The Death of Angie, by Amelia Gray
THE DEATH OF ANGIE
Angie was in the road, leaning against the curb. She had kicked one of her crummy ballet slippers into the street, where it had been run over by a bicycle. "I wish I had a dog boner," she said.
Marcus held her face, her neck. He got down with her in the road. She was crouched between two parked cars. Her arms were cut up. He reached for her chair to roll it closer but it was just past the grasp of his free hand.
"We are good friends," Marcus said.
"To better express my feelings," she said. Her atrophied legs curled up, thin like cut fingernails. "I wish I had a dog boner."
"It's three in the morning."
He grasped one of her arms by the wrist and held it like he was helping her reach for a gymnasium ring. She thrashed out and one of her legs kicked up a soaked piece of cardboard. "I wish I was a dog boner," she said.
"We should go home."
"I don't want to go home with you," she said.
"Your girlfriends said I should take you home."
She made a choking laugh. He was trying to heft her body onto his lap but only managed to pull her torso halfway over his knees.
"It's true," she called out. She reached for one of the cars and hooked her fingers around the bumper, pulled. Her fingernails came back dirty. She wiped her face. Marcus appreciated the independent spirit which soared above her condition. Always since they had met he imagined standing beside her on a television program, maybe like with his hand on her shoulder in a public show of pride and support for her bravery.
Angie was vomiting. He turned her body to the side so she could avoid her dress. His hand grazed her breast and he moved his hand away and down to her belly because he was a gentleman. "We need to go home," he said, soothing.
Someone stopped above them, a man with a child. "We're fine," Marcus said towards the man's knee. The child put its foot in the vomit and Marcus put his hand on the child's face and pushed it off.
"If I was a dog boner I would be vanished," Angie said.
"It's past our bedtime." He pressed his hand against the side of her head.
She produced a high growling noise. He saw her jaw under her skin grinding tooth on tooth. His hand on her belly moved quietly down, holding her hip, drawing a line. He shushed her and she shushed immediately, which made him feel warm.
"Cookies," she said, after a while.
"I have some cookies at my place," he said.
She moaned. His hand was on her upper thigh. He could feel her surgical scars through her thick tights like seams on a fabric doll. Her legs made a graceful arc, ankles as delicate as a child's, like her body moved back in time from head to foot. Her stockinged foot, free of its ballet slipper, was soft like a baby's foot was soft, cold in his hand. He closed his hand around it to warm her. He thought of himself as a gentleman.
* * *
AMELIA GRAY is the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books) and Museum of the Weird (FC2), for which she won the 2008 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. Her first novel, THREATS, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Her writing has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, McSweeney's, and DIAGRAM, among others.
Find more at ameliagray.com or on Twitter @grayamelia.
Amelia Gray joined us in May for Small Doggies Reading Series PDX010.
This piece was originally published in the Small Doggies Reading Series Chapbook #2, available for sale and chock full of other amazing pieces by each author from Reading Series performances 7 - 10.