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The Taste of Chicory at High Tide

By Lisa Mantchev

19 December 2005

I met her on a blind date, a double dare, a fateful setup by chaotic kismet. She strapped red boots on my feet and we danced until my blisters had blisters. She spoon-fed me spicy swamp creatures and fried bread that forever ruined me for ordinary food. We drank until I puked. She stole my wallet, got me shot at by her jealous ex-boyfriend, and gave me a raging case of the crabs. I wanted to take her out again anyway, but the bitch wouldn’t return my phone calls.

Until now.

“I need you. Please come,” she said. I couldn’t fly there (no more airplanes for me, thanks), but I still answered her summons. It was a really long walk. The receding water ruined my dress shoes. The mud sucked at my feet with every step. But when a blues-singin’ hoodoo-slingin’ mistress calls, a man’s got to reply.

I found her sitting in a deserted café, adding packet after packet of sugar to her thick black espresso. Discarded pink wrappers littered the soggy ground around her stilettos. The beads around her neck clattered against the metal table. The hem of her short, wet skirt rode up on her thighs. There were circles under her eyes and defeat oozed from the sodden pockets of her raincoat.

I slid into the chair across from her and looked around for a waiter, but the bar was deserted. The copper behemoth behind the counter stood unmanned and wheezing steam. Flour, dirt, and grease-flecked water swirled in a paste that dripped from the cracked marble countertop and onto the floor. The noisome mess oozed around my ankles and dribbled into my shoes to mingle with the mud.

It was too early in the morning for this kind of shit, and I hadn’t had any coffee yet. I licked my lips and made a wish. My lovely companion slid the demitasse across the table without a word.

“You look like hell,” I said and grimaced into the dregs, teeth gritty with sugar.

She raised her head and glared at me under the matted fringe of her bangs.

“Is that any way to talk to a lady?” Her eyes sucked my dick; her drawl punched me in the crotch.

I set the cup down, tugged off my jacket, and loosened my tie. Steam rose from my collar, the puddles on the table, and the gutters outside. The woman was hot, no doubt about it: fire-in-the-summer, stick-your-clothes-to-your-skin hot.

“When I meet a lady, I’ll be sure to watch my mouth.”

She choked on a mouthful of greasy beignet and grim amusement. I pounded her between her jutting shoulder blades until she spat brackish green water into her lap.

“I’m finished. Washed up.” She put her head in her hands, but didn’t cry. She probably figured there was enough water around without her adding to it.

“You’ll survive.” The lack of empathy in my voice surprised even me. “You owe it to them.”

I jerked my chin toward the crews working to clear up the mess in the streets. In the distance, we could see the displaced families, their belongings scattered around them in trash bags like black plastic confetti. Children sifted through the ruins in search of their parents. An abandoned dog sniffed my pant leg and nudged me with his nose, but I didn’t have anything to give him.

She rubbed a hand under her nose and left a snotty silver snail trail across one cheek. She looked at the dog for a very long moment, then unclasped her tiny sequined purse and set it on the ground. Kibble boiled out of the top and spilled onto the street. Rover attacked the food, pausing every so often to gaze at her with doggy adoration; he beat the crap out of my leg with his wiry tail.

“That’s a step,” I said, scratching him behind the ears.

She swirled the grounds at the bottom of the cup, then set it upside down in the saucer.

“Read the dregs. Tell me my future,” she said.

“I don’t go in for that hoodoo stuff.”

“This once. For me.”

I sighed mightily, turned the cup over, and studied the patterns.

“Wavy lines … Well, I guess that’s the freaking river running through the middle of your city. And a mountain. That’s an obstacle. The spade, for industry, is closest to the rim, the nearest future. And at the bottom …”

“Yeah?”

“A shitload of sugar, which I say is a sweet return.”

“What a load of crap,” she said, sending the dog into paroxysms of ecstasy by fishing a Milk-Bone out of her pocket.

“You wanted to hear it. Now pull yourself together. Comb your hair. Wash off your makeup. Your face looks like Mardi Gras puked on it.”

She jerked as though I’d rammed a live wire in her ear.

“I thought you’d understand,” she said. “Man, I hate your fuckin’ guts. Get outta here, and don’t ever come back.”

She threw the coffee cup at me and the greasy napkin dispenser for an encore; I managed to duck the first projectile, but the second hit me square in the head and then we both were swearing. When she pulled her arm back to punch me, I grabbed her wrist and jerked her to her feet. She screeched and clawed, drew blood in a couple places, and did her best to knee me in the nuts, but I forced her hand inside my shirt anyway. She stilled suddenly as the acrylic tips of her fake fingernails traced the twin scars just over my heart.

“That’s exactly right, baby girl,” I crooned into her ear. “If I can heal, then so can you.”

When I kissed her, I could taste lipstick and bourbon under the raw sewage. I wiped the worst of the muck from her hair and walked away.

“Cocksucker!” she screamed, and began to laugh. Something hit me in the back of the head.

“I love you too,” I said, and picked the gold doubloon out of the mud. Whistling, I began the long walk home as my lady started to sing the blues and pick up the pieces of her broken dream.

Copyright © 2005 Lisa Mantchev

(Comments on this piece | Fiction Forum | Main Forum Index | Forum Login)

Special thanks to Casey Callahan, for showing me where to start.

Lisa Mantchev casts her spells from an ancient tree in the Pacific Northwest. When not scribbling, she is by turns an earth elemental, English professor, actress, artist, dog wrangler, new mommy, and domestic goddess. For more on her work, see her website. To contact her, send her email at lisa_mantchev@hotmail.com.

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