Martin wakes up with a sour taste in his mouth. His feet hang over the couch arm. The pleather sticks to his skin on his back. The sweat and hair leave brush strokes where he slept. They fade as he gets up.
His son plays on the living room floor, probably since long before he woke. Spaceships launch from oversized Lego platforms, while stuffed elephants and bears watch in a half circle. A laptop is propped open to an endless barrage of YouTube kid shows, without parental controls determining what’s appropriate. A questionable video, of Mickey Mouse and his family holding guns to each other’s and their own heads, pops up. No one notices.
Destiny—his baby mama—sleeps in the other room, with two women she partied with the night before. She kicked Martin out of the room when the vibe got sexual. Consequently, he ended the night chopping dessert on a mirror in the living room and jacking off to their moans and his fantasies—defined via porno categories on his phone.
He scratches his ass into the kitchen and shrugs at the cereal spilled all over the counter. Lucky Charms with the marshmallows missing. A small plastic cup of milk almost empty, but no bowl.
"You hungry, bud?" The 4-year-old boy runs into the kitchen with sugar-caked cheeks and the dirt that clings to it.
"Can I have some pizza?"
It’s 10am on a Wednesday. Soiled dishes tower in the sink. Food and crumbs on the countertops.
"No, but you can have more cereal."
The boy runs to the table and sits with a plush giraffe he carries with him everywhere.
Destiny comes into the kitchen and glares at Martin, then smiles at her son.
"I’ve no idea how something so precious came from something so repulsive," she says, as she turns on the coffee pot and pours a shot of Kahlua in a mug.
Martin scoops the cereal from the counter into a bowl and pours some from the box. He bites his tongue. Figuratively at first, but then literally, as anger boils inside and teeth slice through the muscle in his mouth.
"Fuck!"
He touches it and sees blood.
"Watch your fucking mouth around the kid," Destiny says.
Martin puts the bowl of Lucky Charms in front of their son.
"You watch your mouth," he says. "We both know where it’s been."
Before she could retort, the two girlfriends interrupt with makeup-smudged faces and rat’s nest hair.
"We’ll see you at the club, girl," one says. "Had fun last night," the other says and slaps Destiny’s ass. The first one picks a Lucky Charms marshmallow from the boy’s bowl, chomps and rubs his head.
"Could you keep your slimy hands off my son, please," Martin says.
She flicks her tongue between her index finger and middle finger, to mock him with the ecstasy he missed out on. Both women blow kisses to Destiny and leave.
"Don’t harass my guests," Destiny says, as she pours coffee into the Kahlua.
"Harass? You said I could crash here this week instead of at my homie’s," Martin says. "You’re the one who came home with strippers from work, then asked me for party favors and then kicked me out when y’all started to get down. So, I watched our kid while you rubbed up on other dudes, then I supplied your all-female orgy with fuel and I didn’t even trip when you booted me to the couch. How is that harassment?"
"You’re just pissed, ‘cause you ain’t got no swag no more, now that I left your ass," she says.
"That has nothing to do with any of this!"
The boy sits silently at the table—eating his cereal, as the milk turns an array of colors.
"Maybe if you weren’t nothing but a loser dishwasher, I wouldn’t have to strip and I wouldn’t have had to leave your scrubby ass."
"You told me to quit selling and I did. Then I got a real job, but it don’t pay sh...the same...and now, you’re gonna sit here and criticize me for trying to change my life for our son?"
The boy leaves the table and goes back to his toy shuttle launch and endless stream of unsupervised videos in the living room. The adults, if you can even call them that, remain bickering in the kitchen.
"Change? You brought powder into this house! That ain’t changing shit," Destiny says.
"Powder that you and your hoodrats snorted for free, when I could’ve sold it for a new microwave. Besides, I ain’t selling like I was. That was for supplemental income, since you always yell at me about being a scrub."
She charges after him. He steps to the side. She shoulders the refrigerator and whimpers.
"Look what you made me do! Stop blaming me for your bad choices!" She sulks against the counter.
He puts his arm around her in an attempt to comfort her. She flails him off of her, he steps back and gestures an "okay" with hands up.
"I don’t want to fight with you," Martin says. "I still love you."
Destiny tears up. Then they hear a crash and a cry from the boy and his toys.
They run into the living room—he’s fallen off the couch and bonked his head on the coffee table.
Destiny holds him and Martin fetches ice from the kitchen, wraps it in a dish towel and dampens it in the sink. He returns to the mother and son in the living room. He gently presses the damp, cold compress to the boy’s swollen forehead. They all sit, huddled on the stained carpet.
Destiny raises her eyes to his and they’ve lost the disdain she harbored earlier. Martin holds her and his son and rocks them in silence.
