Esther’s upper lip twitched for a second. She cracked open her mouth. Her lips haloed the piece of steak, and she swallowed.
Then she choked.
I looked at our rich friends.
“Do something,” they said.
I slapped her on the back as hard as I could. Her eyes zoomed in and out. She coughed it up.
“Are you okay?” they asked.
“She’s fine,” I said.
“There’s this thing called the Heim—the Heimlich maneuver,” she said to me.
I saw her missing teeth.
Five minutes later, she went for another piece of steak. And another and another, until her mouth was full of moist flesh. She wouldn’t chew on it.
“Chew on it,” I whispered. But she refused.
“I’ll show them my damn teeth, you prick,” she said.
“So, Ryan,” Joseph said. “How’s the real estate business?”
“Great,” I said. “We’re doing great.”
The more he asked questions, the more I lied. He’d never guess that I hung and finished drywall for a living.
His wife smiled at me. She had perfect teeth: whiter than caulk, glossier than trim paint. I smiled back with my mouth closed. My suit was missing a button.
The rest of them were talking about the stock market. They had quadrupled their money this year, except for the woman in the black dress. She’d only doubled, but she’d lost weight—that was the main thing.
“Diets are important,” one of them said. “I agree, one-hundred percent.”
“Chew on it,” I whispered. But she didn’t.
She opened her mouth, and all of my lifelong dreams fell out.
Jason Gordy Walker lives in Birmingham, Alabama. His short-shorts have appeared online in Monkeybicycle, Nap, Cafe Irreal, and elsewhere; his poems have been published in Measure, Think Journal, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology; and he teaches composition at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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