writetomyheart | [team two] Crumb Tray

A tinker and their lifelong companion spend a quiet afternoon in the kitchen examining a mysterious object that probably isn't a toaster.

"So much love," Darita says as she stands at the sink, looking through the lacy curtains at the screaming children in the back yard. "So much noise." The afternoon sunlight is stippling her face and blouse with tiny scallops, like the wave patterns on an ancient map.

"Here be dragons," I reply. I'm poking at the strange toaster-sized metal box the kids had found in the dumpster. Despite Darita's comments that proper toasters had electric cords and at least one slot for items to be toasted, I preferred to continue thinking of the object with the rounded corners and the beautiful brushed violet finish as a toaster, primarily because something about it proclaimed an undeniable toasterness to me.

"You still trying to get that thing to work?"

I look up. She's turned from the window, and is leaning against the sink. Forty-six years, and still as precious to me as ever. Maybe some others wouldn't have looked twice at her, found some fault with her shape or her manner, but none of that had ever mattered to me. Her insides were what counted, and the twinkle when she laughed, and the way one corner of her mouth turned up just a little when she was thinking of doing certain things. Not that it was all about those things, no, no, there was also the way she had always been able to look past my outers, my thick glasses and lumpy body, right to who I really was inside. Maybe that was why she humored all my odd behaviors. Such as non sequitur replies to her comments, and trying to take apart unidentified objects that probably were not toasters.

"There does seem to be a very faint line running along one edge," I say, taking off my glasses so that I can peer at it up close. "I think it might be the key to opening it. Do we have one of those razor-blade scrapers, or any knives with a—"

There is a clatter as Darita puts a handful of metallic things on the kitchen table. She sits down opposite me and folds her arms. "We don't need a new toaster," she says, though when I put my glasses back on I see that, smiling faintly, she's laid out an assortment of tiny screwdrivers and thin-bladed knives.

Go go,

shinysylver !

[team two] Crumb Tray

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