Nothing Much
by oliver Stevens
“I took one of those shits yesterday that makes your ass bleed,” said Marcie as she gobbled down another mozzarella stick.
Linda sat across from her, unsure how to respond. “Oh,” she finally said softly, just to fill the silence.
“Yeah, it was really something,” Marcie continued, “I was sitting there, and I got the sense that it was gonna be a big one. Like, one of those really hefty ones. But it had that sort of oval shape, like a football, y’know? Which is good, because you can just sort of slide it out real smoothly.” She wiped the tomato sauce from her mouth and grabbed another stick. “But then what happened was that it turned on its side, right? And so the tip of it, instead of facing straight up, was kind of leaning against the inner wall of my ass. And it was a sharp tip. So as I was pushing, it just started scraping and scraping and scraping, and it hurt like hell, lemme tell you. But I was like halfway through pushing out a shit, so I couldn’t stop or anything, and I couldn’t just put in back in there, so the only thing I could do was just keep going, as the tip of this thing is just digging deeper and deeper into my ass. So then eventually, as I was getting closer to having the whole thing out, it was totally horizontal, like it was propping my hole open. And I braced myself, and gave it one last big squeeze, and the thing just broke in half.” She snapped the mozzarella stick she had been holding in two to demonstrate, and then took a bite out of the gooey cheese that emerged. “Like the Titanic. And because it was horizontal it made this big splash when it hit the water, and I felt it and it was warm and everything. So then I went to wipe, and that’s where it got really nasty, ‘cause the blood had mixed with the general sort of ass juice that you get when you’re taking a shit, and so the toilet paper had this sort of red-yellowish mixture on it, and it took me a while to deal with all of that. So that was pretty exciting. Still hurts a little bit, I have to walk kind of funny not to aggravate it too much.” She swallowed the mozzarella stick and took a quick sip from her margarita. “Anyway, you were telling me about your divorce?”
“Um, yeah,” Linda responded, a little flabbergasted. “Yeah…” she trailed off, staring at her still full glass of beer, searching for what to say.
“I heard Brian’s hiring that divorce lawyer,” Marcie piped in, “Whatshisname, Rizzoli? Spicoli?”
“Scampoli. He’s supposed to be a real big shot. And he’ll probably win custody.”
“What?” Marcie exclaimed. “That dickhead’s gonna get custody? The one who yelled at Jake so hard after the soccer game that he ran away and spent the night at his friend’s house? He’s gonna get custody?”
“Yeah, probably,” Linda sighed.
“How the hell? Is it ‘cause of–”
“The video.”
“Right, the video. The one of you doing cocaine in the bathroom at the office holiday party?”
“Uh huh,” Linda said. “The cocaine that you gave me.”
“Yeah, I did,” Marcie laughed. “You remember that? It was so wild. I gave you the baggie and you were like, ‘No, I gotta be at parent-teacher conferences tomorrow’ and I was like ‘Stop being such a pussy.’ ”
“I remember,” Linda said.
“And then you did like three lines and then went out and stood on a table and started singing ‘Baby One More Time’ at the top of your lungs and fell over and hit your head on one of the chairs and got a gnarly scar–”
“I remember,” Linda said again, more forcefully this time.
“Yeah, it was wild,” said Marcie. “How did Brian even get his hands on that video? Did he hire a private detective or something?”
“You drunk texted it to him.”
“Wait, did I?” responded Marcie. “Daaaaaaaaaaamn. Wow, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Ya think?” Linda snapped, then stopped herself. “Doesn’t matter,” she took a breath. “It’s in the past now.”
The waiter came to take away the empty plate of mozzarella sticks. Marcie asked for another margarita. Linda shook her head when asked if she needed anything else. She still hadn’t touched her beer.
“So I guess you’re going through a lot right now,” Marcie said after a brief silence. “I mean, you’re getting a divorce, losing custody of your kid, losing your job–”
“What do you mean I’m losing my job?!” Linda exclaimed.
“Oh, you didn’t know? Well, I was talking with Craig in the breakroom today and he said that they’re gonna have to do some layoffs and you’ll probably be one of them.”
Linda put her head in her hands.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Marcie said as she grabbed her new margarita from the waiter’s tray and took a big gulp. The waiter gave them their meals, an eggplant sandwich and side salad for Linda and a double bacon cheeseburger for Marcie.
“So listen,” Marcie continued, “Are you down to team up for the Christopher Walken impression contest this weekend?”
Linda looked up in confusion. “The what?”
“At Tino’s, down on the Wharf, Saturday at 3,” Marcie said. “It’s a Christopher Walken impression contest. They call it Mockin’ Walken Walkin’ and Talkin’. Walk-ins welcome. Winner gets a $50 gift card and a real prop from a Walken movie. I think this year it’s Biloxi Blues. Last year they had one of his former makeup people as a judge. I want to do the scene from True Romance but I need someone to play the Dennis Hopper character. You wanna do it?”
Linda stared at Marcie’s expectant face at a loss for words. “Ummmm…”
“Think about it,” Marcie said. “Just let me know by Thursday, come find me in the office. I mean, if you still have a job by then.”
Marcie started taking big bites out of her burger. Linda began nibbling at her sandwich, keeping her eyes facing down to the table. “Livin’ La Vida Loca” began playing on the restaurant’s speakers.
Marcie finally broke the silence. “So how’s it all going with you?”
“What?”
“How’s it going?” Marcie asked again. “What’s going on in your life?”
Linda stared in disbelief. Her stomach started to boil. Her face began to tighten up and tremble. She fixed her glare on Marcie. She looked at her earnest face, at those innocent eyes and friendly smile with a dash of ketchup on its edge. She slowly exhaled. The tremble stopped and her stomach and face relaxed. She felt a great heaviness in her chest.
“Nothing much,” she finally murmured.
“Same,” Marcie nodded. “Things have been bo-ring for me lately. Well, except for that shit I took yesterday. And there was this guy on the street who was having an argument with his dog. Like he was yelling at his dog and the dog was just barking at him and the guy took out his phone and Googled something and showed it to the dog to prove him wrong and the dog just kept barking and the guy was getting really frustrated and saying the dog didn’t have any good sources…”
Marcie’s voice faded into the background as Linda just stared at her glass of beer, at the drops of condensation that formed on the outside and streamed down to the bottom.