DS LEVY
Ferdinand
At the Pelkington’s annual Super Bowl party, Vivian picks at a tiny scab on the apple of her cheek while her husband and neighbor, Hank Johnson, trade stories about the black bear. Working her fingernail under the crust, the scab starts to pull loose.
She overhears Hank telling Joe he’s got a webcam trained on his blueberry bushes. Last week, he watched the intruder pillage Shirley’s plump berries. “Damn fucker picked every bush clean,” he says, taking a gulp of Pabst.
The Pelkingtons serve bottled beer, not cans, or craft beers with frou-frou labels. Vivian’s husband has already had four bottles, not that she’s counting.
The scab lifts. She’d covered it with a dab of foundation, but makeup over scabs never really works. Fifty-two years old, she ought to be done with pimples. Still, her skin rebels, like teenaged flesh. The other wives congregate around the island counter in the kitchen. All of them have clear, perfect skin. A few wrinkles, yes. Blemishes, no. They politely draw flutes of cheap pink wine to their ruby-red lips, neatly shove chips with Shirley Johnson’s famous taco bean dip into their half-grinning mouths and laugh about something—hahahahahahaha.
Vivian sits on a leather slouch of a chair, a glass of red wine on the side table, the Pelkington’s old dog, Ferdinand, panting and farting beside her. Together, they watch the game on the big-screen TV. If Hank and Joe would only move out of the way she might get to distract herself with the lame commercials, which are loaded with breasts, glistening tanned skin, and close-ups of pouting mouths with wagging tongues.
After a sip of wine, she runs her fingernail around the loosened skin and thinks about final lift off. What if it’s one of those bleeders she’ll have to keep dabbing at with a napkin, not even close to her mouth, drawing attention to herself? She’d have to avoid small talk in the crowded room and get to the bathroom without being stopped. Then again, the scab might not bleed but instead leave a raw, angry-looking welt like a billboard.
The scab lifts right up and falls—where? She touches her face, feels smooth skin, no blood, looks down at her pants, at her sweater, no scab—and then sees it on Ferdinand’s dark fur. She wets her index finger and picks it up like a piece of lint. The dog turns his panting head around. She pets him on the forehead with her free hand and feels a small, hard cyst, which her finger worries over a few seconds.
Hank Johnson and Joe are still droning on about the trespassing bear, how they’re going to take it this year if either one gets a good sight.
At halftime, Vivian finishes her wine and asks Ferdinand to keep her seat warm. While everyone crowds into the den where the halftime show is getting underway, she carries her empty flute to the kitchen counter, and while no one is looking, flicks the scab into Shirley’s famous taco dip and stirs it in with a clean serving spoon. Then she fills up her flute with a full glass of hearty red, which no one else seems to be drinking.
DS Levy lives in the Midwest. She has had work published in New World Writing, Bending Genres, Bull Men’s Fiction, Atticus Review, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and others. Her flash chapbook, A Binary Heart, was published by Finishing Line Press.