WHAT IT IS

The carpet had wax in it from the other night. The other night, they had lit many candles in a sad attempt at being romantic. Some of the candles guttered--a garish pink one, a wine-purple one--and dripped wax onto the carpet. Last year, too, they had dripped wax onto the carpet by accident, but they were lucky because they had had a rabbit, and somehow the rabbit ate all the wax off the carpet perfectly. It was astonishing how the rabbit ate the wax and left the carpet looking perfectly clean. There was not even a stain when the rabbit finished because the rabbit must have actually trimmed the carpet when it ate the wax. Since the rabbit did what it did, they didn't have to worry about the landlord taking some money out of their deposit to clean their carpets after a night of trying to be romantic in the way that most people are romantic.

But this was a different year--they had no rabbit--and there was wax on the floor again. She was screaming at him. Veins stood out of her neck. A vein stood out of the middle of her forehead. When she screamed, she cried and produced incredible amounts of snot. In between screams, and in between sobs, she would gather snot from under her lip and off her chin. She would cup the snot in her palm in order to wipe it on him. She wiped it on him. An entire wad. Her name was Sycamore, and that was his name, too. Sycamore. I was glad all at the top and I sang.

She was screaming, sobbing, crying, wiping snot, and there was a baby left mostly unattended on the couch. Just an hour earlier, the baby was not unattended at all because Sycamore and Sycamore were talking to him and playing with his feet. They made him laugh many times. That was an hour earlier, before Sycamore became angry with Sycamore. Sycamore screamed, and the baby sat on the couch and picked at its toes. The baby did not belong to either Sycamore. It belonged to another woman who was off working and needed help. That morning, she had told them not to let the baby pick its toes. It had a problem with picking its toes. The baby also had a dark bruise above one eyebrow. The bruise was raised. It was what one might call a "mouse." The baby looked embarrassed to be there, but it certainly couldn't really be embarrassed.

Sycamore said he wanted to leave and tried to leave, but Sycamore threw herself at the only door the apartment had and wouldn't let him leave. He tried to open the door with Sycamore angled against it. He got the door open a crack--outside, it smelled like semen because of a vile tree--but then the door slammed closed again, and he felt terrible about even trying to force open the door with Sycamore there and the baby there. He thought about how, just yesterday, they laughed because of the semen tree. He had tried to find out what kind it was and found it was something with "pear" in its name, though he never saw any pears on it. Sycamore spat on him. She wiped her nose on him. The baby nearly fell off the couch but caught itself. The baby would grow up to be a terrific person.