Oslo, Maine by Marcia Butler

Author:Marcia Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

ALL THE LOONS

CARS BACKED OUT OF PARKING SPOTS ON either side of Room 222 at the Loon Motel. Celine flopped onto her back and glanced at the clock—twenty minutes left till checkout time. Her feet always cramped after an orgasm, so she flexed her toes while trying to remember what was on the grocery list she’d forgotten when leaving the house earlier that morning. Milk. Obviously. Bread. No-brainer. Not much else came to mind. She’d swing by Shaw’s on her way home, and hopefully walking the aisles would prompt her. As a fallback, readymade dinners in the gourmet section would do fine for that evening. Especially if in the moment of shopping, the thought of cooking dinner felt as improbable as it did right now. Meat, casseroles, the oven. Plates, forks, the dishwasher. Paper-towel squares standing in for napkins. All of it, a drudgery. Anyway, who was she fooling? Celine hadn’t prepared more than a handful of meals in the last month. In fact, all household tasks she used to perform as a matter of rote, and even enjoyed, she now shirked. Celine felt a failure as a homemaker, an identity she’d always taken pride in. And as a wife, she was nothing more than a cruel harpy.

Earlier that morning and before either of them had coffee, Celine had gone after Claude’s manhood. She laughed at and then derided the size of his penis, which in truth she quite admired. But oh, how she wanted him to suffer for everything that had gone wrong. Which was not an easy thing to accomplish, because Claude was the least repentant person in the state of Maine. He’d make the hardest cider out of rotten apples and remain cold sober. Plead the fifth. Innocent as a lifer on death row. Introspection was just another word for “are you kidding me?” In other words, Claude was all good, all day long. But that morning, as she’d shoved him into every dark corner of their marriage, Celine could tell he was at some sort of brink. Still, that didn’t stop her from nailing him in the only place he’d hurt. His dick.

The walls at the Loon were no better than two sheets of cardboard glued together. She listened to the couple who’d just arrived next door discuss a puppy that had gone missing. And while they worried about Kelly the Labrador, Celine wondered where in hell her brand-new Dyson vacuum cleaner had gone to. The previous night, intending to take advantage of a rare surge of energy and clean the house, she’d searched every closet. AWOL. So, she rimmed the perimeter of each room collecting any dust bunny bigger than a golf ball. Claude trailed behind, pointing out those she’d missed. Meanwhile, Pierre, after losing a coin toss to Claude, busied himself with five loads of laundry. And Pierre being Pierre, his color sorting was intuitive, his choice of water temperature spot-on. And folding, a wonder of origami precision. Now, rhythmic moaning from next door had supplanted any concern for poor Kelly, and Celine doubted she’d make it to Shaw’s.

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