JULIA HORWITZ

Ham (Water Added)

It’s the middle of the night, and the Stop & Save grocery store is closed. Its long windows are dark and hung with glamour shots of this winter’s hottest deals: neatly hole-punched Swiss Cheese, brussel sprout rosettes, spicy mustard photographed close—gold velvet studded with brown seeds.

In a few hours, first-shift workers will see their milky exhales in the February morning air. They’ll sip double-walled paper cups of coffee, turning on the buzzing lights: one switch for the aisles, another for the freezer shelves, one small switch for the deli case. But for now, save for one woman flipping through a magenta-jacketed romance novel, all are asleep. In the freezing dark, the iconic red and green neon of the store sign beat down on the empty parking lot.

Across from the parking lot, there is a gas station. And in the window of the closed gas station, decorated with heart-shaped gel clings, there is a conversation taking place.

“It was never about the ham, was it?” croons a ceramic collectible Jessica Rabbit figurine.

“But it was!” responds a Miss Piggy Pez dispenser, purple plastic body vibrating with emotion, threatening to rustle painted-on pearls.

“It could have been anything in heels, darling,” Jessica gently counters, “She would have found something either way.”

Piggy pouts with an off-character amount of tenderness that only Jessica gets to see.

“But if it was moi—I can’t imagine— just not on Valentine’s Day.”

“Come here, darling,” Jessica beckons, because she is composed of ceramic and cannot move.

Piggy, who for some inexplicable reason can move, scoots her purple plastic foot towards her gorgeous, enamel-glossed counterpart.

“You know I would never do that to you, darling,” Jessica comforts as Piggy wedges her body against her beloved’s red-draped ceramic tits, snout tilted up.

“I know,” Piggy sighs, frosting-sweet pout in her voice, “I know.”

And with that, Miss Piggy parts the space between her pearls and her chin and extends a medium-pink, rectangular block of pressed sugar into the space between Jessica Rabbit’s lips.

***

Virginia arrived for her training shift at Stop & Save an hour early. This was the first sign of the end. She was always late for work, but told her partner the shift started at seven instead of eight, and had been sitting in the parked car, shivering as the sun slowly rose. The 2009 Subaru Outback was technically Olive’s, though the couple talked about it as “their” car or simply, in their ecosystem of two, “the car.”

Virginia couldn’t remember the last time she was in it alone—the last time she was in any car alone. It made her feel sixteen, sneaking this moment of solitude. At sixteen she had a purple buzzcut and was, on occasion, allowed to borrow her older sister’s car. She’d drive to the Taco Bell parking lot where she sat for hours, scrolling Tumblr, crying, licking neon orange ground beef juice off her wrists.

The idea of the buzzcut was to look tough, butch, and like she didn’t give a fuck after being outed by her so-called-best friend (who, by the way, was the one who initiated kissing at their sleepovers). But the hair, in fact, took painstaking, delicate work. Each time she re-shaved it, which was often, her dark hair needed to be bleached and re-smeared with Manic Panic Purple Haze. She got in the habit of stealing it at Hot Topic, never planning to, but always slipping another tub of it into her messenger bag at the mall, walking out with her heart pounding in her ears. Still, there must be six tubs of it, slowly drying into thick globs in the closet of her Southern California childhood bedroom.

When she was eighteen, Virginia’s hair was green and grown out to her chin. She moved across the country to attend the New England liberal arts college where, her senior year, she met Olive working at the library.

Olive often reminded Virginia that the two of them had been in multiple classes together over the years, had Facebook messaged about assignment deadlines, been at mutual friends’ dorm room parties. But for the first three years of college, Olive had mousy brown hair that went down their back and refused to make eye contact. Senior year they cut it short and floppy, clipped close on the sides, and even though they still wouldn’t make eye contact, Virginia found this new combination of factors incredibly sexy.

Now, three years later, there was no reason to think about having her own car when there was “the car.”

Virginia sneezed sharply into her elbow, wishing it was warm enough to roll the windows down and disperse some of the cat dander. She never liked cats, but she didn’t realize just how allergic she was until she, Olive, and Tofu moved into the one-bedroom apartment together. They’d been together less than a year, but Spring 2020 blurred together into an aimless, shapeless block of time that made this step feel both reasonable and inevitable.

When the museum Virginia worked at cut all in-person employees for the “foreseeable future,” Olive helped her get a remote copywriting gig at the startup they wrote code for. The startup sold subscriptions to “Healthy Snack” boxes, and it was Virginia’s job to fill blinking spreadsheets with quippy remarks about puffed chickpeas and five-dollar “superfood” applesauce pouches.

Virginia imagined a dribble of radioactive purple liquid being stirred into vats of Mott’s applesauce by cult members somewhere in Northern California. Olive tap-tap-tapped so that links automatically enrolled doom-scrollers in the twenty-dollar-a-month commitment.

The startup took off. By summer the two of them were gainfully, remotely employed with matching health insurance and very little reason to spend any time apart.

The lunchmeat was the first rift in that pattern.

 

She applied for the job in secret, sitting across the couch from Olive while they both “worked” and didn’t mention it to them until the day before she started.

“The deli counter? Like, the big slicer?”

Olive, brown hair now chin-length and cut with kitchen scissors every few months, blinked at Virginia, their pale green eyes starting to fill with something between pain and disbelief.

“No, I’m going to be passing out the meat. And telling people about the meat. It’s kind of like the museum but not.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think you’d be mad.”

“I’m not mad, I just—”

Virginia cut them off. “This is just a sometimes thing. It’s a little extra money”

Olive didn’t say anything, just looked and blinked at their girlfriend, already dressed in the instructed all black to be worn under her twice-a-week uniform.

“Olive, I haven’t left the house in five days. I need to do something.”

“I mean, it’s January. I haven’t left the house in five days either.”

Tofu meowed sharply, and his two sallow-skinned caretakers turned to look at his goblin-like face, circled in white fluff.

“We’re vegetarian.”

“You’re vegetarian.”

Olive’s eyes got wide, and they gave a weak, unsatisfying shrug. Virginia hoped they would say something else, something that would surprise her.

“Well, you can get out groceries while you’re there—we’re out of oat milk.”

At ten-to-eight, Virginia walked through the doors of Stop & Save and towards the deli to meet Debbie, her trainer. Debbie wore frosty pink lipstick and snapped light blue gum with uncanny rhythm as she spoke.

“Get here half an hour before you need to be on the floor, so you have time to get set up. And remembah,” she said very seriously in her thick New England accent, “presentation is everything. Everything.”

As promised, Virginia received her black chef’s coat and a magnetic name-tag with the title “Selling Events Specialist.” Debbie turned out not to be a Stop & Save employee, but a “representative” for the Farm Roast cold cuts brand. She was responsible for overseeing “Selling Events Specialists” in Virginia’s position across the region, and informed Virginia that she was first up on a string of four trainings she’d do that day. She meant business.

Debbie showed Virginia where to find the schedule of products to be promoted, all with trademarked names: Ovengood Chicken, Honeycomb Ham, Peppermill Turkey. Virginia met Joey, the deli manager, who she was to give no less than fifteen minutes notice to when she needed “product” sliced.

The word “product” was used frequently, making the operation sound sexier than it was. She would request the day’s “product” and create sample-sized bites stabbed with toothpicks, arranged on a platter and plopped on the sample table over a bin of ice.

Next to the samples, she’d retrieve the full sized “product” (aka the large hunk of meat from which the smaller pieces were cut, still in its shrink-wrap) and display it next to the slices. She was also supposed to keep a small pile of half-pound, pre-sliced bags of the day’s featured cold cut so that if the shoppers liked their toothpick of meat, they could snag it right then.

“No wait at the deli,” Debbie winked. “They’ll eat it outta your palm.”

Debbie took her to the back of the deli counter, through a narrow hallway to the walk-in fridge. Floor-to-ceiling metal shelves housed shrink-wrapped beige and brown and pale pink hunks of meat. They walked to the shelf labeled “Farm Roast” with painter’s tape and Debbie slapped an Ovengood Chicken, the smack reverberating off the metal walls.

“It’s big, huh?”

It occurred to Virginia that it was big, so big that when she imagined the grotesque, orange-powder-coated hunk of chicken sprouting legs and toddling away, it was the size of a small child.

“It’s more than one chicken.”

“Oh,” Virginia replied neutrally, and then thought about it a bit more. “Ground up?”

“No, no. It’s bonded together.”

As if Debbie could sense her uneasiness, she clarified,“None of that glue crap. It’s all chicken. They spin them super-fast, two or three at once, and it all sticks together. You get a nice big slice and it fits in the machines bettah.”

Virginia nodded slowly, the chill of the walk-in starting to bite through her chef’s coat.

 

Virginia drove home smelling like Swiss Cheese and thinking about pink, gelatinous chicken flesh whirring around and around a metal drum, clinging to the sides in its separate fat-skirted chunks, defying a bit of gravity each time one passed over the other until eventually, they both give in. Wet, fleshy fibers reaching out, brushing once, and fusing together for good.

When Virginia walked into the apartment, Olive was in the same spot on the couch, in the same pair of pajamas they’d been in that morning.

“I was getting worried,” they said limply.

Virginia tucked her body next to Olive’s on the couch, smelling the layers of musk and sweat over the faint pine smell Olive’s skin always seemed to have. A pale blue thread to the cartoon heart that still bounced from a coiled wire in her chest.

“You smell like cheese,” Olive mumbled into her neck, then kissed it.

“Sorry.”

“I missed you. That felt long.”

“I know,” Virginia said.

“Did you get the oat milk?”

“Shit. No.”

“Okay,” Olive nuzzled closer, pressing their cheek to Virginia’s chest.

Tofu yowled, trying to nudge his itchy head between the two of them.

***

Virginia grew up on the other side of the country where the big grocery store chain is Vons, not Shop & Save.

She was raised Jew-ish at most, but since her mom was raised kosher, the meat at the center of their meals was chicken, the occasional pound of ground turkey, and sliced turkey for sandwiches. Virginia’s mom bought it in plastic bags with three sealed compartments, the unspoken rule that each compartment should last the week before the next was opened.

There was a day, though, that Virginia and her older sister came home from school to a note on the counter:

Back by 8, stuff to make sandwiches, use up the rest of the turkey. Love you girls.

Virginia’s sister, full of fifth grade angst, clutched a bag of corn chips and told Virginia that she would be taking dominion of their shared bedroom with the door closed, and to grab anything she needed now.

Virginia changed out of her school clothes into her favorite pink pajamas with red polka dots and was thusly kicked out, reminded, “Don’t use the stove.”

Her first stop in this state of semi-home-aloneness was her mom’s bathroom. She opened the drawer she liked to go through whenever she was able to, where a smattering of lipsticks and blushes sat, covered in each other’s dust and grease. She screwed up each lipstick, smeared it over her lips, inspected herself, and then wiped it off with a piece of toilet paper. She did this until she’d created a considerable pile of red and pink-smeared tissue that she diligently flushed down the toilet.

When she got bored of that, she went to the fridge to get the entire package of deli turkey slices, still in its sealed plastic compartment, and a bottle of yellow mustard.

She flipped through channels, taking a slice of turkey every so often, squeezing a line of mustard down it, folding it twice, and shoving it in her mouth.

She watched the end of an episode of Unwrapped. Spiderlike mechanical fingers twisted bean-and-cheese burritos into bundles before they rocketed into a deep freezer and tumbled into red-and-yellow plastic sleeves. The credits rolled and she flipped from HGTV to QVC until something stopped her in her tracks:

A long, liquid leg through the slit of a sequin magenta dress, punctuated by a pale purple stiletto. A thick, flytrap voice cooed, Why don’t you do right, like some other guys do?

The high-femme goddess before her was, at least by name, a Rabbit, but had no ears to speak of. Instead, Veronica Lake waves of Auburn hair swayed in time with each hypnotizing ripple of her hip, each long-fingered wiggle of satin, lavender gloves.

She sang, Get out of here, get me some money too.

Virginia’s jaw went slack, her grip loosened and the line of mustard she’d just applied down the center of a turkey slice slopped onto her lap, forever marking her pink pajamas with the feeling that oozed over her that day.

 

“Babe,” Piggy gasps, giggling and looking at her partner with pure wonder.

“Like I said,” Jessica would wink, if she could wink, “could have been anything in heels.”

***

The week between Virginia’s training shift and her first Saturday working moved slowly. A blizzard came and went, and the apartment felt a little smaller with each passing day. She and Olive sat on opposite sides of the navy blue couch, avoiding their email-inbox-add-on to-do lists. Instead of pitching copy for bagged, nutritional-yeast seasoned rice cakes, Virginia scrolled the Sephora website for hours, adding and deleting things from a perpetual cart, legs absentmindedly entwined with Olive, who couldn’t see her screen.

For months now, they’d stopped having sex without acknowledging it. Olive had a growing recoil when Virginia reached to touch them, even in the smallest of ways, pulling the covers up to their chin, and muttering, with that familiar lack of eye contact, “Sorry.”

Virginia knew, that pale blue thread of love still intact, that it was gender stuff. When they first met, it kept the two of them up talking until three in the morning, both swirling with terror, giddy with possibility. Olive with their newly short hair, Virginia with hers grown out over her shoulders for the first time since she was a kid, metallic blue slicked over her eyes for her shift at the library where she knew she’d see her new crush. A revelatory feeling that opened her straight down the middle: she didn’t want Olive to think she looked tough, or like she didn’t give a fuck. She wanted Olive to think she looked pretty. There was something important about it specifically being Olive. That time was electric with newness, finding the space in themselves that contrasted to the space in the other. A door in what they both were told desire would feel like—a clinking curtain of deep red beads between them and the rest of the world.

When they first started hooking up, Virginia laid herself across Olive’s grey and white striped bedspread, propping herself up on her elbows and sticking out her tits.

“Do you want to fuck me with a little more?”

This was a practiced line, but one she hadn’t used yet on Olive. She’d pictured Olive with a cock on many times since they started working together, touching herself in the shower between lathering rounds of strawberry-scented soap.

She imagined Olive would be shy about it, adjusting buckles carefully and dutifully, and she imagined how she’d climb on top of them and ride slower than both of them wanted until Olive got breathy and desperate. She imagined riding faster, pressing the base of the cock into Olive and asking if they wanted to come inside of her. All of this was, of course, theoretical.

“More fingers?”

“Do you have a strap?”

Olive’s face turned bright red, and instantly, a pit of shame opened in Virginia’s stomach.

“I don’t. Do you?”

Virginia curled her body inwards, hands in her lap, the realization that there was so much the two of them didn’t yet know about each other washing over her.

“I do. At my place. I honestly don’t love it, being on the giving end, but it’s not off the table.”

Olive sat up and pulled their knees into their chest. “I, uhh—”

“It is not a must. At all.” Virginia assured, now also sitting upright, feeling terrible that she’d brought something unwelcome into the room.

“I’m so sorry—” she started.

“No—” Olive cleared their throat, “No it’s all good, I mean, this is good for us to talk about. I think that for now, I want to be able to feel you.”

Virginia reached to lay her hand over Olive’s, wanting to say more in response to this, but feeling like she’d already said too much.

“Totally, thank you for telling me,” she replied. With this, Olive laid back onto the pillow and patted their chest as a cue for Virginia to lie there, which she did until they started kissing again. They kissed slow and careful, Virginia holding her teeth back from grasping Olive’s lower lip.

Their courtship was like this: nervous, but always, Virginia hoped, on the precipice of unlocking something big and sweeping. And then at some point, lost between the navy couch cushions, it got smaller.

 

“Okay, but were they even compatible to begin with?” Piggy rolls her eyes, half-circles of painted-on blue eyeshadow momentarily disappearing.

“I mean, are we going to talk about Kerm—”

“We aren’t. Thank you. Chop chop! Back to the story!”

 

And then Virginia’s second shift came.

She got ready listening to Lana, moving rose-scented oil through her hair and braiding it neatly. She lined her eyes, slicked on magenta lip gloss, and sprayed perfume over her black chef’s coat. Olive called bye, babe without looking up from their computer screen.

Virginia entered the walk-in, pushing through the curtain of thick plastic strips. The Farm Roast shelf was stocked full of turkeys double or triple the size of the birds they were made from. She reached for one that looked like it had a red, herb-specked crust on it and felt the sheer heft of it in her arms, searching for the “Smokehouse Turkey” label she was instructed to look for, when out of the corner of her eye, there was a flash of pale pink.

Alone on the store-brand shelf, standing tall and mythic: a tall, rectangular prism of dusty rose, wrapped in a red netting. Virginia shoved the turkey back on the shelf, and approached it.

Ham (Water Added)

The black label was clear as it needed to be: tall yellow letters in block font, small red text declaring “11.25 lbs.” As she got closer she could see that there was a layer of clear plastic shrink-wrap under the red netting, which she cautiously slipped a finger under, pulled back, and let go. It snapped back into place like a showgirl’s nylons.

The ham was a perfect block with rounded corners pink all the way through with splotches of white and lighter pink that speckled the surface but didn’t seem to change the uniform, pristine texture of the meat.

11.25 pounds. She imagined the weight in her arms, cool and contained, the meat pressing the red plastic netting into her skin, hurting just a little. If she held it long enough, she imagined the criss-cross indent left behind would take minutes to fade.

She shuddered, rubbed her lips together, lip gloss solidified by the walk-in’s chill. When she exhaled, her breath lingered in the air like animated cigarette smoke.

Just then, the door burst open and one of the deli guys stepped into the freezer, hopping back when he saw Virginia.

“Shit, you scared me.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

He nodded slowly at her, retrieving a leg-sized tube of salami from the freezer shelf without needing to read the labels. Virginia stood next to the ham, red faced, hands rigid at her sides.

“You good? You new?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m doing the table for Farm Roast. Do you guys have the Smokehouse Turkey?”

Cradling the salami in his arms, the deli boy motioned his goateed chin towards the shelf where Virginia already knew the multi-turkey-turkey was.

“Thanks.”

He winked and nudged the door open with his back, “Sure, sure. You let me know if you need anything.”

Virginia scooped up the turkey, waited until she knew he was back at the counter, and exited the freezer.

The hours passed and Virginia refilled the bin with ice, put on plastic gloves and handed out folded slices of turkey stabbed with tinsel-crowned toothpicks. She watched mouth—mustached and lipsticked and crooked-toothed and gap-toothed—take the folded offering, the body of some bird-footed god, and masticate the glossy slices of meat.

The smell of the sliced meat intensified with each passing hour, dead and sweet and more potent the longer it sat in the tray, sweating an oily sheen.

Virginia thought of the ham, that glorious, unending pink. She was wetter than she had been in a very long time.

***

That night, Virginia dreamt she was in Jayne Mansfield’s Hollywood mansion. As she got closer to what looked like pink faux fur walls, she could see that it was actually a thick, gooey substance piped on in fur-like peaks. She reached out her tongue, and the sludge was familiar: the center of a not-yet-formed chicken nugget. Centered on the wall, glued on with the same meat paste, was a black velvet painting of Miss Piggy in fuchsia feathers and pearls. In the center of the room: a heart shaped bed. And in the center of the bed: Lady Gaga just-barely draped in slices of fat-veined red meat.

Kneeling at the edge of the heart-shaped bed was a second Lady Gaga in Joe Calderone drag, taking a long, devastating drag from a candy cigarette, looking up Gaga’s meat skirt and panting like a dog.

Virginia looked down and realized that she was wearing a black, lacy leotard with a transparent butcher smock over it. The thick plastic of the smock was slightly yellowed.

Joe and Gaga started furiously making out, Gaga’s meat bra squelching against the body of herself in drag, staining Joe’s white t-shirt.

Virginia turned to give them some privacy, but then something splattered against the skirt of her smock. Meat-dress-Gaga with a shit-eating grin, her hand in an industrial-sized bucket of potato salad. Joe picked up a second bucket, this one full of egg salad, and pelted Gaga in the face. Creamy yellow sludge slid over her red lips and down her chin. Virginia reached a hand into her smock pocket and found a fistful of ground beef, so she made a snowball and hit Joe smack dab in the heart. He clutched his chest dramatically and staggered backwards, making egg-salad-covered-Gaga giggle.

Virginia went into the bathroom to look for a towel, pushing through a bead curtain of Vienna Sausages. And there before her, in a heart-shaped bathtub, was the ham from the storage fridge, still in its red fishnet casing. It leaned languidly against the back of the tub, covered in frothy bubbles. Slick skin ever-slicker with bathwater and body oil.

Virginia slid off her butcher’s coat, and, in the black leotard with beef residue still on her palms, dipped a toe in the bathwater.

***

She woke up to Tofu’s wet, chicken-scented nose meowing in her face. Olive’s side of the bed was empty, the whir of a blender in the kitchen. She pawed for her phone and saw a text from Debbie.

U want shift today @ 2? Karen’s son has flu.

She didn’t know who Karen was and hadn’t yet showered off yesterday’s meat smell but immediately replied yes.

Great. Debbie responded immediately. Honey Ham. Thnx. Send timecard.

In the shower, Virginia shaved her entire body for the first time in recent memory. She lathered the raspberry-scented shaving cream, long neglected behind a graveyard of half-empty three-in-one bottles. She moved the razor over her legs twice, until they were slick and rubbery, dotted with tiny red pinpricks.

She put on deep red lipstick and made a beeline for the door, muttering, “I got called in for another shift. I need to take the car.”

“It’s Sunday.”

Virginia turned to face her partner, bundled in a beige waffle-knit blanket, drinking something green and globby from a mason jar. Olive made direct eye contact, eyes flickering to Virginia’s lips.

“I know.”

“You said just Saturdays.”

“I know.”

“You look—”

“It’s just lipstick.”

“You know you don’t have to…”

Olive trailed off. Virginia felt a wave of anger, sharply interrupted by a wave of guilt.

“I love you. I’ll be home five latest.”

 

They eventually bought a strap, a year or so into the relationship.

One night, when they were not only still having sex, but watching porn together, Olive was more turned on than they expected by a strap-on scene. Virginia desperately tried to mask her glee as they made plans to go to the sex shop the next day. Olive picked out a pair of navy blue briefs that a dildo could be slipped into through a rubber loop in the fabric-covered crotch area. They quickly, bashfully selected a six-inch, “flesh-toned” dildo, eyes shutting down Virginia’s question about if they should get a bigger one.

When they brought it home and laid it on the bed, Olive visibly recoiled.

“Its— so…”

“I told you we didn’t need to get a realistic one.”

“It’s not that—don’t you think it’s like, really—”

“It’s really pink,” Virgina conceded.

“It’s really, really pink.” Olive said slowly and somberly.

The briefs went in Olive’s sock drawer, and the dildo in Virginia’s. She forgot about it most of the time but every so often her hand brushed it when reaching for a pair of socks.

Once, when Olive was at their parents’ house, Virgina slipped on the harness briefs and pulled the pink dildo through the rubber circle that held it in place. She looked in the mirror and shuddered, then laughed—it was objectively hot, but decidedly wrong. She didn’t want it outside of her, she wanted it inside. She wanted to pull herself onto the smooth pinkness of it, to feel her body melt with that perfect, impossible texture.

 

It occurred to her now, standing in the middle of the deli aisle while the harsh blue light beat down, that it was the same color as the ham, and had the same slick, supernatural quality.

She looked down at the slices of meat before her, not her ham, but a honey-roasted variety that hadn’t sold as well as anticipated over the holidays. She slicked her lips together, feeling the drag of dried-out lipstick.

“Hi, would you like to try the new Farm Roast Honeycomb Ham?”

(It wasn’t new—in fact, it was one of their oldest products.)

“Hi, would you like a free sample of Farm Roast Honeycomb House-Roasted Ham?”

(There was no “house,” and this ham certainly wasn’t roasted in the back of the store.)

“Hi there, could I get you a free sample from Farm Roast? It’s the new Honeycomb Ham—that perfect sweet and salty mix. Here, let me get you a good piece.”

 

Virginia was good at it, though she didn’t need to be. There was no increase in pay if she moved ten pounds of ham versus a half a pound, or if people bought from her table or not. But they did buy it, they bought a lot of it, whatever she was handing out that day.

Debbie took note of how much sample product she was going through and asked if she wanted Saturdays and Sundays for the foreseeable future. Each shift was a different meat, texted to her in advance. And each shift meant a visit with her ham.

She thought about it constantly: pink under the criss-cross of elastic red. She found excuses to pop into the deli fridge to “refresh her memory” on some other product’s ingredient list, stealing sidelong glances of the pink obelisk, heart pounding, cheeks flushed.

At the end of her shifts when it was time to return the “whole” product, she’d linger in the fridge, tracing her fingers over the netted casing. Cold and almost sharp, under that a layer of thin plastic, and under that, the distinct give of flesh.

The loudspeaker blared, waterlogged by the walk-in’s insulation.

“Show her you care this Valentine’s Day with a dozen cut roses from our garden center.”

She reached into the pocket of her black chef’s coat, pulled out a tube of lipstick, and twisted it up. The red bullet was slick and slanted with new use—a slight melted sheen from the body heat she’d created on her shift. She slicked it on with deft muscle memory, creating a heart-shaped curve on her top lip.

She peered through the foggy window to the deli boys behind the counter, one urgently focused on spinning a whole roast beef through the slicing machine, one dutifully stirring a gallon bucket of potato salad.

She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the surface of the ham. The plastic was starkly cold against her lips. Her lipstick printed onto the criss-cross of red plastic mesh, pigment clinging to each polymer fiber, a red the tiniest bit lighter than the lipstick that now stained it. The thin skin of plastic under was smeared with crimson, the pink glowing steadily through the film.

 

Virginia got in the car, pulse racing, and wiped the lipstick off with the back of her hand, then rubbed the red into the black fabric of the Subaru seats until it disappeared. Little daggers of hail flung themselves against the windshield, splattered, and stuck.

It was the third February with Olive, Virginia noted, windshield wipers flinging clusters of gooey ice one way, then the next, engine groaning to life.

I should bring up Valentine’s Day, she thought.

She could bring up that she took a shift, but that she hadn’t realized it was on Valentine’s Day. This would be a lie of course, but a lie with room to go back.

When Virginia got home, Olive was standing in the kitchen with their shirt sleeves pushed up, hair brushed over to the side, reddish in the kitchen light. Virginia felt an old buckle in her knees, a copper coin down the well of guilt in her stomach.

Two veggie burgers hissed gently in a pan, and Olive slid a paring knife through a tomato, applying just enough pressure to cut the skin without wrinkling it. Virginia came up behind them, unbuttoning her chef’s coat and throwing it to the floor, lipstick still in the pocket landing with a clink.

“I didn’t know you were cooking tonight, babe.”

“Surprise,” Olive pressed a careful, contained kiss to Virginia’s cheek.

Virginia wrapped her arms loosely around Olive’s waist, cheek pressed into their back as they flipped the patties of tangled soy and pea protein, barely salted and peppered.

 

The position was so familiar. She could still feel the two of them in Olive’s college apartment, Virginia in one of Olive’s high school track t-shirts and a scrunched down pair of purple socks. Everything new—open and ready to be filled with a slow blossoming love. Virginia’s arms around Olive’s waist with giddy, urgent tightness.

They’d fucked each other awake and then Olive carefully, strategically crushed a block of tofu into little crumbs, telling Virginia that she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this and scrambled eggs.

Virginia peeked into the pan at the pale, wet pile of jagged protein and thought, I don’t want to eat this.

But then she looked at Olive, hair mussed with sleep, eyes slightly downturned, shoulders broad and slumped forward. Kind and soft and, when she squeezed their hip, crumbling into the most perfect and soft pieces, sighing and turning around to be kissed.

I could eat you, she thought. For every meal.

 

Now, Olive, with those same softened shoulders turned, slid the burgers onto whole wheat buns and removed Virginia’s hands from their waist.

They cleared their throat, “I’ve been thinking—”

Virginia’s stomach dropped.

She waited, watching Olive’s eyes close, breath stick in their throat.

She knew this moment, this slowness before Olive got the strength to say something they didn’t want to say, or felt scared to say. She knew to let the silence hang soft, to squeeze Olive’s hand and be there, feet rooted, for whatever followed.

So she stood, and she squeezed, and they both were silent.

Olive finally spoke, “You’re not working Sunday, right? Valentine’s Day.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

***

When Virginia was in elementary school, her mom took her to the grocery store to pick out valentines to give to her classmates. There were rows and rows of Ninja Turtles and Spongebob faces and heart shaped, peanut-butter filled patties with lines to write Ryan or Rachel or Leon or Lily. Virginia stood and stood, looking all the way up to the top shelf, then down to the bottom shelf, then straight to the middle.

Her mom watched her eyes settle on the individually wrapped chocolate-covered marshmallow hearts, which were sold in luxuriously-priced backs of two, and she shot her a don’t even think about it look. She settled for the classic red heart-shaped lollipops. Clear wrappers with opaque rectangles on the plastic where she could write her classmates’ names. They bought two packs of fourteen, enough for each student in Virginia’s class and a few left over.

That night, as she sat at the kitchen table with a fine-point permanent marker copying the names from the printed class roster onto the lollipops, she knew she’d keep them all for herself.

When the teacher invited any students who brought in valentines to get them from their backpacks, Virginia, ever quiet and shrinking into the back of the classroom, stayed in her seat, knowing the bag of lollipops sat in her backpack.

She ate them slowly over the rest of the school year. One on a day that she walked home without her sister, another on a Sunday afternoon in the dark of her bedroom, covers pulled over her head. Red Dye #40 and cherry flavor burnt slow and sweet over her tongue, her cheeks pink with shame and rapture.

***

On Sunday—Valentine’s Day morning—Virginia slid herself out of Olive’s arms and kissed the side of their cheek. She waited for Tofu to turn over, fangs bared, and give a signature screech, but he did not, instead curling into Olive’s side.

Virginia put on her chef’s coat and, eyes heavy with sleep, chest beating quick, grabbed the tote bag she’d hidden in the sock drawer a few days before: red fishnets, ancient bottle of vanilla body spray, ham-pink dildo.

She planted a kiss on Tofu’s warm head, dander itching her nose, and then an even softer one on Olive’s cheek.

“Where are you going, baby?” Olive grumbled into the pillow.

“I’ll be back.”

She got in the car and drove to Stop & Save.

 

Through the gas-station window, sunlight bleeds warm and yellow in the frozen Sunday morning air. Jessica and Piggy watch through lead-paint-dotted, ever-knowing eyes as Virginia puts out sample product and distributes toothpicks of turkey.

Turkey passes through the lips of last-minute rose shoppers, settling for weird orange tulips at the last minute.

A gaggle of teenage girls in fuzzy pajama pants buying bagel bites and ruffled potato chips, leading their bathrobe-clad friend with mascara running down her cheeks by the hand.

A young mother working the register, babysitter arranged for 7 PM and a dress laid out for a date arranged by a friend of a friend. She isn’t particularly excited.

Two men with well-trimmed beards eye-fucking each other by the meat freezer, eventually setting on a pound of ground sirloin and joining hands on their way to the checkout line.

All the while, the ping-ping-ping of Virginia’s phone.

This upsets Piggy more than Jessica, who seems to know that the whole thing, hard to watch as it is, is inevitable.

 

She just took it. Simple as that.

When her shift was over, Virginia walked into the deli fridge to put back the big turkey. She found the ham, still marked with her lipstick, and took it into her arms, tilting it so the nearly twelve-pound weight of it pressed against her chest. When she exited the walk-in, the teenage boy working the deli counter wrinkled his eyebrows at her, and Virginia just motioned with her chin at the chef’s coat she still wore.

As the automatic doors parted on either side of her, an involuntary giggle slipped out, and she closed her mouth around it. The weight of the ham made her arms burn gloriously as she hugged it close, dashing across the parking lot.

She got into the car and turned the key in the ignition, glancing at the ham in the passenger seat, sweat prickling her hairline. She hadn’t thought it through this far.

She drove to the gas station across the street, around to the side of the building, empty and shielded by barren trees.

Virginia looked to either side of her in the broad sunlight, terrified and electrified, unbuttoning her chef’s coat to reveal the lacy bra underneath. She pushed back the front seat of the car, wiggled off her leggings, and slowly slid on the pair of red fishnets.

She slanted the rearview mirror window toward her face and dragged lipstick slow over her dry lips, red waxy bullet catching on the crusty parts. She swiped again and it slid slick this time, red on red.

Her thighs felt heavy and solid with a warm, raspberry jelly. A melting pulse quickened where she pressed her legs together, little raised mounds of soft flesh pushing through the red fishnet-partitioned sections of stockings.

She pulled the ham from the passenger seat into her lap. Heavy and cold. Pink as anything has ever been, as anything will ever be.

And then, with a singularly thrilling motion, she anchored a bit of the red fishnet casing under her red-painted nail and tore.

The sound—pop pop pop—landed one drop at a time in the center of her body.

Then came the plastic, another swipe of the nail and, far sooner than she meant to, Virginia felt the slick wetness of the ham’s surface.

She gasped, tore more urgently at the plastic, and pressed two fingers into the pink expanse suddenly laid bare before her. There was some resistance at first, the gelatinous material of the ham shocking the underside of her fingernails. She pressed, then pressed a little more, and the flesh parted, her fingers entering.

She placed the pillar of ham tight between her thighs, forgetting about the dildo in the tote back, and leaned against it with her entire body weight.

Somewhere deep in her stomach, a boxy television set flickered to life, a femme in a red dress singing:

Why don’t you do right, like some other guys do?

Virginia pressed her lips to the bare surface of the ham, and then her teeth.

Her mouth filled with salt, her hips buckled.

 

In the broad daylight, sun filtering through heart-shaped gel clings, the ceramic Jessica Rabbit looks dreamily at the Miss Piggy Pez Dispenser to her side. There is the rest of the world, but right now it doesn’t matter.

Jessica’s voice is low as she turns to her beloved and admits, “It wasn’t always pretty, the versions of me I had to be before this one.”

Piggy leans into her, lollipop-red heart on the verge of bursting, “I’m so grateful for all the versions. For every me I had to be, for every you you had to be.”

“Oh, my love,” Jessica’s voice cracks sweetly.

And then Miss Piggy opens the space between her pearls and her chin, extending a brand new pink pellet.

A camera pulls back on the gas-station window, and a superimposed red heart frames the scene. The red heart closes over the scene, a new pink heart outline opening around it, then filling in the screen. A red heart, then a pink one, then a red one.