You
meet him at the gym. He asks you out while you’re wiping the molded
black arms of the elliptical machine.
Two
nights later you’re at the Olive Garden and he’s mad that the
waitress isn’t bringing your salad refill fast enough. He yells;
you stare into the abyss of your minestrone. The shell noodles stare
back, shiny and forlorn in a red, salty bath.
Later,
at a bar, he tells you Ted Bundy is his hero. You are unfazed,
accustomed to the shock tactics of small, powerless men.
He
gives you a ride home. Parked in front of your building, he grabs
your wrist and pulls. You’ve readied the pepper spray. While he
screams, clenched like a croissant around the steering wheel, you
feel guilty. He was probably only trying to kiss you goodnight.
You
let him come in to wash his eyes with the spray attachment on your
kitchen sink.
In
bed, as his thumbs press the hollow of your throat, you regret
leaving the pepper spray in your purse, across an unbridgeable chasm
of carpet, the most significant ten-foot span of your rapidly
expiring life.
Kate
Folk
The
Butcher Boy
Patrick
McCabe
