Tammy squatted in the narrow hallway and slurped noisily on the macerated flesh and bloodsluice that surrounded Bruce’s windpipe. Finally all that persistent gnawing paid off — tenacious Tammy, so bold in love’s pursuit! At last she rodented clean through that tough trachea and then, tiny incisors overcoming its cartilaginous chewiness, tasted the acrid cigarette smoke filling Bruce’s lungs. She’d always wanted to break him of that terrible smoking habit of his, and now she had.

Until this moment they’d been separated, two lonely bodies inhabiting lonely spheres. Now she kissed his inside, sucking up the air that he breathed, and they were one.

But ingesting the nicotine-heavy air suddenly made Tammy woozy, both on the unaccustomed mood-altering nicotine as well as on the heady violence of having suddenly ripped out Bruce’s throat with her pearly white teeth.

Kneeling above him, she murmured I love you Bruce. Drops of blood and gobbets of crimson flesh fell on his cheek, but his beautiful blue eyes fixed on hers and she saw with relief that he understood her action. Now he was entirely hers; now they were one.

It had been a meet-cute, all those hours ago. That morning Bruce was on his way out of his apartment block, perhaps off to one of those sophisticated literary salons he was so fond of attending. Tammy was walking past the building on her way to... somewhere or other. Now she can’t remember. She stopped in her tracks, dumbfounded. Wasn’t he that guy?

She stopped him. Stood in his path, shuffle-pre-empting his nimble attempt at a side-step. Hey, aren’t you that guy?

No, he said. I’m not any guy.

I thought I knew you from that thing.

Never been to that thing. Never even seen it.

But I could have sworn.

Not me, honey, he muttered. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got a loser-free life to get on with.

He shouldered past her but-but-buts and was splitsville. But his fragrance of talc and Marlboro lingered behind him in the air. Bad habit, his smoking, have to break him of it, she thought, and craned her neck around. His cute bejeaned ass, lickety-split and sinuous-sly, percolated on up the street away from where she stood, and finally disappeared into a cloud of walk-ons.

Of such encounters are dreams made. Okay, he wasn’t that guy. But it was overmodest to insist (as he had) that he wasn’t any guy. He clearly was a guy of some sort, thought Tammy.

We can build on that. We needn’t give up on this relationship without a struggle, after all it’s come to mean to us.

Most of what happened the rest of that day can be summarized in one word: waiting. Or for those observers of a somewhat less charitable disposition, stalking. Tammy found herself a vantage point within plain view of the apartment block entrance.

Noted the comings and goings. How the heavy street door tended to stick without locking if the outgoing resident didn’t really give it a hearty swing shut. How the older residents tended to struggle with its weight and never quite had the heft either to fully open it nor fully close it. How the younger residents would just shimmy past like matadors side-dodging a bull, or else lurk behind their geriatric slowness, sourly manifesting an imminent overboiling impatience in sullen rage. But in neither case would they ever think once of helping the oldsters with their task.

There was a little terrace outside a café on the other side of the street. When Tammy felt too conspicuous dawdling on the street outside the man’s building, she went to sit there at a table beside a woman tap-tapping nonstop on a laptop. She ignored the woman’s glare and, employing a classic café-surfing trick, mooched off her busy-ness, mouthing empty convo the woman’s way whenever the waitperson swung by as if they were urgently engaged in a work project. The woman, face in her spreadsheet and ears plugged with pods, ignored her fake chat. The waitperson moved on.

In that way she stole sidewalk time from the city’s productive economic units and used her ill-gotten gains to observe her honeybunny’s environs. But isn’t all fair in love and war?

He returned, no doubt after triumphing with some biting witticism at some latter-day Algonquin Hotel gathering of lionized litterati. She saw him wait with ill-grace while an elderly lady in a walking frame edged open the heavy glass apartment block door, then shove himself past, with some force, but gracefully enough that his jacket didn’t even get caught in the walker.

Once inside, he stepped towards the mailboxes as Tammy, marking him well, got up from the laptop-tapper’s table – ripping herself like a grubby bandaid from the woman’s intense disapproval – and crossed the street quickly to the street door.

There was no difficulty at all shouldering past the old lady in the Zimmer frame and gaining ingress. It wasn’t something Tammy would ordinarily do, but such was the urgency of her love’s imperative that she felt herself excused from everyday considerations of manners.

He’d already gone to the elevator, which allowed her to follow his steps to the mailboxes and examine the one that he’d opened: BRUCE [ILLEGIBLE SCRAWL] APT #33. For a moment she was lost in reverie of his name. She found she wasn’t disappointed in it, which surprised her rather. On a conscious quotidian level she thought Bruce was a rather ghastly name, vulgar even. It stank of Australians and rock stars.

But on a deeper level, we might even say a mystic plane, the name Bruce evoked glens and heather, warriors with claymores standing in those plaid skirts the Scotsmen had, as a nearby piperman blew in the nozzle of his bagpipe and produced a droning air redolent with wistful romanticism and longing. She tasted peat and the sharp bite of whisky.

APT 33 was, as the name suggested, the third door along on the third floor. Once outside, Tammy listened. There was no noise inside: not TV, not radio, not the skirling of pipes. 7.07pm.

Just as she was considering whether to knock or maybe leave a note (with blood from a bitten fingertip on the door?), or perhaps to settle down and sleep on the threshold all night like a lost puppy, the door swung open without warning. Bruce was standing there holding a black garbage bag. The reek of old teabags and cabbage smothered his talc scent somewhat, but the lit Marlboro in the corner of his mouth gave an authentic register of his personality, rugged and independent.

Again Tammy was taken in by the beauty of his clear blue eyes, the feature that had first drawn her to him. She saw now that the sclerae, the whites of his eyes, were slightly yellowed, matching the tips of his fingers. No matter. The sky-like freedom of those irises was enough to build some kind of a future on. Momentarily she saw herself in a balloon scudding through the cloudless space of his regard, and she smiled at him.

I already gave, he said.

No, don’t you remember? Again the attempted side-step, again the pre-emptive shuffle, smart left smart right. Remember me from down before?

No, don’t remember down before, he sneered. Can I get past? I got urgent things to dump. He stared straight at her. And you’re one of them, said his look.

Look you’ve gotta... Tammy didn’t know what to say anymore. She just knew she had to make Bruce understand what she meant to him. Look, Bruce, I’m sure–

What’s this shit? snarled Bruce. How d’you know my name, bitch? You some kind of narc or what?

No Bruce, I’m not a narc. I don’t even know really what a narc is. Do they sell drugs? Anyway, I’m not here on drug business. Any kind of business... I’m just here for us.

US!? screamed Bruce. His beautiful eyes went wide. Bitch, there is no ‘us’. Get outta my way.

But Tammy, without thinking, shoved him with both hands into his apartment. Unbalanced, he fell backwards, dropping his garbage bag. Orange peels and rinds spilled out. Coffee grinds and cracked kleenexes.

Bitch! he yelled again. He tipped his head backwards, as if to look behind him at where his cellphone was lying on the floor. Maybe it had fallen out of his pocket.

That was it. People say silly things when they’re in love. They say, You look good enough to eat. They say, He’s just like a hunk of cheesecake. They say, He’s so scrumptious I could just about eat him all up.

These are just figures of speech, idle sayings. But Tammy saw that stretched throat of his and felt more ravenous than anything she’d ever felt in her life before. She tipped herself forward and surrendered to her appetite.

Afterwards there was a serene time. Bruce lay at peace with himself and with the world, more content now than he’d been for some time, perhaps in his life. Tammy lay beside him and whispered of how she loved him, how they were made for each other, of how he just needed to hush and she’d make it all okay.

The hole in his throat spoke for him and it said Alright, honey, just whatever you say. I’ll just lie here and think of the good times ahead of us.

Tammy tapped the apartment door closed with her foot and held him tighter. In a moment she would start making their home fresh and clean again. She’d pick up the nasty garbage spilled on the floor by his head and replace it in the plastic sack. She’d mop up the blood and scraps, then take her baby into the bathroom to clean him up and make him nice.

A hot bath is a relaxing thing to take, especially when you’re in the middle of giving up smoking and feel all tense and wound up tight. But she could make him forget those feelings. She tousled his hair and murmured in his ear, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce. It sang like glens purpled in heather and soft mists rolling in from the loch.

=== {{ TAMMY FALLS IN LOVE / END }} ===