The Cookies

There was a knock at my door. He was standing there with a silver rose made out of screen mesh. The kind of mesh that you put in windows.
"Wow! You just made this for me?!"
"Well...I made it, " he stumbled over his words, "I made it. It's for you, for the cookies." That meant he must have made it a while ago when he had nothing to do but sit around his friend's apartment all day long. At least he was productive with his time. I wonder why he was making mesh roses, this Jersey boy with a soprano voice and a gangster exterior.

The manager of my building, a big eyed black and white mix with a Jersey accent, always had a sad look on his face. Once he came up to my apartment, very stoned,a giant smile, and told me about an idea he had for a movie that involved everyone in the building. Once he talked about his brother and how he never got a hold of him even though they lived in the same city. Once he told me about wanting to go to a baseball game.
"Aww, you need a best friend, don't you?!"
"Yeah."

Last night I made cookies and then gave them away to the people in my building. I was feeling sick and cold, and I wanted my apartment to smell like a home with a mother. To be more specific, I wanted it to smell like burnt cookies, like Mandy' house-my best friend from elementary school. Her mother was always making cookies. The brown tupperware, the kind with a silver star on it from the 70's, was always full of cookies or her mother would just be pulling a hot batch from the oven. She was always on a "diet", quiet, unhappy looking,and always, always making cookies.

"Christine! Christine!" I heard two singsongy voices echoing down the street. My hands were full of groceries and a large mixing bowl. I looked out from the steps of my stairs and saw the twins; my manager and his best friend, the rose maker, who had come to visit and ended up moving in with him. In his hand there was a very small ziplock bag with a tiny amount of cubed chicken, the amount some people would leave on their plate or give to a dog.
" I don't like wasting food, you know?"