3 Microscopic Fictions
by Merle Drown
In The Tavern
On Friday nights in walks Lionel, pompadour in pure white waves. Salesman-quick, he shakes your hand, pats you on the back, and lights your cigarette—or his if you don’t smoke. It makes no difference to him. He’ll tell you he used to be worth $300,000 until the company went under, taking with it his entire retirement. He drinks Manhattans while he waits for the kitchen to put up his wife’s shrimp dinner. Or maybe vodka tonics. One week martinis, just for the hell of it. The regulars call him a sport, and he smiles.
As usual he buys drinks for the bar. They buy back. He downs half a dozen, or maybe just three. The divorced waitress he wants to bang whispers in his ear. Sitting in Styrofoam on the stool next to him, his wife’s shrimp grow cold, tough. He knows how his wife is, the waitress says. Lionel fits his hand in the small of her back.
Yeah, he knows how she is.
He has to clean the house tonight. Laundry tomorrow. Grocery shop on Sunday.
In The City
“Fuck you,” she explained.
The One You’ll Talk To
Vicky never sits at the bar, always at a table or booth, her big eyes drawing you to her like a fire in a cold house. After awhile, you see the long face, narrow nose, wide, thin-lipped mouth.
You don’t talk to her long before you realize that in her entire life, she hasn’t had a moment’s thought of anyone save herself. Even her mother would tell you that.
Merle Drown is the author of stories, essays, plays, reviews, and two novels, Plowing Up A Snake (The Dial Press) and The Suburbs Of Heaven (Soho Press). Merle edited Meteor in the Madhouse, the posthumous novellas of Leon Forrest, (Northwestern University Press). Barnes and Noble chose The Suburbs of Heaven for its Discover Great New Writers series. Merle has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the NH Arts Council and teaches in Southern NH U's MFA program. Pieces from a collection-in-progress, Shrunken Heads, miniature portraits of the famous among us, or Balzac in a Nutshell have appeared in Amoskeag, Meetinghouse, Night Train, The Kenyon Review, Rumble, Sub-Lit, Word Riot, Bound Off, JMWW, Eclectica, Toasted Cheese, Foliate Oak, SN Review, and 971 Menu.