Page 42 of Resting Grump Face
Mr. Grayson, I know you don’t like it when I keep calling, but please pick up.
Mr. Grayson, a sign that you’re alive would be enough too.
“Who’s that?” Sienna asks with a used condom between the prongs of her grabber. “Your secret affair? Because I should know about that if I am to fix your image.”
Alive
I answer real quick, put the phone away, and open the bag. “Classy,” I say as we both look at the condom. “Who would do something like that?”
“I don’t know.” Sienna drops it in the bag, and her big eyes shift from the condom to me. “Certainly not us,” she says and, in that moment, I can see right through her. I can see how her memory unfolds, how the runway stretches out and the planes lift off. She’s back at the airport, back in that bathroom. And so am I. For a moment, I am not only standing in front of her, I am pressed against her, pinning her against that cold wall while her fingers dig deep into my back. I can feel the pain again, a good pain, an exhilarating pain. I re-live how it feels to be inside her, how it feels to taste and touch her. And —fuck— do I crave to feel it again, to feel her. Despite the cold, I am burning up.
And then I can sense that other pain again, the one in my butt, the one from the taser, and the cut above my eye.
We both swallow hard. Sienna nods once, says something under her breath that sounds a lot like ‘Brother Tucker’, and then she walks off again. She’s not skipping anymore. Her mood has changed in an instant. She’s not merry, not happy, and for a second, I don’t know how I feel about that.
Then I remember that is the whole point of us being here. Making her pull a face like this is why I hired her in the first place.
Both of us walk onto the pier, me following behind her. At the very end, a guy in his early twenties, dressed in a yellow track suit, is squatting down while smoking and looking over the water. Sienna picks up a plastic bag that’s stuck among the reeds. When we approach, the guy gets to his feet and looks over his shoulder.
“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” he asks rather rudely.
Sienna looks down at herself. “Cinderella? Generic fairytale royalty?” Then she pokes holes into the air with her grabber. “Butthiswould probably make me Trashinella.” She ruffles her own hair. “Litterinella? Yeah, the name needs work.”
Looks like her mood is lifting again.
“Ah,” the guy says and rolls his eyes. Then he walks back towards land and, while doing so, flicks his cigarette into the pond.
“Hey!” Sienna spins around like a hound who just discovered a littering fox. She’s fuming. Of course, the fume is just her breath that’s visible because of the cold, but it is very fitting nonetheless. “You can’t do that. What about the ducks? And the frogs!”
“Mind your own fucking business, Bitchinella,” the guy says and spits right onto the ground in front of her.
Sienna pouts. It’s barely noticeable, but I know she does.
A split second later, I make an executive decision to drop my trash bag and grab Mr. (Cigarette) Butt by his neck instead. I make him trip over my leg and force him to the ground. His head is dangling off the side of the pier while my body pins the rest onto the wooden planks. He can’t move. I lean down and whisper in his ear, “Trust me, it’s easier for you this way. Whatever she would have done to you would have been a lot worse.”
The guy is so taken by surprise he can’t utter a single word.
“Now,” I say, “see that trash floating under the pier?”
He nods with a slightly scared, slightly pained expression, so I take most of my weight off him again.
“Grab what you can and throw it in her bag.”
Reluctantly, he does as commanded, quickly grabs what he can and eventually gets back to his knees. His track suit has changed color from yellow to green-brownish. I help him backup and wait for him to place the garbage into the bag that Sienna is holding open.
“And what do we say for polluting our local park?” I ask.
He looks my way, then quickly to the ground. “Sorry.”
“And about her dress?”
The guy hesitates a second.
I take a step closer.
“It’s very pretty,” he mumbles.
That’s more like it.
