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OLD SPICE

Renee Libby

You didn't know this was how in his efforts, causing him to release
it was going to tum out. If you had a string of words that would have
known, you probably wouldn't be made you cover your children's
here, as this is not the most pleasant ears, had you stayed together long
place to be. This is, in fact, the place enough to have children.
that you have dreaded most.
You grow restless and open the
It is the absence of the aftershave refrigerator: a moldy piece of cake
- Old Spice, predictably - that is from his birthday party two weeks
your first clue. You lock the door ago, three half-full bottles of beer (he
behind you, forgetting the deadboIt, would say they were half-empty),
and wait for the smell, but you only
inhale oxygen, nitrogen, and dust and lime Kool-Aid. Maybe if you
particles that have settled in various had learned to cook, you wouldn't
places that are never touched, like be tempted to smash the filthy cof-
the stovetop (but, for the record, the fee mug against the Spanish-tiled
microwave is dust-free). floor you had picked out together

two months before. Instead, you
The table is littered with over- stare into the fridge and wonder
due bills and the newspaper is open
to the classified section, where he if the cake is old enough to poison

has circled seven apartment listings you, or, perhaps, holds the cure for
cancer.
- each with only one bedroom, in
You notice the red light blinking
the best neighborhoods. Under his
on the answering machine. Your
dirty coffee mug you see it - a sheet brother's voice fills the room as you
of lined paper, tom from a notebook
with the fringes still attached. You pick at the paint on the walls; you
consider wallpaper. Your brother
don't read it; you don't need to.
hates him, says that you had bad
His key is sitting on top of the taste in men and need someone
bills, and you wonder if he cried with a "real" job. You always de-
as he slipped it off of his key ring. fend him; "real" didn't have to in-
You decide that he didn't and hope volve sticking people with needles
that his large fingers were pinched and smelling of urine and antiseptic

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