Honey Glazed

Beep. Beep. Beeeeep. “Dammit.” Damien mumbled under his breath, annoyed that he had missed the one second mark on the microwave timer. He always tried to yank the door open just before the timer went off because he hated the sound of that beeping. Sometimes alarms made him panic, and now he could feel a tightness growing in his chest that seemed like something was squeezing his palpitating heart so it slipped down into the pit of his stomach, pounding against the walls of his insides the whole way down.
Damien took a deep breath and pulled the frozen turkey dinner from the microwave. He sat down on the 1970s style mustard yellow couch to enjoy his favorite meal after slaving over a register and rearranging the produce aisle all day. He sat in front of the third episode of the fifth season of Friends (he had seen all ten seasons at least four times,) legs crossed, tapping the foot that hung in the air. A forty-pound, five-year old Corgi who Damien called Jack sat at his foot, eyes wide, tongue flapping. “What is it? What do you want?” Damien asked almost condescendingly, as if he expected more from the hungry pooch. Jack cocked his head to the left, his ears extra perky. Damien raised his eyebrows and shook his head. He tossed a piece of meat into the air and watched it slide down Jack’s throat.
When the episode ended, Damien got up to throw the plastic tray away. Jack trotted behind him, ready for his evening walk. After two more episodes, Damien walked Jack around the local high school track six times which took approximately forty-five minutes, like it always did. Once he arrived home, it was around 7:30. Damien settled in to continue his marathon. About an hour later, in the midst of one of Rachel’s heart wrenching breakdowns, Damien’s seventy dollar Straight Talk phone began to ring. He didn’t bother checking the caller ID because he never got any calls from anyone other than work, anyway. That’s odd. Jim doesn’t usually call me this late. Damien’s boss informed him that due to some scheduling conflicts among the other employees, Damien would have to work the late shift. Damien agreed to take the shift, of course, but he was rather shaken when he hung up the phone. He had always worked the day shift. He liked his nine to five because that gave him plenty of time to eat dinner, walk Jack, and get to bed early. He even liked getting up early. Now he’d have to work from two until ten, which meant he couldn’t catch the bus, which meant he would get home ever later. Oh well. Just this once, I suppose.
Damien woke up around seven the next morning. He showered, put on his usual slacks and wrinkled polo, and ate a bowl of lightly frosted Cheerios. He cleaned up a little bit, unsure of what to do with his time because he never had mornings off. As he was scooping the last pile of dirt into the cracked dustpan, his stomach suddenly dropped. He wouldn’t be able to take Jack on his nightly walk. Jack always got tuckered out on those walks, which sent him straight to sleep. If Damien took him out now, he’d fall asleep mid-afternoon and be up all night. This was all a mess and precisely the reason that Damien liked to do things in an orderly fashion. If he had a routine, he could be ensured that life would go exactly as he planned, and if he kept his life simple, he wouldn’t have to worry about panicking.
Disheveled Damien sat down to watch TV so as not to think about the whole ordeal. He continued onto the sixth season of Friends and waited for two o’clock to roll around so he could catch the bus that would come at 1:32. He would arrive at the stop outside of the shopping outlet at 1:47 pm. It would take him three minutes to walk across the street to Park Place Market and then he could wait in the breakroom until 1:58. Then he would clock in.
His shift was fine, as it always was. He didn’t mind working in a grocery store. It wasn’t the worst job out there, but it wasn’t the best either, of course. Sometimes pretty women came in and Damien wished he could talk to them but a grocery store was not exactly the right setting for something like that. Damien had only had a few girlfriends and he didn’t really know much about women but if nothing else he knew that a woman should be wooed in a bar or at a party or something like that but Damien didn’t drink or go to parties. There was one regular customer who came in once a week, (sometimes twice if she was hosting a dinner which she seemed to do fairly often) that Damien had always wanted to talk to. She was not exactly what most men would call sexy but Damien liked to watch her walk away from the counter because there was something really beautiful about the way her hips swayed in her pencil skirt. Her honey colored hair ended just above her butt, and that added to the effect. Damien liked to think maybe someday he’d ask how long it had taken her to grow it out, and then they’d get to talking and he’d learn her name.
At the end of his shift, Damien began his trek home. Much to his dismay, it was snowing. As a New Yorker, he was no stranger to snow but he didn’t appreciate the first snow like other people did. He did not care to see the soft white chucks falling, slanted, as if the ground were pulling them downward. Anyone else would have found the way those flakes looked in the beams of the streetlight or the blanketed pavement beautiful, but Damien simply wanted to get home so he could get to bed and get up early for his usual shift so things could go back to normal. Ten minutes into his walk, Damien noticed a man on the other side of the street. He wore a black peacoat, dress shoes, mittens, and an Ushanka hat. The man began to speed up, then started to run. After a few moments, he slid. He spread his arms like children do when they are pretending to be airplanes and then flung them backwards, puffing his chest out. He looked up for a moment and then stopped. He repeated this for the next half mile or so while Damien curiously followed at a safe distance.
“Hey! You over there!” the man suddenly shouted, cutting through the wind. Damien froze. His eyes widened.
“Well? What the hell are you doing?!” the man shouted out again. He wasn’t angry, just interested. Damien remained silent and still as if the man, like a T-Rex, wouldn’t be able to see him if he stayed like that for long enough.
Damien and the man looked at each other from opposite sides of the road for almost thirty seconds, and at the forty five second mark, the man had bolted to where Damien was standing.
“Hiya! Do you want to join me or something? It sure looks like I’m having a lot more fun than you are. What are you doing out here in the snow if you aren’t going to enjoy it, anyway?”
“I’m just trying to get home.”
“On a night like this? Can’t imagine there’s anything good waiting for you at home. Unless you’ve got a nice girl or something. You got a girl?” Damien thought about the customer with the honey colored hair.
“Sort of.”
“Good deal. Everybody needs a good girl. Got one myself. She’s a beaut. Hey, what do you say we go back to my place for a drink? You drink?” One time in high school, Damien tried a sip of beer behind his best friend’s dad’s garage. From then on he had sworn to never touch the stuff again.
“Of course. Who d-doesn’t?” Damien choked back a knot of saliva.
The man raised an eyebrow. “Okie dokie. Name’s Mike.” Dodged that one. Damien introduced himself.
Mike and Damien walked for about ten minutes before they reached a yellow apartment building on Grant Street. Once during their walk, Mike had asked Damien if he wanted to try sliding for a little ways, but Damien politely declined. He was already agreeing to have a drink, for God’s sake. He didn’t want to get too carried away. They traveled up three flights of stairs, and opened the door to apartment 301.
“Sit anywhere you’d like,” Mike announced, walking through what appeared to be the living room past all the viable places to sit and tossing his jacket over one of the chairs. “Baby! I brought a friend home. Get your butt out here!”
“Another one?” a female’s voice called out from a few rooms away. The woman who entered the room was, without a doubt, any reasonable man’s definition of sexy. Even in her baggy sweatpants and T-Shirt, Damien couldn’t help but notice her little body and her not-so-little assets. The T-Shirt was a little too fitted and it made Damien a bit uncomfortable, like he shouldn’t be looking at this man’s girlfriend after he had been invited into their home. She walked toward Damien, smiling.
“Hi, dear. I’m Jen. So sorry I’m sort of a mess. I was just settling in for a girls' night in.” She turned to her boyfriend. “Mike, love, what are you doing here? I thought you were going out.”
“I played in the snow for a while and then I ran into this guy. I forgot Clarice was coming over. Do you hate me?”
Jen squinted her eyes as if to say “shut up,” and then she puckered her lips and released a kiss into the air. “Of course I do. You know that.”
“Good. I hate you, too. Hey, Damien. You like Whiskey?”
Damien nodded, figuring whiskey sounded a lot nicer than beer. Beer sounded heavy, like it would plop down in your stomach and stay there for days. He figured whiskey might be a little smoother. Mike poured a bit of the drink into a small glass filled with ice and handed it to Damien. He poured one for himself, too.
“So you’ve met my girl. Tell me about your girl. I want all the gooey details.”
“She’s really pretty, and really nice, too. She wears a lot of pencil skirts.”
Mike laughed. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, it is so.” Damien lifted the glass to his lips and took a big gulp. The drink splashed at the bottom of his stomach. At first it burned, but then Damien could feel a warmth that felt sort of nice creeping up through his body. When it reached his throat, he knew he was in trouble. Damien pushed the drink into Mike’s hand.
“Bathroom?” he blurted, immediately putting his hand over his mouth. Mike pointed, his gleaming eyes painfully sympathetic. Damien bolted in the direction Mike had pointed. As he approached the door he noticed it was closed. He frantically searched for another option but there were no other rooms around. As he reached for the knob, the door opened. He backed up as soon as he could, but the motion was too much for him. He jolted forward and vomited at his feet.
“Oh, my…” he heard a female voice whisper. This voice was different from Jen’s, though. It was much softer. Damien looked up. Oh mother of God, no… He could recognize that honey colored hair anywhere. Mike and Jen rushed to the scene.
“Damien! I’m so sorry, dude. I thought you said whiskey was okay? Oh, Clarice, did you get any on you?” Mike looked at Jen but quickly looked away. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
“Hell no you won’t. Not with him feeling like that. It’s fine. It’s only 11:30. Clarice and I can wait a little bit. Besides, if you stay, that will only give us more to talk about.” She half smiled.
The four of them went back into the living room after Mike had cleaned the mess up off the floor. Mike sat on the lazy susan, Jen on the rocking chair, and Clarice took a spot on the couch. Damien looked at the piece of furniture and assessed. There was plenty of room so that the two could sit relatively far apart, but he took a seat in another chair instead. He crossed his legs and tapped the foot that hung in the air.
“Clarice isn’t one for drinking, either. Sometimes she’ll have a glass of wine, but every time I try to get her to go a little crazy, she says no. She’s an old woman, I swear. Twenty-five going on seventy.” Jen picked up a pen from the side table next to her and threw it at Clarice.
Clarice shook her head and laughed. “Hey, I got all of that out of the way in high school. My bad for being a little over it. I don’t mean to be a buzzkill.”
“We still love you, I guess,” Mike contributed. “Damien, man, I’m thinking I should get you some water.” Mike went to the kitchen. “Hey, Jen, can you come here for a minute?” Jen hopped up and left for the kitchen as well.
Damien and Clarice sat in silence for a moment until she said, “so, what are you doing here?”
Damien tried his best to explain the story, leaving out the part where he told Mike he sort of had a girlfriend. Clarice explained that she and Jen had been friends since freshman year of high school. She said that Jen had always been a little bit more on the wild side. She partied a lot and got around a bit, but she had settled down after she met Mike. He was good for her, she thought--fun, but level-headed, too. The two heard giggling from the kitchen. It had been at least five minutes since the couple left.
“Everything all right in there?” Clarice called out.
“Be out in a minute, Clary!” Jen replied after a moment. It sounded like a pan or something had fallen and hit the tile floor. Jen re-entered the living room. Her T-Shirt was slanted over her shoulder and her hair was much messier than it had been when she left.
“Damien, do you mind walking Clarice home? I’m not feeling too well.”
Damien nodded and looked away, even more uncomfortable now that he had more of an idea of what Jen looked like under her clothes. He shouted a halfhearted, “goodbye and thanks for the invite, Mike!” toward the kitchen. Jen gave him a piece of paper to write his phone number on. Clarice and Jen hugged. Clarice whispered something in Jen’s ear, and Jen giggled. “Have a good night,” Clarice said smiling, raising her eyebrows and letting them fall quickly back down again.
The two walked for about twenty five minutes. At first, they could only manage small talk, but soon enough they were telling each other stories, Clarice’s seeming a bit more interesting. Still, she seemed curious enough to know more about Damien. She wondered about his routine, but mostly she wondered why he was so set on sticking to it. They both agreed that story was for another time, and Damien liked that because it meant they would see each other again. When they reached Clarice’s apartment, they stood for a moment to give their last goodbyes.
“You’ll have to come to one of my dinner parties...as long as it doesn’t interfere with your schedule.”
“Hopefully I won’t have to work the night shift again so I can be there. Actually, on second thought, tonight wasn’t so bad.”
“Not at all. Well, goodnight, Damien. It was very nice to meet you.”
“Goodnight, Clarice.” Damien turned to walk away. Before Clarice had reached the final step up to her door, he said, “hey, Clarice?” and she turned around. “How long have you been growing your hair out?”
She laughed. “This hair is about the only part of me left from high school.”
Damien smiled. “Goodnight, Clarice.”
“Goodnight.”
Damien made his way home, walked past Jack who was sound asleep by the refrigerator, and climbed into bed. The next morning he got ready for his nine to five. This time, he ironed his shirt and spent a little more time brushing his hair. He hoped the girl with honey hair would stop in for the second time that week, and for the first time in his life, he looked forward to eating something other than frozen turkey for dinner.