By Kristance Harlow
“I can tell. She’s got men all figured out!” Mario exploded into another frenzied rant. “And that’s bad because she’s so young. She is going to end up an old maid, all alone.”
At least I couldn’t see him from where I was. I crouched behind the refrigerator door and grabbed a stick of butter from my designated half of a shelf.
“Give me that boy’s number, Mario,” Irena said between bites of lettuce, her teeth scraping the fork.
I rummaged for a pot, accidentally opening one of the many cupboards filled with used plastic bags. He was obviously not willing to forget a single meal he ever bought. As I filled a pot with water I rolled my eyes at the new note posted just at eye level above the sink. This one declared, “Clean every dish immediately after use before leaving the house for any reason. If you cannot, notify your roommates and live-in manager. ~ Mario.”
“Irena, you’re going to marry a Latino. I’m convinced of it. I’ll get you Santiago.” Mario said.
I stood in the kitchen and watched my rice cook. Rule number fourteen was to never leave anything cooking in the kitchen, no matter for how long. He said he once had a girl who fell asleep while she had soup cooking on the stove.
“Did it start a fire?” I had asked him.
“Well, no, but she was lucky.”
I imagined Mario noticing the kitchen unarmed with the stove on low. He would have paced back and forth for a minute, or two if he was feeling patient. Then he would make up a new rule and try to add an amendment to the girl’s lease.That must’ve been why she moved out.
Rule number eleven was to never leave the house while the dryer was on. For someone who was so afraid of fire, Mario did his best to make the apartment into a slew of fire code violations. The term packrat was invented for him. Clutter with no apparent meaning lined every wall, every closet was filled with faded books and water stained boxes. Canvases and empty paint tubes gathered dust in corners. He bought a small refrigerator from me and left it in a closet next to a child’s broken chair.
I risked leaving the stove on in a kitchen with no fire extinguisher and hurried past the lettuce crunching to the bathroom. Mario loudly commented, “We won’t get Kristance anybody. She has to stay a starving artist.”
Maybe it was because my mother is a poet who is easily persuaded by words. The kind of words Mario used were laced with inappropriate compliments like, “You should only wear dark colors, because it makes your pale skin look very sensual. The light colors, they just look…yuck…I won’t even say.” It was the type of thing that someone with low confidence could pick apart and take away a bit of good. Something my mother could be won over by. Or maybe she really didn’t know me at all, but for some reason she thought it would be a brilliant idea for me to live in a cramped apartment with an aging Latino-American artist and two graduate students from Russia.
Returning from the bathroom I found Mario watching the stove. His body twitched nervously as his gaze went from the timer, which had twenty-two minutes left on it, to the stove, which was set on low, to the corner I had just emerged from.
“Rice has no cholesterol,” Mario stepped towards the sink.
I nodded and tired to occupy myself with half-cooked rice.
“Even though you’re a lot bigger than me, cholesterol is still a big deal for someone my size.” He quickly left the kitchen.
Waiting for the water to boil, I grabbed a pen from the windowsill and added, “Nice suggestion, but no thanks. I’m not taking orders today. ~ K.”
