ALYSON MOSQUERA DUTEMPLE (fiction 19) in FLOCK

Alyson Mosquera Dutemple’s story “Prix Fixe” was nominated for a Pushcart and appears in the latest issue of FLOCK.

It was May, but the trees outside the restaurant didn’t seem to know it.  Their blighted leaves shuddered and fell, lending an autumnal feel to the air even before Mary took me out to dinner and announced that she wanted to leave me.

“Stephen, I’ve thought long and hard about this, and… Stephen?  I need you to listen,” she said.

A waiter had walked by. “I’m worried about you, Stephen,” Mary began, and though I tried to focus, there was something about this waiter, this kid, that caught my eye.  The way he bounced up a little on his toes as he walked.  That nervous jump at the end of each step.   The same skipping motion, the same funny little stride.  It reminded me of our boy, Everett.

“Stephen? Are you listening to me?” Mary’s voice rose.  “Now see?  This. This is exactly what I’m talking about.”  She rattled the ice in her glass.  “I can’t stand it.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the waiter, the one with Everett’s walk, standing just a little way off from our table, patting down his pockets.  “You tune me out,” Mary continued. “Whenever I bring up—” Her words rumbled indistinctly around me, a storm on the horizon, the wing-beat hum of locusts.  “It’s like you’re trying to be distracted all the time.”  I watched as the waiter brought a tiny notebook from his pocket, the kind used to write down orders in a restaurant.  I wondered if there was a name for such a book.  I wondered why I hadn’t asked Everett if there was a name for such a book the summer he worked on the pier washing dishes. Back when he was saving up for college or for whatever else he thought, we all thought, might have come next.

Read the rest of the story here: https://flocklit.com/fiction-dutemple-prix-fixe/