Clicking. It’s the mice again, Josie is sure of it. Dancing on her toes she seizes a small cast iron pan from its rack above the cutting board. She bangs the thing heavily against the sink where, beneath, the mice skitter back and forth . They make more clicking noises as they scritch and patter, nosing their tiny snouts into places where they don’t belong. She’d put out poison, nestled in a 
tempting way between the “KaBoom!” kitchen cleanser and a hunk of aged gouda (mice liked cheese, right?) which was, by way of their ignorance, becoming moldy. She’d placed sticky traps under the pipes, lacing the edges with crackerjack crumbs, and yet nothing. The mice kept to themselves.
At present, Josie taps the pan against the tile of the sink, hoping to send shockwaves below. The cast iron pan is almost too heavy for her. Almost. She hears them pause a moment, waiting. She hits it again, flat-side. The sound reverberates throughout the kitchen. She pictures the disgusting little things wide eyed and terrified. She pictures their ugly little fur coats standing on end, their wiry tales curled up in fright. She bangs it again, this time so hard that one of the tiles, sea foam green and glossy, flies off the sink and clatters to the floor. She raises it to try again once more, listening to the frantic scratching as the mice run for cover, when the sound of the telephone interrupts her thoughts. She sets the pan down on the counter, eyeing the screened cupboard under the sink with a wary gaze, and answers the phone.
She has an older model phone, a dirty off-white color. It has one of those coiled cords that gets tangled and knotted when it’s hung up on the wall. Josie likes to talk and twirl it around her fingers like they used to do in the movies before phones stopped having cords. Her phone rings sharply, incessant. While most phones today play Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, she’s never felt the need to have anything but a piercing alert. She calls herself old-school. She picks the receiver up on the fifth ring, balancing it between her cheek and shoulder.
“Lo?” She says, and kneels to pick up the piece of tile that has broken off the sink. She still watches the grated cavity underneath it suspiciously.
“Josie.” Its Martin. His voice is good. Like yogurt. Soft, special.
“Hey, Martin.” She says, and seats herself on the cold floor of the kitchen, Indian-style. She winds the cord demurely with one hand and with the other examines the piece of tile.
“What are you up to, babe?” Martin is happy today. She can picture him reclining on his couch, watching day-time television, getting ready for his shift at Fed/Ex-Kinkos. He ships packages there, and wears a crisp white shirt and slacks with a shiny name tag. She often thinks un-holy thoughts about him in that crisp white shirt. Her stomach give a tug just as her mind wanders to it. She runs her tongue over her lips.
“Oh, cleaning… The mice are back under the sink.” She mentions this as a point of interest, plain and simple. If she thought he judged her because of the wayward rodents in her tidy little apartment she would have spared him the information. She didn’t because he didn’t. plain and simple.
There is a pause over the phone. “Babe, have you taken your Thorazine today?”
Thorazine. “That’s a generic name you know, Martin”
“Your chlorpromazine then”
She shakes her head, knowing full well he can’t detect her response. She hates when he asks that, was this why he called, to check up on her? “No” she says, adding edge to her voice to tell him that it irritates her the way he babies her. Josie’s mildly schizophrenic. They tell her you can’t be mildly schizophrenic, only are or are you are not schizophrenic. She feels she’d not ready to make that assertion yet.
Martin sighs into the phone. Whether or not he bothers her about her disorder. edit, minds her disorder. edit, slight disorder, after this many years of being together Josie is ready to make the claim that they do love each other. Therefore, she will remain patient. Turning the tile over in her had she slices her finger along the edge, making a small cut.
“Martin, I’m okay.” She sucks on her finger to staunch the tiny bead of blood on the tip. “I think I need some help re-caulking the sink”
“Josie, honey, go take your meds.”
She eyes the underbelly of the sink with mild apprehension. “Okay, but im telling you, these rats are remising.”
“I thought you said they were mice?”
“Tomato, tomah-toe”
Another sigh, another exhalation of breath. Martin’s thinking. He says: “babe, go take your meds. I’ll come by tonight after work, alright? I love you.”
Josie’s stomach flip-flops for the second time. “Okay” she says, which could mean anything. She stands and replaces the phone receiver on the wall.
She takes up the pan again and taps it along the counter-top, uncommitted. She walks to the kitchen cabinet, the one higher up where she keeps spices and dry goods. She sets the pan aside, reaches up and pulls down the small prescription bottle sitting near the cumin. She fumbles for a moment with the baby-proof cap and finally gets it loose. She shakes out a small tablet.
She discerns her palm, in it the fine dark orange disk. She flips it over, reading the inscription branded into the coating. She cocks her head a moment, considering. Then, she sidles to the sink cupboard, bends on one knee and opens the screening with great deliberation. She can feel their eyes on her, small and dark. Observing her, tolerating her. She reaches forward with the tablet, and sticks it squarely on the platform of one of the traps, a humble offering.
“Here, take it” she cooes, almost humming. “You’re remising.”
