Fee arrives on a street filled with trash.

            Rows of ugly houses stretch out on each side. Graffiti and the unique way each is destroyed set them apart. Some are black with smoke damage. Some have doors kicked-in. Some look like they could sell for heaps, if not for the numerous holes in the roofs. Hums fill the air. Somewhere, something electrical is shot. A live wire could kill someone at any moment, but no one lives in a deserted town with graffiti sprayed on every wall, at least, no one that Fee would like to see again.

            Tiny hairs stand up on her skin. She goes by Fee because names over one syllable bore her. Bex is one syllable. Fee thought she liked Bex, at first, but then Bex’s name started to feel a lot longer than B-E-X. Fee decided to call her

                        B                                 E                                              X                                 Y

            “Oh god,” says Bexy, emerging from a house. She stands in the middle of the empty street, staring.

Fee wants to look away, but there’s not much else to look at. Bexy shuffles forward. “I didn’t know if you’d come. I— thought you were still mad.”

            Fee doesn’t meet her halfway. Next is a hug: a long, ugly, hug that Bexy initiates.

            Two heads of blonde hair touch. They’re the same: glowing bright. One tilts to embrace the other. The other leans away.

            Fee’s eyes are wide open.

            The hug breaks, but Bexy keeps her face close. Her exhale touches Fee’s lips. Bexy’s eyes dart up and down. She’s pulsing closer, until Fee pulls back.  Fee winces and says, “You smell like a bean burrito.”

            Oh no. Bexy hears it again this time in her own voice, I smell . . . like a bean burrito.

            Bexy lifts her palm to her mouth. She exhales and sniffs, grimacing. It’s true.

            Fee walks down the road, stepping over a puddle. Bexy follows, splashing through it. Brown water and sand hang onto her pants. She stops to wipe off the muck.  

            Fee stops down the road to look at graffiti. In black paint someone carefuly scrawled the word: F-U-C-K

            F                                  U                                             C                                 K

            “Jeez, they used to swear a lot back then, didn’t they?” Fee says, to herself.  

            Bexy hobbles down the road. “Can you stop, please. Just a sec. So we can talk? So I can apologize?”

            “Shut up and look at this,” Fee says. “Does it remind you of anyone?”

            They stand, scanning the wall like fine art. Bexy tries, but can’t keep from glancing at Fee. She sneaks peaks, but soon gets caught staring.

            “Hey,” Fee says. “Focus, bean-breath. Come on. Who does it remind you of?”

            Bexy remembers.

            In a room lit by the twilight of a late-afternoon, she remembers Fee kissing him. He’s skinny, ugly. Their lips smack together and their lips come apart. The kiss is over, and then he grabs Fee by the face. He squeezes cheekbones hard. He must be hurting her. Her mouth scrunches while he swears in her face. His lips, thrashing obscenity, throw drops of spit at her. It seems like he might even hit her, but it seems like she won’t care. Fee’s eyes are dead.

            Bexy snaps out of it, back to the trashed town where it’s just the two of them.

            Fee says. “Honestly, I miss him. He talked like such a piece of trash.”

            Bexy can’t stare anymore. With her eyes closed, she leans forward again. She perks her lips. She wants the kiss, wants it now.  

Trying to be smooth, she whispers while she leans forward, “Yeah . . . well he’s not . . . not — here, so . . .”

                        S                                  T                                  O                                 P         

            “Oh my god!” Fee shoves her. “Stop! Just stop!”

            She storms away.

Bexy resists following. She stands alone in the mud and checks her breath again. It still smells like beans. God damnit.    

            Then Bexy remembers something again. It’s Fee. This time smiling. It’s been so long since she’s seen Fee smile. Her teeth are unreal, drawn out by memory in pencil sketch and milky white-out. They sit together cross-legged, staring. They should be sleeping, but they’re up, too goofy over their night together. Everything feels good, everything feels right. They have nothing but time.

            Bexy tells a bad joke: “How many lovers does it take to make a home?”

            Fee grins. “How many?”

            “Two!”

            Fee stares. She waits a long time, then keeps waiting.  

            “. . . th-that’s it?” she says. “That’s not a joke!”

            “Yes.”

            “That’s not funny.”

             “No . . . naw it’s not!” Bex squeals. And they both cackle. 

            She snaps out of it, back to the trashed town where Fee is walking away again.

            Down the road Fee is crying. She rubs her eyes and looks up at all of what she would call the “fucked windows of these fucked houses on this fucked street.”

            One by one they pass, foggy and cracked. All are empty, abandoned — except two.  

            Two people stare down at her from a bedroom. Both are missing their pants, unashamed. Fee sees everything. Otherwise, they’re dressed well. They wear jackets, hats, glasses, even ascots. Male and female, they look at each other for a long moment and then back at Fee.

            They wave. And the wave turns into a beckon, motioning for her to come inside.

            They’re insistent. Come inside.    

            Fee murmurs. “Fuck this. Absolutely not. Fuck this.”

            She hurries down the road, muttering under her breath, trying to hurry out of sight.

            “FEE!” someone calls.

            She shudders, thinking it might be the people in the windows. But it’s Bexy, standing alone down the road. Her shoulders are slumped.

            “Do . . . do you wanna come inside?” Bexy asks pathetically. “With me? Please?”

            Fee looks at Bexy, and then at the pants-less people in the windows, and then at Bexy again. Honestly, she wishes they were all in one house together— so she could burn it to ground. She inhales, gathering everything in her to yell like a banshee. What comes out sounds more like a whimper than she hoped.  

            “Fuck off!” she cries. “And leave me alone, bitch!”

            There’s venom in her face, pure hate. She looks at Bexy like she’s never even known her. She turns, walking down the seemingly endless road. She doesn’t know where it leads, just that it gets her away.

            The dilapidated houses finally give way to a corner bar. To Fee it looks promising: a normal place in an abnormal town, but inside everything is smashed to bits. Most of the barstools are snapped into jagged stakes, and the floor seems to have more broken glass on it than floor.

            Fee leans forward. She blows dust off the top of the bar. It hangs in the air, waiting to settle or dissipate and filter through someone’s lungs. It’s alive, welcoming. It’s more real to Fee than anything she’s seen so far in this town . . . other than Bexy, but Bexy doesn’t count.

            Before the dust settles, a pint glass lands on the bar full of fresh beer, hazy and yellow. It sits on the cluttered countertop, looking like the first drink to a lovely afternoon.    

            Fee looks up to see who placed it, and she sees him.

            He’s the one who kissed her, grabbed her face, screamed at her. He’s the one she misses most. Now he’s here in a destroyed bar with a crisp pale ale.  

            “There you are,” she says, chuckling.

            He’s dressed handsomely. His white shirt is neatly cuffed at the elbow. She purses her lips over the glass and fake sips. He doesn’t say anything. She purses harder, her lips stick out as if she’s been bashed in the mouth with a bat.            

“I just got them done.”           

He glances at them and doesn’t say anything. She fidgets, impatient, bouncing between feet.         

“Can you like— come over here and kiss me or something?”  

He tilts his head, speaking for the first time in a disinterested voice.             

“Who do you think I am?”           

Fee smirks, not really acknowledging his question. She looks down at her drink.            

“Can you, hit me?”            

He stares at her blankly. Fee looks up, begging.

“Curse me out? Call me what you used to? Do something?”

            Slowly, he starts shaking his head, back and forth. It’s too slow, really. And for too long. His head pendulums. After a moment Fee can’t stand it. She clenches the drink in her hand and tosses it in his face. It drips down the collar of his shirt, but he won’t stop shaking his head back and forth. When she’s fed up, she swings an open hand at him, aiming to knock some sense into him.

            Her hand cracks against his skin like it’s made of stone. He doesn’t move an inch, while she lets out a resounding scream.

            F                                  U                                             C                                 K!

She hurries out of the bar, holding her limp hand. Tears stream down her face. He watches her go, standing long after the door slams and he’s left alone.

            Her teardrops fall between dirt and broken asphalt.

            Bexy is standing exactly where she left her, still deflated in the middle of that empty street. She lifts her sad little head when Fee approaches.

            Fee can feel eyes on her, judging. It’s those half-naked people in the windows. She ignores the urge to scream at them, or burn their house down. Instead, she leans into Bexy who’s been waiting for this kiss for ages.

            The people in the windows watch.  

                        S                                  T                                  O                                 P         

            When their lips come apart, Bexy looks different, resolute. She takes Fee’s hand and pulls. Fee follows her lead.

            They make for a house at the very end of the street. Of all of them in the neighborhood, it’s the least-destroyed. It could even be a home. They enter together.

“How many lovers does it take to make a home?”

            Inside, Fee sees the truth. The house is a pop-up, built from the inside to look real. It’s held up by plywood and faulty scaffolding. The back is wall-less, facing the desert.   

            Fee and Bexy stand together inside of the hollow shell, still holding hands.

            Fee looks around at the false interior.

            Two rats scurry across a wooden beam. One falls off and bounces around on the dirt floor before continuing on. It hit a nail, somewhere above, and it leaves a trail of blood.

            Fee looks at her lover. The door closes behind them.

            She says, “Bex?”

END