Alec Solomita’s fiction has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, and The Drum (audio), among other publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, The Galway Review, Bold + Italic, Litbreak, Subterranean Blue Poetry, The Blue Nib, Red Dirt Forum, and elsewhere. His chapbook, “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017 and is still available at Finishing Line Press. His first full-length book of poetry, “Hard To Be a Hero,” was published last April by Kelsay Press in 2021. Both can be found on Amazon. He’s working on another. He lives in Massachusetts.
Trompe L’oeil, 1969
By Alec Solomita
For Dan, sleeping with Debbie was a relief as much as anything else. The four times they did it that night put to rest worries about impotence that had haunted him on and off for three years, since he was fourteen. Other worries would immediately take their place, like the fact that when they woke up in Milo Young’s bed that morning and did it once more and he looked into Deb’s shiny green eyes and said, “I love you,” she seemed not to hear. And then, after he figured out Milo’s coffee machine and brought her a cup in the cubby-like dining room, she seemed, her head bent and her long hair falling over her face as she pulled on her sandals, even further away. But these moments paled next to a lifelong sentence of being less than virile.
So, as they strolled through the homey run-down streets near downtown on this Saturday in May, squinting in the early morning sunshine and holding hands, he felt mostly fine, like a man of the world. In those moments, though, when Debbie would turn her face toward him and smile, her hazelly green eyes narrowing and the pale band of freckles over the bridge of her nose rising on each side, a kind of weakness hit him, a feeling that maybe the world was too much to take. The bottoms of Deb’s bell bottoms grazing against the wobbly brick sidewalks, the ravishing green of the leaves she picked at through wire fences, the aggressive color of forsythia — small things — made his eyes sting suddenly with tears. In those moments, he was glad for the protection of his new prescription sunglasses, for the nonchalance of his easy shamble.
They were a couple of blocks from the corner where Deb would catch a bus home when someone called out across the narrow street. It was a little woman in a long dress standing on a small, pillared porch, leaning on the rail, and calling out in a high, old-fashioned voice, “Heloooo!” As the two crossed the street, Deb tilted her head towards Dan’s ear and said, “She pipes!”
“Oh, thank goodness,” the woman sighed as they presented themselves to her on the sidewalk below the narrow, shabby three-family. She brought her palms together in front of her chin as if she were trying to find just the right words. “Well,” she said with a fluty laugh, “I guess you’re all wondering why I asked you here today.” She laughed again and, thrusting her head forward, hissed with a jokey intensity, “I need help.” Dan figured she was in her early twenties, this small corny lady in a purplish peasant dress with a ruffled low-cut bodice. Her cheeks darkened a bit as they smiled politely up at her.
“Well. I’m having people over for dinner tonight, and I’m preparing a Middle Ages sort of feast. A real banquet. Ale in pewter goblets. Herb salad. Cider. Pears in syrup. And, the piece de resistance is …” And here she paused, a little breathless, “roast suckling pig … you know, with the apple in the mouth and everything.”
Deb grimaced. Dan said, “I’m getting hungry.”
“It’s got to roast for hours. Everything’s ready to go but I’ve come to a standstill of sorts,” and she rounded the porch and skipped down the steps to the sidewalk, almost crowding Deb to one side. She looked at Dan, her eyes bright with anxiety. “I can’t … take the eyes … out of the pig,” she said in three distinct bursts. “I just can’t. Every time I think about it, I begin to panic. Could you do it for me?”
Now that she was standing in front of him, he could see the tops of her breasts. The rounds of flesh, a rush of breeze setting the leaves around him in motion, a motorcycle belching into life in the distance — again Dan felt a sudden weakness in his loins. He looked at Deb, who seemed ready to go on, not thinking, he thought, for a second that her fastidious and shy boyfriend would volunteer for anything so daunting.
“Sure, I’ll give it a try,” he said.
Debbie’s eyebrows went up. The woman hopped up and down, clapping. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!” She held out her hand. “I’m Sylvia,” she said, “like in the song.” “What song?” thought Dan. As Sylvia led them out of the yellow sunshine and up the porch steps to her apartment, Deb noticed a vase of daffodils on a glass table top, “Makes the porch so pretty.”
Deb approved of the living room, too, though Dan found it faintly oppressive. It was cool and dim in there, with the bamboo shades drawn. The large, framed Chagall prints on the wall couldn’t perform their whimsical feats in such darkness, and the stained wicker furniture — a long couch and a chair with a round, throne-like back — depressed Dan almost as much as the poster of an armed Bobby Seale in the short hall between the dining area and the kitchen. He was happy that Deb seemed at home, though, chirping contrapuntally along with the piping of their nervous hostess.
As soon as they reached the kitchen, Deb turned on her heel, saying, “I’ll wait out here.” “Oh, yes,” Sylvia called to her, “Please make yourself comfortable.” Next to Sylvia in a pan on a sideboard lay the naked pig.
“Well, here it is,” she said with a little giggle. She looked at it appraisingly for a moment, then said brightly, “I think maybe a spoon would be the thing.”
“A spoon? Oh. A spoon.” He nodded thoughtfully, “I guess so.”
“Do you want anything? A little brandy, maybe?”
“A glass of water, please.” He picked up the pig. It was more like a piglet, smaller than he’d expected and its skin was cool and dry and a healthy-looking pink. Its eyes were pale blue. He rested it back in the pan.
Sylvia perched a glass of water and a teaspoon on the gas stove next to the sideboard. “I really can’t thank you enough. I’m just not brave enough to do it myself.” He picked up the spoon, “That’s fine.” He smiled, “Just … um … leave me alone with my pig, please.”
“Sure, of course.”
While Deb and Sylvia chatted in the living room, Dan stood in the small kitchen. Sylvia was doing most of the talking, “I’m not a medievalist, just been in love with that time since I —” The rest of the sentence was lost in a rush of clicks as she pulled the blinds up. The apartment glowed suddenly with light. He rested the spoon gently beside the pig and wandered across the stained black and white checked linoleum to the small kitchen table, where he sat down. He looked out onto the sunshiny side yard and the neighbor’s house. A squirrel was unburying some winter treasure at the bottom of a chain link fence separating the two properties. Dan put his face in his hands for a few moments, then stood and took off his jacket, draping it on the back of his chair. He returned to the pig and picked up the teaspoon. He gently prodded an eye, which turned out to be firmer than he’d expected. Scoop it, he whispered.
The spoon hovered uneasily above the eye. As Dan thought out the maneuver, planning to home in on the edge of the socket, he felt a small wave of vertigo. Think of something else, he instructed himself. The leer on Milo Young’s long, white, mole-spotted face as he handed over his apartment keys. “Y’all make yerself ta home.” “Thanks, man.” “And don’t forget to strip the bed, man, ya hear?” “Sure thing, Milo.” Searching for the light switch as they entered the funky smelling place, turning it on. “The accommodations,” said Deb, “are not particularly deelux. But,” she added with a consoling smile, “they’ll do.” Deb undressing and lying on the pale blue sheets. The spoon dove. Perfect. He exhaled sharply. The eye was intact, the spoon lodged firmly in the socket. The handle of the spoon stuck into the air, its bowl filled with the pig’s blue eye.
Dan stepped back and listened for a moment to the twittering from the other room. Sighing, he took hold of the small handle with both hands and rotated it to get the eye loose. The resistance was greater than he’d expected and he pressed harder. When the spoon ground audibly into bone, he was instantly nauseous. He swallowed down the taste that rose into his mouth and let go of the spoon, watching the handle vibrate. Again he tried to divert himself —Debbie’s body glowing faintly in the half-moon’s weak light, the raspy patch of darkness in her center, her sour smell, her arms reaching out to him, fingers beckoning. He grabbed the handle of the spoon firmly and pressed it down like a lever. With a slight sucking sound, the eye was loosed into the air. It landed on his forearm, just above the wrist. His arm jerked spastically and the eye was launched again, this time landing on the toe of his boot. He looked at it looking up at him. Then he reached for a napkin on the sideboard and bent to pick it up, wrap it, and put it on the table.
He whispered to Bobby Seale on the wall as he went into the living room, “Tough guy.” Sylvia stood when she saw him and said, “Oh, you poor thing. How’s it going?”
“Halfway there,” he said with a small smile. He winked at Debbie, whose face, half-lost in the full morning sunlight behind her, looked caught between impatience and sympathy. “I could use some of that brandy now,” he said to Sylvia.
“Oh, sure, right away,” and she flew over to a cabinet.
“Was it awful?” said Deb.
“No, it wasn’t so bad.”
“You OK?”
“Great. Just great.”
“You poor thing,” said Deb, patting the space next to her on the wicker couch. He sat, blinking in the sun. Sylvia handed him a tumbler with a couple of fingers of brandy in it, which he drank down.
“Take as much as you like,” said Sylvia. “I really do appreciate this.”
He handed back the glass as he stood.
“Good luck,” Deb called after him.
Facing one eye and one empty socket, Dan was more confident. Ignoring the illusion that the pig was winking at him, he located the spoon and, this time, a napkin. Holding the napkin over the eye with his left hand, he brought the spoon down swiftly and, he thought, accurately. It bounced off the eye. He tried again and again the spoon bounced back. His stomach swooped. “Oh, God,” he muttered. Deb’s laughter drifted in from the living room.
Dan shook his head, the spoon dangling from his hand. Now he could smell the animal, a high, slight, pondlike odor. He backed up and stood, staring at the small head, the pink folded ears. He squinted in concentration. An image hovered just behind his eyes, shimmering close to consciousness. “Grapefruit,” he said aloud.
He found a small, serrated knife in a drawer. He poised the blade on the edge of the eyeball against the socket. “God, please don’t burst.” Once more, Dan summoned the night before. Deb tickling him awake at three, leaning over him and waiting for his eyes to open. Then lying full on top him with a cozy moan. Holding him in her small hand. The knife slid in easily, and he began to saw around the edges, half looking, half looking away. In a moment the eye was loose. Napkin. Spoon. Deb poised above him, shifting around as both of them tried to guide him home, her little grunt as she slid down him, and then her wide, unnerving grin in the wan light of the moon. With a tiny pop the eye was in the napkin. Dan gently laid it next to the other and then sat at the kitchen table.
In the living room, the ladies were silent, almost dozing, facing each other, their legs curled up underneath them, each with a little snifter of brandy in her lap. Deb’s hair and eyelashes were fringed with sunlight. Sylvia started when Dan sat down next to his girlfriend. “Oh!” she said, “Oh! Is it done?”
“’Tis done,” said Dan.
“Thank you! Thank you so much.”
“Anytime. What should I do with the eyes?”
“I don’t know. The disposal, I guess.”
“Oh, no,” moaned Deb.
“Of course,” Dan said.
He opened the napkins over the sink and the eyes reluctantly slid into the drain. He turned on the disposal, certain that Deb was covering her ears in the other room.
They said good bye with as little ceremony, Sylvia thanking him over and over as they walked outside together. “Sorry,” she said, “I can’t invite you to dinner.”
“That’s OK,” Dan said.
Walking away, he put his arm around Deb’s shoulder and she leaned against him. “Was it really just horrible?”
He answered her with a squeeze of her shoulder.
“You’re so brave.” He glanced over to see her expression. “No,” she said, “you are.”
“I am, ain’t I? I just am.”
The Galway Review 