Bridgeport stinks. The smell comes in with Chris, the corporate broker who steps out to slug a couple of tokes of cig smoke at any stop lasting over a minute. Chris who plugs in all of his potential equipment. Who reads corporate profiles, who calls the partner on his new iPhone to brag about opportunities. Who sneers, “Great? You don’t sound so great!” to his thirteenth temp answering phones this year.
Chris the cadaver.
The teenage Chris in gym class getting clobbered by dodge balls.
The one who cannot sit still. Chris playing the bassoon until his studies at Yale get in the way. Chris who votes for Bush, who supports the war, who says bomb the bastards. Who has a lover he has not yet met. Chris comes undone, though you would not ever know. He is calm and casual in his loafers with tassels.
Chris does the work of an army. He kills off any possibilities of intimacy within twenty-five hundred yards.
Robert Vaughan’s plays have been produced in N.Y.C., L.A., S.F., and Milwaukee where he resides. He leads two writing roundtables for Redbird-Redoak Studio. His prose and poetry are published or forthcoming in over 80 literary journals. He was interviewed about Flash Fiction by WUWM’s Lake Effect. His work is included in 6S MIND GAMES anthology. He is a fiction editor at jmww magazine. A flash editor at Thunderclap! His blog: http://rgv7735.wordpress.com.
Archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/micro/297-rv-1110-chris and shortlinked at http://frsh.in/g5
