She jumped on my lap. I gazed into her eyes, which were the color of a certain kind of shiny Greek olive you can get at a nice grocery store. She had a funny way of looking you right in the eyes.
Then she buried her face in my armpit. She thought I was her mother. I thought about how nice it was to be loved.
By the time I returned with Sandy’s chocolate mousse, I was surprised to find him dancing with my wife to one of the rocking tunes I had put on my special Sandy Baker Jr. playlist.
“The chicken was great, sweetie!” my wife said. She shouted, actually, because they had turned the song way up. It turned out to be a song they both loved very much, “Strobe Light” by the B-52s. Music had brought them together, at least for the moment. In the lyrical portion, the male singer and female singer promised each other that they wanted to “make love to you under the strobe light,” which rankled me in my ambivalent mood, as well as the promises from the male that he would kiss the female “on the pineapple,” though clearly it was the rhythmic fun that had arrested the listeners, and after all, the selection was of my own choosing.
“I had some!” screamed Sandy, referring to the chicken. “It’s okay once you pick all the mushrooms off! F***! Your wife can really dance!”
“I love to dance!” she confirmed.
“Do you guys go out dancing a lot?”
“No!”
“You should!”
“We really should! When we were first dating, we went out dancing all the time!”
If only all this merrymaking had commenced a little earlier.
The song ended. A ballad came on, Bobby Short. I was the only one who liked Bobby Short. They turned him way down. I picked at my chicken. I don’t know what they were doing, just horsing around like old chums. Who was playing whom? I couldn’t tell. Sometimes I think I might have a mild case of Asperger’s syndrome, or a severe case of Asperger’s syndrome.
“You should come hear my band.”
“When?” my wife said.
“Tonight!” said Sandy Baker Jr. “I’m going to have to get on out of here pretty soon. Sound check.”
“Hold it a second, hotshot,” my wife said. “We haven’t talked about the money yet.”
“Oh.”
His “oh” made it clear that he knew just what she was talking about. It was practically a confession.
“Oh!” he said again, changing his tone to something devious and jolly. “First let’s get these dishes washed. You don’t want to get up in the morning with a load of dirty dishes.” He started collecting items to wash. I put my arm around my plate, like a man in a prison movie.
“Dishwasher’s broken,” said my wife. “You’ll be sorry you volunteered.”
“He doesn’t look so broken to me. Well, maybe a little.” Sandy Baker Jr. was implying that I was the dishwasher in the family. I believe it was meant to be emasculating.
“If that is meant to be an insult, I don’t get it,” I said. Inside I thought, What’s wrong with a man washing the dishes? Nothing is wrong with a man washing the dishes.
“I like doing things the old-fashioned way!” said Sandy Baker Jr. to my wife, ignoring me.
Off they went, making little cheeping noises like little baby chickens in a chicken yard.
I guess they got the water all warm and sudsy and one washed and the other dried, and Sandy Baker Jr. was probably wearing an apron for some kind of disarming effect. Strangely attractive gloves of yellow latex were involved, I feel sure. Then my wife changed clothes and asked was I sure I didn’t want to go out and hear Sandy’s band.
I, on my third snifter of chocolate mousse, declined.
When my wife came home she smelled intoxicatingly of sweat, perfume, liquor, and old cigarettes. I was reclining on a chaise longue. If I may say so politely, she immediately sat athwart me and tried energetically to rekindle the old romantic spark in our marriage despite all the chocolate mousse I had inside me.
“What’s got into you?” I inquired.
The cats were certainly alarmed. It may be that they had grown unaccustomed to displays quite so strenuous, mellowing as our household had with the inevitable passing of the years.
I should stop and indicate that though I enjoyed the aroma of tobacco commingled with other sins that was making my wife’s skin so slick and hot, smoking is not cool, nor do I endorse it.
“What’s this?” my wife asked teasingly, from atop me. She withdrew from her shirt pocket (she was wearing a white shirt with a front pocket like a man’s) some twenty-dollar bills so damp and soft. There were three of them. Her pants had been shed by this point. I am not trying to be erotic, especially about my own wife. Having described her shirt, it seemed disingenuous to skip the remainder of her couture.
“I got his take of the door,” she said. “It was just forty dollars, the poor dingbat. I shook another twenty out of him. I doubt we’ll see any more of our money.”
“Did you…seduce him?” I said.
“Shut up, baby,” she replied.
At what I should term the highlight of our intimacy, my wife whispered into my ear, “You don’t really want our cat to be a movie star, do you?”
“No,” I said. “No, no.”
“You would miss her too much.”
“Yes!” I shouted.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” she said.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t matter at all.”
Marriage
“BANANA CREAM PIE. COCONUT CREAM PIE.”
“Chocolate icebox pie.”
“Lemon icebox pie.”
“Lemon meringue pie.”
A great deal of meaning lay in that conversation, an escalating clash, a conflict and resolution, an understanding and harmony, and none of it about pie. It is not worth explaining. You could never understand it.
Here’s an easier one:
“The mail hasn’t come yet.”
“It hasn’t come yet.”
“Huh?”
“I said the mail hasn’t come yet.”
“Huh?”
“It hasn’t come yet.”
“That’s what I said.”
But perhaps most to the point:
“My stomach is upset.”
“Well, you ate beans twice yesterday. Plus you are in a period of transition.”
Taco Foot
TWO MEN, HARRIS AND BURNS, MET FOR LUNCH.
Harris had a baby. He brought the baby to lunch.
Burns saw Harris getting out of the Harris family minivan. Harris had to put the baby on the ground for a moment, in its little car seat. Burns walked over to say hi. In the meantime, a woman happened to be parking her car next to Harris’s. Her mouth was very wide open. As if she were laughing with eagerness to kill the baby.
Harris picked up the baby in plenty of time.
It seemed to Burns, who did not have a baby, that babies were in constant and horrific danger. But he had noticed that people with babies, such as Harris, were nonchalant about it.
Harris and Burns went inside and stood in line. It was a good taco place, where you had to stand in line to order.
The cashier asked whether they were babysitting today.
Harris said that he babysat every day, by which he meant that this was his baby, and he took care of it every day.
Burns and Harris were not young men. Say their average age was forty-six. They didn’t comport or groom themselves like respectable gentlemen of that age. They were unemployed. One had brown hair and one’s hair was somewhat lighter than brown. They were ugly.