We Are All Sitting Down to Miracle Monday
By Patricia Bidar
Everyone’s brought leftovers from Christmas. Sasha says the miracle will be if no one dies from food poisoning. But it’s the first day everyone could make it. And the miracle is that we all survived the holidays with our families.
I am in a foul mood. I meant to get spiffed up, but stopped halfway. So, I’m in a pencil skirt and too-small t-shirt with a faded picture of Betty Boop on the tit. Period cramps: terrible. Makeup: half-assed.
My girlfriend Sasha has been fired from her temp job for pressing her boobs against a glass conference room wall, 26 floors up. Our heater is broken, and so is our oven. Luckily our next-door neighbor seems to be out, and I still have her key from when we watched her place last summer. So her oven is ours.
Brian and his young boyfriend Frankie worked a brunch in Golden Gate Park, and arrive bearing two shrimp trees, a jar of cocktail sauce, and a double magnum of bubbly they've stolen. Brian calls their black pants and white shirts their “retail drag.” Their closet at home is stuffed with items they’ve liberated from Macy’s.
Larry brings his Ukrainian workmate Pat, who we all like to have around because he is the only real punk we know. It’s only a matter of time before Pat gets blackout drunk and throws a punch. It’s happened every single time I’ve seen him. On Halloween, he and Brian ended up on the sidewalk, snarling in their clown costumes. But I know Pat spent Christmas alone. He kisses my cheek, and I hear the swish of chains on his leather jacket. He really is so gentlemanly at the beginning of things.
Larry is wolfing down shrimp, dragging them through the plate of ketchuppy sauce. One of the shrimp trees is nearly defenestrated. He is keeping an eye on Pat, who is telling how he awoke on the sand on Ocean Beach without his wallet and glasses.
We are six, then. Displayed before us are five bowls of cranberry sauce. A pile of turkey skin on a plate. The rolls and bowl of mashed potatoes are down the hall in my neighbor’s oven. We pass around a joint. I pass around spoons and soon the cranberry is making its way around. Brian refills our glasses from the magnum of warm bubbly. The tablecloth is soaked with it.
Frankie offers to check the oven down the hall. Our dog, Ruby, snuffles around our feet. I keep handing down bits of turkey skin. She licks my hand. We don’t have fairy lights, but the streetlight streaming in illuminates the raindrops on the windows. It is a moment to behold.
Everybody starts saying what they are thankful for. My feet in their socks are nicely warm, Then, I realize Ruby has thrown up on them. That’s when Frankie bursts in. There’s a fire next door in the neighbor’s kitchen. He couldn’t control it. He’s dramatically backlit by grey smoke, like a performer on stage. Then I realize he is crying. He thinks he’s in trouble. We are all so young, but Frankie is even younger.
Beside me, Pat lurches to his feet like a skinny bear, a growl beginning in his chest.
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About Patricia Q. Bidar
Bidar is a native Californian with family roots in New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. Her stories have appeared/are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Sou’wester, Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, Little Patuxent Review, and Pithead Chapel. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee and three-time Best Small Fictions 2020 nominee. Apart from fiction, Patricia writes for progressive nonprofit organizations. She lives with her DJ husband in the San Francisco Bay Area.