POTTED DJINN, PT DOS

 

A week had gone by, yet Keith had seen nothing more unusual about the table than the fact that the glass pane top really wouldn’t be budged.

 

Yes, against the old woman’s warning, Keith had tried to pry the top loose the instant he’d closed his apartment’s front door.

 

“Delusional old bag,” Keith said to himself as he popped an Amsterdam WHAM open and flopped onto his living room couch. “The next time I drive by her house, I think I’ll leave a dirty note on her front door.” Keith grinned and slopped foreign beer down his front. “Or maybe a bag of flaming s**t on her doormat.”

 

As he groped for the remote in the cracks between the couch cushions, a question to himself floated from his lips. “Did I ever actually expect a word of what that woman said to me to be true?” Another laugh escaped his throat. “Either I’m not smoking enough weed or I’m smoking too little weed.”

 

The television flicked on. From the bleached, drab world of 1978, Archie Bunker told Edith Bunker to stifle for the thousandth time. For the thousandth time, Edith stifled. For the thousandth time, Keith laughed. He never got tired of watching A. Bunker preach the gospel truth.

 

Fifty minutes and three beers passed as the marathon on Nick at Nite flashed before Keith’s eyes. He could watch All In The Family all night long and never once tire of it. This was an unusual thing for him, since he’d grown up watching very little TV at all. Of course, his father, a big, controversial bear of a man, had allowed him to watch a few select shows. All In The Family was one of those shows.

 

In time, Keith had developed a real love for the characters, the intelligent humor, the situations. The only other show he could stand watching for such a long period of time was a little show called The Avatar.

 

Before he knew it, in his half drunk state, Keith’s feet, crossed and comfortable, found their way onto the new table’s polished surface. His feet felt at home upon the table. Already, it felt like a part of the natural boorishness that was the decor of his apartment living room.

 

In time, Keith fell to sleep with his chin on his chest and a beer can in his right hand.

 

He never noticed that the TV had turned on of its own accord. He never noticed that he’d never found the remote control.

 

The next day, as Beverly Morning felt him up with her eyes from her station across the room, at work, (Important Resources, a non-profit telemarketing outfit) Keith began to crave lunch. Ten minutes later, the floor Supe came out and announced the twelve o’clock break. Fifteen minutes to slurp down some form of sustenance, and then it was back to boring, conniving work.

 

“S**t!” Keith snapped as he sat down in the break room. His hands closed into disgusted fists on the long, bare table in front of him.

 

“Problem?” a sweet, slightly amused voice said.

 

Keith, ready to argue his disgust away, looked up and saw Beverly Morning. There she was, standing in the doorway with a colorful lunch sack and a bottle of root beer in her right hand. There she was, in her gray jumpsuit that was filled out in all the right places, with her soft, beautiful smile, with her round, plump…

 

There she was in the break room doorway, teasing him with her voice and presence. As usual.

 

“What’s the matter?” said Beverley, sitting down opposite him.

 

“Nothing,” lied Keith. He didn’t feel like discussing his lunch problem with anyone when talking about it would only make him even hungrier than he already was. He didn’t feel like flopping through an awkward conversation with the object of his most lucid, most fantastic dreams. He would only embarrass himself. After all, he hadn’t had a crush like this one in a very long time. Not since High School, where, of course, the feeling wasn’t returned in the slightest way.

 

Keith had a weird feeling that Beverley wanted to reciprocate his stares, his queasy laughs, and the good, yet careful feelings of a possible companionship.

 

“C’mon, K,” said Beverley, a genuine curve of concern made of her pink, moist lips.

 

Careful, you pervert, Keith thought to himself.

 

“You’re not eating," she said, now snapping her lunch sack open. "Every time I turn around, no matter what’s going on, you’re eating. You not eating when you're supposed to be eating is disturbing." She laughed softly. Beverley was a strict vegetarian, which Keith found puzzling, since the food she brought to work smelled better than any meat product he’d ever smelled. Of course, this was impossible. Except to his nose.

 

“Well,” said Keith, carefully, “that is sort of the problem. I forgot my lunch today. I know, I know. It’s not as big a deal as I’m making of it. We’ve got another break at two, but hell, I’m hungry now.”

 

Beverley was silent for a moment, in which time Keith damned himself to a thousand purgatories for ever even thinking that he could discuss such a shallow, meaningless problem with Beverley, the most desirable woman he had ever known. Possibly the kindest and most down to Earth, too.

 

She was taken.

 

Taken and happy with being so.

 

F**k.

 

“No, it’s not a small deal, K,” said Beverley, breaking some kind of veggie salad apart with her plastic fork. K. She was the only person on Earth who called him that. He relished the sound of it every time she said it. “There have been days that have been pulled out of the toilet by a good meal,” she said as she rose from her seat and visited the cabinets on the far right side of the room, where the plastic wares rested. “There’s a reason why breakfast is called the most important meal of the day, K.”

 

As Keith watched and Beverley spoke, the break room filled with people. Some of these people listened and watched as Beverley went through motions and spoke to Keith. The nosy b******s.

 

She came back to the break table with a Styrofoam bowl and a plastic fork. She placed the bowl in front of Keith and handed him the fork. A great pile of salad that smelled like Heaven fell into his bowl. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat anything with green in it that wasn’t sopping wet with grease,” Beverley said as she began to fork her own salad into her mouth, “which means that I don’t know if you’re a fan of veggie heads or our food. You’re welcome to try it, though. It’ll be something in your stomach until two, at least.”

 

For the next fourteen minutes, the pair of them ate in silence, but Keith, when he was absolutely sure that she wouldn’t see, snuck quick glances at Beverley every chance he got. Even the way she ate was sexy. Not just sexy, but graceful. It was like watching a lone lioness eat. Delicate, careful.

 

Classy.

 

“Thanks for the pick-me-up,” said Keith as everyone pushed back from their chairs and rose to head back to telephone work. “I’d have never made the hour and a half to lunch, were it not for you.”

 

Beverley smiled and dropped a handful of plastic into the room waste basket. A vegetarian, but no environmentalist, apparently. This was just one of the tiny contradictions of her beautifully quirky personality that Keith liked so much.

 

Maybe loved so much.

 

“It’s no big deal,” said Beverly, who now walked toward the break room door. Just before she exited the door, she turned and faced him. “My a*s is already big enough as it is.”

 

With that, (in slow motion, it seemed) Beverley vanished from the doorway. Keith saw the sly smile that rose on her face in the second that it had taken her to turn and walk away.

 

He wanted her, in so many ways, so badly that he could taste it, literally. Salivary glands pumped extra moisture into his mouth.

 

“S**t,” he said to the empty break room.

 

That night, as he watched Mike Stivic’s stupefied gaze at his father-in-law, Keith’s cell phone rung. Two foreign beers had done their job, once again. Keith didn’t want to move from his comfortable spot, on the couch with his feet crossed on his new table. He was halfway asleep with his chin already settled on his chest. Like so many other nights, he would find his dreams of financial comfort, decent houses, a content family, and Beverley Morning in this way.

 

Only his cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

 

“Goddammit,” barked Keith. He leaned to the right as far as he could and snatched the cell phone from the dresser that was just a foot away from the couch.

 

Laziness and the young; like the pieces in a game of Connect Four.

 

“Hello?” said Keith.

 

“I haven’t dealt with a dumb-a*s like you in at least two centuries,” a light, appalled voice said.

 

“Who is this?” said Keith, who now sat upright from his slumped position.

 

“The TV turned on of its own accord last night. You didn’t notice that,” said the small, contemptuous voice. “Your snack eluded you this morning, before you left for work, yet, you ate heartily at work, with very good company to boot.”

 

“What the f**k…?” said Keith. Before he could say or do anything else, there came a rapping from beneath his feet. From the glass surface of the table. Startled, he snatched his feet from the table as if he’d been burned.

 

“What is this?” said Keith. “Just what in the f**k is this?” Now he was genuinely scared. Who could know his previous night and day as well as he could? Where was the rapping on the new table coming from?

 

“Look at the surface of the table, numb nuts,” said the voice from the cell phone.

 

Without pause, Keith dropped his cell phone on the couch and leaned forward. He looked into the table and saw the impossible.

 

There was a twelve inch tall…man, for lack of a better word, staring up through the pane of glass at him. He was dressed in a dark...was that a f*****g business suit he had on? There was a wide, monkey-like smile on his small, dark face. Held to his pointed right ear was a purple cell phone. The little man waved up at Keith, his eyes sparkling with humorous glee.

 

“Too much weed," said Keith.

Reviews

[Inda Lauryn]

"Either I'm not smoking enough weed or I'm smoking too little weed." Awesome!

I loved how you captured Keith's longing for Beverly. It's something I relate too so I can't help but feel so much sympathy for him. You can imagine being stuck in a job and a life you hate and the only thing that gets you through is that secret crush and hours of escape through tvland. And of course the weed ;-)