crouton.doc

8/14/2019 Crouton.doc

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The crouton appeared on Teds white ottoman, perfectly centered on the quarter-sized

leather button that formed the nexus of stitching that held it together.

The ottoman was one of four pieces of furniture in the room, a one-bedroom place right

above the bagel shop on Main Street, Breckenridge. It was purchased for him by his

mother, along with the matching recliner, just after his graduation from the university in

Boulder nearly a decade ago.

I think youre crazy to have all white in a mountain town, shed told him. But she wrote

the check all the same. Price they charge for furniture these days, its criminal. Are you

sure its that much?

A small glass-and-aluminum end table sat next to the chair, and a similar piece slightly

larger with one white-cushioned chair, served as his dining table. The 56-inch Sony plasma

hung on the wall, along with three framed exhibit prints from the Denver Art Museum.

Ted noticed the crouton immediately upon entering his apartment. Everything else was

exactly as hed left it that morning before going to his office a small graphic arts firm

within walking distance of his home. A man with, say, several children could come home

and not notice an errant crouton for weeks. But for Ted, it was the same as if hed come

home and found the place ransacked, searched by thugs, infiltrated by zombies.

He froze.

It was easy enough to see that whoever had left the crouton was no longer present. The

door to his bedroom was open, and there was no place to hide.


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Except the closet.

Slowly, he removed his sno-mocs and jacket. The shoes went on one of three shelves

dedicated to just that purpose; the jacket a white Marmot went on its peg. He moved

quickly to the bedroom closet and flung the door open. Greeted only by his typical winter

wardrobe of white turtlenecks and dark cords, he gave a quick peek under the single bed,

then went into the other room to contemplate the crouton.

Ted was not a crouton eater. He rarely ate salads, for starters, since the bag always went

brown before he got around to making a second bowl. Even then, purchasing an entire box

of croutons to go with his infrequent salads would have represented something of an

extravagance. A typical box of Pepperidge Farms croutons probably held several dozen

croutons, and figuring only half a dozen or so, max, would go on a salad every few

months, the box would go stale long before he could finish it.

Store-bought croutons were also, he suspected, pretty high in sodium. Ted had mild

hypertension, and he was cautious about his salt intake.

A box of croutons was the kind of thing that would sit in his cabinet for a very long time,

plaguing him with a silent insistence that he come up with some way to use it. Another

example was a box of Rice-a-Roni, pilaf flavor, hed bought on a whim. After noting that

the sodium content per serving was over 1,000 milligrams, the box sat accusingly on his

shelf for an entire ski season before he finally donated it during a Christmas food drive.

Standing about three feet from the crouton-inhabited ottoman thinking these many

thoughts about croutons, Ted felt the old pre-Paxil ball of dread welling up in his chest. It

had been a good two years since hed felt it about the time that had elapsed since his

doctor had prescribed the little pills that took the anxiety away and flattened him into a two-

dimensional being.


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It was definitely a packaged crouton, not a restaurant-made product. It was nearly

perfectly square, with tiny flecks of what was probably identified on the package as

seasoning. It might be Italian style, he thought, or garlic-herb or even Caesar.

There were no crumbs or other debris around the crouton, negating the notion that it could,

somehow, have been tossed in an open window or even more unlikely shot out of an

air vent. It looked like it had been placed there with a pair of tongs by someone who took

great pains to place it symmetrically, at the precise center of the ottoman.

In the middle of the button.

In his apartment, where he lived alone and never entertained. Even his mother hadnt been

to visit since October she never drove up to the mountains when snow was a possibility.

Ted silently formed the word why? on his lips, then reached for his phone. He could

call his mother, but the thought wearied him. Her incredulity at the presence of the crouton

would lead to a paranoid rant about the derelict ski bums who inhabited Breckenridge,

followed by a plea to move in with her or find some friends, maybe a nice girl. She

would quiz him again about his sexual orientation, suggesting that it was OK with her if he

were gay if it meant he had someone to talk to. She would tie the crouton into an indictment

of his mental health, telling him he was going stir crazy or getting cabin fever from the

long winters.

He could call the police, but even the cops in a small town dont have much patience for

something as ridiculous as this. It was even more inane than the time last summer when he

heard or at least thought he heard his doorbell ring at 3 in the morning. When he looked

through the peephole, he saw what looked like a guy wearing an astronauts helmet,

peering right back at him.


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The cop who showed up actually had a shotgun in hand, and he stalked around the

building and up and down the hall before asking Ted to close the door and look again

through the peephole.

The astronaut was still there, apparently some optical illusion caused by the glass of the

peephole with the hall light.

The cop was pretty nice. He didnt laugh but acted as if it happened all the time. Ted

could imagine getting the same guy to come investigate the case of the ottoman crouton.

Hed get the reputation as some crank loner, cooking up bizarre stories to get attention.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket. He squinted at the crouton and then walked

into the kitchen. He opened every cabinet, every door and rummaged through the tiny closet

pantry to see if somehow he had purchased a box of croutons, forgotten about it, and, while

sleepwalking, perhaps, had placed one of the damn things on his ottoman.

He took Ambien, and hed read stories about people doing weird things in the middle of

the night under the influence of the drug. It was preposterous, though, to think that he could

have driven to the store, purchased a box of croutons, removed one and placed it on the

ottoman and then gotten rid of the rest for he could find no box anywhere in the

apartment.

There was the cleaning woman who came in once a week. But she was very good a

woman who removed things like errant croutons; she didnt place them there.

Ted pulled out his phone again to check the time. It was already a good 20 minutes past

the time when hed have begun his evening rituals of uncorking a bottle of wine and

preparing dinner.

Damn! he said, slightly stamping one foot. As a dramatic gesture, it was weak. He

thought about stamping again, much harder, but he now felt the moment had passed. And

what about the people who lived below him?


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He walked back into the living room and glared at the crouton again. There it sat,

unmoving, unthreatening except for the story the mystery, he supposed behind its

arrival in his apartment. Ted started to reach for the crouton, with the idea that he would

simply throw it down the sink and grind it up in the food disposal. But his hand stopped

about halfway, and he looked around.

If he discounted the possibility that he had installed the crouton in his apartment on an

Ambien-crazed night mission, and that it hadnt somehow arrived by accident or been

placed there by some insane prankster, then he had to accept its presence and the fact that he

would likely never know the answer. Its idealized location at the center of the ottoman

suggested that whatever force had put it there understood Teds need for order. Removing

it could disrupt some new equilibrium that now existed in his space.

Thats the dumbest thing youve ever thought, Ted, he said aloud. Then he laughed an

artificial laugh, crossed his arms and looked down at the crouton.

It was time to make dinner.

***

Knowing there was little chance hed sleep with the alien presence in the adjoining room,

Ted took a pair of cooking tongs and removed the crouton from the ottoman around 11

p.m. For a moment, he stood in the middle of the room, holding the crouton in the tongs out

in front of him like it was a chunk of nuclear waste. He considered saving the crouton as

some kind of evidence (they could do DNA testing on it, perhaps, and identify the

crouton-placer that way), but ultimately he opted for the food disposal option, allowing the

water to run for an extra minute after the grinding stopped to ensure it was washed away

completely.


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And when he returned home from work the next day, the crouton was there again, in the

exact same spot.

Ted froze, again, but his bodys internal processes moved into high gear: The dormant

anxiety bomb inside his chest inflated to the size of a softball maybe even a basketball. He

could feel various chemicals being released into his bloodstream: adrenaline,

norepinephrine, god knew what else. Perspiration spiked all around, with a concentration

around the back of his neck and collar. His mouth went immediately dry, and the

phenomenon hed always thought of as principals office stomach hit him with the force

of a jackhammer.

He felt his bowels twitch and hold, but his bladder let go completely. He stood there for

several seconds before he even realized hed completely wet himself. The pee was hot on

his leg, and it was making an exit via his left pant leg onto his extremely clean white carpet.

Moving quickly, an adrenaline-fueled antelope before the lion, he made a quantum leap into

the bathroom, where he stripped off his pants and boxers in the shower, pulled his shirt

over his head and turned on the water.

Normally, Ted was the kind of guy who stood outside the shower, monkeying with the

handle to get the water to the perfect temperature before stepping in. It always made him

laugh how, in movies, people always got into the shower first and then turned the water on.

That would never work in Breckenridge, where the water entered the house at, it seemed,

exactly 32.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

But thats exactly what he did in this case, and the resulting blast of frigid water caused

him to jump backwards, slip, fall and crack his head on the tub. He was knocked

unconscious, but only briefly. The water was jetting down his throat and up his nose,

activating his gag reflex and reviving him, he later imagined, just in time.


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Hed been out just long enough for the hot water to have reached the shower, so in

addition to choking on the water, he was also being scalded. With a bizarre, inhuman croak

hed recall later with equal parts wonder and horror, Ted pulled himself out of the tub and

onto the bathroom floor, bringing the shower curtain with him. Bleeding profusely from his

head wound, scalded about the chest and face and still barely conscious, Ted lay there for a

moment wrapped in the wretched plastic shower curtain, highly cognizant of the fact that he

was all alone.

There was no one to call out to, no one to help, no one to give a damn that hed just had

all this shit happen to him. He had to digest all of what had just transpired and make it right

all on his own, as he always had. The temptation was to lie there on the floor for some time,

but there were several factors convincing him that he needed to spring into action. These

were:

1. The hot water in his apartment did not last very long, and if he wanted a warm

shower to wash away the blood, urine and shower-curtain filth that now coated him, hed

need to act quickly.

2. His head was bleeding quite heavily, from somewhere around the back; his face and

neck were on fire from the hot water. This was something that needed immediate attention

possibly even a trip to the hospital and/or a burn center of some sort.

3. The crouton was still out there. Ted didnt believe it was necessarily doing anything

that required further action on his part, but it bore close watching.

Struggling to his feet and extricating himself from the shower curtain, Ted first pushed

the shower handle to the middle. He was able to get the bloody curtain more or less in

place and step under the stream of water. He watched in amazement as the water circling

down the drain turned bright red, but after a moment it lightened up a bit, giving him hope


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that a Band-Aid would do the trick. Where the hot water had scalded him still felt

unpleasant, but he soon became reasonably sure that he hadnt been horribly disfigured

and wouldnt need years of painful recovery. (As an avid watcher of medical shows on

the Discovery Channel, Ted was all too aware of what burn victims had to endure.)

He skipped shampoo for fear that it would irritate his wound, but his faculties had

returned well enough for him to clean and dry himself off properly and get into clean

clothes. His head he wrapped in turban fashioned from a large towel. Ted knew how to

wrap a turban because hed had a Sikh roommate in college at Boulder, and hed once

had Dalip show him how to do it.

It always pleased Ted to be able to deploy knowledge hed acquired, especially when it

was knowledge that initially appeared useless.

Even with the towel-turban, though, Ted could tell his head wound was still bleeding

and that hed probably need stitches. That meant a drive to the clinic, which was no doubt

full of skiers getting their torn ACLs and broken legs looked after. It was Christmas

week, after all, and Ted could probably look forward to a long wait unless he could

somehow contrive to start gushing blood onto the floor. The though of standing there

bleeding in his makeshift turban surrounded by gaping Iowa skiers made him chuckle in

anticipation: Maybe a trip to the clinic would be more fun than he thought.

Laughing made the blood flow more freely, some of it oozing out from beneath the

towel and onto his neck. Grabbing a box of Kleenex off the night table, he stepped into

the foyer and pulled his coat on while he stuffed some tissues up the back of the turban.

As he zipped, he regarded the cursed crouton sitting there on the ottoman. It was

oblivious to all the pain it had caused him, and it mocked him in the highly annoying way

only non-sentient things can mock. Fear of the crouton and what had caused it to be in his


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apartment had been replaced, at least temporarily, by anger. This little piece of dried bread

and spices was really pissing him off.

Of course, it must be a different crouton, Ted reasoned. But it looked identical: the little

flecks of spice, the near-perfect rectangular shape and the brittle, porous surface just

waiting to play host to some sickly bottled salad dressing.

Screw it, Ted said, grabbing his keys. He turned once more to the crouton: And screw

you! Bastard crouton!

A sudden whim found him crossing to the ottoman, picking up the crouton and crushing

it in his hand. He let the crumbs fall onto the dark spot on the carpet where hed pissed

himself, and he laughed another fake laugh, a mad scientists giggle that pleased him

immensely. He strode out the door feeling the situation was well in hand.

Hed deal with the carpet later.

***

What do you mean, a crouton?

I mean a crouton, mom, a little piece of dried bread you put on a salad.

There was a pause on the line as his mother digested this information. Ted was back in

his apartment, sporting a row of six stitches in the back of his head and an ice pack on his

upper chest where hed taken the brunt of the hot water. The doctor told him his burns were

relatively minor, but that hed probably look and feel like someone with a bad sunburn for a

couple of days.

As for the skiers in the clinic, theyd barely noticed him, involved as they were in their

own pain, their own forms to fill out and the unpleasant fact that their expensive ski

vacation had been cut short by season-ending injury. By the time Ted got out of there, it


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was after 8 oclock, so he grabbed some dinner at the soup place and was eating it on the

couch while talking to his mother.

The Crouton Incident, as he was calling it now in his mind, had grown too big to keep to

himself. The pain-killers the doctor had given him had deadened his senses enough that he

thought he could handle his mothers 20 questions. Spooning cream of asparagus soup into

his mouth, he countered her interrogation with what seemed to him Job-like patience.

Why?

Why what, mom?

Why did you put a crouton on your ottoman?

Ididnt put it there, mom. I told you, it just appeared. Twice. I dont know who put it

there. It could have been evil snowboarders, the mob, aliens, an intelligent gas from Pluto. I

dont know.

A what?! Gas, your gas is leaking? Get out of there NOW, Ted. I mean it! Call 911!

So much for trying a Vonnegut allusion with his mother. After reassuring her that his

apartment was not going to erupt in a natural-gas explosion, he asked her to hold her

questions until hed recounted the entire series of events.

There was another pause, longer this time very unusual for his mother, who was

seldom at a loss for words. Finally, she spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone:

You have to get out of there, Ted. Thats it, thats all there is to it. Come down to

Denver and move in with me. Well find you a place, another job. Theres lots of girls

down here, Ted, all hungry for a nice young man like you and

Mom, he said, Im OK here, really. Its just a friggin crouton, for gods sakes. And

besides, I think I may have found somebody.

***


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Although Ted was lying to get his mother off his case, there was a somebody of sorts.

Her name was Elizaveta, and she was from Kazakhstan. In addition to the areas sizable

Hispanic population, Breckenridge also had a lot of immigrants from Eastern Europe. It

wasnt unusual to find someone from Georgia behind the deli counter at the grocery store,

or Polish guys doing roofing or just-off-the-boat Russians or Czechs cleaning condos. One

of Teds clients had a company that brought them over and found them service-industry

jobs. It was Bricklin whod suggested a maid after Ted mentioned he was spending his

Saturday morning cleaning his condo.

Youre doing what? Youre cleaning? Why?

It was what Ted always did on Saturday in his ongoing quest to achieve spotlessness. It

wasnt like he loved the process of cleaning so much, but he did like the feeling of being

around clean. He didnt have that much else to do, anyway. Unlike 99 percent of the towns

population, Ted did not ski or snowboard. He was drawn to the winter landscape of

Summit County simply because it was so very clean. Nearly devoid of insects, covered in

snow half the year or more and with crisp, high-altitude air, it was almost perfect but for the

diesel pickups many locals seemed to favor.

Ted, you are notcleaning your own place, Bricklin said. Thats ridiculous. Ill send

someone over, cost you 50 bucks a week, thats all.

He hung up before Ted could protest. But having someone come into his place and make

it perfectly clean once a week? How bad could that be?

Elizaveta rang his doorbell on the very first day of September. She had a plastic carrier of

cleaning supplies, and she wore faded jeans of some unknown European brand along with

a stained jersey T-shirt and worn canvas shoes. She just smiled at him, and Ted felt himself

literally go weak in the knees something hed never experienced before, so far as he


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could remember. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes

on. Her hair was raven black and tied up in a pony tail. She had deep brown eyes and the

high cheekbones and pert nose he was used to seeing in Vanity Fair advertisements. She

had a lovely mouth with thick lips and slightly crooked, white teeth, which she deployed in

a smile that felt all too much like looking directly at the sun.

In fact, Ted found he couldnt bear to look Elizaveta directly in the face after their first

meeting. Despite the fact that she was there to scrub his toilet and sink and vacuum his

carpet, she was more goddess descending from Olympus to Ted. As a mere mortal, there

was nothing he could offer her, nothing he could say, no level ground from which to

approach her. She may as well have been one of the women in those magazine ads; the

closest he could get to her was to sniff the page.

On that first day, he mumbled something about errands and left, returning hours later

when Elizaveta was gone, leaving only cleanliness and fresh smells in her wake.

So it was just as well that he rarely saw her. She cleaned on Thursdays while he was at

work. He knew it was still her cleaning the place, though, because she would occasionally

leave him terse notes in her scrawling, exotic hand:

Ted, need flour. -E

That was one of her early notes, and it was set atop a fresh-baked banana bread. From the

start, Elizaveta was more than your average cleaning woman. She did things like clean the

silverware separator and dust the top of the refrigerator (both things Ted did, for sure, but

he was under the impression he was largely alone in such endeavors). She even folded the

end of the toilet paper roll in a neat triangle, a source of mild embarrassment to Ted, who

was generally loathe to acknowledge the need for such.

For his part, Ted would write notes to Elizaveta before he left on Thursday mornings.

Sometimes he would ask for little things like Please straighten up the pots & pans cabinet


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or baseboards could use a wipe. But mostly he went for short and cute: Hi E! Thanks

again for doing the things you do! You da bomb! T

He would imagine her puzzling over his Americanisms, bringing his notes to her friends

to help decipher. In his imagination, she would giggle, smile and clutch the note to her

breast.

On occasion, Ted would contrive to appear while Elizaveta was still in his apartment, just

to catch a glimpse of her unearthly beauty. He tried to time it to when he figured shed just

be leaving (he certainly didnt want to catch her on her hands and knees in the bathroom).

These meetings were by their very nature brief and awkward, but Ted was convinced that,

after a few years of such encounters, something might come of it.

It was Thursday now, two days after the second crouton encounter. No crouton had

appeared on Wednesday a fact that had worked to make Ted even more apprehensive

had one actually appeared. Whoever it was, there was some twisted psychology involved.

They were messing with him, big time.

Logically, Ted told himself, there was no reason to doubt that the crouton placer was

Elizaveta. She was the only other person apart from the property manager guy who had

access to his apartment. At the same time, it made absolutely no sense for someone charged

with making the place spotless (which she did, with flying colors) to leave such an item on

his pristine white ottoman. But what if it was some kind of Kazakhstani ritual or tradition?

It still didnt fit. Elizaveta was a perfectionist, a clean freak like him, and she knew how

Ted liked things. The crouton, unlike, say, an apple or a wrapped granola bar, was a messy

comestible. It shed crumbs readily, left a visible (if slight) slick of oil behind it, and was

unwrapped and porous a natural collector of microbes, dust, pollen, filth.

It had taken Ted several days to arrive at the Elizaveta theory for, although it was

screechingly obvious, the pairing of the Incident and the Goddess was difficult for him to


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parse. After all, Elizaveta was the embodiment of something wonderful that Ted desired

greatly, whereas the crouton, well, it was an unwelcome guest at best, a condiment non-

grata, a flaking, oily intruder that had pierced his domestic tranquility with all the subtly of

a Tomahawk missile. Already his mind had conjured what escalations might be

forthcoming. Would he come home to find a half-eaten Pop Tart on the ottoman? A hunk of

bloody whale blubber or a calfs liver? In his more elaborate flights of fancy, Ted had

poked around wikipedia to identify even more objectionable foodstuffs and their

ingredients or properties, just to be prepared if the worst came to pass:

Haggis: the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep mixed with onions, spices, oatmeal and suet

and boiled in the animals stomach.

Borewors: sheep, pig and/or cattle intestines stuffed with meat and offcuts, then

barbecued.

Offcuts, Ted said aloud to himself.

Swedish blood dumplings: reindeer blood mixed with flour and served with bacon.

Seal flipper pie from Newfoundland.

Stop it Ted, he finally said, closing his laptop. Just wait for Thursday and ask

Elizaveta if she knows anything about the crouton.

And so he did.

***

Ted knew from past experience that Elizaveta finished his apartment sometime between

3:30 and 4 in the afternoon. Leaving work early, he found himself creeping down the

hallway to his door with the air of a man intent on surprising a burglar. For a moment, he

stood outside his door, listening for activity within. It was silent for a moment, and then he

heard the toilet flush.


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Good. That meant she was done with the bathroom, probably. He waited another minute,

then made a great show of jangling keys and stomping feet as he entered. Elizaveta was

bending over the couch, straightening pillows, her perfect rear marred only slightly by the

odd-fitting exchange-student jeans she wore.

He flashed back to a time a few months ago when hed found her in a similar position.

Her shirt had ridden up her back, exposing the top of her plain, white panties and a few

inches of skin. He was certain it was the exact moment hed fallen in love with her, because

he couldnt help but notice two things in that flash of time before she stood up:

1. The panties were dingy and ripped, the elastic band separated from thefabric. Yet she looked 10 times sexier in them than the most incendiary lingerie

model, and Ted felt a twinge of something like guilt: the most beautiful woman in the

world wore shabby panties because she couldnt afford new ones.

2. She had a tiny tattoo that appeared in the space between the elastic and therest of her panties: Two little bumblebees nothing more.

Ted had actually worked himself up to ask about them, aware that doing so would tip

his slightly voyeuristic hand. She paused a moment at the question, considering him and

his query. Then she smiled, patting her chest.

Me, she said. Busy bee, right? Always working. She laughed a wonderful laugh.

Yes, busy bee, but never the money to go with.

Today, though, her shirt was tucked in, and Ted had to mentally paint the bees in their

proper place.

She stood up when he entered but did not turn around.


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Hi Elizaveta! Ted said, in a stupid-sounding, faux-surprised voice that reverberated

around the tiny condo as if it had been issued through a bullhorn. His eye fell to the kitchen

table where his note from that morning lie, crumpled in a ball.

He felt a sickening stab in his stomach as he recalled what hed written.

E, had an accident in here the other night. Cleaned as best I could but ran out of time.

Spot on carpet and (sorry!) blood in bathroom. Damn crouton, believe it or not! T

Hed guessed she wouldnt even know what a crouton was at least not in English. And

when hed written it, the suspicion that she was the bearer of the crouton was only a latent

presence in his mind. Hed half-hoped the crouton mention in the note would lead to a

longer note from her requesting an explanation, and maybe even expressing concern or

regret for his accident.

Elizaveta?

She was still facing away from him, her hands at her sides. Slowly, she turned around to

reveal her angelic face streaming with tears. She held her hands out to Ted, palms up, as if

in supplication.

Oh, Ted! So sorry you fell?

He stood frozen for a moment, not knowing whether to maintain some sort of

professional distance or to step forward and embrace her, comfort her. That, of course,

would entail putting his arms and hands around the most beautiful woman in the world. He

settled for taking two steps toward her and extending his own palms outward.

Its, its OK Elizaveta. Im OK. Just a, a bump on the head is all.

She took a step toward him, her hands now together, nervously moving against

themselves as if she were applying lotion. She gave him what he interpreted as an

imploring look, then cocked her head to the left and down. Her voice dropped to where he

could barely hear the next thing she said.


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And Ted?

Yes, Elizaveta?

The hands moved against each other some more.

You pee yourself?

He took a step back, then another as her eyes slowly came up to meet his. Part of his

brain insisted he keep going until he reached the door. He still had his coat on; he could go

down to Clints for a coffee and wait a few hours to make sure she was gone. Then hed

call Bricklin the next day and tell him he needed a new cleaning woman. Man, even. A guy

would be fine.

But he stood his ground, his mind quickly processing the options:

1. Deny it. Offer some story about a friends dog, a neighbors cat or some drunk guy

who mistook Teds apartment for his own.

2. Laugh it off. Yep, Elizaveta, that was me: pissed all over my carpet. He could

mention some health problem, maybe. But, then, beautiful women didnt want to hear

there was anything wrong with a guys plumbing.

3. Tell the truth, sheepishly.

With Elizavetas eyes on him, he turned away, his gaze resting on the carpet, the spot in

question. It looked damp in a uniform circle shape, which he took to mean Elizaveta had

already cleaned it. In fact, he thought he smelled some kind of masking fragrance like

Febreze. As he was settling on No. 3 and deciding how to start, he felt a light hand on his

shoulder and Elizavetas whispered It is OK.

Slowly, he turned, his hands finding her waist while her other hand landed softly on his

cheek, like a butterfly.

I was scared, said Ted. Im all alone here and when the thing showed up the second

time, I , I


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And then her lips were on his and, for the first time since a game of spin-the-bottle 12

years before, Ted kissed a girl. She was, in fact, the only one ever after that, and when

their children and grandchildren threw them a 50th anniversary party in 2060, the cake

was decorated to look like a giant crouton.

So it was you? he asked, as they broke off that first, most amazing kiss of all time.

She smiled. She nodded.

But why?

Elizaveta laughed a tiny, staccato giggle Ted would soon learn to love. Look at us,

Ted. Worked, right? Like charm.

He couldnt deny it. The damn croutons had done what his mother, half a dozen shrinks

and a score or two of web-hookup blind dates had failed to do: got him a girl.

Ted smiled a wide smile so wide, in fact, that muscles in his face unused to such

grinning were taxed to their limit.

But why a crouton, Elizaveta?

She smiled, tossed her hair a bit and shrugged.

I poor cleaning woman, Ted. They were on sale. At store.

The End


20/20

About the author

T. Alex Miller is a graduate of the University of

Colorado-Boulder creative writing program. His

writing career has been spent mostly in commu-

nity newspapers, although he also worked for a

year in Hollywood (in development at the Sci-Fi

Channel) and edited a magazine in Los Angeles

(LA Family). He is currently the editor of the

Summit Daily News, a newspaper in Frisco, CO.

In addition to his career in journalism, Miller hasbeen active in theatre as an actor, director and

playwright. His plays have been produced locally

as well as in conjunction with the state theatre festival. They include 5 Gears in

Reverse, The Adjudicators, Velociraptors and Outrageous Claims.

Miller lives in Frisco, Colorado with his wife, Jen, and their many children.

Reach him at [email protected].

crouton.doc

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