Enjoy (or not)
Bob blinked, the revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.
“But why?” he asked as his thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without cling free.
“I’m unhappy” Mary answered. This was true, she was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn. Of course she couldn’t say it like that because her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quickaaakk/ch@ung by mistake. “so you’ve been cheating on me?”
“Just the once” she answered with a lie, because in reality she was as easy as the TV guide crossword. “But that was just because you’re lame and you smell”. Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
“At least that’s true” Bob though, he already knew he was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something. He was bald as one of the Three stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo Bob took one last look at her as she stood up to leave the table, .her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten actually. Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser, her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
As Mary left she reflected on what had just happened. It was unlucky that her husband had interrupted her on that date, especially given the date wasn’t that memorable in any other way. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “second tall man”.
“What I really need” she thought “is someone to find that baseball player I had a fling with, for me”. She remembered when she first saw him, the baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas. His name was Jason McBride, that’s when it clicked with her, Bob’s friend John was a private eye who could find anyone for anyone. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. But John and Bob had met, they were friends, they were as good friends as the people on “friends”. Maybe John could help.
So that’s how she met me, John the Private Eye. Interrupting my lunch . She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. She caught you eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center, her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like the sound a dog makes just before it throws up. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan might just work. She was going to pay me to find her long lost love Jason McBride the Baseball guy. I looked at my lunch and my desk lamp, the sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747, the lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object. So I agreed to the job.
3 Days later I found Jason watching the sunset in a park complete with a pond and a single dandelion, the sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black. But it was cold, you know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in. And today was even colder than that. At first Jason was unconvinced, he didn’t want any more heartbreak, he spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. A little bit of persuasion from me however and she grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef, and then eventually he fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River. It was a beautiful moment, The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium and the little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
The arrangement was that they would meet at the ballet, it was Mary’s idea, her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. As Jason and I walked into the ballet we looked to the performance where the ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. Realising that Mary wasn’t inside we left to wait for her at the park nearby. That is where Jason and Mary saw each other, long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced towards each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6.36 pm travelling at 55mph. the other from Topeka at 4.19 pm at a speed of 35mph. She looked at him, he was as tall as a 6’3” tree “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
They moved in together and they lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth. The red brick wall the colour of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
And that’s where the story could have ended happily ever after, if it wasn’t for Bob’s revenge. It was an American tradition, like Fathers chasing kids around with power tools. Bob asked to borrow my Grandfather’s revenge book to summon a revenge monster, a dicey proposition because even in his last years, Grand Pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
A full moon later and I heard a knock at the door. It was a stormy night, the thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. It was McBride and Mary, soaking wet, her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. Jason told me he felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs I suppose. This is obviously different to fishing, fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
Suddenly from the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7.00pm instead of 7.30. Then I realized that Bob must’ve summoned the fighting politician monster from the revenge book. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before. I felt nameless dread. Well, there is probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either. It was a young monster with a gun and a knife too. The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating in a while. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do and I was hit. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidently staple it to the wall. Then it hit McBride up through the roof high into the air, so high that McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
Mary screamed and ran to Jason’s aid, and I looked on in terror, but with Bob’s revenge complete the politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
Then End
Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt
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