Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Seven

Moving in with Elizabeth Ascot had been a big mistake.

Exhausted, John pulled up in front of their Cary Street row house as the sun dipped low over the horizon. As he got out of the car, he could hear the smoke alarm from the street. On the porch, something acrid and bitter burnt his nostrils before he even got his key in the lock. He swung the door open, and the screech of the smoke alarm shattered his eardrums.

The horrible stench of burning plastic bit his nose and throat and stung his eyes. He coughed.

A fearful whimper and the clatter of cooking implements drifted from the kitchen along with a smoky haze of blue vapor inching across the ceiling. His girlfriend bounded by on impossibly long legs, wielding a black spatula and using the other hand to plug one ear.

John stepped in and looked down the hallway. Lizzie jumped at the smoke alarm unit attached to the high ceiling and whacked it with her spatula. The noise went on and she jumped at it again. Whack! Whack!  Her third try must have knocked the battery loose, because the noise stopped.

"Whew!" Lizzie dropped her arms, whirled around, and saw him. "Oh, shit," she said.

The smell and the smog grew worse by the second. John charged into the kitchen to find his brand-new combination grind-and-brew automatic coffee machine scorching on top of a red-hot burner. Beside it sat a cold pot of water and a half-opened box of whole wheat spaghetti noodles.

John twisted the burner knob to "off" and lifted the coffee machine. Strings of liquid black plastic stretched like taffy behind it and fell back onto the glowing coil, scorching to a shriveled crunchiness that would take time and a putty knife to remove. The bottom of the coffee machine was ruined. John laid it on its side at the edge of the sink so any dangling strings of cooling plastic wouldn't stick forever to the cheap Formica countertop.

The smell was drilling right into his skull and making his sinuses ache. He headed into the living room and started raising Venetian blinds and opening the windows.

Lizzie stood looking at him with the forlorn expression of a little girl. With her clean-scrubbed face and her short wavy hair sticking out around her ears, the look fit her, even though she stood almost six feet tall.

"I'm really sorry, Johnny!" she blurted. "I turned on the wrong burner."

"Couldn't you turn the burner off before you worried about the smoke alarm? This cost over two hundred bucks!" He waved his hands at her, stifling the impulse to wrap them around her throat and squeeze.

"Yeah, I know that," she snapped. "And now you're gonna tell me how many months you saved and shopped around for it. Why did you leave it on top of the stove anyway?"

"Why do you think?" John spread an arm to indicate the dirty pots and pans that took up the one sink and half their meager counter space. Creased sections of the morning paper from the past three days, Lizzie's clear plastic zipper case with six different shades of pantyhose, assorted dirty glasses and mugs, and an eyelash curler took care of the rest of it. After weeks of cleaning the kitchen half the night when she had been home all day, John had gone on strike.

"I'm sorry, Johnny." Her amber-hazel eyes rolled up at him like a puppy's. "I'll owe it to you. I'll buy you a new one, I promise. I've got several jobs next week."

"Like you owe me your half of last month's electric bill? And the phone bill?" She had made her half of the rent, which was considerable on a Cary Street row house, but just barely. Hard to believe she had earned top dollar modeling in New York just eighteen months ago.