ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

FETCH | PAGE 2 | BACK TO PAGE 1

I sat on the couch that afternoon, concocting all sorts of dialogues where I announced to my wife that I could not live this way, that I had to leave. Awful, delirious, conversations where I always got the last word: Look what she'd done to me. She'd ruined me. I'd slaved my life away."

"Your life?" she'd say" You were at this job a year and half."

"Yes, but a year and a half of the best years of my life."

But when she came home, looking very professional (always looking professional) and lovely. When she came home, poured herself a glass of wine, while I imagined her screwing her boss—a fat Armenian who claimed to have written the original code for the Apple platform—I asked instead how her day had been.

"Fine. Yours?" she asked me.

"Lovely, I just finished some more of Ulysses."

"Yeah?" she asked looking into her wine glass.

"I just finished some of Ulysses."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I finished a two hundred and eighty pages of Ulysses and then went down to the park and talked to this little red head and then she and I walked up the street to that abandoned row house and I fucked her brains out."

She looked up at me. "I thought there was a hair in my wine. That's it honey. I was listening to you. I heard everything you said. The whole sentence in fact."

"You're right you're right," I say "You are so absolutely right. Who cares about Ulysses? Why bother? What's the point? Sure there is the undeniable fact of these things like Ulysses. These very important things. These events. Right? I mean there are these certain things that provide you with the opportunity to look back on your life at the end of it... assuming you have the good fortune to pause there on the threshold and you are not hijacked from this event by a lousy driver or a fibulating valve, these things give you the authority to say Ah. Ah, what a life well lived. Ah, the mountains to climb. Ah, the ludes! The acid! Ah, this beautiful brunette with the shaved pussy. Ah! Fucking her in the bathroom on a 727. Ah! Ah! Ah! How are you?"

"I feel like you look."

At that point, the dog came up to her and was licking the wine off of her finger, the finger she'd used to fish out the hair...it licked all around the finger. All the way around the finger, her ring finger in fact. "You were saying?" she asked me.

"Don't you think he's gotten the wine off your finger by now?"

She looked at the dog. "Are we going to do this again? I don't see the problem. What is the problem? He's just being affectionate. Your daddy's getting jealous, honey. He thinks your showing mommy too much. Attention."

Jeaneane, I thought. What was that? A pattern of incidents. A blind date and three unscheduled encounters in two days... a series of unrelated events that the gray matter in my brain fashioned into a destiny of some sort. And the sex? Patterns. A series of licks and pokes, of movements leading artfully or gracelessly to conclusion. Why are you letting him lick your finger?

"What do you care if he licks my finger?"

"I don't. You're right."

I took a sip of her wine. "It's just that you're so tactile. You know you must have touched Kenneth's elbow five times making a point the other night."

"You're fucking ridiculous." She dipped her finger in her wine and the dog was going crazy

"It's not like the dog is not a sentient being. I mean the way you crawl all over it is fucking grotesque."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Me?"

"Get some air," she said "Do something. You've become progressively pathetic. Willfully pathetic. What is this? It's like a test. Like just waiting for some act of unconditional love or something. Look at you curled up on the chair. With your socks on."

"Don't call me daddy."

She looked at me and took a swig of her wine, looked into the glass of wine. "You washed these didn't you? I can always tell when you wash something because it never gets completely clean. You're pretty lousy at washing the dishes."

"And closing the cabinet doors."

"Yes. And closing the cabinet doors and the front door, and hanging wet towels, and cleaning the hair out of the drain, and washing the sink, and keeping the bath mat from getting dirty, and rinsing the toothbrush, and rolling the dental floss into a tight little ball. It's really gross."

My head was very heavy. I tucked my chin. I caught the collar of my t-shirt and held it with my chin. "I'm sorry."

"Yes, you are," she says.

Kenneth says: "Ah you shouldn't listen to that stuff." Kenneth, my friend, he says: "Of course she says that stuff. You're married."

"No really. This is different."

"It's always different."

"Sure. That's helpful. I mean that is very perceptive."

"Face it. She can't stand you. She hates you."

"Good that helps. I feel much better now."

"She can't figure out why she married you."

"Thanks."

"There's no reason to get nasty," he says.

"No really."

"Really?"

"This is very upsetting for me to think about. I mean I have a hard time thinking about it. You know."

"Don't take it personally. It doesn't have anything to do with you. It's the institution. Be grateful, you're married. It's a humbling experience. Humility's good."

"You're right."

"Your wife is right. You are shit my friend. That's the humbling message of marriage. See the ring? A circle? That's the pattern of your thoughts. That's what that means."

"What a fucking life I've stitched together. I've got a loveless marriage, no career, and what else? A dog. A very good dog, one of the best in fact, so patient and caring and loving my dog. Good. But the rest. I don't want to go into the rest. There was nothing that the Rolling Stones ever sang that properly prepared me for this..."

"You gonna eat that?" He asks me.

"What?"

"The pickle."

"You want my pickle?"

"It's just a fucking pickle. Okay?"

I can taste his aftershave in my salmon. It is a bitter, soapy, full-bodied flavor that made me want to barf. "Fine take it."

He does. "Don't listen to me. I don't know what I'm talking about."

"No, I'm fine. It's this fish," I say. "I'm sorry."

Later from the couch, she elaborates on the theme of floss: "It was in your mouth asshole. In the little dark unclean spaces of your mouth."

"Sorry."

"Or, do you think I'm supposed to love THAT about you? Do you think I'm supposed to love every fucking THING about you. Because it's you."

"I'm gonna walk the dog."

"Walk the dog."

"I'm gonna."

I walked the dog. Out into the dark where a cluster of thirty somethings were cooing over dog breeds while their fullbreds sniffed each other's asses. An old man was at the far end of the park. A smudged figure in the half light of Philly, playing fetch with a beagle mix of some kind. My dog watered a little. The old man threw a red ball and my dog perked up. The beagle went after it, plunging blindly into some bushes to the right. The old man picked up the red ball, walked back to his previous spot. He lifted the ball. The beagle trotted back, sat at his heels. The old man threw this stick into the bushes at the far left end. The beagle plunged to the same spot at the right. It was fall, the sycamores were empty, and the windows of the houses were filled with the blue light of the evening news. I watched the old man and the disoriented beagle for a while and then I went in.

"I'm going to take a shower," I said at the door.

"You don't feel dirty. I hope you don't feel dirty on my account."

I walked into the bathroom concentrating on the extension of my head, went into the shower and stripped immediately while the hot water was working its way up the pipes and into the house, and into the bathroom. There's nothing like a good hot shower to loosen you up. It's so... something. Especially when it is good and hot. I like it hot. So hot that the chrome on the showerhead is good and fogged and there's an inch or two on the mirror when you step out. So you feel the way you look in the fogged mirror, which I did, drifting ever so swiftly away from the dirty green walls, when I heard a little rustling in the bathroom.

She had set up shop at the sink, the make-up bag in the bowl, the eyelash brush, and the lipstick on the lip. She was eagerly wiping the mirror, trying to get a look at herself. "Jesus," she waved the steam out of her face. "What the hell are you doing?" she asked.

I thought about saying something very funny. But I could think of nothing funny to say.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"It's hot."

"Yeah, no shit. It's hot I know it's hot. It's ridiculously hot."

"I'm cold."

"Well, that's a big fat softball. Since when did you start taking super hot showers?" She put her hand in the shower. She stepped back, put her burned hand to her mouth and looked at me. "Oh my god." There was a stranded half-yelp in her throat. Then she snapped it off.

I didn't move.

She paced the tight steamy space, saying: "You're a danger to yourself. You are a fucking menace."

We lived in a rented house and read the paper every Sunday, sitting on the front porch on a Sunday, in a nice domestic neighborhood, I thought.

I'll call the police," she said. "Don't think I won't call the FUCKING police."

...With a young immigration attorney and his wife, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts across the street, in a white house with an exact little lawn...

"Don't think this kind of thing is going to make me love you," she said. "Before we get into this any further. For the record. I DO NOT LOVE YOU!"

...And little hedges of wax leaf lugustrum, a little bed of violets, two crepe myrtle equidistant from the sidewalk, and roses and roses. It was a nice neighborhood, domestic, loving couples up one side and down the other.

"What are you writing?" I asked.

She was leaning over the sink and her nice silk blouse, this shiny red shirt, getting wet at the corner. It took a while because of the fog to see it. It said: I cannot live this way. I cannot live this way. I will not live this way. We must not live this way. Then it was gone, fogged over.

I thought about saying something very funny. But I could think of nothing funny to say. I thought about it, and thought until she was gone.



STORY CONTINUES | PAGE 3