Aborigen

Linda watched the eucalyptus and sage bathwater drain away, then gave the tub a quick once-over with a rag to leave it clean enough. She smirked: if only cleaning up Fairview could be so easy. Just wipe up the scum with a swipe of your hand, and then …

She looked at herself in the mirror, picked at a dark spot between her upper teeth, then braced herself as she opened the door and let all the delicious steam out. Straightaway she padded on moist, bare feet to the living room and opened a small, vintage liquor cabinet. It wouldn’t be a complete night without her glass of sherry. She turned out the lights in the kitchen, drew the blinds in the living room—she hoped some late-night voyeur caught a glimpse of body just before the slats shut—and slipped back into the hallway to shut off the bathroom light. Then, once all the rooms were dark, with glass in hand, then she took in her final indulgence.

Mounted on the wall near the front door were six little Plexiglas apartments, like a meticulous art display portraying the interior lives of an apartment building. That’s what it was, in a way, and if there was any art to it, it was in the expensive miniatures with which Linda had stocked each room. They weren’t elaborate little apartments, no, they were one-room deals. Everything they needed was provided for them in one room, with partitions separating the bathroom from the bedroom from the living room, if they wanted that. In the six little rooms were six little men, Derek being the newest addition to her collection— Linda smirked, catching herself. She mustn’t allow herself to think of them that way, even if that’s what they were and what she dearly craved them to be.

Glancing to ensure the deadbolt and chain lock were set on her front door, she stepped up to the living fixture. Six little rooms, six little men asleep in them … except for one. Ted’s light was on, he was reading, and the light from his room glowed enough to permit Linda to see her own nude form dimly reflected in the Plexiglas. She sipped her drink and admired how well she’d taken care of herself, for someone her age. She was the stuff college boys lusted after, told stories about. In the reflection she could just make out the shadow dividing her symmetrical abs and the hollow of her navel. Artistic, if she said so herself. So why weren’t these little men begging and pleading for a taste of her?

She drew a long breath, the herbal bath mingling with the musk of her own skin in her nostrils. She rolled the sherry around her tongue, enjoying how quickly the alcohol soaked her inner tissues and coursed along with her racing pulse. Ted, that little boob, reading the same book over and over. It’s like he was scared to ask for a new one, and he might well be. He looked like a little potato that hadn’t gotten enough sleep and never said no to a doughnut. If he were bigger, normal-sized, he’d be the dork of his group, the one that the cooler, handsomer guys stuck with the bill occasionally, partly a joke and partly a hint to stop hanging out with them. And he’d take it. Because of all this, he was not one of Linda’s favorites, and therefore his furniture was not flashy and nice, and perhaps she yelled at him the last time he asked for a third book. Linda snorted in her glass. It was hard to recall, but she knew a drunk redhead could be intimidating to any man, not to mention one a little shorter than her vaginal canal.

The other little men, Ralph, delicious Duane, and her current favorite, Chris, they were all uniformly rolled over in their beds, facing the wall, slight backs turned toward the Plexiglas front. Synchronized bedtime rituals, Linda thought. Her boobs bounced with a light laugh, and she couldn’t get over how much the little fuckers were missing out on. She stepped forward and pressed her breasts against the Plexiglas, mashing over Duane and Derek’s apartments, with Ralph and Chris flanking her head. Marvin’s place was dark on her right side and Ted’s glowed on her left. Reading into the night. It would’ve been a great opportunity for him to just look down and see how Linda had shaved tonight.

He was immobile. Either it was a really good book, or he was scared shitless to be caught glancing at his landlady.

She rested her forehead against the Plexiglas with a light thunk, closed her eyes in a squeeze, and turned and brought her sherry into the bedroom.