Dinners of steak. Meat and potatoes. Pouring juice like blood and fat married. Cutting in muscled strips and strings. Grained like wooden men set to matches. Adapting to the strokes of the knives.
He is a suit using a knife serrated and reflective. It mirrors his tie and the glasses pinned to his nose. He chews and swallows and repeats what others have said like them boys and them heroes and them sons of bitches. Same inflections and burling cheeks.
Plates soak. Chunks left like spittle. Bread sopping the layers like skins. Unburying designer lines and classic shapes. Buttons connecting through slits. Brands on these men. Their stomachs tight and pushing pregnant with meat. Swelling on pride and wine.
The dessert cart has a wobble in its front leg. They laugh and speak of it as putting down a lame horse. Can’t race can’t live. One suit toothpicks his mouth. Another re-tucks his entrails. Another pisses in the bathroom and leans into the tiled wall. They order cheesecake and creamed coffee and swills of scotch.
Buttons burst and rocket through windows. It is dark outside. Their hair is oiled and graying. Their shoes are polished and sleek. They grin as coyotes. As rounders. As oiled men. Men made of plastic. Suits woven in gold and dollar bills and tank grease.
A card racks through the slide. Magnet on magnet reader. Numbers drain from one place and appear in another. And the name on the card reads to fingers like Braille. The tip is thirteen percent. One in three men dying. The receipts crunching in his pockets like faux casualties.
***
J. A. Tyler is the author of the novel(la)s INCONCEIVABLE WILSON (scrambler books, 2009), SOMEONE, Somewhere (ghost road press, 2010), IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (willows wept press, 2010), & A MAN OF GLASS (fugue state press, 2011) as well as the chapbooks ZOO: THE TROPIC HOUSE (sunnyoutside, 2010) & OUR US & WE (greying ghost, 2010). His work has appeared recently with Sleepingfish, Caketrain, Hotel St. George, elimae, & Action, Yes among others. He is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press. Visit: www.aboutjatyler.com.