Against Her Fading Hour
three short stories
Isaac Sweeney
Copyright by Isaac Sweeney, 2011. Verona, Va.
Isaac.c.sweeney@gmail.com
The stories:
Handi-Cure
Urine Trouble Now
Lemonade Nights
Handi-Cure
Thick smoke fell around Elisa like rain. Colorful, flashing lights danced against her
silver dress. The pounding beat jumped on her chest as she sat on her stool, sipping a Long
Island iced tea. She checked her watch before scanning the dance floor. He, the best looking
man in the place, was medium height, medium build with overly-manicured features – plucked
eyebrows, trimmed fingernails, and a painted-on tan. He danced with a squiggly, leggy blond.
“Come with me,” Elisa said with a glance and a wave of her arm. Best Looking Man
could not refuse and he drifted toward her enticing gaze, like always. They left the club together.
“Where’s your car?” she asked.
He led her to his flashy, green sports car.
“You know the market at the end of Fifth Street?”
He nodded.
“I’m in the apartment building next door. Second floor.” She used to have a house with
a garage, a dog in a fenced-in yard, and a husband.
Elisa was recently widowed. Her family and friends had stopped talking to her. Or she
had stopped talking to them. She couldn’t remember which. Either way, it was hard to see them
after seeing him, her husband, lying on their bed, the sheets and wall soaked in red, the gun in his
hand. After finding him, a panicky Elisa threw the sheets in the washer and scrubbed the bloody
walls. Blood stains, and Elisa could not get the damn spots out. Meanwhile, the body had been
tossed to the floor when Elisa removed the sheets. Unsuccessful with the blood, she sat on the
bare mattress above her husband. She cried. Looking back – as she always did on these rides to
her apartment with Best Looking Man – she considered her marriage.
“What did I do wrong?” she inadvertently said aloud, resting her hand on the wedding
ring that she wore on a chain around her neck, beneath her clothes.
“What?” Best Looking Man asked.
“Nothing,” she answered, and let go of the ring before he saw it.
Best Looking Man’s hand had started on her knee but, by now, it was high on her thigh.
Elisa put her hand on top of his to keep it from going any farther for now.
“So,” she said, “where are you from?”
“Here,” he answered. “East side of town. You know Beverly Street? I grew up in the
white house on the corner. Still live there.”
They reached her apartment. It was small and dark. So dark that they could barely see
the purple and blue striped wallpaper peeling away at the corners of each room. The two quickly
undressed and had sex. As Elisa lay next to a sleeping Best Looking Man, she noticed how the
moon used the blinds and made shadows that lined his body like prison bars on his light-brown
skin. In a shadow was his finger. On his finger was a wedding band. Elisa held him against her
naked body, a draft from the cracked window chilling her neck.
They woke up early, the ground outside wet with dew drops, the evening air vanishing as
the sound of passing cars began to fill the roads.
He had been her first married Best Looking Man.
“What’s her name?” Elisa asked as they shared a pot of coffee at the small kitchen table,
both of them still naked.
He paused. “Melinda,” he replied in a shaky voice.
Elisa closed her eyes and rolled the name off her tongue, one syllable at a time, “Me-linda.” She opened her eyes and said, “It’s a nice name.”
“We’re going through a tough time right now...”
Her hand shushed his mouth and she stroked the side of his head, just above his ear,
before drinking from her steaming mug.
Best Looking Man borrowed her shower before he drove home to Me-lin-da. As he
drove away, Elisa decided to get a manicure at the corner store in the shopping center down the
street. It was close enough to walk to and she could be back before it was time to go out.
She had on jeans and a loose-fitting, long-sleeved t-shirt. She kept her hands in her
pockets the whole way. She walked past little stores and ground floor apartment windows, all of
which seemed dustless and tidy. Her wedding band tapped her chest as she strolled. Elisa once
wore the ring on her finger, proud of what she had. She thought her husband was proud too,
until she found him and realized that he had secrets – ones that she probably couldn’t understand.
A better wife would have understood, she always told herself.
The corner store had Handi-Cure flashing in red letters above the doorway. When Elisa
entered, an Asian tune greeted her, followed by an Asian woman wearing a black dress and black
lipstick.
“Help you?” the woman said. Her voice was loud and abrasive and she seemed to be the
only person there.
“A manicure please.”
“We do feet. You want feet?”
“No,” Elisa answered, “just the hands.”
“Whole shebang?” The Asian woman pointed to a sign of prices. The whole shebang
cost thirty dollars.
“Why not,” Elisa said.
They sat across from one another as the Asian woman prepared a table with nail clippers,
cuticle scissors, and various other finger-conditioning instruments.
“What color?”
“Silver,” said Elisa.
“Ooh!” said the woman. She pulled out a small silver bottle. “Dis for man?”
“Kind of.”
“What his name?”
Elisa didn’t answer and looked at the woman filing her nails.
“Ooh! Mystery man. I like.” She dipped Elisa’s hands into a clear solution too thick to
be water. “He good man? Treat you good?”
“Yes.”
“He buy you tings, take you places?”
“Sometimes.” Sometimes he bought her a drink. Sometimes they went to his place.
“My husband never take me nowhere. Just sit at computer. Work, work, work. All da
time.” The woman looked over her left shoulder at a small office that Elisa hadn’t noticed
before. The woman yelled something in her Asian language which sounded like all one, winding
word to Elisa.
A pudgy, bald Asian man emerged from the office and yelled something back. They
seemed angry, but when the man went back to work, the woman started smiling. “Don’t go
nowhere,” she said. “But he love me. He tell me all da time.”
Elisa looked down at her hands. The woman rubbed on a silky lotion.
“You got good man. You love him?”
Elisa just looked at her hands as the Asian woman softly rubbed on the cream. Then the
woman guided Elisa to a tiny hand dryer two tables away.
“Sit here,” the woman said. “Five minute. All done.”
Elisa sat there and watched as the Asian woman disappeared into the back office. Elisa
heard their bickering for five minutes. The language of love, she thought. When her time was
up, she pulled out her hands.
“You like?” the woman said as she came out to collect the money.
“They’re like new,” Elisa said. “They look so clean.”
“No, still you’re same hands. Just look different to you,” said the woman. “Not your
fault. Sometimes people never really look at hands. Sometimes same ol day after day and hands
get dry and wrinkle. Just need clean up.”
Elisa walked home and put on the silver dress. As she looked in her mirror, she noticed
that, when compared to the fresh color on her hands, the dress appeared dull in her apartment
light. Instead of taking a cab to the club like she usually did, Elisa started up her ancient
Chevette – a car she rarely drove – and peeled out of her street-side parking space, as if she knew
exactly where she was going. The truth was, she only vaguely knew where she was going. She
only knew that it was a white house on the corner of Beverly Street.