Tom wore black jeans, black Bauhaus t-shirt, no makeup. Three al pastor on corn, no onions.
Clayre wore the long black lace skirt, black and yellow zebra top, black lipstick. Two barbacoa on flour.
Tom was a lab assistant, Clayre a speech therapist.
Funny, Tom had a daughter named Claire, with an i, a fourth grade sweetheart whom he saw on weekends.
Funny, Clayre had a brother named Tom, a Grade-A turd who did real estate in Phoenix.
Was Tom the coolest, best looking guy at Goth Tacos that Wednesday? Nope. But was he kind enough and safe-seeming enough to bring home for the night. Yep.
The next morning, Tom put on his glasses to survey Clayre’s room in daylight. Everything was black or yellow: curtains, rug, sheets, art, crumpled clothes on the floor. When Clayre rolled over and flopped her black-and-yellow-nailed hand on his chest, he said not “Good Morning,” not “That was fun,” but, “You know, when pollinating, a bumblebee wraps itself around a flower’s anthers and vibrates its wings at precisely the middle-C frequency to shake out the pollen.” Then he made a presumably middle-C buzz.
Eyes shut, Clayre parsed his meaning. Should she laugh? Was the mace still in the nightstand? Her cat meowed somewhere. Tom sneezed and admitted that he was allergic to cats, but too embarrassed to say anything last night.
Clayre did laugh at this, not out loud, but deep inside her chest, where a lifetime of fear rode a barrel over the falls.
She climbed on top. She slid her arms under Tom’s hairy back, squeezed as tight as she could, and shook him until she gasped. She couldn’t see him grinning. She’d have to tell him she couldn’t give a single, solitary shit about bees.