“Can I have your autograph?” the man asked the fat blonde in the fluorescent pink tracksuit. “You know, I’ve heard every song you’ve made, from ‘Come to Me’ to ‘I Need Someone.’”
The singer looked up from her triple cheeseburger, her blue eyes sparkling amidst the pale folds of a face that had once been thin and beautiful.
“I don’t have a pen.”
“I do,” the man said, dropping his plastic tray on the singer’s table and taking one from the pocket of his stained sweatpants.
“What about paper?”
The man smiled. His face was lean, unshaven; his teeth, yellow and crooked.
“You can sign a napkin.”
The singer plucked one from the dispenser in the middle of the linoleum-topped table and delicately wiped her hands—each pudgy finger strangled with a plastic-gemmed ring—then took the pen.
“Who should I make this out to?”
“Steve.”
The singer took another napkin, but when she tried to sign it, the pen tore through the cheap recycled paper.
“I’m sorry sweetheart,” she said, “It won’t work.”
“What about this?” the man asked, offering her the receipt for his chicken finger combo.
The singer signed her name in a loopy, florid hand and gave the autograph to the man who put it in the breast pocket of his frayed denim jacket.
“Do you mind if I sit with you?” he asked.
“Be my guest.”
The man sat across from the singer and stared into her eyes until she blushed and put the long straw of her cola to her pink, fleshy lips.
“Do you come here often?”
“No,” the singer lied.
“Would you like a fry?”
“No thank you, I have my own.”
“Their burgers are good value, but I’m a chicken finger man.”
“I can see.”
“What have you been doing? It’s been a dozen years since your last record.”
The singer smiled, a small piece of lettuce trapped in the gap between her pearly front teeth. Her last album, pegged as her great comeback, had been a critical and commercial failure. Since then, she had put on more than a hundred pounds. Now, no one would sign her. Occasionally, her agent secured her fifteen minute sets at disco revival revues that were almost always hosted in gay clubs, but, for the past twenty years, she had struggled to make ends meet.
“I’m retired.”
“That’s a shame,” the man said. “You have one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard.”
“You’re quite the charmer.”
“No, you’re quite the singer.”
The man picked up a golden-brown chicken finger, dipped it into a little paper cup of plum sauce, and munched slowly as he watched the singer eat her hamburger. They ate in silence for a time amidst the buzzing and beeping sounds of the near-empty fast food restaurant.
“I should be going,” the singer said after she had finished her late-night meal.
“Wait,” the man said. He took a fresh napkin, reached across the table, and wiped a green glob of relish from singer’s chin.
“Excuse me?!” the singer said. “Who do you think you are?”
The man grinned, then stuck out a long, pointed tongue and licked the relish off the napkin.
“A loyal fan.”
* * * *
“You’re less than half my age,” the singer said after the man peeled off her tracksuit. They lay together on the carpet of her small apartment.
“That’s true.”
She tore off his clothes. The man’s flesh reeked of perspiration and the singer could see his ribs through the taught hairless skin of his chest.
“You weren’t even born when I started my career.”
The man took his lips off the soft flesh of her wide nipple.
“Yes.”
“Then how do you know my music?”
“My mother had all your LPs.”
“And how did you recognize me?” she said, pulling away from his scrawny embrace. “I don’t look the same as I did on those albums.”
“No,” he said, “but I recognized your eyes.”
He pulled her close then and covered her big lavender-scented body with a tongue that left behind the reek of chicken fingers and cooking oil. The singer melted as the man put his mouth between her thick legs.
* * * *
When the singer awoke the next morning, the man was gone and so was the moth-eaten black sequined dress she had worn on the cover of her first album. The singer sighed; she wouldn’t have been able to fit in it anyways.
Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis
