Twice Shy

by Sarah Hogle

And I am weak. My spine was manufactured by Charmin. I want to be commanding, stern, intimidating, but I am raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

“Is it too much to ask that you be less nice?” I bemoan. He gives me a once-over. “I don’t understand that thing you’re wearing. Your top is attached to your shorts. How do you go to the bathroom?” “Yes. More comments like that. And it’s called a romper, by the way.” “The color of it washes you out.” My jaw drops. “Hey.”

I look like a high school secretary from an eighties teen comedy, which is to say, I look extremely excellent and like a person who makes firm decisions.

“When we go home, you won’t have to talk to anyone but me for six months straight if you don’t want to,” I tell him. “When guests start arriving, I’ll tell them you’re a ghost of a logger who died in the nineteenth century and that’s why you don’t ever seem to see or hear them when they speak to you. You’ve been groundskeeping at Falling Stars since it was first built.”