncomfortable, what did I do to deserve this, freezing ass cold. If I were a man, my nuts would be in my neck.
Since I'm not a man, my ass resembles a round, clammy, albeit small, frozen turkey. Maybe a turkey is too big, so it would be a chicken? I won't be conceited and say it's a Cornish hen or anything, but it's no where near the size of those gigantic carcasses my mom cooked each and every holiday. I'm Riley, the chicken ass, and I will not get out of bed. Not today and not tomorrow and not until it's not cold anymore.
I love the cold weather, but in order to appreciate it fully, I have to be wrapped in thermal pajamas, rolled in blankets and tucked into my bed. Today is the perfect cold day; beautiful in it's relentless bitterness, dark and hollow and completely desolate. Who am I to waste a day so glorious by trying to get out of bed and do anything?
I roll over again, face to face with Grotto and wonder if he will fit in his carrier when the winter ends and he has to go to the vet. Grotto is half Persian asshole AKC registered arrogant and ungrateful prick my mother adopted from the Save Our Persian Bloodline fund for overpaid people who use animals as a status symbol and the other half is crafty neighborhood Tom cat who managed to sneak in through a window I left open, inadvertently of course, when Sarajevo was in heat.
Grotto inherited Sara's dismissing stare and cruel attitude, puking in everything I own at least once, but luckily he got his fathers fantastic climbing ability. Grotto can get on top of anything and everything, including someone's head using a move I call, "Let me use my claws to run up your body slashing flesh from bone until I get high enough to scare myself shitless and cry until my mommy saves me."
I'm 5'3" and I've never been able to rescue him without using the Architecture degree I never got. I can stack the shit out of chairs, books and the occasional table to save his fat ass from the top of my furniture. I call him Grotto because of the puking. The puking is another good reason to stay in bed.
"Rye!" My door flings open until it hit's a pile of clothes and stops. Fortunately the voice didn't stop and my roommate smacks his head on the door. "Dammit, Riley! You're room is a disgrace! How in the hell do you live in this… SHIT!!" Evan bounces back, terrified.
"Baby, do not get out of bed. Stay put!" He hurries back out the door and for a second I listen to him rummage in the bathroom. He's gone just a few seconds too long and I start to wonder if he's seen some mega-bug about to sodomize Grotto, but he comes back armed with only a roll of paper towels, Lysol and a few plastic bags.
"I think you're cat got sick." He tells me. I watch him hover over the puddle and maniacally scrub the floor. I feel a twinge of guilt. Evan's gay and because he's gay he'll have to shower after this. His clothes will go into his hamper, separated by color, texture and importance and he'll wash himself with three different soaps and start his grooming all over because he saw the cat puke and broke a sweat cleaning it up.
I watch him crouched down, rubbing vigorously at my floor, spraying Lysol and rubbing again and smile at him. He can't bare the thought of my foot touching cat puke and he knows, in his heart, that I probably wouldn't have cleaned it up. That's why I have Evan. We take care of each other; he cooks, cleans, pays most of the bills, cuts my hair, does my nails, grocery shops and reminds me to call my mom on her birthday, while I forget to feed Grotto, run perpetually late, make fun of him and his compulsions and sexual preference with my scathing wit and pretend to be his girlfriend because nobody but me knows Evan Ericson is queer. I think that makes us just about equal.
"Do you think he's sick?" Evan's talking but I know if I respond I'll be awake and if I'm awake I can't be asleep and I'll be forced out of bed. His voice is the gunpoint taking me hostage. "Riley?"
I shake my head and hope he doesn't ask me anything that requires more than a yes or a no. I can shake and nod and still not be awake.
"You need to take him to the vet. No cat on the planet should get sick as often as he does." Evan finishes scrubbing my floor and places each neatly folded paper towel in a plastic bag. He wraps the bag tightly around the messy towels and ties it. He takes that bag, places it in another bag and ties again. He's pulling the knots so tight and forcing so much air out of them that the towels have gone from soft and soggy and become a hard nugget of plastic covered icky.
My mind wanders and I imaging that bag, with all those deoxygenated towels compacted to a mini-brick would make a great swinging projectile and contemplate taking one with me, sans cat sick, when I get on the train. I envision swinging the bag over my head and clobbering Reggie the Wonder Bum on the Red Line next time he asks if I got a "spring" water in my bag.
"Are you going to get up?" Evan stands and, like clockwork, starts to undress. As much as I want to stay asleep I can't help it. I can't just wait and listen for the shower. I have to ask and know and tease.
"You looked so nice. Why are you getting undressed?" I bite my lip and try to look disappointed. Really, I'm just trying to hold in the laughter.
"I need a shower, Riley, you know. You know how I am. I can't just," and here he shudders and gags a little, "I just can't. I need to be clean. I'm not clean, not after that. I've got cat puke all over me."
"You don't have cat puke all over you, Evan." I'm trying to be nice, but the more I talk the more he panics. "You're a careful cleaner. You didn't get anything on you."
"Fumes." He says and starts to leave the room, holding the bag as far away as he can. I wonder if fumes is some other language word for 'fuck off you dirty bitch.'
"Fumes?" I have to ask, cause I think I know, but of course, I have no idea.
"Yes Riley. Fumes. The fumes are all over me. The fumes from the cat puke wafted up and penetrated my clothes." At this point, he is flailing and waving his hands like a panicked chicken. "I'm covered in fumes from that little fiasco."
"Your mom is blind?" I ask and finally sit up.
Riley sits up from her bed knowing that if she does not go to class today she's going to be a disappointment to everyone she's ever met. The voice ignores Evan because Evan gets enough attention.
"What?" Evan stops moving and watches me stand and stretch and I know his eyes are on the hole in my pajama pants and the boxers I stole from him, peeking out from underneath.
"Like, she can't see, or hear, or even feel?" I'm provoking him because I'm crabby and he's an easy target.
"Say what you mean, Riley." He's trying not to furl his brow because that causes wrinkles, but he's so confused it's inevitable.
"She has to know you're gay, Evan. If she could hear you whining like a bitch or see you, or, or even feel the air that moves when you go into one of those rainbow frenzies then that woman has no doubt you're a twink, love." I do a really bad imitation of Evan's prancing and panicking and stumble and bang my foot.
"See, God punished you." He smirks and stalks off.
"Wait until you see what God does to you, Evan!" I call after him while I rub my bruised and aching foot. "I know what's coming for you, I watch the 700 Club. God has a list of tortures that are, dare I say, even worse than cat puke!" Riley braves the pain and starts to walk towards the bathroom.
"You're going to be late for class." Evan doesn't pay any attention to anything I say. "I'm going to shower and get ready and you'll be late."
"Oh, look at me, I'm a fancy man who needs a shower cause I got too close to some unmentionable dirt. I can't take it, all the dirt, I'm swimming in it, dirty nasty slimy! Help!" I wave my hands in the air but refrain from spinning. One more fall and I might have to call my mother.
"Riley?" Evan has reopened the bathroom door. He's wearing his pre-shower towel, which is different from his post shower robe and never to be confused with Riley didn't buy toilet paper so she uses whatever is closest towel.
"Yeah?" I'll humor him.
"Why do I have a British accent when you make fun of me?" He's right. For some reason when I mock anyone, I give them British accents. I shrug.
"Take your second shower." I start stalking into the kitchen hoping there's coffee.
"Feed your cat. Yesterday when I came home he was chewing through the last of the imported ham." Evan's voice is drowned out by the shower and I pick up Grotto as I cross into the kitchen.
"Little does he know, Grotty baby, the imported ham was exactly what I fed you. I'm glad you liked it. Evie might not have known it was for you when he brought it home, but I know that in his heart he's thrilled you liked it." I kiss my baby's head and set him on the kitchen table, wishing Evan wasn't in the shower since he does a great scream when Grotto is on the kitchen table. "Let's see what Evie has for my baby today. Oh, look honey, lox! You love lox! Mmm and this is the imported kind. Evie must have brought that for you, since no normal person would eat that shit."
Yes, Riley Vaughan, speaking in a perfectly adorable baby voice, fed fifty dollars worth of Lox to her cat. To thank her, Grotto threw it up on Evan's bed, because Riley locked him in Evan's room before she left for class, inadvertently, of course.
9:16 PM
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