On a crowded bus

My arms have gone numb from being squeezed between a thickset man and a well-built woman on this bus steaming with acid indigestion. About three stops ago people started looking over their shoulders at the suspicious package in my lap as the smell started to penetrate the butcher paper, the sticky tape, and then the plastic bag. Soon the bus driver will ask me to step off the bus probably, maybe report me to the police, who would probably snicker as I walk the rest of the way to your apartment.

That would be just fine. I can walk, I mean – because I still have functional legs. You broke one of yours, apparently, in the middle of the night. Not intentionally, I assume, but you did not call me. It was too late to call, you said, full of spite as always. So you sat on the cold tiles and waited until morning. I asked why. You merely said that it was not unusual, this waiting for me until the morning.

Then you said you still want to cook for me but you don’t have the legs to buy the food anymore, nor the arms to carry it, so you asked me to bring it. I don’t really know how to buy fish, and even if I did you would not approve anyway because in your eyes I will never know my way around the kitchen. But I do know.

I know, for instance, that it is not a good idea to rinse the dishcloth in the cistern. I know that the toilet is not a stand on which to rest your frypan so you can scrub it, even if space is an issue. Your eyes can’t see that well anymore either, but I could tell you that there are sometimes cockroaches as big as dates floating in the sink. Others have in hushed voices told me what they have seen too, but I don’t have the heart to tell them what I have seen, and I don’t have the heart to tell you. And anyway you get annoyed when I try to help you with anything.

So when I get there I will just sit at the table and avoid looking in your general direction. It is easier that way. My hair is already standing on end and will be until the last frightful bite, and I will probably be sick for three days. But even if my stomach groans in anticipatory protest as sensory symphony to the smell rising from this plastic bag, I will bring you this dead stinking fish bleeding down my legs. You cook, and I will eat it.