Fatty

Appeared in NARRATIVE, Spring, 2011

You tell your wife that last night a Chivas drinker said you were one fine-looking man.

She takes a drag off her Merit, unmoved, leans across the kitchen table and pinches your nipple. Hard.

“I don’t care what some drunk slut said. Put a shirt on. I’m not staring at man-tits while I eat breakfast.”

And that would normally be that. Except that you recall how you shivered reading his name on the business card he slid across the bar, Thomas Cattaneo, Esq., and later, in the backseat, how this selfsame attorney-at-law gazed up at you with eyes burning like you were the Holy Ghost.

Thomas. Tommy. Tom.

You roll the name across your tongue like a birthday wish, lean back. The sunlight warms your breasts, and you nearly tell her you’re not wearing a shirt at all today. Not even outside mowing the grass where the neighbors can see. 

© 2011 R. A. Costello