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Friday, October 15, 2010

The Atomic Man Pt. 4: The Second Egg

Searching for the light switch, they find it and reveal the drab severity of their furtively adopted surroundings. She tells him to turn it off.

Just like that. It's not a request. No endearing "dear" or "babe" attached to the end, because he wasn't any of these things to her. He was the tall guy in a striped shirt who outside the bar in between sets had offered her a cigarette, making a flat joke about British slang, calling it a "fag." She had seemed sweet to him then, laughing softly.

She pushes a condom into his hand, not even asking if he'd brought his own. He thinks then that she must be used to situations such as this. The etiquette of strangers meeting in strange rooms. He wonders whether she's into it as much as he is, whether she's putting on a well-rehearsed show whose intermission they had just reached.

Two yellows sit in a viscous pool of translucent liquid which has begun to congeal around the edges. Charlie's stomach churns but anyway he thinks maybe that's hunger and decides to pluck another egg from the carton, thinking "Christ, I need it."

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