“I don't want to shower here,” she said.
Bean glanced up. Not even so much as a sardonic murmur, did she get. She stood over Bean, observing its thin little form on the couch. A scarf tied around its neck, it staring up with those mildly annoyed eyes. As if every attempted conversation were an interruption. She looked at Bean's legs and the way its thighs curved in so as never to touch each other, and she felt equally jealous and attracted.
“I said I don't want to shower here!”
Plainly, Bean said, “Why?”
She knew that it didn't really care “why”, and only answered her because it knew she only wanted it to say something so that she could get angry.
“You seem like the type that has to masturbate to fall asleep.”
“Do I really?” Bean asked.
“I mean, you seem that fucking repressed and miserable that I bet you have to do it to shut out all those thoughts at night, just furiously masturbate until everything's okay again.”
“Nope.”
Bean watched her for a moment, perhaps paused in case she had anything further to say. When she didn't, when she just stiffened her shoulders and turned her eyes this way and that, Bean again ignored her.
Bean's hair---short or long, depending what your thoughts are---stuck out in pieces, so that no matter which way she came at it, she was confronted with black knives. Though she noticed, today, how faded its hair had gotten; the dye leaked out through its fingers, swirled around the drain and went down, down, down that stack of bones, down those thin legs, against those unmoving feet, and was washed away.
As she thought about leaving, she pondered the back of its neck. But this was what made her say, “Do you know why I...?”
Maybe Bean had stopped listening.
It took a large, calm breath, and said again, “Why.”
“Because,” she said, almost satisfied, “No one loved you ever.”
“Okay.”
But she knew that wasn't true. Someone had loved it, after all. When they looked at one of its earliest sonograms and called it “Bean”.
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