Kafka in a Skirt by Daniel Chacón

Author:Daniel Chacón [Chacón, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC029000 Fiction / Short Stories (single Author), FIC019000 Fiction / Literary, FIC056000 Fiction / Hispanic & Latino
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2019-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Kafka in a Skirt

1.

I want to eat breakfast with you.

I’m sure you would.

No, I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. I mean I’d like to pick you up and take you out to breakfast.

That’s odd. I’ve never been asked out to breakfast. Unless it’s a business thing.

Well, I want to go out with you. I have for a while now, which I’m sure was obvious to you.

Yup. The way you look at me sometimes is kind of, I don’t know, ambiguous.

So, I want to go out with you, and I know this . . . really nice place, a breakfast place.

She put down the stack of papers she had been carrying across the office when he had asked her did she have a minute. She had been holding them for a long time and her arms were tired. Arms free, she faced him, hands on her hips, with confidence. They were in the copy room of Black Kitten Publishers.

On the wall was a glossy poster with a businesswoman carrying a huge computer monitor as she runs across a field, one of those old fat computers that used floppy disks. Her hair is disheveled, and she’s running toward a giant metal wall so tall you can’t see the other side. The wall expands across the curve of the land and the top of it touches the clouds, where light streams out and shines on her face. The caption on the poster reads, Your data is safe in The Wall®.

I guess breakfast makes sense for a first date, she said. This is a date you’re asking me on?

Absolutely! Let me make that perfectly clear.

It’s a safe date, she thought. Breakfast. Okay, she said, and then, in the voice of Eddie Murphy’s Donkey, she exclaimed, Let’s have some waffles!

I’ll pick you up at seven, but I have to warn you. This is, uh, a somewhat formal place, so, you know, I’m going to wear a suit.

Are you saying I should wear . . .

An evening gown. If you want to. I mean, I’m going to be pretty dressed up.

An evening gown for breakfast?

This is a special place.

Well, now I’m curious.

Oh, and it could last several hours. Just so you know.

What kind of breakfast is this?

He put his hands in his pockets and pushed his fists down and said, A really good breakfast.

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