“One night,” I say, “I didn’t have a whole lot going on, so I sat down with the dictionary and memorized all the q words that don’t have a u following the q as well as every unusual two-letter word there is. You’d be surprised how helpful an encyclopedic knowledge of two-letter words can be when you reach the endgame in Scrabble. You almost never get stuck with any letters that way. Well, unless you’ve got a v.”
“I can’t even begin to tell you how odd that strikes me,” Carla says, “and yet somehow, you make it sound so reasonable.”
I’ve always been your basic level of competitive when it comes to anything, well, competitive, but glancing at the score on Helen’s piece of paper and seeing how sour Carla looks, when I’m up a few turns later, even though I have the final a in my possession, I neglect to go for the obvious with flautist—triple-word score plus 50 points bonus since it’s seven letters or greater; I mean, there’s no point in spiking the ball in the end zone. Instead, I do something completely uncharacteristic. I take a dive with a simple to. Truthfully, it gives me a bad feeling inside. I mean, historically speaking, guys have forfeited entire professional basketball careers by point-shaving—and now here I am point-shaving at Scrabble, of all things.
But really, it doesn’t matter how many dives I take. When the game is over, I still beat my closest competitor, Helen, by a hundred points.
And still there is no gloating here.
“Well, that was fun,” Carla says, pushing away from the table. She stretches, rises, yawns. “I should probably get going.”
“No!” Helen says, looking disappointed. “Stay! You’ve only just got here.”
I give my watch a surreptitious glance. It’s nine o’clock. Seriously? She’s only been here two hours? Still, remembering Alice’s wisdom on etiquette as received by me through Billy, I add my voice to the objections with, “Stay. Stay at least one more hour.”
To make an even three, we just need one more hour—that’ll cover us.
“What’ll we do then?” Carla says, settling back down.
As tempting as it is to suggest another round of Scrabble, I refrain. Hey, I talked Carla into staying—I did my part. Let the women figure out what we should do next.
As they’re figuring, I think about the slight injustice of the situation. For the last two Fridays, Helen has not only beaten my friends at poker, she’s positively fleeced them, yet no one is a poor sport about it. They stay, they play, they lose, they lose some more. But here, I beat Carla at one measly game of Scrabble—there’s no money on the line and I don’t even play my best game—and yet she still gets all pouty face about it. Is that fair?
“…or we could go out,” Helen suggests.
Wait? Did someone just say out? You mean we can get away from the hell this evening has become—three of us eternally locked around my dining room table, like some suburban social version of Sartre’s No Exit? We can get away from this table, break the cycle and go out?
“But what would we do?” Carla says.
“I don’t know,” Helen says. “What do you want to do?”
Who cares what we do? We’re going out! Let’s go out! We could do anything—
“When I was driving over,” Carla says, “I saw a bar on that really busy street—you know the one I’m talking about?”
“Main Street?” Helen provides.
“Right. That’s the one.”
Who cares what street it’s on? Anything other than this would qualify as amazing.
“There was a sign out front,” Carla says. “It says every Saturday night they have—”
Anything! I’ll do anything—
“—open-mic karaoke.”
—except that.
“That’s fantastic!” Helen says.
No, it’s not.
I thought we were past this karaoke stuff. I mean, I was hoping.
“Johnny?” Helen says, expectantly, hopefully.
Oh, geez. I hate to wipe that smile off her face. I know how much she loves karaoke—believe me, I know—and maybe if it was just going to be her and me going, I could maybe just barely make it through one more night of it. But adding Carla into the mix? Karaoke and Carla? I just can’t bring myself to do it.
“You know,” I say, “fantastic as it sounds, I just don’t think I’m up to karaoke tonight. I think I may be”—cough, cough—“coming down with a little tickle in my throat.”
Carla raises an eyebrow at me. Something I said? The way I said something I said?
I ignore her.
“I know how you hate it,” I tell Helen, “when I’m at karaoke with you but won’t sing.” OK, that was like one time on the cruise ship, but still.
“Well, I don’t know if I’d use the word hate…” She looks so disappointed. “But if you’re not feeling well, I guess we could all just stay—”
“You know what?” I say. “There’s no point in letting me ruin the good times. Why don’t you and Carla go?”
“Without you?”
“Sure, I’ll be fine here.”
“Well, if you don’t mind…”
A minute later, they’re giggling their way out the front door.
“Hey,” I call after them. “If you stop for a snack afterward, maybe you could bring me back a slice of za?”
Yes! Yes! Carla’s gone, and I didn’t even have to make it through a whole three hours! Ye –
But Carla being gone, in this instance, means that Helen’s gone too. I’m not used to that. Oh, crap. What am I going to do with myself?
It’ll be fine, I tell myself. It’s fine.
I tell myself that while I wash the dishes, after first having another piece of strawberry shortcake with strawberries this time.
I tell myself that after calling up Sam to see what she’s doing, only to have her say, “I’m watching a repeat of the Stanley Cup Championship.” She’s watching hockey? Who watches hockey, especially in repeats?
I tell myself that as I sit on the sofa, Fluffy in my lap, as I flick through all the stations on the TV. Wow, it’s true what they say—all those stations and sometimes there really is nothing on.
“Geez,” I tell the cat, “when’s the last time I’ve had a free Saturday night to myself?” I think back over the year plus since I first started dating Helen; if there was a solo Saturday night in there, I’m not remembering it.
“I’m not used to being home alone without Helen on Saturday night,” I continue to the cat. “Hell, I’m not used to being home alone without her on any night. This sucks. I miss her. Don’t you miss her?”
Is it just me, or did the cat just shrug?
Fluffy looks at me and yawns, bored. I look back at the cat, bored too.
Then I get an idea.
“Hey,” I ask the cat, “you feel like getting out of the house for a bit?”
“Should you drive or should I?” I ask the cat once we’re outside.
Fluffy, at the end of his leash, stares back at me.
“It was a joke,” I say. “Let’s walk.”
It’s a nice night, the constellations up above twinkling over my small city, and the place I want to go to really isn’t that far. We walk and talk and before you know it, we’re standing outside of Chalk Is Cheap, a dive bar Sam and me used to frequent on those occasions when we wanted to be out shooting pool with people instead of in my basement, in other words before Helen came along.
“This,” I inform Fluffy, as I hold the door open and let him precede me, “is about to be the culmination of a lifelong dream.”
It’s still relatively early for a Saturday night at Chalk Is Cheap, meaning there are hardly throngs there yet for us to wade through as we make our way to the bar and find two empty stools side by side. I pick Fluffy up, plop him on a stool, and then settle on the one next to him.
The bartender—long blond hair that looks like she irons it, it’s so straight; midriff-bearing top with a diamond stud sticking out of her navel—ambles over. As she places both hands wide on the
bar, hip cocked, I grow a little concerned. After all, just because I’ve dreamed of doing this, as with so much else in life there’s no guarantee of dream aligning with reality. What if she kicks us out? I mean, it’s not like Fluffy’s a medical necessity, like a seeing-eye cat or something.
“What’ll it be?” she asks.
“A Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for me and a saucer of milk for me furry little friend here?” I ask tentatively. After all, if she’s going to kick us out, now would probably be the time.
Bartender eyes cat. Cat eyes bartender.
Then: “Cool,” she says—the bartender, not the cat—as she pushes away from the bar to fill our order.
Apparently, Fluffy is not considered to be a health-code violation. Or perhaps, maybe in a bar that prides itself on still having a few patches of threadbare carpet left that patrons have not puked on, ‘health code’ is a relative term.
A moment later, there’s a bottle of beer in front of me and an Old Fashioned glass with milk in front of the cat.
“Is that OK?” the bartender asks, nodding at the Old Fashioned glass. “We don’t really have a whole lot of call for saucers around here.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
“Does he want ice? Because I wasn’t sure how he takes it.”
“It’s fine,” I say again. “He’s not particular.”
The thing is, as I take a long pull on my beer, it’s more than fine. Except for the part where I was tentative in placing our order, this moment is everything I’ve ever dreamed it would be. In fact, as I say “Cheers,” following which, I clink my bottle against Fluffy’s glass, and take another pull on my beer while he laps up some of his milk, I think that it is better than my dreams. This moment is awesome.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who finds this awesome.
“I never would have thought to bring my cat here.”
Who said that?
I swivel on my stool and see…breasts. Not wanting to be staring straight at someone’s breasts—I mean, they’re only like two inches in front of my eyes—I stare down. But down that way are short shorts, tight in the crotch, and incredibly long legs. That doesn’t feel right either, so I immediately swing my gaze upward, blinking as I pass the breasts so I won’t be directly eyeballing them again, and settle on the speaker’s head: pretty-enough features, spiky blond hair; definitely safer than breasts, crotch and legs.
“Can I buy you and your friend another round?” she offers, eyeing my wedding ring as my hand rests on the bar.
“Thanks,” I say, “but we’re good for now.”
Another woman’s voice comes at me from the other side of Fluffy: “Mind if I sit here?” Not waiting for an answer, from me or the cat, she sits down on the stool next to Fluffy. This one’s very skinny, not so much in a “I’ve dieted myself down to almost nothing” skinny, but rather, in a “I was born this way” skinny.
“Some guy over by the pool table was bothering me,” Skinny Chick informs me. “I could use a safe haven for a few minutes.”
“Be my guest,” I say magnanimously, raising my beer bottle.
I see Skinny Chick stare at the hand that’s raising the beer bottle, my left hand, more specifically at my wedding ring.
“Do you shoot pool?” Long Legs asks me. “I’ve got quarters if you want to play.”
“I do play,” I say. “But, you know, the cat.”
“I’ll watch him,” Skinny Chick offers. “Then, when you’re done playing her, you could play me and she could watch him. It could be like a pool-shooting, cat-watching threesome, only you’d never have to watch the cat or sit out.”
Tempting as that sounds…
“Another time, perhaps,” I say. “I think I’d really better stick with the cat. He’s been feeling very neglected lately.”
Long Legs and Skinny Chick (hands over hearts): “Awwww…”
And yet a third female voice: “Want to dance?” The person attached to this voice actually touches my hand, the one with the wedding ring, after she asks this. This one’s short and a little on the rounded side. I guess we’ll go with calling her Pleasingly Plump—but not as a pejorative. She just happens to be both plump and pleasing, like a really great pillow.
“The cat,” I explain ruefully. Really, I would never dance with her—I’m married to Helen and happily so—but it seems more polite to blame it on the cat.
“Know any good jokes?” Seriously? A fourth female voice? This one’s…oh, forget it. This one, we’ll just call This One, who continues with, “After the day I’ve had, I could use a good laugh.”
Do I know any good jokes?
It’s like all my life I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me this question. Oh, do I know some good jokes.
I start out small, with the kinds of jokes that almost any reasonable person would find funny—because it’s tough to know the humor tolerance level of people you don’t know—but as Long Legs, Skinny Chick, Pleasingly Plump and This One laugh appreciatively, and a couple more women wander over to see what the fuss is, I get more bold: nothing completely tasteless, you know, but maybe not completely tasteful either. I even venture into politics, always dangerous territory and especially so in an election year, but it turns out that like me, they’re all supportive of This Guy, as opposed to That Guy.
“This is exactly what I needed,” This One says during a break in the hilarity.
The break is not long enough to qualify for an awkward silence but it is just barely long enough for me to reflect: Just what is going on here? How did I wind up with—one, two, three, four, five, six—a six-pack of women hanging on my every word? It’s safe to say that, me being me, nothing like this has ever happened to me before in my life.
But there’s no time for me to analyze events, because now there’s a seventh woman, only this one’s like a compilation of the ones who’ve come before and as she bends over, cleavage practically in my face as she asks, “Can I pet your pussy?”—she did not just say that to me, did she?—it is finally too much for me. My response has absolutely nothing to do with my love for my wife, which is immeasurable and unending. It’s simply Pavlovian. Cleavage + ‘pussy’ reference = instant hard-on. This means that I am out of here.
On the walk home with the cat, there is time to analyze the evening.
“Does it make any sense to you?” I ask the cat. “Women asking me to shoot stick; to dance; thrusting various…body parts in my direction. When has that ever happened before? Usually it’s more like there’s an invisible cone around me that serves to tell the world: Men only; women, keep out.”
The cat looks up at me like, Dude, what are you obsessing about? It was just a few women. Anyway, it was me they wanted to pet.
“Yeah, I know, but—” I stop. “Hey, wait a second.” I look down at the cat. “Maybe it was you? Maybe you’re some kind of, I don’t know, chick magnet?”
The cat blinks back.
“I don’t know.” I start walking again. “I mean, they all saw the wedding ring and still they kept hanging out, some in an extremely friendly fashion. Could that be it—they’re all into married men? But no, that would be too sick, at least on what would appear to be a near-universal level.” More musing. “It is a puzzle.”
The cat doesn’t have any answers but that’s OK because the ensuing silence affords me just enough time to think and now what I’m thinking is:
It’s not just tonight. It’s been encounters with women, including Willow’s mother, the past several weeks, that have indicated a certain warming on the part of women toward me, a warming that’s never been there before, a warming that’s even extended—to a certain extent—to Alice. But how can that be? And then I think:
All my life, maybe I’ve only ever seen myself in the world through Alice-colored glasses before? Maybe, because of the model of womanhood Alice set, I only ever went after the kind of females who would only rebuff me? But maybe there were women out there who liked me, who would have wanted to be with me if I hadn’t a
lways been barking up the wrong tree—until I met Helen, that is—or expecting to fail simply because I’d always failed with Alice?
Hmm…
As I turn the corner from the sidewalk to the path leading to our front door, I glance at my watch: Midnight? Shit, was I at the bar for that long? I must have really been enjoying my own jokes.
The whole house is lit up—did I leave all those lights on? how environmentally unconscious of me—and as I reach my key toward the lock, the door swings open and I practically fall in.
“Johnny!” Helen says, then she throws her arms around me.
“Helen!” I hug her back, careful not to let go of Fluffy’s leash.
“When I got home and you weren’t here, I was so worried about you. I should have realized you were just out walking the cat, but when you didn’t come back…”
“That’s because where we walked was to the bar. We went to—”
“Wait a second.” The hug stops and she leans back in my arms, away from me. “You were feeling so unwell”—cough, cough—“you couldn’t go to karaoke with Carla and me…but you were well enough to go out drinking with the cat?”
Oh. Was I not supposed to do that?
Weekend Worriers: Sunday
You could say that Fluffy and I are in the doghouse.
Apparently, that thing where I went to the bar with the cat instead of to karaoke with Helen and Carla? Yeah, I was not supposed to do that.
“Where’s Helen?” Big John, seated in his wheelchair at the front door to his house, cranes his head to the left and the right of me, peering at the path behind me as I stand on the stoop. Maybe he thinks I’m hiding her back there?
“What?” I hear Aunt Alfresca’s voice from the kitchen. Her voice gets louder as she nears with: “Is Helen not here?” And now Aunt Alfresca’s in the doorway too, laptop tucked under her arm as she starts in with the neck-craning thing. Unsatisfied with the results of this futile exercise, her eyes narrow on me. “What happened? Did you two get in a fight?”
Isn't It Bro-Mantic? Page 20
