Read Hydroplane: Fictions for Free Online

see she wears nothing under her dress, and all the guests watching, clapping, as she shakes herself out, fanning herself with the dishcloth, everyone laughing, except for the last guest who stands against a wall watching what seems to be nothing but is really the window where two headlights shine inside and light his hair, and the hostess seeing the light on his hair as she has been looking at him and hoping, it seems, that he will look back, but he never does, and the hostess looking outside and pulling down her dress, though not all the way, andsaying, Turn it down, to whomever can, and opening the door to the vestibule where the cops stand dripping rainwater to the floor, Hiya fellas, Turn down the music, I did already, We've had complaints, Well, who's complaining, Look miss, Are you complaining, We'll arrest you miss.
    Knowing that to show one must pretend to like the hostess and her preparations for evenings such as these, her incessant pounding of nails which gives one a headache and the incessant paint fumes which drift though the cracks in the ceiling and rise through one's floor and worsen the headache, not to mention the awful dust floating up when she shakes her rugs, the dust floating through one's window which makes one want to march downstairs to the hostess and say, Stop that fucking shaking already, Stop that fucking pounding.
    Knowing that to show one must pretend to have never been bothered by the sounds of drunken guests from prior evenings at the home of the hostess fucking in the bedroom below one's bedroom, therefore, provoking one to get oneself off, yes, imagining a three-some with the drunken friends, as other over-drunk guests stumble up the staircase to pound on doors in the most drunken minutes of their evening, interrupting, calling, Wake up everyone, before the hostess lures them back downstairs with a flash of her legs, as seen through the peephole.
    Knowing that to be there when cops arrive, for cops will always arrive despite who has been invited, is to say to the hostess, I am not the neighbor who complains, I can be trusted, I deserve the invitation.
    Calling this new kid until he leaves his telephone off the hook andall we get is the busy signal, and we are stuck, the two of us, sitting in her dismal bedroom on the dusty shag rug, looking at each other and bored with nothing to do but science now that we have smoked all the cigarettes.
    Thinking of saying to the last guest, Come with me, to pull him somewhere, though not to my place as his knowing where I live is his knowing I am a neighbor and that I was invited only as a selfish move on the part of the hostess, his knowing quite well, as do all the guests, as do I, that her neighbors are of the pathetic and dull sort, the always-home sort, everyone knowing, too, that to invite one's neighbors is to reduce the risk of calls to the cops, and thinking of getting the last guest, therefore, into the bedroom of the hostess, after, and if, the two friends come out, and doing something in there with him, something risky, something involving some kind of role-play in which his role is that of the new kid from seventh grade who, when I go to return my tray in the cafeteria, grabs my tits from behind and squeezes hard, pressing his cock against my ass, saying, Stop calling me, and, You're ugly, leaving me crying and curled on the cafeteria floor with a crowd of kids around my body.
    A fire starting and spreading in the kitchen sink from candles lighted around the sink as a decorative move on the part of the hostess and her two friends who helped to decorate all week for this evening, and too many drunken guests throwing their paper plates and napkins to the sink to catch fire, and the flames seeming quite capable of growing, of reaching a good height, a height that could scorch the cabinets above the sink or the ceiling above the cabinets, that is, my floor, the ceiling.
    Often hearing the hostess in the evening crying to herself, a poor pathetic