Saturday Mornings

I used to work opens at this fast-food place. Every Saturday morning, 5 A.M. to 12 P.M. At a quarter after I'd get home and slip back into bed beside my girlfriend, who still hadn't gotten up. We'd make love before falling back asleep. My Clara was perfect. We’d been sharing a bed for months now and I looked forward to our Saturday mornings all week. We lived with a room-mate, an old friend of Clara's named Bruno. He was a cool guy, played the bass in a rock band.
This one day I got home from work and slipped into bed. Clara was warm and she smiled when I stroked her face. As we lay there, I analyzed her body and ran my fingertips over her skin. I noticed that today she had little black marks on her body. They were on her back, her arms, her breasts, even a bit on her face. Just these little dirty smudges everywhere.

“Clare, you've got black marks all over your skin."
“That's funny” she said. She rolled over and looked at her arms. “Hmm, I dunno what that is.”
“Hmm,” I kissed her forehead then wrapped my arm around her and drifted off to sleep.

The next Saturday, Clara had the same dirty smudges on her skin. She still said she had no idea what they were from. It was driving me crazy. Hadn’t she simply been lying in bed since I had last left her this morning? I began to come up with theories about what secrets she could be hiding, what she could be doing while I was away at work. She led a double life as a plumber and enjoyed to work naked, leaving marks from the dirty pipes all over her. Or maybe she would sneak off to the fingerprint lab at the police station and as a fetish asked the suspects to rub the leftover ink all over her body. But these theories seemed unlikely, so I went back to sleep.
That Friday night we went to see Bruno's band play. They sang songs about wolves and ex-girlfriends. It was actually good. When we got home, Clara told me this one song Bruno sang really moved her. That got me thinking about Bruno and what a great guy he was. He was someone you could count on and even though his talent made me a bit stiff with jealousy, I was happy for him.
The next morning was Saturday. I got cut from work and came home an hour earlier than usual. Bruno was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper.

“Hey man, good job last night, the show was great,” I said.
“Thanks, glad you enjoyed.”
“For real, I hope you make it. You deserve it, you know.”
“Thanks man, I really appreciate that.”

Before going to meet Clara in bed, I opened a pack of pop tarts. While I waited for the toaster to pop, I absent mindedly watched Bruno pour himself a glass of orange juice on the counter beside me. When he set the the glass down, I noticed something that made me feel sick: Bruno's fingertips. They were black. I looked back at the newspaper sitting on the kitchen table.

“Bruno…”
“Hmm..?” He looked at me sipping his juice.
“Do you always read the newspaper?”
“Yeah,” he said smiling “Every Saturday morning.”