Tonight she said that’s your problem when I said I’m sure if I had showed her more affection and attention this past month she never would have become interested in this English guy. She had placed on the table a plate of different French cheeses she had picked up at the same store she bought the closest American bread to a baguette. I said I’ll get a knife. She said break it with your hands. I said it isn’t easy breaking butter with your hands unless the cubes are frozen solid and it also gets very messy smearing it on bread with your fingertips. She said she’ll get it but I said stay. I got up so I could get behind her. Her back was to the kitchen. I leaned over her from behind with the knife in my hand and kissed her lips. She let us linger there but when I tried opening her mouth it wouldn’t budge. Maybe you better go, she said. I spoke about passion. I forget whose. Maybe hers, mine, ours. She said must you yell? I was putting my shoes on at the time. I said when I speak about passion I sometimes have to do it passionately. And passion to me is the essential, Yeats said, I said. I told her that was in a letter he dictated or wrote. I know because I read it yesterday. And I know I read it yesterday, I said, because if I had read it the day before yesterday I wouldn’t have remembered the quote and if I read it today I would have remembered if the letter had been dictated or written. She said someone else once said. I said Shakespeare always said. She said Shakespeare isn’t the one she’s thinking of although one of his characters did say give me that man that is not passion’s slave, which she thinks applies to her here. My shoes, coat and muffler were now on. She said she forgets which play it’s from though it was in one of the textbooks she taught from last term, but let’s call it a night, Will, she said. I said I can’t and I’m not going to transform into the little boy she says I sometimes become when I don’t get what I want. Hamlet, she said. Act scene, seen act, I should have said. But I said my stomach hurts and I’m feeling awful and I don’t want to be alone tonight. She said well what do I expect her to do? I said her sleeping with me now would be a very considerate thing to do. She said not tonight. But you don’t even know, I said. Didn’t one time in bed you didn’t want to do it when I did and I stirred you up into wanting to and later you said you were glad I hadn’t let you fall asleep straight off? She said she’ll call me at the end of the week and we’ll meet. I quickly calculated. Today’s Monday. Four days. Too long. Maybe the end of the week meant Sunday to her. I said we can simply sleep beside one another if she likes, arm around arm, not even that if she doesn’t like. Just in the same bed if she likes. Or if she likes I’ll place a board between us if she has a board or a column of thumbtacks down the middle of the bed if she prefers. I said do you have any tacks? She said no. I said what if I just sleep on the living room couch surrounded by thumbtacks and broken glass and you in your own bed in your room? No that won’t do, I said. What have I come to? I said. What about the time she was so warm to me when I was sick? It started in a movie house. We had to leave before the picture was over but she said she didn’t mind in the least. Not if I was sick. She gave me medicine, a back rub. I had fever and chills. She tucked me in, made me mint tea. Paid for the cab. Untucked me, got in beside me. No clothes on. Oh what a sight. I wore her shirt. She turned down the electric blanket. Warmed me with what she for the first time out of many called her hot box body. And next morning I was well. The infamous ten-and-a-half hour virus had passed. Doctor Dana I said when she gave me tomato juice in bed. Just old Doc Dan to my friends she said when she took the glass. I don’t know if it was when she took the glass. I do know it was tomato. I think she that night stirred me up to doing what I originally didn’t feel like though I’m now not so sure. I think I said you’ll get sick. I think she said don’t fret about me. Did we come? Was it fun? Tonight I said passionately that I won’t speak about passion passionately anymore tonight or even dispassionately or even the word passion or passionate or passionately or passional or even passionless or — ateness or passion fruit or flower or week or — tide or play or Sunday or even pass in or passing or pass sing or passengers sing or passenger pigeons used to sing or any words like that. None. I promise. Heart my cross and die to hope. I’ll be passionless. No words even near to passion. Not even passive, passage, passport, Passaic, passe partout or even passe or partout.
By now I was at the door. At the door I said I’ll stay a while longer if she still wants to talk. I’d like to talk. Stay then, she said, but please not for long. So I again thought there was still some hope. What I wanted most was to get us both into bed. But that I already said. But that I still want to do. Just to get this horrid night through. Because tomorrow, she said, I think tomorrow we both have to go to work. But how am I going to get through work? Should I call in sick and lose a per diem day’s pay? She gets paid when she phones in ill. She teaches at college, I’m at junior high. She works one third of my hours and gets twice as much pay. Her work’s more than not intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying while I come home physically exhausted and emotionally and mentally drained every workday. But she takes the subway to work while I walk the three blocks to school and run home for lunch. I shut the door. Close call I think I thought then. And sit at her table without ever again removing my muffler, coat or gloves. In the movies we used to hold hands. Tonight I said I bet in a month this piggy finger of hers will have rings. In the street it was arms around waists and also hands. And one night at Ray’s place she fell asleep with her head in my lap. I petted and played with it as I would with a cat. Lights were out, logs were on. Later she said she didn’t much care for my friend and his girl but liked their fire. She also had this bad habit of bugging taxi men. You’re taking us too far out of our way she used to say. Shhh, I told her, better gypped than dead. She said in the cab I looked quite strong but wasn’t that brave. But then another time she spoke about my courage but said I lacked common sense. And then a third time she feared how physically weak I sometimes appeared and that—
“Beep beep yourself. I said beep beep it up your nose. I said the pedestrian’s got the right of way. Especially in a snow and sleet storm and even if the red light’s against him which it wasn’t. Oh don’t give me that hand over the ear you can’t hear. Go on, go on, before you miss your precious light. Then open your window a tinkle if you want to understand.” There they go. Waving goodbye to me as if departing for across the States. Bye-bye now mama and papa and all the relatives, afraid for a little chill. Your door’s open I should have yelled. Your back lights aren’t working, muffler’s hanging, fender’s dragging, tire’s flat or very short of air. I’m sure they thought he’s a crack. Nut job to say the least. Looks so dopey in his nitwit Pinocchio hat. La la — listen to your tape deck and stereo set. Turn up the heater some more you Cadillac people, cushy as you are in your own mushy homes. But what do I know what kind of people they are? Besides it was a Buick. Be by me now, sweet, and I wouldn’t rage at all. Die my heart and cross to hope. I’d laugh. Ya ya. Out loud. Ha ha. We’d nip from my mouthwash flask of gay sherry.