Lack

Linda doesn’t lack anything these days, only her sense of humor and her pinky. She lost her pinky in a fight the other night when we were at the bar. She realized the girl behind her gave her a pinch and without thinking or remorse, slapped her a good one across the face. The girl, blonde and full of giggles, had great reflexes and quickly bit Linda’s finger as it left her cheek and spit the tip of her pinky on her face.

“That’s youth for you. Now have some soup,” the girl said as she walked away from the counter. The girl, whose name was Eloise, ended up on the lap of some bohemian poet that night and had the best episode of the giggles yet. He wrote poetry in French on her inner thigh with a red fine point sharpie and misspelled the word Chanteuse over and over. The poet, ashamed of his infidelity to the English language, killed himself three years later by lacerating the area behind his knee with a dull knife he had used to spread mayonnaise on his crackers earlier that day.

When the neighbors found him in his apartment, they recall hearing him say his last words with such sullen courage while releasing his last breath.

“Oh death, I see thee now. Take my rice and spread it in Mongolia where there are no buffalo…..”

Mr. McMahan, the building manager later told his wife he hadn’t heard anything at all, but because everyone else was gasping and awing, he gasped and awed too.