Spatch-Cock’d
I stuff the chicken. One hand up and under its skin. My fingers pushing the soft buttery mixture between its skin and flesh, massaging, rolling, caressing its rawness with my butter-y lemon-y fingers, plumping it. Readying it. 400 degrees. Like that. Roasted. Crispy skin in my mouth.
Crackle. Crunch. And yum!
Why can’t I eat like this all the time? Because I’m getting fat. Like the Pillsbury dough boy. Poke your finger in my belly and I’ll giggle—but I’m not as cute. I’m a middle aged, expanding middle, middle child, living right down the middle. Please! Somebody turn this bus around. This doomed ride. Turn it around and head back to hope ‘n youth ‘n small waistlines. Christ, who put a rock on my gas pedal? Is anyone driving this bus? This one-way ticket to the abyss, the open mouth of the dragon, the dark years. Count Down! 3, 2, 1…
Hormones. And not the kind that wound me tight when I was young and ripe like a melon, but the kind that boils up, out of my skin, hot flesh, bubbling over, unforgiving, my ovaries screaming for attention. We’re still here, lady, let’s go for a ride. Slide it into gear and ahhh!
Gone are the days that we (me, him, anyone) couldn’t wait to get home, so we screwed against a fence behind a bar, or in a closet at a party. Gone are the keys slipped into my pocket—room 436? Gone are the VIP passes from lead singers or bassists or both. Playing songs just for me. Desire pulsing through throats, fingers, tight jeans. Beating, throbbing. So much blood filling me up, turning me over and over, my body climaxing in a tight dress. I can still taste the sweat on my fingers. Mine, his, anyone’s. Youth exploding in my hands and heart. Crescendo-ed. Gone.
Or are they?
I see the way he looks at me, that young guy at the office. He stares from behind the grey partition, his wall of Jericho. The one that hides his desk, his computer, the photo of him and her— his full lipped magazine bride with plump breasts that stand up braless. But I have experience. A history. And I see him watching, his flirt skipping over the cubicles to mine, daring, ready for the ballgame.
Hey batter, batt er
B
A
T
T er
SWING !
So what if? What if I’m right and he and I stay late sometime and laugh over a drink, tension building. Should I (he thinks). Should we (I think)? Then, yes, yes, YES. We do. Right on the photo copier. Like in the movies.
Chicken’s done.
My husband says, “Smells good.”
We set the table. Put out napkins, the good silverware and uncork some wine. It’s Sunday. I put the bird on a platter and place it on the table. I stand over it with a dull knife, the one we forget to sharpen. We always forget things. That’s just the way it is. I cut and tear into the flesh, sawing my way through bones and meat, spilling innocence all over the platter.
“Leg or breast,” I say.
—
Laura J Morris is a veteran producer of TV ads, living in NJ. She’s an emerging writer with recent work published in Hobart, Sky Island Journal, The Phoenix, Dash, Amethyst Review, and Slippery Elm Literary Review. When she’s not traveling the globe, cooking, dancing, or clicking away on the computer, she’s most likely curled up on the sofa, asleep.
