Every word Matt speaks is too much or not enough. Drea opens the door of her apartment at the end of the day and his dingy checkered Vans are dug into her couch cushion. The stagnant air reeks of burnt weed and cat piss. One of his dumb friends giggles from inside a smoke cloud. When they see her, Matt hands her the bong. She looks past him, at the pile of cat litter on the carpet, litter box overturned.
‘What the hell is that?’ Drea ignores the bong, opens a window, and starts looking for the cat. ‘What happened?’
‘I was cleaning the litter box. You criticize too much.’
Getting ready for work the next morning, she pulls a nine-year-old shirt from a hanger in her narrow closet. Matt says, ‘You have too many clothes.’
When he gets up and starts making himself a pile of toast, he gestures around the kitchen, at her apartment, and tells Drea how she owns too much stuff. He tells her again how materialism weighs people down. She lifts up the green flannel sheet masquerading as a table cloth that covers the end table. The table is a cardboard box in disguise. Drea reminds him she’s been on her own since she was sixteen, that what she does have, she worked for, and bought for herself. What she doesn’t have, she makes up for with garage sale sheets and cardboard boxes.
As Matt takes down one of her plates from the cupboard and fills it with the food that she bought, she tells him she doesn’t owe an explanation for what she has or doesn’t.
He says she’s too defensive. She asks what he’ll do today while she’s at work.
He shrugs. Takes a piece of toast from the pile. ‘Stop by my place for a bit. Then go to band practice.’
Downstairs, in her car, Drea lights a cigarette, knowing if Matt were here instead of loafing upstairs in her apartment stuffing his face with her food on her couch in front of her TV, that he’d be telling her that she smokes too much.
Wears too much make up. Drinks too much. Been with too many men. Talks too much. Cries too much.
Tolerates too much.
He calls her at work. From inside her cubicle, she tries to make the call sound as though she might be speaking with a client. He tells her his parents are in town; they want to take the two of them out to dinner.
‘They want to meet you,’ he says.
On the way to meet the parents at the restaurant, he gives her directions and Drea wonders if she had it wrong. His bare apartment. His tiny car. His sparse possessions. Sure, it would be nice if he spent his days doing something more productive than getting high on her couch and banging on his drums in his friend’s basement, but perhaps she had been too defensive, too demanding. Inviting her to meet his parents, it was a gesture. A reveal. A truth his lack of words left unspoken.
When they pull into the parking lot, Drea asks, ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ They’re surrounded by shiny cars. People move about the lot in trendy outfits. They are shiny people with gleaming teeth and shimmering hair. She’s never been here; didn’t even know this place existed.
‘Yeah.’ Matt points at two people standing near the entrance. ‘There they are.’
The introductions are awkward. Drea sees their eyes take her in from feet to face to the car she arrived in. Over something called an aperitif, she learns Dad’s an electrical engineer. Mom’s an OBGYN.
During the main course, they tell their son how they’re moving all his stuff into a storage unit because they’re turning his room into a game room and not to worry, they’ll pay for the storage and won’t a game room be lots of fun?
After they order dessert, they ask Matt if he needs more money, if he’s doing all right.
Drea thanks them for dinner. They drive to Matt’s apartment. He turns to her and wants to know why they aren’t going to her place instead. She wants to ask him what it’s like to have more than enough; to have so much you don’t even realize it. She wants to unleash a storm upon him, but it feels like too much effort.
She tells him not to call her as he opens the car door. He wants to argue, but she’s had enough. She drives away, longing to be alone with her cat, surrounded by discarded objects that masquerade as fancy, necessary things.
Rasmenia Massoud is from Colorado, but after a few weird turns, ended up spending several years in France. Once she learned all she could about fromage and cassoulet, she moved on to England, where she lives and writes while trying to keep out of the rain. She is the author of three short story collections as well as several stories published in literary journals throughout the U.S., Canada, Ireland and the U.K. Her novella Circuits End, published by Running Wild Press, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. A second novella, Tied Within, was published in 2020. Find Rasmenia on Twitter at @Rasmenia or at www.rasmenia.com.
Photo by James Fitzgerald on Unsplash.
Very interesting, seems like the ones who have it all criticize the ones who don’t.
Ah yes, the privileged ones who don’t recognize themselves. Have live in Drea’s world in the past, but now I have a card table instead of a box. Good slice of life story.
I’m a long-time fan of Rasmenia’s, and this story is a great example of why that is. It’s an interesting story that makes the reader feel, and makes the reader think.