Sinners Circle

by Sims, Karina

  She points with her paint brush at a pile of Chinese noodle boxes, Pizza boxes, Wings, Pasta shells dried and hardened fallen on the floor. “I call the restaurants when I need to.”

  “What!”

  “I have to eat sometime!”

  “Yeah but...”

  “And it’s not like you’ve been going to the grocery store lately. I should be asking you the same thing!”

  “Well, I work a lot and go for dinner at friends houses...” I think about the girl I’ve been eating for the past month. The last time I was in a grocery store— about two weeks ago—was to buy some lettuce for the rat I sewed inside her stomach. I ate spaghetti and watched it wiggle out of her vagina. When he got out, the little fucker was racing around my living room, darting here and there. It took me forever to catch him. My intention was to see if I could keep him alive and strong enough to sew him in again, so I bought lettuce. Sadly though, this killed the poor little guy. “Marcy, eating out all the time is too expensive.”

  “Well it’s not like I have many friends now, is it?”

  “Marcy, I can cook for you.”

  She looks like she’s about to cry, but she bats away the tears and her face turns hard. “I don’t need you wiping my ass and spoon feeding me. You have other things to do, I’d just be holding you back. You’d be married by now, you know that.” Her little stringy fist bangs the wheel of her chair. “You are the child, not me.”

  I close the fridge door and put my hand on her shoulder. “You are not a burden to me.”

  She freezes up, so I run my fingers through her hair, pat her on the back. She takes a deep breath then slowly relaxes. She pats my hand. “I know, dear. I just want you to live your own life.”

  “Marcy... you are my life. Please, don’t forget that.” I try my best to mean this, but even as these words pass through my lips, and I can feel them warm her heart, I don’t mean a word, because I’m wondering when she will die. My hand patting her shoulder, stroking her hair, I’m actually wondering if she’s ever had an orgasm. I’m wondering if Jesus really was black, or Chinese, and I’m fighting the impulse to squeeze her shoulder, to see if I could break anything before she managed to make me stop, or if she could make me stop. “I love you, Marcy.”

  She sighs. “I know, love. I know.”

  I clean her fridge while she makes a grocery list. After I toss all the rotten apples and rancid meat in the trash, and throw the compost in the back yard, I go to the grocery store and buy all her food. The brunette bagging my purchases winks at me. She can’t be a day over seventeen. I wink back and take Marcy’s stuff home for her. I cook her spaghetti and help her get dressed for bed. We talk about plans for the trip to the paint-by-numbers contest and she tells me all about men my age who attend.

  “Some of them are real lookers. You really ought to come this year.”

  I nod, tuck in her blankets. “I know. I will.”

  I watch TV in her living room until the cuckoo clock announces ten o’clock. I turn off the TV and check if Marcy is asleep, then I drive back to Walgreens. I wait in the parking lot, listen to the radio and smoke cigarettes until that brunette grocery bagger girl comes walking out the door digging through her purse. As she gets closer she waves, I roll down the window, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  She laughs. “Umm, I work here?”

  “Yeah but, until this hour? Don’t you have homework?”

  She laughs again.“Yeah, I do actually. Wait, what are you doing here?”

  I point to the video store across the street. “Waiting for my friend to get off work.”

  “Oh. You know Dallas?”

  I cough in my fist, looking around the parking lot. No one is here, she’s close enough to my car that I could pull her through the open window. “Yeah, that’s my cousin.”

  “Oh cool! That’s my boyfriend.”

  The best I can do to not frown is pull my face into a smirk. “Listen, you want a ride or something?”

  She steps back, I could still hit her with the door before she broke into a run. “Well, I’m not really going far.”

  I point at the sky. “It’s pretty dark, a lot of creeps out in the city tonight.”

  She doesn’t say anything, so I start the engine. “I’m gonna go get Dallas some beer anyway, so if you just wanna come for the ride, I can take you back to him after.”

  Seventeen year old girls are so dumb. “Oh! Sure!”

  We don’t leave the parking lot. I undo my seat belt as she straps hers on. I swing a screwdriver straight into her windpipe, grab her hair and slam her head against the dash until I hear a loud crunch. I break the fingers she tries clawing me with and I light a smoke watching her as she slumps forward, her nose pouring like a bloody fountain onto the garbage bags on the seat and floor. When all that stops, I undo her seat belt and cover her with a blanket, then I drive home.

  XX

  Carl’s friend Michael is getting married. Written vows, caged doves, real rings and everything.

  Alison, she’s hiking up the halter top of her dress, spitting in my ear, “Were we not supposed to wear white?”

  Carl’s friend Michael is getting married to a woman he met online via a website for Ukrainian mail order brides.

  Alison hisses in my ear so sharply I can feel the spit flying into my external auditory canal, beads of her saliva collecting on the bottoms of my hoop earrings. Her words, they are literally dripping onto my bare shoulder. “It’s not like she’s pure anyway. I’m not going to dress in slut colors just because she is parading around in faux virgin fabric. Look at her... she’s probably been around the block a hundred times.” It’s kind of alarming how Alison crosses and uncrosses her legs when she says virgin.

  Carl’s friend Michael, this chump hasn’t even met his blushing bride. This wedding, the one I’m sitting at right now, hung over and dizzy, yeah this will be Michael and what’s-her-face’s first time seeing each other, flesh wise. Alison points at the wrong woman. I wipe the beads of spit gathering on my earrings. “That isn’t Sveta.”

  Alison looks over at some fat woman laced tight into an off-white bridesmaid dress and spooning borscht into the wide hole of her face. “Her?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. That’s just some bitch.”

  She keeps pulling up her halter top. “How do you know?”

  “Because Mike won’t see her until she walks down the aisle.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. Some people really are that lame.”

  Alison rolls her eyes, “Traditional.”

  I shrug. “Lame.”

  She rolls her eyes again, quits pulling at her halter and crosses her arms and legs. “Well I don’t think I’m wrong for wearing white if that pig over there gets to.”

  The borscht pig, the one in the white dress, she pops some pirogi in her mouth and smiles at some old man walking by. He doesn’t smile back.

  I poke Alison in the ribs, “Hey is my eyeliner smudged?”

  She looks at me without smiling and shakes her head, “No sweetie, you look beautiful.”

  Carl sits down holding a napkin of Brie and Havarti squares. “Hey ladies.”

  Alison smiles, “Don’t we look great? We got our hair and nails done this afternoon.” She shakes her hands loosely in front of her so Carl can see her manicured talons.

  He pops a block of Havarti in his mouth. “Lovely!” He looks at my hair. “Wow! Amanda, I’ve never seen you with your hair up.” He pops another piece of cheese in his mouth. “Beautiful.”

  I scratch my legs with my Mary Janes. These tights I’m wearing are itchy as hell, but I have to have them on or else everyone will ask me how I got that scar on the back of my leg. I got it from the chick I killed, the one who popped me in the back of the knee with a pair of scissors. Yeah, I don’t need to draw any more attention to these things. I was a little worried about going strapless because of the five claw marks on my right shoulder, but when the woman at the dress store saw them she ask
ed if they were like that Khmer tattoo of Angelina Jolie’s.

  She said, “You know, the ‘Know Your Rights’ one.” I was going to say no, Angelina’s tattoo is on the other shoulder. I was going to say, no, these scars are from a woman trying to save her own life. I was so tempted to say, I’m a murderer and it turns me on to rape, kill, and eat women. But instead I lied, “Yeah, ‘Know Your Rights.’ I’m a big fan of Jolie.” I even nodded, grinned, and acted fun and everything. Though I got the feeling, even when I acted just right and didn’t speak out of turn and bought all the shit she told me to, I got the feeling that bitch at the dress store knew I was rotten. When we waved goodbye from the car, I was so tempted to give her the finger and kill Alison and I both by driving through the wall of the bridal shop.

  “Totally beautiful.” Carl’s cheeks are packed with so much Brie he’s drooling wide strands of milky looking spit all over the front of his tuxedo.

  Eventually the groom’s side is stocked full, so Michael asks half of everyone to sit on the bride’s side. Carl, me, and Alison, we don’t move a muscle. We’re sitting in the back row in white picnic chairs. The only three people this far back on the groom’s side. Everyone else on Michael’s side is up front. But it’s OK because we look cool. We look like the bad kids.

  Some old Ukrainian woman sings a song, completely flat and acapella. She’s wailing away underneath a wreath of artificial flowers where the priest is waiting for the old pronouncing man and wife shtick, the worthless pay check and the free bar. This old woman, the one singing in Ukrainian, she goes on and on for a good eight minutes in this terrible language I would never want to understand or appreciate. I keep rolling down my evening gloves to check my watch.

  Alison pokes my arm, “I thought no one here came from her country.”

  I can see the cheese being reduced to mush in Carl’s mouth as he speaks, “Yeah, why are they all sitting on the groom’s side?”

  Alison rolls her eyes, “People will do the weirdest things to fit in.”

  Carl’s mushy cheese breath blowing down my neck, “I don’t understand why they had an outdoor wedding and we’re sitting here under the goddamn tents. Why not just rent a hall or something? It’d be cheaper.” He pops another block in his mouth, a drop of white spit plopping into his sleeve. “And easier to clean up.”

  The old man, the one who walked by the borscht bitch, the piggy one in the cheap dress whose now sitting on the groom’s side, stuffing her face with Torte, yeah that old guy who didn’t smile at her, well, he turns around now, frowns at us and puts a finger to his lips.

  The priest says something to Michael, he stands up, digs in his suit pocket for a second then nods to the priest. A fat bitch with a huge purple birth mark on her face springs off her chair, launching towards a tiny portable CD player hooked up to two huge wooden speakers that look so old and crumbly they could be reduced to dust from the slightest breeze. She presses play then retracts like a jack in the box back into her front row seat on the bride’s side.

  Everyone turns around to see the bride come stepping slowly out from behind two large cream colored drapes that part the very moment Madonna comes to life through the CD player, “Life is a mystery...” those two ancient speakers carrying over the sounds of that old wailing Ukraine woman.

  I itch the scar on the back of my knee and smile as the bride steps into the aisle with Madonna singing, “I hear you call my name, and it feels like home...”

  The bride, I’ve never met her. I know her name is Sveta. She’s got the body of an anorexic teenage cheerleader, only hotter. She’s got the ass of a girl coming into puberty. I can’t see her face, but I’m immediately disinterested when I see her hair is blonde, long and thick. I’m reminded of the waitress—what’s her name—Kim. I remember her strapped into a chair, huffing beneath the saran wrap wrapped around her entire head.

  I can’t see Sveta’s face because she’s wearing that damn veil. I check my watch again, Madonna whines, “I want you to take me there!” as Sveta approaches the priest. When she’s face to veiled face with Michael, the woman with the birthmark on her face, she dashes forward, slapping the stop button.

  Somewhere off in the distance a car honks twice and a dog starts barking. While Michael reads his feelings off a flash card I can’t stop staring at the perfect bow in Sveta’s back, her perky tits and stick arms. Her figure is so perfect she looks like Leta Laroe only covered in glowing white silk and a head of honey blonde hair curled against her back.

  Alison whispers, “There are blondes in the Ukraine?”

  I poke Carl, “Are there blondes in the Ukraine?”

  Pieces of wet cheese foaming at the corners of his lips growing into soppy streams of creamy spit, “I guess so.”

  I lean back to Alison, “I guess so.”

  She shrugs and spits in my ear again, “That’s weird.”

  When the bride says, “I do,” and Michael starts crying and everyone is blowing snot into hankies, Sveta lifts up her veil and they kiss. Carl leans into one ear, “But-her-face.”

  Alison leans in the other ear, “A fantastic body and that’s all she’s got for a mug?”

  I laugh just when the priest says, “May God be with you.” And that old asshole, walk by guy, turns around again frowning and puts his finger against his lips. I’d flip him the bird but Sveta is looking at me and I can feel little chunks of Carl’s cheese rolling down the side of my face.

  Fatty pushes play again, skipping to the beginning of “Like a Prayer” and the whole song starts over again. Only this time, thank God, everyone is getting up from their chairs and moving around, walking towards the bride and groom.

  It’s always a great relief when I speak without whispering, “Alison, give me a napkin.”

  She checks around her, “Don’t got.”

  Carl is getting up, walking over to the buffet, I follow him when a napkin is suddenly right in front of me. I take it, wipe my ear which causes a bunch of makeup to come smeared off.

  “Thanks, this...” I look up to see a girl so beautiful my heart skips a full beat and I have to close my eyes for a second to keep myself from chocking on a lump that’s swollen my throat completely closed.

  When I open them again, the girl is still standing there, an awkward grin on the whitest skin I’ve ever seen. Her hair is bright red, but not the gross kind of red. She’s got eyes so stunning, so bright green I can’t even look at them directly when she asks “Are you OK?” Her words are like gifts from the bows of her lips, the most beautiful silk ribbons, the kind you would never untie.

  “Hi.” I go to shake her hand but the napkin, with all my makeup and mashed cheese hits the tiny palm of her perfect hand and I feel so dizzy I can’t say anything except, “Great party...” before stumbling away and almost knocking into a group of bridesmaids posing by the punch bowl. I sit outside, have a smoke and wait for Carl to come out of the tent dragging Alison with him.

  He’s laughing, spinning his keys around his finger as we walk to Alison’s car. “So I see you met Mike’s sister.”

  A passing breeze moves through my body, chilling me to the center of my bones. “Who was...”

  He throws a thumb over his shoulder back towards the tent. “That red head. That’s Mike’s older sister. She asked me if you were drunk.”

  I shake my head and fumble with opening the door, my whole face feels hot, my chest feels tight and heavy. “But I’m, I wasn’t, I’m wasn’t not...”

  Carl is staring at me, Alison pauses at her door in the front. I can barely look up because my chest keeps getting tighter and tighter and it’s getting harder and harder to breathe. “I’m not drunk!”

  He squints, his voice getting real calm. “I know, Amanda, it’s OK.”

  I light another smoke and we pull away into traffic. Carl unwinds his window, lights a cigarette. “It’s OK, Amanda, don’t worry about it.”

  I flick the ash of my cigarette out the window. “I got some shit to do at home, drop me off, I’
ll call you guys later.”

  Alison turns on the radio, bobs her head to the rhythm of a song I don’t know the name of, but have heard enough to hate. “But it’s the wedding party!”

  Carl laughs, “Shut the fuck up, since when do you give a fuck about wedding parties?”

  She turns the radio up higher, “Whatever, I just do OK?”

  He shakes his head, “Yeah yeah, whatever.”

  At a traffic light I put my head between my knees, I hear Carl call from the driver’s seat, “Amanda, you OK? You going to puke?”

  I sit up, lean my head back and close my eyes, “No, my chest just is...”

  Alison says, “Panic attack. It’s OK, I used to get them all the time.”

  I open my eyes but everything is either too bright or too blurry so I close them again. “What the fuck is a panic attack?”

  Carl reaches an arm back and snaps his finger in my face, I open my eyes, and he looks at me serious for a second then smiles, his eyes going back to the road. “I deal with them all the time at work. Well...” He shifts gears, “ I mean I don’t but a lot of the patients have them. Don’t worry, you can’t die from one, no matter how much you feel like you’re really dying, you won’t.”

  “What?”

  He looks in his rear view mirror, passes a minivan full of car seats and toddlers and shifts gears again. “You can’t die from them.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, so don’t worry about it.”

  I scratch the scar on the back of my knee again, “Well, what the fuck?”

  He checks his rear view mirror and changes lanes. “What the fuck, what?”

  I close my eyes, open them, light another cigarette and try cracking my neck. “Well what the fuck is this? What brings them on?”

  Carl shrugs, “Nothing really. They can happen for no apparent reason. It’s just the mind’s way of coping with stress.”

  “Oh.”

  Alison turns the radio down. “Amanda, don’t worry about it. I used to get them all the time.”

  I tap the ash off my cigarette. “What made them go away?”

  She’s quiet for a second staring out the window, “I don’t know. They just sort of went away.”