THE GREY PLANE

By: Andrew J Jepsen

They’d been sitting for at least three hours. Everything was packed and Maria was on the phone with the moving company. Her monologue was absurd because the words were so simple and short. All sentences began with “you” and rarely got beyond that. “Fuck. You,” Wilt thought at his mom. “You, are an unfillable cunt.” “You. You need to. You said,” his mother babbled. She was idiotic. There was nothing pathological about his anger and shame. She deserved it. It was very clear. “You have.” “Fuck you, Maria,” his dad told her. He was drunk, Wilt didn’t know. Maria put her hand to the phone and mouthed fuck you at Clarence. Bo wasn’t her fault. Clarence had to forgive her anyway. He was a black fat fuck in sweatpants whose only work was drawing red circles around classifieds and sending tepid emails. “You!” she yelled at the mouthpiece. It didn’t work. “Mom,” said Wilt. “He can’t help you.” Clarence left the room. He was in the bathroom where he’d sequestered a small bottle of vodka in the toilet tank. It was slightly below room temperature and he had nothing to mix with it. It was illegally bought before noon for $4.75. He should’ve slept with the woman who sold it to him. She’d wanted to. She’d smiled and tapped her nails on his hand. Clarence, she’d said no purred when she looked at his ID. There was no need for her to look. He could’ve fucked her. That mouth open and low tongued. She was forty and he was thirty. The vodka didn’t stain his breath. “Fuck you, you ignorant pecker,” thought Wilt at his father, tripping into the room. He was remarkably acrobatic and sloppy and had called Wilt’s friends niggers last Tuesday. Well he was the nigger. He hadn’t wanted to show his dad the jewelry and letters he’d found while moving his mom’s dresser. They should just kill each other. But they were moving, from black to white, his father said. Wilt hated them. “You fuck you!” his mother shouted at her cell phone and threw it down the hall. The three stared, watching the dark phone slide across the empty floor.