the barfly (pt. 4)

The bartender handed him a Tom Collins, in and out of which he whipped his quick tongue. Her sweet dung beetle Jonathan would be home soon, she thought, and he would view even simple flirtation as a betrayal. God forbid she went home with the frog—she knew exactly the expression Jonathan would make if he ever found out, as if his face was buttoned up like a shirt. It would break her heart. But she couldn’t resist the iridescent glare of the lights on the frog’s moist back, or the way he took up so much space at the desolate Tuesday happy hour. She checked Jonathan’s location on her iPhone...still at work. It’s a good thing she could keep her secrets.

Tossing back the rest of her Manhattan she stood up and straightened her clothes, putting on the expression she knew would seduce anyone, man or frog. She felt a magnetism drawing her forward and he turned to look at her as she came closer. He stared at her dumbly with pupils askew. She wasn’t sure he could actually see her, as she may have been standing directly in the center of his blind spot. She moved slightly to the left and he stirred with recognition.

“Hey there,” she said softly.

the barfly (pt. 3)

Splat, splat, splat. Hearing loud slapping sounds behind her, she was shaken from her reverie and turned around slowly. She knew exactly what the sound was. She had seen the guy around before, once at a gas station and once at the grocery store. He walked up to the far end of the empty bar perched on all fours, sticking and unsticking his feet from the floor, leaving a trail of wet, three-toed splats. She studied his enormous flat-backed, pot-bellied form, drenched in neon greens and oranges. She longed to know his name. She admired the long tongue shooting out of his mouth at lightspeed, sticking to the bar mix and flicking it back into his wide, wet-lipped mouth. She became aroused at the thought of his bright colors, drawing her ever closer with their signals of danger and poison. What would a kiss do to her? Would she begin to foam at the mouth and keel over in muscular paralysis?

the barfly (pt. 2)

He was working late at the firm again, something that happened more and more often. A part of her hoped it was because of his cute new secretary. Maybe he would wreck it all, do something she could finally respect, instead of suffocating her with his pitiful devotion. It wasn’t like she hadn’t considered doing it herself—crash a couple atoms together and everything goes boom. But she always came home to him, he always came home to her, and they always went to sleep touching. There were things about Jonathan she loved–for all his dogged perfection she preferred his flaws, like the way he sucked the soup off his spoon. It turned her deranged, so she made soup all the time and they fucked like rabid animals after. She let the cocktail sit on her tongue, enjoying the warm tingle of the rye and thinking about soup.