After Dinner

Dirty...that's what he felt.  Unwashed. Unclean.

Before him, in a window over the sink, the view was towards the East, over the James River and its outlets to the Atlantic so the reflection was of the west, now pink and orange in a cold haze of an evening.

The dishes were stacked in lumps of circles, pots and pans discolored with the burnt renderings of a dinner.  It had been an amazing meal, served with decades of recipes, murmurings and suggestions of a spice here and there.  Fingers tucked into servings to offer a small taste.  Heads nodding in agreement.

Somewhere behind him was a slight murmur of argument or disagreement.  It was always like this when the liquor kicked in.

He was in the small side of the kitchen, the sound of faucets roiling as white noise.  He imagined it was like the churn of ferry engines across the James.  They just carried people...they didn't get involved.

He pushed hard scrapers against something baked on a cast iron skillet, keeping sure he didn't clean it with soap, an unforgivable sin with such southerners.  Meanwhile his fingers grew white from the soap and water.

Every so often he thought he heard her voice.  Her laugh.  It was picturesque.  It was a fingerprint.  He would recognize it for the rest of his life.  It was embedded upon him like a name.  She wouldn't fully appreciate it, but for him, scrubbing dishes in an evening it was perfectly fine.  It was what she did.  She interrupted.

A tiny tinny radio played...beach music, the type of southern music that allowed dancing and knees bouncing.  Weird that it was so late into November but that was this part of Virginia.  Southern, farm-raised, James-river echoes and frost in the mornings.  Sometimes sunrise was a perfect circle...but for tonight it was a long time coming.  Rather, in this small kitchen he only heard her voice in a room of others. Relatives, strangers, family...but as much as he was common she was exceedingly uncommon.  She never felt like that, but he knew.  And with every brush of his sponge across some dirty plate he tried to come up with words that revealed how truly uncommon she truly was.

He was left alone in cold suds that he would disrupt with hot splashes from the spigot.  That was his world...cold water, dirty from nights before...she was a hot disruption.

He thought he heard her voice coming closer...he tensed a bit...the way he always did in her proximity.  Closeness to her was was one of his favorite sensations...like the way you felt a lightning strike.  The way a magnet chooses its attraction.  The way you feel when a certain song plays.

It lands in your chest and plummets through floors...pulling wood and splinters with it.  And the bright sweet feeling that plumes.  When she was near...sometimes quiet...sometimes talking.  Either way it was kept inside of him like a window...opening and closing randomly.  Her reflection against it.  Her presence beside.

He splashed soap against a rather stubborn pan.  He exerted effort to get some stubborn stain.

When it cleared he raised up the dish and wiped it clean with a drying rag.  It was pristine.

Like her...rubbing against him to remove his stains, remove the dirt...the debris.  The parts of him that were unclean.

He watched the colors transition into an evening, the radio playing dance music and the laughter spilling from the larger part of the house.

His hands were warm, the towels a wet-warm in his hands, the stack of dishes and plates and pans miraculously clean beside him, awaiting their next role in the day.

He turned, to go back in...ready to be whatever she wanted him to be...cleaned, ready and perhaps hoping that she would pick him up and use him.