Under Golden Arches
She had two cats, which I thought was crazy. Nothing against cats, of course. Who doesn't like cats? But her apartment was little larger than a walk-in closet, spacious for the cockroaches that inhabited it, perhaps, but not for me. Not for any adult human being. The two litter boxes weren't large, but they took up limited real estate in what was already a crowded mess of scattered underwear, denim skirts, and mostly empty takeaway containers. I never did see any cat, but there were wisps of hair everywhere—white and ginger—and the litter boxes weren't empty. The room smelled of the shit within them.
As we took the two steps it required to traverse the length of the room to her bed, I became aware of a certain claustrophobic panic that came with being in that space. In all honesty, it took my mind away from the sex we were about to have. Maybe that's why I underperformed. Looking around the room, I tried to determine if it was possible for someone my size to pull off a proper jumping jack without grazing both wall and ceiling. I very much doubted it, but didn't commit to giving it a try, so who knows?
All the strewn about clothing, the half-eaten lo-mien and paper plates gone transparent with grease, the supposed cats; it all made what was already scant even smaller. How could someone live like this?
It probably helped that she, herself, was small. It likely shifted the perspective, made the tiny room feel adequately proportioned. At four foot nine, she was legally a dwarf. But even if she was only a little taller than Peter Dinklage, stood eye-to-eye with Danny DeVito, she was shaped like Beyoncé, proportioned to size like a runway model. Apart from the way she lived, the way she acted, she could have passed for a woodland dryad, a fairy queen.
“Are you ready?” She asked me, her voice nowhere near as tiny as her self. She was all confidence, having guided me here from the laundromat with nothing more than telling looks and body language, all the communication required to have me happy at her heels. A smile, a bit lip, a head tilt to bare her neck, it was as if we had exchanged many words, a direct, written agreement. I nodded, realizing that like her, I had hardly spoken. We just acted, as if fated to fuck.
We undressed in silence. I felt something soft and furry rub up against the back of my bare ankles. I turned to look but all I saw were inside-out socks and tank tops, a Smirnoff bottle empty but for one last meager taste. The girl nudged me with her pixie foot, coughed out a little ahem to speed things up. I stopped looking for cats and turned my attention to the pocket-sized princess. Taking her by the waist, I lifted her up with extreme ease and placed her upon the bed. At five foot seven, I had the unique pleasure of feeling like a giant for the first time in my life as I crawled over her.
She reached for me and guided me in, and then I was lost. I’ve never been with someone so small. It felt illegal. But she was older than me. Her confidence gave it away, and the driver’s license on the bedside table that read 1980-something. I should have looked at her name. Or better yet, I should’ve just asked her. What’s your name? Would that have been so hard?
And speaking of hard… only joking. You know how that part goes anyways. You can imagine it for yourself. I’ll just say, it was the very best sin I’ve ever had the pleasure to partake in. Shame, in retrospect, that I spent the three -- five maximum -- minutes of it staring out the window above her bed. The window, like the apartment, like the the girl, was minute. It was square, about the size of a record sleeve, and from my position whilst I fucked an unforgettably gorgeous, miniature bombshell it perfectly framed the yellow glow of a nearby McDonald’s arches.
A face and a body, both immaculate, both much more refined than my own -- and female too. Artwork of my favorite variety. Breasts and navel, sultry dark eyes, black, glossy hair, all bathed in Mickey D’s gold and there I was looking up at a signpost advertising a world-wide burger franchise, a totem to be found in every neighborhood, on almost every other block.
The same confidence that led me to her tiny apartment led me back out the door. The space between climax, collapsing on the bed and getting dressed, getting out through the door and staring at the bronze number four and the peephole as it closed inches from my face was probably as quick as the sex. In three -- five max -- minutes, I was ushered out the door with looks and gestures. I was honored with a curt “goodbye,” and again her mature, lower tone surprised me.
I stared at the fish eye peephole for a while and thought I heard a meow from within, maybe the shuffle of cat pebbles or kitty litter. Then the white noise of a running shower through the walls and the metronome of my steady breath. Then the footsteps echoing on the stairs as I descended into the night, part of me elated, part of me hurt, walking back, alone, to the laundromat.
That little woman left a big impression. For weeks, I brought clean laundry to the laundromat. I shoved stark white socks, crisp, floral-scented underwear into the machines. I forked over coins and started wash cycles that were merely symbolic, little more than an excuse to be present. To wait. To hold onto hope that before the spinning cycle ends she’ll walk though the door. So I watched unsoiled garments go from dry to wet, a baptism from clean to cleaner. Holy socks. Holy shirts. My temple, the laundromat. My goddess, a tiny stranger.
I carried my linens, pure as a saint’s sinless soul. I took them, piled up in my arms back to the car and shoved them, unceremonious, in the back. I’d wash them again tomorrow. Maybe later tonight. I sat in my car and drummed on the steering wheel. I watched the street and chewed my lip. I daydreamed of three to five seconds of the best sex of my life but only saw golden arches.
This was how it would go day after day, night after night. I’d wait for a petite lady I was starting to doubt ever existed in the first place. Like her cats, maybe a ghost. She was there, but was she really?
I looked down the street and up into a purple sky. I stared at a lemon-yellow signpost, a supernova that drowned out the anemic urban starlight. I stared till my eyes went wet, till my vision blurred. I blinked away the tears that smeared the golden arches of a nearby McDonald’s, the very same ones that had christened me in their canary glow, turning me, in a moment of ecstasy, into the devout believer I have hopelessly become. There is a god, and she is a tiny woman who lives in squalor in apartment four of the Rainbow Estates on 36th avenue.
It was well within walking distance, but I drove to the Mickey D’s because I wanted to eat in my car. I wanted to watch from the curbside below, look up through the glass of a paltry window. I wanted to catch a glimpse of a shadow, of a cat, of anything. I wanted to catch that moment the lights go out. To relive the oh-so-short moment. To look upon the oh-so-short woman.
I rolled up to the drive-thru window and ordered a twenty piece Chicken McNuggets. I asked for extra packs of barbecue sauce and knew I’d feel like shit come the morning but didn’t care. I needed sustenance—if it could be called that. I was planning for a long night.
Parked outside of Rainbow Estates, below a window roughly the size of a record sleeve, I ate twenty lopsided globs of low-grade chicken. I went through four packets of BBQ sauce and felt the gut rot at work. I watched a tiny window go black and knew she was there, about to sleep. I smiled, my lips a smear of tangy, maroon paste, like Ronald McDonald himself. I reached for clean linens with greasy hands. I soiled white socks with ruddy fingerprints. I didn’t care. It legitimized my next visit to the laundromat.
I bunched up my laundry to serve as a makeshift pillow. I stretched as best as I could and closed my eyes. Under the amber glow of radiant arches, I began to drift. Beneath the inadequate glass aperture through which a micro scale Aphrodite slumbered, so too, did I sleep, and dreamed of God in all her shining glory.
James Callan grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, New Zealand on a small farm with his wife, Rachel, and his little boy, Finn. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bridge Eight, Beyond Queer Words, The Tiny Journal, Millennial Pulp Magazine and elsewhere.