[Del]'s Diary

ENTRY THIRTY-SIX

I’m staring at a white stucco ceiling. My body feels soft, so I figure I must be Sugar. Soon, a long drag on a cigarette confirms it as I the tips of my fingers lightly touch my honey bee stung lips.

I hear a door open. I look up from the rumpled bed I’m lying in. Hunter steps out of the Spanish red door beside the dresser that I had mistaken previously for a hotel room linen closet. Inside, I can see a small dark room behind him with a large boxy film camera poking its eye towards the inside pane of the mirror’s glass. And another man writing notes beside it.

I flop my head back down on the pillow while Hunter prowls overtop Sugar’s body. “Ugh, please,” is her response to his advances. “No, I mean it. I’ve had a long night.”

Hunter mockingly pouts, “Oh, your poor tired and sore back.” His fingers dive under both sides between my back and the bed, and he starts to massage.

Still exasperated, she complains, “Why don’t you give Trudy a ring. She doesn’t have half my workload.”

“That’s because you are our best and brightest. In more ways than one,” Hunter nuzzles our neck. I feel as if our skin should be crawling, but Sugar’s isn’t. He stops to look her with his heavy-lidded bedroom eyes and says, “In fact, we, or I rather, think you are in line for a promotion.”

I can feel Sugar arch her eyebrow toward him as if to say, ‘A promotion?”

The smell of Hunter’s warm intoxicating breath fills my drowsy face as I hear him ask, “How’d you like to get your teeth fixed?” 

It always takes some time getting used to my own body again after the dreams. I feel around my teeth with my tongue now as I write. They feel different from Sugar’s. Straighter. No gap between the two front teeth.

Maybe I was promoted too?

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