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Sidney Thompson
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Sometimes eating only chicken and fixings from where Claude worked and pizza from where Jodie worked got old, but most of the time it didn’t. It really didn’t.
Silverhill Gardens at this time of night, lit only by two dim lamps attached to telephone poles, appeared as small and still and serene as a nativity scene.
Sometimes Claude prayed he wouldn’t lose a tire, as bald as the tires were, as the car crunched along the oyster-shell lane that circled through the park.
When he eased the trailer door open, he found Jodie and Emma asleep in the dark. The window unit humming. In the scant light filtering through the curtains, he crept toward the table, hunching his back, and the trailer taking his weight with a slight jostle.
Jodie woke unstartled, to see Claude creeping through the house in the shape of a giant shrimp. She always thought of Claude creeping in the dark as a giant shrimp, and their trailer as a house.
She drew the covers back and yawned as she stood to her toes.
Claude felt his world tilt, but he continued one by one to remove containers from the sack. Eventually, Jodie slipped her arms around his waist, his filthy shirt, pressing her face against his back. Then she loosened her grip to retrieve the silverware from their wedding set, which she preferred they use, even when dining with disposable plates and paper napkins.
Soon enough the scents of dinner would enter Emma’s dreams and make her cry. Soon enough their time would be her time. They sat across from each other at the two-seater table, and as Claude divvied the chicken by shape and texture, Jodie buttered her biscuit, then his biscuit, then Emma’s biscuit, for later, if they hurried.

Sidney Thompson is the author of the short story collection Sideshow. His fiction and poetry have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, Carolina Quarterly, 2 Bridges Review, RHINO Poetry, A Capella Zoo, The Fat City Review, and The Fertile Source. He lives in Denton, TX.