“Well then what am I supposed to do?”
“It’s weird how I’m not at all worried about that. You got your work, if I get to use loose terms. You got your goddamned voice, still. I know that for a undeniable fact. It comes at me forty times a day. I can’t get the fuck away from you. I get in the car and there you are. I feel like all the air I breathe you’ve already breathed.”
“….”
“Is cryin’ supposed to make me feel bad? ‘Cause it don’t. I don’t feel bad. I just feel like I need to get the fuck out, still.”
“You’re just drunk.”
“I’m a tinch drunk. No bones about it. But I’m sincere, here, ma‘am. No more fucking, no more love.”
“….”
“Take your robe off a second.”
“….”
“Take it off please I said.”
“Ow! God, what are—?”
“Thank you. Don’t worry, no rape on the horizon this morning, ma‘am. Look, mine comes off too, to be fair. Let’s just have us an objective look at the situation, here.”
“The curtains are open.”
“My analysis of the problem, if you want my analysis of the problem, is that you’ve just run out of holes in your pretty body, and I’ve run out of things to stick in them. My pecker, my fingers, my tongue, my toes…”
“Oh, God.”
“… my hair, my nose. My wallet. My car keys. So on. I’ve just run the fuck out of ideas. And this crying shit is starting to piss me off. I’m askin’ you right now to stop crying, ‘cause it’s not working, and it only pisses me off.”
“….”
“I’m getting pissed off.”
“Daddy…”
“Well there we go. Daddy. I think maybe he’s just what you need right now. You can help him fuck his lawn.”
“I hate you.”
“All I’m tryin’ to do is say fuck off.”
“I love you. Please. Here… see?”
“Now let’s don’t be misled here. What we got here is just purely perverse excitement at seein’ you upset. It’s just the reaction of a bored old soldier in the game of love. It’s not wonderfulness. And if we did do it, it’d be like two animals in the fucking forest.”
“….”
“You care to hear how many women I’ve blasted since we got married?”
“….”
“I’ve personally blasted over a dozen women since I married you. Since I committed to you forever and ever, I have fucking betrayed you, hundreds of times. There’s been times in the last year when I haven’t with you, ‘cause I was savin’ it up for somebody else. That ought to make you feel better about me taking a indefinite vacation.”
“Oh, God.”
“Have a Kleenex.”
….“
“And please don’t think I don’t know you’ve fucked around too. I know about you and Gluskoter. The only reason I haven’t kicked his ass is that it would just be too fucking boring. I know you’re not any better than me, don’t worry. But I’m talking about doing it on a grand, grand fucking scale.”
“How can you be so ugly to me?”
“ ‘Cause I’m bored, and when a man gets bored enough he gets like an animal. I’m an animal now, feels like. I’m sick of this shit, your work, my work, worryin’ about other people’s taxes, hearing about your Daddy’s fucking fertilizer strategies every day. I got to get out. When animals get so they feel trapped, they get ugly. You want to watch out for trapped animals, Melinda-Sue, I’m tellin’ you that for future reference.”
“I can’t take this. I don’t know what’s come over you.”
“It sure ain’t you, don’t you worry.”
“I think I want a divorce.”
“Christ, even my clothes smell like you.”
“There’s no way you can hate me the way you’re trying to convince me you hate me.”
“….”
“Oh, God.”
“… car keys…”
“….”
“One drink for the road and I’m gone, like a desert breeze.”
“You’re contemptible.”
“We out of ice again? Shit on fire. You eat ice, or what? Do you go around takin’ the ice out of here after I make it? If you do, just admit it.”
“Just leave, if you’re going to leave.”
“Let me just take a quick squirt, if I may. One for the road.”
“Wait. I think you shouldn’t go.”
“Say please.”
“Please.”
“Too bad. Fooled you.”
“You’re drunk.”
“….”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I think first I’m gonna go home.”
“You’re going to drive to Texas? Now?”
“No, you very very dumb woman. I said I’m going the fuck home. Home.”
“I love you.”
“Then you’re a confused little specimen.”
“And you love me.”
“You are an amazing woman if you think that’s today’s message. You amaze me, Melinda-Sue. I’d take my hat off to you, except I think I left it next door. And hey, you should probably either get out of the window, or else put something on.”
“….”
“No sense givin’ it away.”
/b/
A bright day, in very early September, everything dry, the sun an explicit thing, up there, with heat coming right off it, but a flat edge of cool running down the middle of the day. A jet airplane stood at lunchtime on Runway 1 at CHA, pointed west to go east, a red-ink drawing of a laughing baby on its side, guys with earmuffs and orange plastic flags torn at by the wind off the flatness taking iron prisms out from under the airplane’s wheels, the air behind the engines hot and melting the pale green fields through it, the engines hissing through the dry wind like torches, fuel-shimmers. The guys slowly waving the orange flags. The sun glinting off the slanted glass of the windshield, behind which there are sunglasses and thumbs-ups. One of the flag-guys is wearing a Walkman, instead of earmuffs, and he twirls with his flag.
/c/
“There is an ominous rumbling in my ears.”
“That’s the engine, right outside the window.”
“No, the engine is a piercing, nerve-jangling, screaming whine. I’m talking about an ominous rumbling.”
“….”
“My ears are going to hurt horribly on this flight, I know. The change in pressure is going to make my ears hurt like hell.”
“Rick, in my purse are like fifty packs of gum. I’ll keep shoving gum in your mouth, and you’ll chew, and swallow your saliva, and your ears will be OK. We’ve discussed this already.”
“Maybe I’d better have a piece now, all unwrapped and ready to go in my hand.”
“Here, then.”
“Bless you, Lenore.”
“A story, please.”
“A story? Here?”
“I’m really in the mood for a story. Maybe a story will take your mind off your ears.”
“My ears, God. I’d almost begun to have hopes of forgetting, what with the gum in my hand, and you go and mention my ears.”
“Let’s just have a minimum of spasms, here in public, on the plane, with a pilot and stewardess who’re probably going to tell my father everything we do and say.”
“How comforting.”
“Just no spasms, please.”
“But a story.”
“Please.”
“….”
“I know you’ve got some. I saw manila envelopes in your suitcase when I put stuff in.”
“Lord, they’re getting ready to take off. We’re moving. My ears are rumbling like mad.”
“….”
“Ironically enough, a man, in whom the instinct to love is as strong and natural and instinctive as can possibly be, is unable to find someone really to love.”