She told me she had a daughter. She waited till the fourth date to tell me, when we were lying beneath her Muppet sheets. Alice in Wonderland posters were on the walls. “My room is being painted,” she said. I didn’t mind. I spent five years sleeping on Gonzo’s nose. It felt like a childhood reunion. I almost wanted to wet the bed and wear furry pajamas with the white zipper and rubber feet. “You have protection?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. Kermit clenched his throat as he gazed into my eyes. I remembered when I caught myself in the zipper and my mother had to help. Those mistakes you wish would never come to the surface again. “She’s a good girl,” she said, smoothing out the bed over Miss Piggy’s face. Beaker’s head poked out from beneath the pillow: shaggy orange hair like a troll, a nose like a tangerine. “Alicia is her name,” she said. “She’s with Grandma this weekend.” I nodded. There was something odd about it. The bedroom I mean. The walls were watching, eyes of a dozen Muppets were fixated on me; this strange man in the little girl’s bed. Gonzo’s nose was more purple than I remembered, less crooked. Scooter’s glasses were smaller; his eyes were bulging as if he had just swallowed one of the mushrooms on the wall. Bert and Ernie were merging together like two waves, their faces rippling into one interminable current as our pillows bunched together. I jumped out of bed. Kermit was watching me out of the corner of his eyes, green with envy. He understood; so did she. There was nothing more to say.
Matthew B. Dexter lives in California.
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