Her fingers twitched against the marble counter in the kitchen. Jeanette, a 47-year-old raptured endowed member of the neighborhood’s debauched coven of decadent insomniacs, and bowling widows. Stirring the fondue, calling the kettle black as the cheese bubbled over her makeshift altar (the oven). She was speaking to someone—or something—in the pantry, a can of mushroom soup—perhaps, the autographed picture of Wayne Newton. Her wooden spoon kept on churning. She had recently broke bread (Melba toast) with an orthodontist who shackled her gums with store bought teeth from a pawn shop, now her spittle ran over. She had eaten two pounds of cheese in an hour—or was it thirty minutes? Time had dilated like a snake swallowing its own tail, regurgitating moments in reverse. The clock on the microwave flashed 12:00—not midnight but midday—whenever she looked, it seemed to have blinked.
Outside, the neighbor’s dog yowled at nothing. The crickets were chirping a melody of her obsession—her hips swaying slightly to the hum of the fridge, listening to the icemaker belching its cubes. The TV flickered in the background, casting shifting blue shadows on the linoleum floor in the cavernous single-wide trailer, high up on the hill of Pompeii Gardens, once a landfill. Now a crock of rusting old tin cans, erupting occasionally.
