"Can you put like a fuckton of mustard on there?"
"Excuse me?"
"Mustard. I want mustard."
I squeezed a bright strip of yellow across the edge of the sandwich.
"More than that."
I laid out another.
"More mustard."
I hefted the bottle and sprayed it across the bread several times.
"Keep going. Do I look like a woman? I said I want mustard."
The sandwich was almost entirely yellow now, the bread beginning to soak a little.
"That's good."
He lifted it up, a big glob spilling out the back as the bread felt the pressure of his fat fingers. He lifted it to his lips and took a bite, his teeth covered in yellow, a trail of slime streaked from his bottom lip to his chin.
I motioned to my own chin, trying to catch his eye. "You've got a little—"
"I don't clean the mustard till I'm done," he said. "I like to let it soak in." He grabbed the bottle from the counter and spread a little more on the edge of the sandwich he was about to eat.
I picked up a napkin and started to hand it to him. "But you should really—"
"Shut the fuck up," he said, taking another bite and then another, letting it drip off his chin onto the floor. "I fucking love me some mustard."
I looked down at it for a second, seeing the glob glistening there on the linoleum tile. "How is it?" I asked.
"It could use some ketchup."
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Suburban Minotaur
Everything was fine on Rosemont Avenue until the Minotaur moved in.
Elms shadowed the block, big cars gleamed in the driveways, and traffic was leisurely and relaxed. Every backyard had a child, every living room a television, every mother made every sandwich without a crust. These were just a few of the reasons that made us decide it was a good place to raise our daughters.
But the Minotaur didn’t pick the neighborhood for any of these reasons. He liked it because it had long and winding streets, inexplicable dead ends and cul-de-sacs that seemed like they might somehow lead somewhere, anywhere, but just circled back around. Some people might call this poor neighborhood planning, suburban sprawl, but the Minotaur said it felt natural, said it felt right. He picked out the perfect cul-de-sac and hired a contractor by the name of Stephen Daedalus to build him a place in our gated community on Rosemont. It was a place he thought would make him happy, surrounded by a dizzying web of streets and signs in a tangled subdivision on the west side of town.
We had arrived less than a month before the Minotaur. A few of our immediate neighbors had come by to introduce themselves, but so far most of the block was unexplored territory, a blank map known only by the shapes of rooftops and the shades of cars in the driveway. The kids hadn't made any friends and we were afraid it would be wasted summer of videogames and boredom for them. The community pool at the end of the block, we hoped, would be a wonderful place to mingle and meet, but it was almost always empty. The girls would come into the house dripping and giggling, saying they hadn't seen another human being in hours, just empty streets left to bake in the sun. It left us puzzled as the month got hotter and a faint tinge of sweat seemed to hang and thicken in the low, heavy air. Turns out most of the neighbors had their own pools in their own backyards and had no need of the community space.
But once the Minotaur arrived, people in the neighborhood started talking. Neighbors we had never met started waving to us and whispering in conspiratorial tones, trading rumors, trading complaints: he was too hairy, too strange, he would drive down the property values. Soon, the neighbors we did know were introducing us to others, introducing us as a good, solid family. We started receiving fliers in our mailbox for meetings of the homeowners association, the neighborhood watch, and, even though school hadn't started, the PTA. What really bothered everyone was the sound he brought with him—distant pounding and digging that went rattling through the neighborhood early in the morning, every morning, and this made people angry. It seemed to start at the Minotaur’s place but as the days passed it moved further away, the banging now emanating from under different neighbors’ houses—pulling them awake at 5:30, dragging them from their beds and rudely throwing them into the waking world without remorse or apology. Mornings were ruined and people blamed the Minotaur even though the banging was now coming from below their own basements. Some nights there were other worse sounds—strange bellows and groans that echoed through the neighborhood, across locked doorways and darkened front windows.
All this and almost no one had seen him yet. Rumors circulated: that he was seven feet tall, that smoke poured from his noise, that his horns scraped the ceiling and dripped blood, that he walked around completely nude, his genitals covered only by a thick mat of dripping animal fur. We worried, the wife and I, about living so close to him nearly directly across the street and worried about the effect it would have on the girls, if maybe we had picked the wrong street, the wrong neighborhood, the wrong city. We worried he would lure them into his labyrinth. We worried he would eat them alive.
On a Sunday morning, I caught my first sight of the suburban Minotaur. He stepped outside, pulled his robe closed, and squinted in the morning sun. I called my wife over quickly and we watched together through parted blinds of the living room window. He waved at the old man across the street, who did not wave back, and went to pick up the morning paper, stomping around his front yard leaving hoof prints deep in the dirt, a stampede of little steps traced through the grass. He was very hairy but he didn't look like anyone expected.
"How come you ain't got no nose ring, mister?"
The Minotaur looked up from the paper in his hand. A little 7-year-old girl, the color of a sunrise, stood at the edge of his lawn watching him. We both gasped. It was Christine, our youngest daughter.
Elms shadowed the block, big cars gleamed in the driveways, and traffic was leisurely and relaxed. Every backyard had a child, every living room a television, every mother made every sandwich without a crust. These were just a few of the reasons that made us decide it was a good place to raise our daughters.
But the Minotaur didn’t pick the neighborhood for any of these reasons. He liked it because it had long and winding streets, inexplicable dead ends and cul-de-sacs that seemed like they might somehow lead somewhere, anywhere, but just circled back around. Some people might call this poor neighborhood planning, suburban sprawl, but the Minotaur said it felt natural, said it felt right. He picked out the perfect cul-de-sac and hired a contractor by the name of Stephen Daedalus to build him a place in our gated community on Rosemont. It was a place he thought would make him happy, surrounded by a dizzying web of streets and signs in a tangled subdivision on the west side of town.
We had arrived less than a month before the Minotaur. A few of our immediate neighbors had come by to introduce themselves, but so far most of the block was unexplored territory, a blank map known only by the shapes of rooftops and the shades of cars in the driveway. The kids hadn't made any friends and we were afraid it would be wasted summer of videogames and boredom for them. The community pool at the end of the block, we hoped, would be a wonderful place to mingle and meet, but it was almost always empty. The girls would come into the house dripping and giggling, saying they hadn't seen another human being in hours, just empty streets left to bake in the sun. It left us puzzled as the month got hotter and a faint tinge of sweat seemed to hang and thicken in the low, heavy air. Turns out most of the neighbors had their own pools in their own backyards and had no need of the community space.
But once the Minotaur arrived, people in the neighborhood started talking. Neighbors we had never met started waving to us and whispering in conspiratorial tones, trading rumors, trading complaints: he was too hairy, too strange, he would drive down the property values. Soon, the neighbors we did know were introducing us to others, introducing us as a good, solid family. We started receiving fliers in our mailbox for meetings of the homeowners association, the neighborhood watch, and, even though school hadn't started, the PTA. What really bothered everyone was the sound he brought with him—distant pounding and digging that went rattling through the neighborhood early in the morning, every morning, and this made people angry. It seemed to start at the Minotaur’s place but as the days passed it moved further away, the banging now emanating from under different neighbors’ houses—pulling them awake at 5:30, dragging them from their beds and rudely throwing them into the waking world without remorse or apology. Mornings were ruined and people blamed the Minotaur even though the banging was now coming from below their own basements. Some nights there were other worse sounds—strange bellows and groans that echoed through the neighborhood, across locked doorways and darkened front windows.
All this and almost no one had seen him yet. Rumors circulated: that he was seven feet tall, that smoke poured from his noise, that his horns scraped the ceiling and dripped blood, that he walked around completely nude, his genitals covered only by a thick mat of dripping animal fur. We worried, the wife and I, about living so close to him nearly directly across the street and worried about the effect it would have on the girls, if maybe we had picked the wrong street, the wrong neighborhood, the wrong city. We worried he would lure them into his labyrinth. We worried he would eat them alive.
On a Sunday morning, I caught my first sight of the suburban Minotaur. He stepped outside, pulled his robe closed, and squinted in the morning sun. I called my wife over quickly and we watched together through parted blinds of the living room window. He waved at the old man across the street, who did not wave back, and went to pick up the morning paper, stomping around his front yard leaving hoof prints deep in the dirt, a stampede of little steps traced through the grass. He was very hairy but he didn't look like anyone expected.
"How come you ain't got no nose ring, mister?"
The Minotaur looked up from the paper in his hand. A little 7-year-old girl, the color of a sunrise, stood at the edge of his lawn watching him. We both gasped. It was Christine, our youngest daughter.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
"Brenner also plans to recognize that the site was part of the Underground Railroad by erecting some small monuments."
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