Michelle McGill-Vargas

Getting Roger inside my house had been the easy part.

The ethereal sweetness of a freshly baked lemon poppy seed coffee cake wafting through my kitchen window was all it took. Like every morning after his wife would leave for work, he’d station himself on his adobe-red deck to scratch parts of his body awake. Then he’d smoke a cigarette until the bespectacled girl arrived. Today, there will be no girl. Today, I’ll do for her what no one did for me.

Once inside, I’d offered tea, though I suspected the ink on Roger’s arms meant he was a beer man. Bottom lip between my teeth, I watched and waited as he sipped.

“What kind of tea is this?” He smacked his lips and frowned from something his tongue couldn’t place.

“Chai. It’s probably the pepper you taste.” Or the bitter bite of ground-up anxiety pills I need to contemplate…