by Mike Itaya
The day of the storm, me and Ms. Wanda were gettin’ freaky deaky inside my bamboo timeshare/loveshack. Above us, the sky was turning black. I wanted to get horizontal again but Ms. Wanda wasn’t having it. Right short, she confessed Bad Boi was home from Angola Prison and I felt the wilting salad days of our afternoon delight. I was at a loss for words. Ms. Wanda was classy stuff, wore houndstooth underwear, and sometimes wore no underwear at all, and right then I knew in my heart of hearts, dollars to donuts, I’d never see her undies again.
Overhead, the storm picked up. The wind buffeted rain into my face. I felt like some wind-swept loser on the news.
Like a thunderclap, Ms. Wanda bolted without saying another word, without even putting on her boots. I sat there like a fool, watching love run away from me.
It got gusty in that loveshack. Winds blew the door closed and opened. Closed and opened. Outside, our crimson two-seater loveseat, an anniversary gift for Ms. Wanda, took flight into the sky. Losing the dream of sittin’ in that loveseat lawn chair together (plus the $89.95 I blew on it) was that straw that broke my heart.
Well, if Ms. Wanda wouldn’t have me, I didn’t want to feel anything but bad. If a hurricane blew me to hell, it would’ve been a waste of wind. If heartache was nothing but a word, it was a pretty damn big one. I was alone with Ms. Wanda’s boots (from J-Ray’s Shoe Emporium) and nothing but the days without her stretched before me. I picked up one of her boots and looked inside it, hoping for a windfall. But it just smelled as funky as I felt. There was a hole in her sole, and through it I spied Ms. Wanda disappeared into a dot, while the sky dropped buckets, and the wind played hell with our loveseat.
Mike Itaya lives in southern Alabama, where he works in a library. His work appears or is forthcoming in New Orleans Review, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Storm Cellar, among others. He studies fiction at Pacific University.
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