Lemmings down the Drain

Wind weaves through the curtains, trips up paper cups, crushed candy on the coffee table, around which you tiptoe, treading the cigarette ashings of the unconscious and departed guests deep into the soft plum carpet.

There was music - loud, thumping – now there is not. Now there is the soft puffing sound of the carpet under your feet. The soft puffing sound of the wind and the curtains. The soft puff and sizzle of the embers between my fingers that I can just see past the tip of my nose.

Why do you clean? I whisper.

You drift, the heels of your alligator leather boots only just brush the plum fibers that seem to electrify beneath them, erect like hair on goosebumped skin. I wasn´t invited.

So?

So.

Red paper cups smell of rum coke remains, smell like medicine, like keg, syrup, or citrus-soaked salt, march across the square table like chess pieces. The alcoholic beverage moves by jumping forward two squares and backtracking one. The alcoholic beverage is the last piece to protect the doomed king.

It´s the least I can do. You drift to the kitchen, backtrack to the door. Do me one, get those ashtrays.

I gather in crystal, porcelain, glass, and blue plastic in the shape of a fish. In the kitchen, I tip bent little cigarette bodies out of the crystal down the trash.

Who invited you? You flick a wrist at the bodies that flatten the carpet fibers, asleep and passed out.

Her. I point to blue dress on the couch, legs akimbo, arms and hair draping over the armrest. Psych 101 with Harris. Lends me pencils. Always needs to be nice to everyone. Wants to be a lawyer. Wears sensible shoes.

The streetlamp outside casts patterns of the curtain weave over your face, the walls, the tiles, and the patterns bend and distort as the wind weaves through the curtains, as they puff out, fall back, puff out again.

Don´t you know her name?

It´s not important. I call her Smiles.

The curtain shadows slide across your cheek and disappear under the darkness of your hair. What´s my name?

Spurs. Your shoes...

You click your heels together. The sharp wood sound cuts through all the sleep in the house. You pour away the dregs that have begun to seep through the red paper bottoms of cups, drip drip, like rain from overstuffed clouds. You examine the rim of a cup, rub at waxy lipstick traces and drink from it. I reach my hand, you push it down. I think you´ve had enough, man.

I will never have enough. I´m fine.

Smiles rolls over on the couch, grunts, and gathers in her draping arms and legs. I know red shirt, blue jeans in the armchair too. And pink hair by the window, drooling a small darker plum stain onto the carpet. Pink hair´s name is Pink. Red shirt has no name. He is not important.

None of them invited you. How come you´re here?

I walked in the front door.

But how did you know?

I didn´t. You feed paper plates down the chute and drink the left-overs from a second paper cup. A pink smudge half-moons around the corner of your mouth. Someone else´s lipstick, from someone else´s lips. So many painted faces in the room tonight. Whose lips drank from that cup and met, delayed, with yours? The vague intimacy of it makes my skin crawl.

I don´t live around here. You say. I just walk around here once in a while and... you know. I watch you people sometimes. You´re so... entitled. But you look happy. I wanted to know.

Know us?

No, Just know. I thought about stealing something.

What would you have stolen?

I don´t know... some knickknack. An ashtray.

I raise the blue plastic fish that still has a belly full of half-digested cigarettes.

You smile, you take the fish from my hands, you hand it back after a moment. It´s ludicrous.

Exactly. Look around. It´s the one thing in this house that is ludicrous. Whimsical. Weird. The one thing you will not find on a glossy catalog page.

A souvenir?

A present?

Sentimental value.

Money can´t buy.

You seem different. From them.

Less entitled?

Nah. Just less happy.

The red paper cup army is now marching along the anthracite marble towards the trash chute and the sink, swirling its various dregs around in circles, teasing. It has lost many already. Soon, they will all be gone, tipping themselves to their fates one by one, like lemmings, down the drain. A blood rush weighs my fingertips, wanting to reach out and save them, but you and your sharp clicking boot heels stand guard between me and them.

You move with the curtains in the wind. Weave in and out of the close-knit patterns. You don´t like these people. The paper cup front lines tumble their teasing swirls down the drain, their red shells cast into the chute by your pale tentacle fingers. But you know these people.

The front lines thin, the chess pieces fall, I blink and the last of the cups have vanished.

Nobody knows anybody. I hold the fish, now empty.

Ever?

Ever.

Then why are you here?

We like to pretend.

Together, we drift back into the living room, over the electric plum carpet that brushes our heels and lines a path through the sleeping shapes, the limp human meat, breathing, dreaming as one. A single entity of sleep thickening the air around us, the awake, the watching, thinking, moving.

Whose party was it? You ask. Whose house?

I don´t know.

Sad. You glance, warmly, at the blue plastic fish in my hands. I like to know who I am stealing from.

Behind us, the big sleep continues undisturbed, unaware of the absence of an army of soggy red paper cups, the absence of cardboard plates, the absence of a small amount of pink lipstick and the essence of someone else´s mouth being carried out into the night, riding on yours, the absence of a small ashtray in the likeness of a fish, that might be a cherished memory, or a fond joke, or something from a dream.

The door looms, swings open, the night swims against my eyes; the fish swims ahead, blue and boldly synthetic, leading us out. And despite everything, it will be as if we were never here.