Down the Rabbit Hole

More stuff for Cal's contest. I'm especially interested about what you think of Leila--narrating for her is so hard! Any tips would be appreciated.

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What are you here? Mere carrion, rotten flesh,

withheld from Truth by this world’s clumsy mesh.

- Farid ud-Din Attar

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There was a line in the apartment—an unspoken boundary between what was Bunny’s and what was Leila’s; what was sacred and what was profane. The couch was like an island, with an ocean of t-shirts and month-old tabloids lapping at its shores. There was something imperialistic about its advance. Maybe someday, she’d wake up, buried under heaps of new capitalism, her values and mores wiped away with Saran wrap and Pringles cans.

Bunny taught English one soap opera at a time—nouns, verbs, I love you, You’re a worthless bastard and I never want to see you again. In return, Leila cleaned—dishes in the sink, laundry in the bathtub. Bunny’s hangdog attaché, Tweak, would invariably come around and chatter at her the things he'd never be able to tell her in person, and she’d roast beneath her hijab, scrubbing. Though it was cooler at night, it was always hot, and Leila could feel her hair matting with sweat beneath the wool scarf Bunny’d given her to last until they could make the trek uptown to Al-Anwar’s.

Tweak sat on the edge of the counter, slamming his bare heels into the drawers beneath, while Leila swirled sweatpants in a frothy mixture of stolen hotel shampoo and lukewarm water. She glanced up at him. His hands were shaking. Somewhere beneath the tattered folds of his shirt, his stomach growled.

He gazed back, eyes wide, deep in the sockets carved out by bony cheeks and thin skin. “Food for you?”

His lips twitched into a smile. “Oh, man,” he said. “Oh, man. You’re the greatest. I mean, really great. Supreme.”

She let the clothes settle to the bottom like cotton flounder and began to rifle through the refrigerator. Tweak hovered nearby, swatting at a lazy fly that kept ramming itself into windowpanes.

There was a chicken wrapped in foil, some SoBe, a dropper of lemon juice. She set the frying pan on the stove and lined it with oil in a bottle above the sink, waiting as it bubbled and crackled before slapping a chicken breast onto the slick. It hissed. Leila poked at it with a fork and turned around. “You help?”

Tweak jumped. “Yeah, sure. Fine.” He stepped toward the stove, unsteady. His sneakers squelched a little, like he’d fallen into a puddle and hadn’t bothered to take off his shoes since. “What should I do?”

“Dish,” she said.

He hunted around Bunny’s cabinets for her dishes—two mismatched, chipped ceramic plates she’d found at a Goodwill. One had roses on it; the other had Amish children frolicking through faded toile. Leila waited for the meat to brown and sprinkled it with spices from the cabinet that smelled good, not knowing what the labels said. She tore it into chunks with a plastic fork and divided the pieces between them, giving him just a little bit more to fill in his cheeks, his wrists, his collarbone.

He took a bite and smiled. “It’s good. Not too bad, considering…Bunny’s a slob. So messy, all the time. But she’s pretty, right? Don’t you think?”

Leila looked at him in what she hoped was a compassionate manner.

He sighed. “She’s gorgeous. Premium. And to think that some dick’s feeling her up downstairs right now—it’s like, profane, or whatever. It’s awful. Horrendous.” He brushed away a piece of chicken that had stuck to his lip. “I never liked those places, you know. Too nasty. I like girls too much. I don’t want to share them with every sweaty drunk in the state.”

“Ah,” said Leila.

“She’s smart, too. Sure, she’s got a great ass. But she’s like, brilliant. Smarter than some dumbshit like me. I mean, top marks in high school. Chicago U, no sweat. But it’s so expensive—God, I have trouble grocery shopping, let alone paying for those books. They’re so huge. Enormous. No wonder she’s got such nice legs, Bunny, oh, Bunny—"

“Why is this her name? Bunny?”

Tweak eyed her food distractedly. “Thought it was classier than Margarita. That’s her real name—Margarita Valdez. Trashy name, perfect for her night job, terrible if you want to be a lawyer and someshit. You know? They’ve always got yuppie names, on those lawyer shows. You watch those? Law & Order?”

Leila shook her head.

“Boring as hell, but if Bunny likes them…you know, she’s got good taste. Real good taste. In everything.” He peered at her. “Doesn’t it…bother you?”

“Bother?”

“You know. You’re like…covered up and shit, and you live with a stripper.”

“Ah?”

He swiveled his hips. His fork clattered to the floor, and he bent down, slowly, puffing out his chest. Leila wasn’t exactly sure why it was necessary, but Tweak was the sort of person who always did things with an absentminded flourish. Even picking up forks.

“Doesn’t bother you?”

“Mm, I think no.”

“Well,” he said. “You make damn good chicken. Better than my mom. You know, you’d make a great mom. Is that why you’re here? To be a mom? Where there’s no war?”

“War?”

He held up his plate like a Kalashnikov and made sputtering noises with his mouth. Leila nodded. “I want to be…doctor. My mother want to be doctor. She die.”

Tweak set down his plate. “Shit, man. That’s rough,” he said, eyes wide. “So you’re kind of like Bunny? Sort of? Domestic, but only because you want to get to a good school?”

“Oh yes, good school.” She scraped the rest of her chicken onto his plate. “I will help many.”

“Bunny would look kickass in a suit,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

“Ah.”

“God, what is it with me and meeting women who are better than me? I swear. I should just castrate myself and call it good. I don’t deserve you. Either of you.”

He looked sad. Leila patted his arm, awkwardly. “You are good boy,” she said.

“Right.” He looked down at his empty plate. “Thank you—how do you say that in your language? Thank you?”

“Welcome.”

“No, how do you say it—in your language?”

She looked at him. “I speak?”

“You speak.”

“Mamnoun.”

“Mamnoun,” he said. “Mamnoun.”