Elf Pants
She was sitting on my lap in her nightshirt with her legs folded under her. She was as soft as anyone I have ever felt. She was looking into my eyes. She knew how to do that, and her eyes were as brown as mine. They looked like coffee in a white mug two inches from the bottom of the mug. She smiled at me. I liked the smile.
She reached for her can of beer on the coffee table, then she tilted her head back, and she swallowed long. Then she put the can back. It made a hollow empty sound. She looked at me just as tears dropped from her eyes. I watched them travel down her cheeks, and drop into her lap. He doesn’t want me, Father, she said. It’s been months. Months and months.
In the other room he was sleeping. I’d heard the yelling and screaming. It had started out about the waitress asleep with one of the other guys, asleep now in one of the other rooms. The other guy had a kid, and a wife, and if his friend was fucking waitress when they were out of town then surely he was. He argued he was too tired to fuck anyone. Then she said I know, and then they were off for quite sometime. I had listened to them yelling and screaming. And I had listened to the other guy banging the waitress.
She put her hands on my shoulders, and went back to looking me in the eye. Her eyes did that back and forth thing when you look from eye to eye. What kind of man doesn’t want sex, she said. I told her that I didn’t know. Her fingers locked behind my neck, and she smiled.
We sat like that for a while. Her fingers locking and unlocking behind my neck, and her smiling at me. She told me that the guy who had been banging the waitress tried picking her up any chance he got, but she never gave him anything.
We looked at one another for a while longer.
I asked her if she wanted another beer. Then I smiled big like I was faking the smile. She kept her stare on me. She had no smile. Her fingers were locked behind my neck, then they loosened. Yeah, she said. She’d take another beer.
She crawled up, and out of my lap. She sat on the sofa next to me, and curled her legs under herself. I walked to the kitchen. I looked to the hallway. He was sitting there in the dark of the hallway on the steps in front of their room. He put his finger to his lips making a “shhhhh” sign. He was wearing purple elf pants he’d picked up from the discount store that afternoon.
I got the beer out of the refrigerator, and watched him walk back into their room. He closed the door quietly.
I handed her the beer.
She got up from the sofa, and went back to their room.
I turned out the light, and laid back down on the floor, and covered myself with a sheet. I tilted my hat down over my eyes, and went to sleep in my clothes.
