Percival Chapter One Part Ten

She giggled.

“Why are you laughing?” he said, sitting up. When she continued to laugh, he grew angry. “What’s so funny?”

“I thought you were gay.”

Percival shot out of bed. “What? How could you think that?”

“Well, you didn’t show any response to me coming on to you?” When she sat up he saw that she was naked. She looked beautiful.

Percival took it that she was attacking his manhood. He wanted to grab her right there and kiss her but crushed that idea. He slipped out of bed, put on his slippers and walked over to the fridge. He pulled out a container of milk and drank.

“How did you get it?” she asked.

He could just make out her outline in the darkness. “My mother was a drug addict and she gave it to me.”

“You mean you’ve lived with it your entire life?”

“Yep. I take around fifteen pills a day to keep everything in order.”

“You’re pretty lucky to still be around this long.” Percival was taken aback.

“I’d like to have it over and done with to tell the truth.”

“That’s shit talk. If you wanted to die, why didn’t you just kill yourself?”

“I‘m chicken shit.”

“I have something that I want you to know,” she said.

“What is it?”

“My name isn’t Candi. It’s Clarrisa Brown. Candi is my stage name.”

It was nice to talk to her when she wasn’t drugged up. She had a very sincere personality and when she was under the influence, she seemed to be inside a shell and rarely ventured out of it to conversate. They talked for much of the night until a faint light chased the shadows across the ceiling.

He wondered if she was coming over tonight. As he threw the joystick to the ground. He was bored and there was still plenty of time until Clarrisa shift ended. His stomach growled, so he went to the fridge and pulled out his food that he took from work. He sat down on the floor and ate, while Jeopardy was on. Once he finished eating, he crawled under the sheets and slept. He dreamed about marrying Clarrisa and moving out of this crap-hole and into the suburbs. They’d have children together and he’d have a job where he would wear a suit.

It would never work, a kid born in the world with a disease, sentenced to death and a stripper, addicted to drugs that anchored her into a world of stripping. Why was he kidding himself about this woman? But he wanted to help her, he didn’t know why he put such an effort into a futile project. They were way beyond saving.

Then there was a soft knock on the door and she walked in and his heart began to beat faster.
“Hey, honey.” She started calling him honey, a sign that they had established a type of relationship.

“Hi. There’s some food in the fridge from work.”

“Thanks. I’m starving.” She opened the refrigerator, pulled out the rest of the leftovers and skarfed it down. “I need to head back out but I’ll be back around two. I’ve got a party to go to.”

He didn’t like hearing her talk about her work and wanted to imagine that she was a bank teller rather than a stripper. It made him feel better about their odd relationship.