short fiction by Joseph M. Faria
([email]jmmf [at] msn [dot] com[/email])
Bob is an upstanding citizen. He smokes big, black cigars. He says they’re Cuban to those who don’t smoke cigars. Bob’s hair is gray-speckled white and on his upper lip he wears a slippery thin mustache that looks as though he painted it on with a magic marker. He says to those who don’t dye their hair that it’s naturally black.
Betty, his wife, is a blonde. Her eyes are stone blue and her lips are full and expressively red. She keeps a diary. She uses a tiny copper-colored key to open the clasp. She writes diligently everyday as if she were errantly snowbound. She is quite utterly alone until Bob returns from the office. The words in her diary are not the same words she uses in real life.
