How Adults Spend Saturday Nights

By Julie Heaney

I am a plucked chicken ready to go out. My skin is rubbed raw. All of the acne scabs once clawed onto my face with bits of spider leg skin are now swirled down the bathroom drain. The pink, sore arches of my eyebrows are void of coarse brown hairs. They have been brushed into the well of the sink by the toilet. I look hoity-toity. I look fresh.

Jimmy is supposed to be here in five minutes, but the back left tire on his hand-me-down-oh-no-I-don’t-have-money-please-Dad-do-you-really-need-that-old-pickup flew off on the highway, and in seven minutes, he will call to tell me so and that he has to reschedule. His scalp will be sweaty, and a little grime leftover on his thumb from working the fryer all day (at a restaurant that he will only ever be able to work at and never eat in) will leave a thin veil of grease over my picture in his phone. The photo was taken a few Thanksgivings ago in 2012, a year before I broke up with him. I was a college senior. It was the day I met his parents for the first time. In 2012, I thought the world was going to end, so I clung tighter to relationships of all kinds that I didn’t really want. When it didn’t, Jimmy and I were still together.

 In fifteen minutes, someone new will text me, asking what I am doing later, and when I respond nothing (;, you?, he won’t text back for an hour or two. There’ll be a bit of back and forth after he finally responds, and at eleven, he’ll expect me to be on my way over to sneak into his parent’s house or maybe to weasel my way into his shared college apartment with roommates who I’ll have to pretend aren’t there. However, I’m not sure that I’ll go over to the new guy’s place tonight after Jimmy texts me that he’s stuck on the highway. I am busy sitting on the toilet swiping left and right on Tinder, trying to ignore the subconscious doubt clawing at my brain. 

After getting a few matches, I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and redo my hair and makeup. I scavenge around my house for a bobby pin and find some after I shake the contents out of the vacuum onto my white carpet. I blow the dust off of four and use them to pin to my hair a few feathers, which I found inside the throw pillows on the couch. The puff of the feathers against the sleekness of my short brown hair makes me look like half of the burlesque dancer that I always wanted to be. I strip down to my bra and underwear and do a little shimmy. Then, I turn the lights down low, put a match to some candles around the apartment, and go into my bedroom. 

My phone dings and the college guy, who is the someone new, has texted me asking what I am doing later. I respond nothing (;, you?, but don’t expect a response for an hour or two. Obviously. I make my bed and slip into a nightgown; it ruffles a few of the feathers in my hair, and they fall to the floor, but I will suck them up in the vacuum tomorrow morning and maybe use them again tomorrow night. My arms stretch above my head, and I yawn, then head to play in the living room with the plastic kitchen set I’ve had since I was five.

It looks just like I left it last weekend. I prepare a few meals for my pretend guests. I know that on Saturday nights the plastic pizza is very popular, so I cook about five of them in the pretend oven before my phone dings with a message from the college guy asking me to come over. I ignore it for a little while as I Velcro pepperoni onto cheese onto wooden pizza crust and plate it onto a beautiful plastic dish. The pizza seems to be especially popular this evening, and I wonder if he maybe would like some (because all college guys love pizza on Saturday nights) and ask him to come over instead. As soon as I send the message, he is on his way. I hope, for a moment, that his back left tire doesn’t fly off on the highway, but then I chuckle and shake my head. If it does, then there will be more pizza for me. I love pizza on a Saturday night even more than college guys do. 

I turn the Do Not Disturb function off on my phone, throw together a few plastic lettuce leaves and un-Velcro a handful of tomato slices. I mix them together as a light salad just to add a little variety to the menu. I don’t want to be too bloated after we eat.

There’s a knock at my door, and I quickly throw a fuzzy bathrobe over the nightgown before I open it. The college guy looks a little rougher than his picture on the dating app, and he’s somewhat confused at my bathrobe. I smile warmly with all my cheeks and let him in. His name is Daniel or David or something of the sort, and he’s going to school for business, just like Jimmy. I say that is so cool, and he’d have to tell me more about it over some pizza. He looks a little confused at that but follows me to his plastic seat at the dining table. I give him some water and head into the plastic kitchen in the other room to fix him a plate. His eyes widen when I put a full dish of plastic pizza in front of him. I think he is surprised at how much food I put on his plate. I tell him he doesn’t have to eat it all, but that I remember campus food was pretty shitty when I went to college a few years ago, and maybe he’d like something that didn’t taste like garbage. He thanks me and flicks his eyes around the room. Poor thing probably hasn’t had a real meal in ages. We go to the bedroom around an hour later, and he stays the night. The next morning he offers to take me out to breakfast (his treat), and I let him. When he drops me off in front of my apartment building and kisses my cheek, I decide I will not text him back, because he will text me later asking if I want to hang out at his place (not mine), next weekend, and he seems too childish for my taste.