You take Mickey’s ukulele down off the wall and strum it.
You don’t play the ukulele, but that doesn’t stop you.
The words form in your throat: “ I… I… I… wanna play catch with yooo–oo–oooooouuuu…” The notes form just beneath the words, quivering under them, as if you had set the words down on the surface of a custard, like a candied violet.
To Mickey, your words are like candied violets, sweet and crisp and delicate, impossibly scented. Even though they make no sense at all.
Mickey is in the kitchen, opening a bottle.
“I wanna be barefoot in the parking lot with yoooo–ooo–ooooouuuuuu…”
The glasses clink, and it sounds like Mickey is playing along with your plinking on the ukulele, so you plink back, and Mickey hears you and clinks, and this is the conversation, now.
You smile, and you hear Mickey smile.
You hear it.
The notes, the c/p/links, the custard underneath your thoughts now fill the room, heavy and humid and sweet. Mickey appears with two glasses in the doorway, and glows for a second, backlit by the kitchen light. You play a pizzicato some/no/thing on the ukulele, and Mickey tiptoes each note over to the futon like Bugs Bunny sneaking around, and sits next to you. The ukulele crescendoes all by itself.
Mickey hands you a glass and you sip, trying to keep eye contact, and you — almost — lose Mickey through the distortions in the glass.
Mickey dives in slowly, and nibbles on your neck, and the custard pretty much takes over completely.
The ukulele disappears.
©2020 by Nick Trotter. All rights reserved.