Jim Ruland
You know what would be really great? She said nothing so you trembled on. Antlers. Come again? Antlers, like… But there was no like, just the things themselves. A mass of hair and bone. A glorious crown fused to the body, a halo you could hold on to. You want me to wear antlers? Not wear, have. But it was no use. Your words had the wrong effect, made her tense up. It was not a desirable tension. The antlers alarmed her. She was alarmed. Whatever. Just hurry up. When she was gone you fixed up the room in a fit of pointless embarrassment, opening windows and fiddling with the thermometer. You put the coffee in the apparatus and measured the water. You stood waiting for it to burble and hiss. Toward the end of her shift, your mother sometimes let you make the coffee for the regulars, a gratis cup of joe. You thought gratis was a special kind of coffee she served to those she so zealously gave her attention to. You fed quarters into the pool table and took aim with your cue stick at the taxidermied beasts that decorated the wall, their enormous racks draped with panties and brassieres, their dust-dimmed eyes inattentive and remote.