Clothes The Door: a Short Story

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Warning: this story contains adult themes. While in no way graphic, the content is nonetheless appropriate only to readers eighteen and older. Thank you!
I’m so excited to announce that this story appears in the September 2014 publication of GRAVEL magazine.

Clothes the Door
By: Rebecca J. Lacko Copyright2014

I’d get a drink but I hate what I’m wearing.

Stroking the length of my clutch, a sparkly envelope number I received free with the purchase of a perfume and lotion set, I cast a low glance toward the bar. An intimate setup, Jak’s positioned a carved Indonesian sideboard, an unusual piece commissioned by a Turkish effendi who’d gifted it to his father, his father to him. There are several bottles chilling in silver tubs and a handful of half-filled glasses sweating coaster-less on the bare surface of the sideboard’s mahogany.

Our host, unassuming enough to look at, is wildly successful art dealer Jak Schiel. I use the word “wild” because he rakes in crazy cash, but primarily to denote the miscreant voyeur he’s proven to be behind closed doors. I’m uncertain whether his success as a businessman begets the entitlement of sexual deviance or if his depravity yields his intuition for exceptional art.

The bar area is plotted by a plush Persian rug dented in several places by finely spiked heels with price tags negated by my meager student loan. Plotting my path across the Persian, the heels boast each an influential personality reflecting the artistic point of view of her owner. Style, class, in some cases humor—but all chic. I won’t even look at my feet. I can’t. It would be too depressing.

Please continue reading at GRAVEL magazine. Thank you so much!

Gravel magazine is produced by  the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Monticello editorial staff.

Let’s connect on Twitter! @TheRJLacko

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