Shortly after the exchange, another man arrives, bell chinking behind him. Bound in a dark leather jacket, the odor of cigarettes, and a fresh tan, his presence exerts its own gravity. He’d be well suited for a men’s deodorant commercial, Blandine thinks: handsome enough to serve as a vessel for positive self-projection, but not so handsome as to threaten the consumer’s personal sense of masculinity. Blandine senses that he has many tattoos, although she can’t see them. He wears his testosterone like a strong cologne.
The café patrons collectively notice that the man is short.
“Oh,” says the woman, her voice falling. “I remember you being bigger.”
“Huh?”
“Hi,” she corrects.
He sits beside the child, ruffling her wispy pigtails. “Heya, kiddo.”
The child glares at him. “I do not want to sit next to you.” Her tone is dark and deliberate. She appears to be five years old.
“Sweetie, stay by Daddy,” orders the woman, watching the father, who watches the child, who watches Blandine, who watches back. “He came all this way to have breakfast with you. Isn’t that nice? Wasn’t that so nice of him, sweetie?”
Betrayed, the child transfers her glare to the mother, then returns to the toys. As far as Blandine can tell, the rabbit is winning.
“This is what happens when I try,” complains the father.
“Oh no, no, no—she’s just hungry, is all!” Bright laughter spouts from the mother’s throat. “You know, it’s funny; I feel so silly—I just, I thought you were much bigger. I was telling everyone you were big. I was like, ‘He’s so big, he’s so big.’ But you’re actually not. That big.”
He crosses his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her smile twitches. “It’s just funny.”
They read their menus.
Eventually, Blandine approaches the table and waits for them to speak. She knows that she is not a good waitress—she lacks a pleasing disposition, often aims to displease—but she is too exhausted to counter her deficiencies today. The mother orders pancakes with a side of avocado, a grapefruit juice, an apple juice, and an extra plate. The father orders coffee, blackberry pie, bacon, and eggs. “Really runny.” He grins, his teeth snowy, his eyes flicking to Blandine’s chest. “Basically raw.” He winks.
Customers often wink at Blandine. After the wink, they tend to offer unsolicited, intimate facts about themselves. Unaware of her odd beauty—indeed, repulsed by her body—she suspects the phenomenon has to do with her compulsive eye contact. Last week, while his wife was in the bathroom, an elderly man revealed that he’s “center right, on the spectrum of sexuality, far right being fully homosexual.” The next day, a teenager confessed that she provides topless photos for her middle-aged youth minister. “He’s in love with me,” the girl said hopefully. Just yesterday, a park ranger from Michigan admitted that he sometimes leaves cutlets of raw salmon near campsites, hoping to see a bear.
Blandine does not enjoy lugging around the secrets of strangers. She wants to transcend herself, wants to crawl out of the grotesque receptacle of her body. How can she accomplish such a thing when strangers treat her as a storage unit for their heaviest information? She frowns at the winking father.
“We don’t have blackberry pie,” she says.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’ve had it here before.”
“We’ve never served it.”
“Yes, you have,” the man insists. “I ordered it the last time I was here.”
“No,” Blandine replies, aware that she is sublimating her general opposition toward this man into one pointless opposition, but unwilling to surrender. “That’s impossible.”
“Maybe it was before your time.”
“I’ve worked here since it opened.”
“Well, it’s a real shame you’re not serving it today.” The man scowls. “A real shame. What’s on offer?”
Blandine turns to the blackboard at the front and reads, “Lavender lamb, avocado rhubarb, black mold, strawberry tomato vinegar, banana charcoal, and broccoli peach.”
It’s as though she told him that their pies are stuffed with shredded human thighs. Horror fills the man’s face, rapidly setting into rage. Sensing danger, the woman busies herself with a tissue, unsuccessfully exhorting the child to blow her nose.
“Is that some kind of joke?” asks the man.
Blandine clenches her jaw. “I am dead serious, sir.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Look at the chalkboard.”
He does. “Black mold?”
“It’s a sour cream pie with black licorice powdered on the—”
“No pie for me. No pie. Jesus.” The man crosses his arms and shakes his head. The universal performance of moral disgust. “This place has gone downhill since I left.”
After placing their orders, Blandine resumes her perch at the register, studying the family bitterly. Neither parent wears a ring. The mother collapses further and further into herself as she chatters about her hair and skin, then the child’s hair and skin. “Doesn’t she look so cute, today?” she asks repeatedly. “In her pigtails? And her pretty white dress? I wish I wore a white dress, kind of. To match.” The father remains taciturn, but occasionally tries to pet the child, who flinches away from him. This continues for some time.
Blandine retrieves and delivers their meals.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” says the father, eyes on her chest again, and Blandine is glad she sneezed on his eggs. The child guzzles her juice as soon as she receives it, as though she’s been stranded in the desert for days.
“I used to get really tan, you know,” the mother says as she transfers two of her three pancakes to the child’s plate. “But now my skin is so sensitive to the sun that I can’t even be outside for more than like fifteen minutes without SPF. It’s crazy. We were at the Dunes over the weekend—because you know, I’m teaching her how to swim and stuff?—and I had to keep applying and applying and applying and she had to help put it on my back and I still got burnt like all over, maybe you can tell, you probably can, but I don’t know, it’s been a while since you’ve seen me so maybe not.” Her speech tumbles to a halt, and she blushes. The daughter gives her a stern look, appearing disproportionately huge for a moment, like Jesus in paintings of Madonna and Child.
“Syrup,” commands the daughter.
The woman applies syrup to each point the child indicates.
“It’s just crazy,” concludes the woman in a small voice. “Because I used to get so tan.”
“And yet you still talk too much.” The man slices himself a quarter of the woman’s remaining pancake.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, folding her arms and legs to her core, compressing herself limbless. She examines the father as he chews her pancake. A frothy laugh. “It’s funny.”
“What is funny?”
“I just—I thought you were so big.”
Please Just
Noise pollution triggers a feeling best described as murderous rage within Joan Kowalski. This reaction is especially violent at libraries, at work, and during the week before her period. Lately, the noise above her apartment—where that pack of teenagers lives, including the spooky white-haired girl from the laundromat—has become unbearable. Furniture crashing. Boys yelling. Bongos.
Three months ago, on a train to visit her aunt Tammy in Gary, Indiana, Joan sat a few seats away from a man who snored louder than she thought possible. Joan felt, for the first time, that she was capable of killing someone. It was spitty and gross, the snoring—indescribably gross. Joan had already transferred from the café car because a young man who looked fresh out of a fraternity spent an hour joyriding from one phone call to the next. She stood from her seat to confront the snoring man, shaking from the fear of confrontation and the anger at having to confront.
“Excuse me,” she said, but the man snored on. She tapped his shoulder. “Excuse me.” Nothing. “Excuse me!” When he snorted awake, he looked so embarrassed and fatherly that most of Joan’s anger retreated into apology. “I’m sorry, but, um, I’m trying to read?” she began gingerly. “And I’m very sensitive to noise? And I was wondering if there was a way you could maybe, um, stop snoring? I’m really sorry. If not, that’s okay. I know it’s an unreasonable request. It’s just that I have trouble focusing when there’s . . . noise.”
The man flushed and nodded. “I didn’t realize I was,” he said. “Snoring. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’ve got sleep apnea, so I normally don’t sleep too well, but last night my son was sick, so I didn’t sleep at all. He’s got the flu, we think. I guess I must’ve dozed off. I’m really sorry about that—I’m so embarrassed. I’ll try to keep it under control.”