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Whatever You Do
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
54 Whatever You Do Almost everywhere today the sun and its rays are merciless, beating down on houses, shouting up from the pavement, consummating all of our dark ideas. The heat immobilizes a woman driving to the grocery, leaving her staring senselessly at a green light, enraging other drivers who just want to go where they are going–now. Fingers grip everything too tightly or too loosely today, the way the heart grips every day, tightly panicked like the bears inside the zoo, glaring hopelessly at the sinkhole that has opened but offers no exit. She turns at the intersection of Herself and Something Else, down a too-familiar street, past a Jaguar with a flat tire and a fifty-something man in a blue, wrinkled suit on his knees beside it; his pale hands are awkward with the tire iron, weaker than the chrome lug nuts—five stubborn stars. Two boys on bicycles quietly watch the sweating man. Is it possible everything is melting together? Her thighs and the Blue Ridge Naugahyde seat are becoming one. The day is a Salvador Dalí soup or a finger painting by a clumsy child. She runs a red light, parks next to a guy in a Land Rover daydreaming about quantum field theory. He smiles as if she’s part of an exhibit he approves of. Right outside the supermarket door Girl Scouts sell cookies and she walks past them not buying, turns down the first aisle to buy tamari and tofu, though who wants to eat in this heat – 55 ubiquitous and unwholesome, rubbing thoughts together in her head, all vying for dominance, trying to get the tongue and lips to free them into the air. Who wants to shop for the food sitting sullen on the shelves, shrink-wrapped Xeroxed examples of genetic engineering. She buys conventional mushrooms and yellow squash. She wanted organic but had wasted her money at the zoo, whispering words of comfort to the bears when she was alone with them. ...