Selected Fiction from Issue #48

Cover art by Mark Hillringhouse

Fuchsia Fanfare

So my roommate Connie says we get to stay for free in a condo at the Jersey Shore on Labor Day because her cousin needs someone to feed the cat.

“Her cat’s a cinch,” says Connie. “It never moves.”

“But what about the flat?” I ask. “Do we have to keep it clean?”

Connie waves me off. “She’s real uptight about her stuff but she says we can camp out in the living room.”

“What kind of floor’s the living room?” I ask. “Are we talking carpet?”

Connie shrugs. “Who cares?” she says. “We’ll just spray it afterwards with Listerine.”

Well, of course it turns out that it’s carpet in the boring beige you see in glossy magazines you can’t afford and wouldn’t even take for free. And the cat --- sheesh. It’s creepy --- you could tell just looking at its eyes. You knew the thing was desperate to get outta there, and it would claw your face off if you tried to stop it. We decide the cat is devil spawn and we don’t want to feed it.

Connie gets up first thing the next day and Sure enough, she says, the cat got out. I’m stuck with going to track it down because Connie is all prepped to give herself a pedicure --- she’s sitting on the sofa in the living room with a square of paper towel underneath each foot.

When I come back, she’s bending over an open bottle of polish, stroking Fuchsia Fanfare on her big toe. I’m clutching kitty in a football hold but of course the creepy thing somehow gets free and leaps across the room. Connie freaks --- she never dreamed she’d have to see the cat again. She jumps halfway to the ceiling, screaming her brains out, and of course she kicks the nail polish in a gruesome roiling arc across the carpet.

For the next two days, we’re in the living room on hands and knees. We begin our carpet restoration by hacking off the biggest clots of color with the toenail clippers. Then we level out the tufts with the Lady Bic we use to shave our legs. We hunch down on the carpet hour after hour, trimming the sticky bristles with razor blades and scissors except for tough spots where we yank the whole wad out with eyebrow tweezers. And when we finish up at 2 a.m., there’s not a single trace of Fuchsia Fanfare except for stubborn lurid roots we hide with make-up.

The next morning, right before we leave, I give the cat a snack while Connie’s hard at work unscrewing lightbulbs overhead and unplugging all the lamps so that when her cousin first walks in, the carpet won’t look so much like a lawn that’s just been savaged by an ape.

We throw our things into the car without even zipping up our bags. We’re still in our pajamas --- we just want to book it outta there. But as we’re backing out the driveway with Connie at the wheel, a large black van pulls up and blocks our car. A man steps down from the cab and comes up to the window on the driver’s side.

“You Connie?” he asks. “I need to get the house-key for your cousin’s flat.”

“What for?” says Connie. “If you’re inspecting it, I’ll save you the trouble. The cat is healthy as a horse and the place is spotless.”

“Good to know,” the man replies. “But I’m not here for that. I’m installing her new flooring. She’s sick of that old carpet.”

Kristina Branch, a painter and writer with residences at MacDowell, Yaddo, Ossabaw, and Skowhegan, is a professor emerita at Stanford University. A Smith College graduate, her solo exhibition venues include Farnsworth Museum, Cantor Center, and University of Iowa Museum of Art. She recently completed a novel, Nicer Than Jesus.