It started snowing pretty heavily shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday night. I dismissed class early so we could all get home before the worst came. Overnight we got about 5 inches. Today we've been pretty much house-bound, but tomorrow morning I need to get out and drive to my writers' group. We're critiquing one of my works, a short story. I haven't written a short story in a long time, and I'm not sure if it's going to be their cup of tea. I've tried to play with psychology and language together, and they just might not see it.
Just for the heck of it, I may include my story here in this blog. I'll have to figure out how to do it, but surely I should be able to find a way.
It's late, I'm tired, and I'll have to write more when it's not midnight. The hubbie coughed a lot last night, and I slept with my mouth open, creating both dried-out tongue and drool on the pillow at the same time. We must make one helluva good-looking couple when we sleep. I'm tired. And oddly, I've just developed hiccups. Odd.
Hic, hic, hic, Dr. S.
short story, tentatively titled “She’s So Fine”
The first time he saw her, really looked at her, he realized that he’d actually seen her dozens of times. Her car, at least. It was a red Mustang convertible, but the top had always been up before. Still, there was no mistaking the license plate: MSOFIN. He’d noticed the car ahead of him, turning off Burlingame onto Larkspur, nearly every day for the last couple of months, and that license plate had caught his attention.
Then there she was again today, heading south as usual down Burlingame, but the ragtop was down. Her bright hair, white-gold like a harvest moon, was whiplashing her face, but instead of being bothered by it, she was laughing. Her turning indicator flashed, she slowed, and he slowed behind her, passing in the other lane only after he’d had a chance to give her a once-over.
She wore big round sunglasses, the kind that movie stars wore, and her lips were red. Her arms were slender columns emerging from frilly short sleeves. She raised one delicate hand, brushed back her hair, and turned east down Larkspur. The road curved, so he could not follow her beyond her turn.
He did not see her the next day, a Friday, even though he was careful to leave work at exactly the same time, to take exactly the same route home. But he saw her again on Monday, this time as she pulled out from a grocery store parking lot. The top was down again, but she’d come prepared, tying back her silky gold hair with a scarf. He watched as she drove ahead of him down the street, the ends of the scarf playing tag with her curls.
He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
She began to appear in his dreams. He was a hero, rescuing her when her little red car had a flat tire. He was a knight in shining armor. She was always exquisite, always laughing, her eyes always covered by the sunglasses. He talked to her, not hesitantly the way he usually spoke with women, but confidently. She listened to him, too, hung on every word, the way women never did. But always in the dreams, when he reached to remove her sunglasses, he would awaken.
The days grew warmer, and he saw her almost every day. She did not work at the grocery store, as he had first suspected. That was only where she stopped for milk or eggs on her way home. She worked in a medical clinic only half a mile from his office. He would cut his lunch break short so he could justify leaving the CPA firm just a bit early, and though sometimes he had to pull over to wait until the red Mustang left the parking lot, his beige Camry was usually the first car behind her during the five-mile drive down Burlingame.
Her skin began to tan a dusky, tawny glow. She liked short sleeves, and he loved to watch her arms as she drove, reaching over to play with the radio, stretching back to retrieve something in the back seat. She listened to eighties music, sometimes singing along. When she sang, although he could not hear her and could only watch her mouth moving, he thought his heart would burst.
One day it was raining so hard he thought he’d missed her. But no, there she was, the top up, of course, just pulling out of the grocery store lot. They drove slowly down the street, almost blinded by the torrent of water. He had to brake suddenly when her car fishtailed, but she regained control almost immediately. He was proud of her. She was so accomplished, so perfect. Just like her license plate promised—she was so fine.
That day, because it was raining so hard that he told himself he wanted to make sure she got home safely, he turned left when she did. She drove down Larkspur only half a mile before pulling into the driveway of a white-brick house. The garage door opened, admitting her, and he drove on slowly, but not before jotting down the house number: 11713 Larkspur.
The leaves began to turn, and more and more, she drove with the top up on the little red convertible. Still, even when he could not see her, he imagined her. Sometimes he would make a circle and return to the medical building parking lot just in time to watch her walk from her car to the building. She wore skirts, never pants, and her legs were lovely, perfect. Occasionally, she would stop to greet someone else arriving at work, and he could hear the sound of her voice, but he never had the courage to get close enough to speak, or even to discern the words spoken between her and the co-worker.
One Saturday morning he awoke early and could not get back to sleep. He had dreamed about her again, and though he could often see her eyes now that she wasn’t wearing sunglasses all the time, he could never get close enough to her in his dreams to touch her. He got up, made coffee, and tried to watch an old movie. It was no use. He hungered. He needed to see her.
He pulled on his brown cords and a sweater, hurried down the stairs to his car, and drove to 11713 Larkspur. The sun was up, but only barely. He parked in the driveway of a house that was for sale two doors down from hers and waited. After a bit, lights went on in what had to be her kitchen. He could see her slender silhouette moving back and forth. Then she was joined by another silhouette, a larger and more mannish shape. That shape’s head bent to her head. A kiss.
He felt the heat of humiliation rise up the back of his neck. Putting the Camry in reverse, he backed up, headed back to his apartment. Of course she was married. Why wouldn’t she be?
For the next two weeks, he deliberately left work late so he wouldn’t see her. Then one day, there she was, right in front of him. As she turned left onto Larkspur, she waved and smiled.
She had missed him! She knew he was there, taking care of her, watching for her, and she liked it! He grew almost dizzy with happiness.
Winter came suddenly that year, the first snowstorm blanketing the newly fallen red and yellow autumn leaves. He had grown comfortable with their ritual. Each day, just as she turned left, she would wave at him. He would tentatively wave back. Sometimes he imagined that the happiness he felt was akin to the happiness of a long-married but much-in-love couple who took great joy in the little traditions of their lives—the coffee prepared just so, the right brand of mustard purchased at the grocery, the whimsical in-jokes that only the two of them knew.
Now and then, he would pull into the parking lot of the medical building and watch her walk from her car. She had a big fluffy coat, all white, with a matching fluffy cap atop her shining hair. She still wore skirts, but with them she wore boots, not the little sandals of summer, as she stepped carefully through the nasty plowed-up snow.
Then one day, she wasn’t there. At first he didn’t worry. Perhaps she had a cold or was taking a day off. But as another day, and then another day, passed by with no sign of her, he grew distressed. He drove by her white-brick house, but the garage door was closed, and no light beamed from the kitchen.
He began to detour through her neighborhood on his way to work. Sometimes he’d see the silhouette of her head and shoulders in the kitchen window. But that’s all he saw.
Perhaps she’d left her job. Maybe she was working from home. His imagination painted picture after picture. Surely she had not been fired? That was impossible. Who could not love her? She was perfection. She was happiness.
His apartment became a dank cave and he, a hermit, even though he continued to go to work at the same time each day and to return home at the same time. His trips past her house grew fewer, but his heart remained heavy.
Finally the weather began to break, the snow falling less frequently. Here and there a crocus bravely protruded through the sludge. It was nearing tax time, and the work load at the CPA firm was intense. He began to come in early and leave late, so tired that he barely made it back to his apartment before falling asleep. He lost weight, growing even thinner, his brown corduroy slacks held in place with suspenders. There was so much work to do that he even postponed having his thin hair trimmed. It began to curl over his ears and down his collar.
At last April 15 came and went. He took a brief vacation, driving to visit his elderly cousins at their Pennsylvania farm. They noticed that he seemed different.
“Richard, you’re looking peaked,” his cousin Lorraine said, reaching up with her wrinkled fingers to tuck the curl of brown hair back behind his ear.
“No, I’m fine. Really,” he said, and blushed. He’d meant to get a haircut, but somehow, it had slipped his mind.
“Don’t look fine to me,” said Lorraine’s brother Harold. “Look skinny to me.”
So they petted him and fed him and when the week was over, he felt better than he had felt in a while. He returned to work refreshed, his hair neatly trimmed.
And on the way home that first day back, he saw her. She was coming out of the grocery store. In her arms she carried a pastel-wrapped bundle. As the bagboy put her groceries into the trunk of the Mustang, she buckled her baby into a car seat. Richard could barely breathe. A rush of tenderness threatened to bring tears. So this was it, her mysterious absence. There was a baby, a quite new one by the looks of it. As she drove toward Larkspur, he followed at a careful distance, feeling protective.
That night his dreams changed. He dreamed that they stood arm-in-arm and watched their baby playing. The baby—a boy, of course—had fine brown curls much like Richard’s own, but when he laughed, he had her laugh, that beautiful happy gurgle that made Richard’s heart sing.
She didn’t return to work for another two months, so he seldom saw her. Now and then, he’d drive his beige Toyota around her block, and once or twice he thought he saw her walking, pushing a stroller, but as he got near enough to see, he could tell it was some other woman, not Giselle.
Not that that was her real name. He had no idea what her real name might be, but in his imaginary life with her, she was his beloved Giselle, their son was Richard Junior—not to be called “Dickie,” never that ugly name—and the tiny brick house on Larkspur Lane was a doll’s house, pristinely clean, somehow much more spacious on the inside than one would think. If he thought hard about it, he’d sense a vague resemblance to the home of the Andersons on that old tv show Father Knows Best. But to be truthful, he never thought hard about where his fantasies came from. And after awhile, he even stopped acknowledging that they were fantasies.
One day as he was preparing to leave work, he was smiling. It was a Monday, a beautiful day, the kind of day when Giselle and the baby would be playing together on the swingset he’d assembled in the back yard. They’d hear his car pull in and would run to meet him, the baby’s chubby arms outstretched for hugs from Daddy, Giselle waiting patiently for his kiss. The aroma of roast beef in the oven would blend pleasantly with Giselle’s light fragrance, the one he’d bought for her birthday....
“Damn, Dickiebird, watch where you’re going!” his colleague snapped.
Richard’s head jerked up. He’d just bumped into the back of Paul Canady, the one man who made no secret of his feelings for Richard Wren, CPA. The rest of them at least politely pretended to like him, but not Paul. Richard reddened.
“Please don’t call me ‘Dickiebird,’” he said quietly.
“What’s that, Dickiebird? Speak up! Stop talking to your shoelaces,” Paul said. “Where are you off to in such a rush? Is there a sale on birdfood at the pet store?”
The blood pounded in Richard’s head. He could feel his temples pulse, and it seemed that the noise of his arteries drowned all the other noises of quitting time at Mangold and Bevin CPA. He blurted, “If you must know, Canady, I’m off to see my girl. She’s waiting for me. So if you’ll please step aside....?” He moved to step around Canady.
“Whoa, wait a minute. What’s this? A girlfriend at long last? Or are you just switch-hitting, Dickiebird? You sure your tastes don’t run to little boys?”
Thinking back, Richard could not remember deciding to spit into Paul Canady’s sneering face, yet somehow, that’s what he did. A giant slimy glob of spittle struck Canady’s right cheek and oozed gently toward his neck. Nor could Richard remember turning on one heel and exiting the back door of Mangold and Bevin. Somehow, he found himself slamming the Camry into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot.
He drove straight home, not even looking for the red Mustang. Once inside the safety of his third-floor efficiency apartment, he exhaled for what seemed the first time in an hour. Shaking, he dug around in the back of the tiny pantry until he found the bottle. He poured a finger of rum into a juice glass and gulped it down, gagging at the taste that reminded him too readily of his late mother’s Christmas rum balls.
“Well, you’ve done it now, Richard Wren. Any chance of promotion went out the window with that little stunt,” he scolded, feeling unpleasantly aware of how much he sounded like his mother. “Richard Wren, you’ve done it now!” she’d yell, pointing out his misbehavior—the scuffed shoes, the overturned milk, the trash still sitting next to the refrigerator. “You’ll never get ahead in life as long as you pull little stunts like that, Richard Wren! I won’t be around forever, you know, just to clean up after you....”
“Well, Mama, you’re right. You didn’t last forever,” he said grimly to the now-empty rum bottle. “But even if you were here, I don’t think there’s much you could do about this. I spit in a man’s face, Mama. Spit! That’s just so, so, ... juvenile and disgusting.” He let his mind fill with the image of Paul Canady’s horror, the spit bubbles gently bursting as the blob slid down the man’s five-o’clock shadow.
And then Richard began to laugh. It really was absurd, after all. He shrieked and howled, feeling a tiny bit of urine dampen his underwear, hearing and smelling a sour, squealing fart, and that just made him laugh more. When it was finally over, he lay limp on the floor, still giggling and hiccupping. Damn. He hadn’t felt this good in ... who knows how long. Forever? Had he ever before felt this good?
He awoke with a headache the next morning, but he still felt happy. He whistled as he dressed for work and sang along with the radio in his car. Once inside Mangold and Bevin’s austere offices, he jauntily strolled past the staring eyes of his co-workers. His cheek twitched with the urge to giggle, but he suppressed it. Oh, there would be fallout from yesterday’s scene—no doubt there. But he knew he could handle it.
The day seemed to speed past. Although eyes followed him, no one spoke to him—not unusual. He didn’t see Paul Canady at all. He dove into his work and managed to put in a magnificently productive day, working straight through lunch. Then, as he was gathering his things, the boss, Eleanor Bevin, signalled him to her office.
“Well, Wren, this is it. This is where it hits the fan,” he thought, shutting the door behind him and turning to face Eleanor Bevin. To his surprise, she was smiling.
“Richard, I’ve transferred Paul Canady to our Lansing office,” she said. “After what happened yesterday, I realized that the office could not afford to put up with his boorish behavior any longer.”
He shook his head, trying to clear it. He couldn’t have heard her right.
She smiled. Eleanor Bevin, a grandmotherly white-haired softly-spoken woman, had seldom spoken to him since she had hired him ten years ago, yet now she was treating him as if he were family?
“Uhh, ma’am?” he began, but she cut him off.
“Oh, don’t think we all hadn’t noticed how rude he was to you. Of course, spitting in his face was a bit over the top,” she added, winking, “but to be honest, he had it coming. We’ll see how well he likes cowtowing to Leo Mangold in Lansing.” She stepped out from behind her desk and reached toward him to shake his hand. Dazed, he accepted her hand and shook it gently.
“Thank you,” he told her sincerely. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused trouble, it isn’t my way, I’d never deliberately....”
“Hush, Richard. The problem is solved. Now, on to more pleasant business. We’re having a dinner party at my house on Friday. We’d love you to bring your girlfriend....?” There was a questioning lilt to her voice, and he realized that in her own quiet way, she’d sucker-punched him. There was no girlfriend to bring. Everyone would know he’d lied. He’d be humiliated far more deeply than Paul Canady had managed to do.
Nevertheless, he found himself smiling brightly and agreeing that he would indeed bring the lovely Giselle. Seven o’clock? Oh, yes, that would be perfect. The smile stretched drily across his teeth as he exited Eleanor’s office.
What to do? He sat inside his car, the key held in an increasingly sweaty hand, waiting for inspiration. None came. Sighing, he drove slowly home, taking a different route. It would not make him happy to see Giselle today.
Despite the pleasant temperatures, he could not sleep. The sheets knotted and wound around his legs. The pillow developed lumps that it had never had before. The slight ticking of the clock magnified into a throbbing that matched the blood beating in his temples. Finally morning came, he drank coffee, and on his way down the stairs to the parking lot, he paused and rushed back to his apartment.
Leaning weakly against the cold porcelain, the regurgitated coffee eating an acid hole in the back of his throat, Richard began to weep.
That Friday morning, squirrelled away in his cubicle, he wondered if he should speak to Eleanor, tell her that he would be unable to attend her party, confess that there was no girlfriend. An image of her eyes full of pity and scorn kept him seated. He’d avoided her and everyone else in the office as much as possible all week, and as usual, no one had sought him out. No one had said, “See you at the party, Richard,” or appeared to be chatting in their gossipy cliques in any way different from usual.
At one o’clock he ventured into the break room to retrieve his sack lunch. A couple of the secretaries were there, but one left as he was entering. He seldom spoke to the secretarial staff, doing his own typing and filing, avoiding human contact—female contact, especially—whenever possible. But this woman looked more familiar than the others. Brown hair pulled back with a hairband, round face, glasses, what was her name?
“Hi, Richard,” she said, gesturing casually to a chair at the table.
“Oh, uh. . . hi. It’s, uh, Eileen, isn’t it?”
“You remembered!” she said cheerfully. “We were introduced when I came to work here, but I don’t think we’ve talked since then. You’re an accountant, so you probably don’t hang out with us secretaries much, huh?”
He tentatively lowered himself into the offered chair. “Oh, uh, well, no, I don’t ....”
She kept on talking, with an ease and comfort that Richard envied. “I’m taking bookkeeping classes in night school, so maybe one day I can run with the in-crowd, too!”
He tried to tell her that he was hardly a member of the in-crowd, but she changed the subject. “What’s for lunch? I brought tuna. Trying to diet again.” She patted her round stomach, pushed up into a roll around her middle by too-tight jeans. But her excess weight—and really, it wasn’t much, she might weigh 150, 175, but she was tall—did not affect her self-esteem. She leaned over the table toward him and peeped into his sack. “Um, smells like meat loaf.”
“Yes, actually, I made it myself from my mother’s recipe,” he told her.
“Oooh, a man who cooks! Well, aren’t you a real Renaissance man!” She twirled a lock of her brown hair around a finger and winked at him, batting one of her brown eyes. She seemed quite monotone in appearance, but her personality added all the color she needed. Suddenly Richard could not imagine why he had not paid more attention to her before. She was really quite pretty, good skin, nice strong hands, a ready grin.
“Too bad about Mrs. Bevin’s husband, huh?” she said, stealing one of his potato chips.
He nearly spilled his rootbeer. “Mrs. Bevin’s husband? Why? Did something happen to him?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t cruel, not the way people usually laughed at him. “Why, Richard, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you lived in your own little world! It’s all anybody’s been talking about all week, for heaven’s sake!” She paused, apparently waiting for him to laugh and admit he’d been teasing, but he knew the expression on his pale face could have conveyed nothing more than confusion.
“The heart attack? Tuesday night?” she prompted. “Haven’t you even noticed that Mrs. Bevins hasn’t been here for the last coupla days?”
“Oh, uh, well, that....? Uh, actually, no, I hadn’t noticed,” he admitted, feeling his earlobes stinging. “I’ve, uh, been busy. So how’s Mr. Bevins doing? He’s okay, isn’t he?”
Richard had met Eleanor’s husband several times during his ten-year employment, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what the man looked like. It was hard to feel pity for someone in poor health when you couldn’t even picture what they looked like healthy. But he didn’t want to show a lack of sympathy, so he tried hard to hold a worried expression in place.
Eileen stood up, gathering her lunch things. “Yeah, he’s going to be okay. They’re letting him out of the hospital today, or so Brenda told me. But of course, the party’s going to have to be rescheduled for when the poor man is up to it.”
The party! He’d forgotten that stupid party! And his lie that now would not be revealed! A real grin leapt toward his face, but he caught it just in time. “That’s a pity. I was looking forward to the party,” he told her. “Were you going?”
“Who, me? Oh, no. I’m just a secretary. Only the higher-ups like you were invited. But we all knew about it because Brenda was going with Gene Chapman, that accountant who works two cubicles down from you.” She tossed her trash away and turned back to him. “It’s been nice talking to you, Richard. Maybe we can do it again soon.”
“Uh, oh, yes, of course, that would be nice.” He stood up. “Thanks, Eileen.”
“You’re welcome, I guess, but I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. Have a good one, Richie-Rich,” she said and was gone.
Richie-Rich. That was the wealthy little boy in the comic books he’d read as a child. That didn’t sound so bad, certainly not like Dickie or Dickie-bird. He could live with that. He said it to himself several times, tasting it in his mouth to see if it was bitter, but it wasn’t.
* * *
“Honey, you know that guy? The one I told you about, in the beige Toyota, who follows me just about every day?”
Her husband stuck his head out of the bathroom. “Yeah? He bothering you, babe?”
“Oh, no. It’s just kind of weird,” she told him. She pulled a red t-shirt over her white-blonde hair and tucked it into her skirt. “I thought he must have moved or bought a different car or something because I hadn’t seen him for weeks. But there he was today, right behind me as usual. I waved at him when I turned on Larkspur, but he didn’t wave back.”
Her husband came naked from the bathroom and pulled her close to him. He smelled like soap, clean, good. “I guess you’ve lost it, babe.”
She pulled away from him and pretended to pout. “I’m just an old crone now, huh? Just a saggy, baggy milk cow?”
He laughed and touched the part of her that provided their six-month-old daughter daily dairy delivery. She was definitely not saggy, baggy.
Just then the baby cried from her crib. She wasn’t really upset, just bored and ready to be picked up, so Stan lifted her out and cuddled her. “When are you gonna grow some hair, little girl? You look more like a boy than a girl.” He tugged at her blue coveralls. “These don’t help, either.”
“I can’t help it if all my sisters have had boy babies and those are the only hand-me-downs we got,” Marge replied. “Here, Nellie, come to Mama. Want to go for a ride in the car? We can put the top down.”
The first time he saw her, really looked at her, he realized that he’d actually seen her dozens of times. Her car, at least. It was a red Mustang convertible, but the top had always been up before. Still, there was no mistaking the license plate: MSOFIN. He’d noticed the car ahead of him, turning off Burlingame onto Larkspur, nearly every day for the last couple of months, and that license plate had caught his attention.
Then there she was again today, heading south as usual down Burlingame, but the ragtop was down. Her bright hair, white-gold like a harvest moon, was whiplashing her face, but instead of being bothered by it, she was laughing. Her turning indicator flashed, she slowed, and he slowed behind her, passing in the other lane only after he’d had a chance to give her a once-over.
She wore big round sunglasses, the kind that movie stars wore, and her lips were red. Her arms were slender columns emerging from frilly short sleeves. She raised one delicate hand, brushed back her hair, and turned east down Larkspur. The road curved, so he could not follow her beyond her turn.
He did not see her the next day, a Friday, even though he was careful to leave work at exactly the same time, to take exactly the same route home. But he saw her again on Monday, this time as she pulled out from a grocery store parking lot. The top was down again, but she’d come prepared, tying back her silky gold hair with a scarf. He watched as she drove ahead of him down the street, the ends of the scarf playing tag with her curls.
He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
She began to appear in his dreams. He was a hero, rescuing her when her little red car had a flat tire. He was a knight in shining armor. She was always exquisite, always laughing, her eyes always covered by the sunglasses. He talked to her, not hesitantly the way he usually spoke with women, but confidently. She listened to him, too, hung on every word, the way women never did. But always in the dreams, when he reached to remove her sunglasses, he would awaken.
The days grew warmer, and he saw her almost every day. She did not work at the grocery store, as he had first suspected. That was only where she stopped for milk or eggs on her way home. She worked in a medical clinic only half a mile from his office. He would cut his lunch break short so he could justify leaving the CPA firm just a bit early, and though sometimes he had to pull over to wait until the red Mustang left the parking lot, his beige Camry was usually the first car behind her during the five-mile drive down Burlingame.
Her skin began to tan a dusky, tawny glow. She liked short sleeves, and he loved to watch her arms as she drove, reaching over to play with the radio, stretching back to retrieve something in the back seat. She listened to eighties music, sometimes singing along. When she sang, although he could not hear her and could only watch her mouth moving, he thought his heart would burst.
One day it was raining so hard he thought he’d missed her. But no, there she was, the top up, of course, just pulling out of the grocery store lot. They drove slowly down the street, almost blinded by the torrent of water. He had to brake suddenly when her car fishtailed, but she regained control almost immediately. He was proud of her. She was so accomplished, so perfect. Just like her license plate promised—she was so fine.
That day, because it was raining so hard that he told himself he wanted to make sure she got home safely, he turned left when she did. She drove down Larkspur only half a mile before pulling into the driveway of a white-brick house. The garage door opened, admitting her, and he drove on slowly, but not before jotting down the house number: 11713 Larkspur.
The leaves began to turn, and more and more, she drove with the top up on the little red convertible. Still, even when he could not see her, he imagined her. Sometimes he would make a circle and return to the medical building parking lot just in time to watch her walk from her car to the building. She wore skirts, never pants, and her legs were lovely, perfect. Occasionally, she would stop to greet someone else arriving at work, and he could hear the sound of her voice, but he never had the courage to get close enough to speak, or even to discern the words spoken between her and the co-worker.
One Saturday morning he awoke early and could not get back to sleep. He had dreamed about her again, and though he could often see her eyes now that she wasn’t wearing sunglasses all the time, he could never get close enough to her in his dreams to touch her. He got up, made coffee, and tried to watch an old movie. It was no use. He hungered. He needed to see her.
He pulled on his brown cords and a sweater, hurried down the stairs to his car, and drove to 11713 Larkspur. The sun was up, but only barely. He parked in the driveway of a house that was for sale two doors down from hers and waited. After a bit, lights went on in what had to be her kitchen. He could see her slender silhouette moving back and forth. Then she was joined by another silhouette, a larger and more mannish shape. That shape’s head bent to her head. A kiss.
He felt the heat of humiliation rise up the back of his neck. Putting the Camry in reverse, he backed up, headed back to his apartment. Of course she was married. Why wouldn’t she be?
For the next two weeks, he deliberately left work late so he wouldn’t see her. Then one day, there she was, right in front of him. As she turned left onto Larkspur, she waved and smiled.
She had missed him! She knew he was there, taking care of her, watching for her, and she liked it! He grew almost dizzy with happiness.
Winter came suddenly that year, the first snowstorm blanketing the newly fallen red and yellow autumn leaves. He had grown comfortable with their ritual. Each day, just as she turned left, she would wave at him. He would tentatively wave back. Sometimes he imagined that the happiness he felt was akin to the happiness of a long-married but much-in-love couple who took great joy in the little traditions of their lives—the coffee prepared just so, the right brand of mustard purchased at the grocery, the whimsical in-jokes that only the two of them knew.
Now and then, he would pull into the parking lot of the medical building and watch her walk from her car. She had a big fluffy coat, all white, with a matching fluffy cap atop her shining hair. She still wore skirts, but with them she wore boots, not the little sandals of summer, as she stepped carefully through the nasty plowed-up snow.
Then one day, she wasn’t there. At first he didn’t worry. Perhaps she had a cold or was taking a day off. But as another day, and then another day, passed by with no sign of her, he grew distressed. He drove by her white-brick house, but the garage door was closed, and no light beamed from the kitchen.
He began to detour through her neighborhood on his way to work. Sometimes he’d see the silhouette of her head and shoulders in the kitchen window. But that’s all he saw.
Perhaps she’d left her job. Maybe she was working from home. His imagination painted picture after picture. Surely she had not been fired? That was impossible. Who could not love her? She was perfection. She was happiness.
His apartment became a dank cave and he, a hermit, even though he continued to go to work at the same time each day and to return home at the same time. His trips past her house grew fewer, but his heart remained heavy.
Finally the weather began to break, the snow falling less frequently. Here and there a crocus bravely protruded through the sludge. It was nearing tax time, and the work load at the CPA firm was intense. He began to come in early and leave late, so tired that he barely made it back to his apartment before falling asleep. He lost weight, growing even thinner, his brown corduroy slacks held in place with suspenders. There was so much work to do that he even postponed having his thin hair trimmed. It began to curl over his ears and down his collar.
At last April 15 came and went. He took a brief vacation, driving to visit his elderly cousins at their Pennsylvania farm. They noticed that he seemed different.
“Richard, you’re looking peaked,” his cousin Lorraine said, reaching up with her wrinkled fingers to tuck the curl of brown hair back behind his ear.
“No, I’m fine. Really,” he said, and blushed. He’d meant to get a haircut, but somehow, it had slipped his mind.
“Don’t look fine to me,” said Lorraine’s brother Harold. “Look skinny to me.”
So they petted him and fed him and when the week was over, he felt better than he had felt in a while. He returned to work refreshed, his hair neatly trimmed.
And on the way home that first day back, he saw her. She was coming out of the grocery store. In her arms she carried a pastel-wrapped bundle. As the bagboy put her groceries into the trunk of the Mustang, she buckled her baby into a car seat. Richard could barely breathe. A rush of tenderness threatened to bring tears. So this was it, her mysterious absence. There was a baby, a quite new one by the looks of it. As she drove toward Larkspur, he followed at a careful distance, feeling protective.
That night his dreams changed. He dreamed that they stood arm-in-arm and watched their baby playing. The baby—a boy, of course—had fine brown curls much like Richard’s own, but when he laughed, he had her laugh, that beautiful happy gurgle that made Richard’s heart sing.
She didn’t return to work for another two months, so he seldom saw her. Now and then, he’d drive his beige Toyota around her block, and once or twice he thought he saw her walking, pushing a stroller, but as he got near enough to see, he could tell it was some other woman, not Giselle.
Not that that was her real name. He had no idea what her real name might be, but in his imaginary life with her, she was his beloved Giselle, their son was Richard Junior—not to be called “Dickie,” never that ugly name—and the tiny brick house on Larkspur Lane was a doll’s house, pristinely clean, somehow much more spacious on the inside than one would think. If he thought hard about it, he’d sense a vague resemblance to the home of the Andersons on that old tv show Father Knows Best. But to be truthful, he never thought hard about where his fantasies came from. And after awhile, he even stopped acknowledging that they were fantasies.
One day as he was preparing to leave work, he was smiling. It was a Monday, a beautiful day, the kind of day when Giselle and the baby would be playing together on the swingset he’d assembled in the back yard. They’d hear his car pull in and would run to meet him, the baby’s chubby arms outstretched for hugs from Daddy, Giselle waiting patiently for his kiss. The aroma of roast beef in the oven would blend pleasantly with Giselle’s light fragrance, the one he’d bought for her birthday....
“Damn, Dickiebird, watch where you’re going!” his colleague snapped.
Richard’s head jerked up. He’d just bumped into the back of Paul Canady, the one man who made no secret of his feelings for Richard Wren, CPA. The rest of them at least politely pretended to like him, but not Paul. Richard reddened.
“Please don’t call me ‘Dickiebird,’” he said quietly.
“What’s that, Dickiebird? Speak up! Stop talking to your shoelaces,” Paul said. “Where are you off to in such a rush? Is there a sale on birdfood at the pet store?”
The blood pounded in Richard’s head. He could feel his temples pulse, and it seemed that the noise of his arteries drowned all the other noises of quitting time at Mangold and Bevin CPA. He blurted, “If you must know, Canady, I’m off to see my girl. She’s waiting for me. So if you’ll please step aside....?” He moved to step around Canady.
“Whoa, wait a minute. What’s this? A girlfriend at long last? Or are you just switch-hitting, Dickiebird? You sure your tastes don’t run to little boys?”
Thinking back, Richard could not remember deciding to spit into Paul Canady’s sneering face, yet somehow, that’s what he did. A giant slimy glob of spittle struck Canady’s right cheek and oozed gently toward his neck. Nor could Richard remember turning on one heel and exiting the back door of Mangold and Bevin. Somehow, he found himself slamming the Camry into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot.
He drove straight home, not even looking for the red Mustang. Once inside the safety of his third-floor efficiency apartment, he exhaled for what seemed the first time in an hour. Shaking, he dug around in the back of the tiny pantry until he found the bottle. He poured a finger of rum into a juice glass and gulped it down, gagging at the taste that reminded him too readily of his late mother’s Christmas rum balls.
“Well, you’ve done it now, Richard Wren. Any chance of promotion went out the window with that little stunt,” he scolded, feeling unpleasantly aware of how much he sounded like his mother. “Richard Wren, you’ve done it now!” she’d yell, pointing out his misbehavior—the scuffed shoes, the overturned milk, the trash still sitting next to the refrigerator. “You’ll never get ahead in life as long as you pull little stunts like that, Richard Wren! I won’t be around forever, you know, just to clean up after you....”
“Well, Mama, you’re right. You didn’t last forever,” he said grimly to the now-empty rum bottle. “But even if you were here, I don’t think there’s much you could do about this. I spit in a man’s face, Mama. Spit! That’s just so, so, ... juvenile and disgusting.” He let his mind fill with the image of Paul Canady’s horror, the spit bubbles gently bursting as the blob slid down the man’s five-o’clock shadow.
And then Richard began to laugh. It really was absurd, after all. He shrieked and howled, feeling a tiny bit of urine dampen his underwear, hearing and smelling a sour, squealing fart, and that just made him laugh more. When it was finally over, he lay limp on the floor, still giggling and hiccupping. Damn. He hadn’t felt this good in ... who knows how long. Forever? Had he ever before felt this good?
He awoke with a headache the next morning, but he still felt happy. He whistled as he dressed for work and sang along with the radio in his car. Once inside Mangold and Bevin’s austere offices, he jauntily strolled past the staring eyes of his co-workers. His cheek twitched with the urge to giggle, but he suppressed it. Oh, there would be fallout from yesterday’s scene—no doubt there. But he knew he could handle it.
The day seemed to speed past. Although eyes followed him, no one spoke to him—not unusual. He didn’t see Paul Canady at all. He dove into his work and managed to put in a magnificently productive day, working straight through lunch. Then, as he was gathering his things, the boss, Eleanor Bevin, signalled him to her office.
“Well, Wren, this is it. This is where it hits the fan,” he thought, shutting the door behind him and turning to face Eleanor Bevin. To his surprise, she was smiling.
“Richard, I’ve transferred Paul Canady to our Lansing office,” she said. “After what happened yesterday, I realized that the office could not afford to put up with his boorish behavior any longer.”
He shook his head, trying to clear it. He couldn’t have heard her right.
She smiled. Eleanor Bevin, a grandmotherly white-haired softly-spoken woman, had seldom spoken to him since she had hired him ten years ago, yet now she was treating him as if he were family?
“Uhh, ma’am?” he began, but she cut him off.
“Oh, don’t think we all hadn’t noticed how rude he was to you. Of course, spitting in his face was a bit over the top,” she added, winking, “but to be honest, he had it coming. We’ll see how well he likes cowtowing to Leo Mangold in Lansing.” She stepped out from behind her desk and reached toward him to shake his hand. Dazed, he accepted her hand and shook it gently.
“Thank you,” he told her sincerely. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused trouble, it isn’t my way, I’d never deliberately....”
“Hush, Richard. The problem is solved. Now, on to more pleasant business. We’re having a dinner party at my house on Friday. We’d love you to bring your girlfriend....?” There was a questioning lilt to her voice, and he realized that in her own quiet way, she’d sucker-punched him. There was no girlfriend to bring. Everyone would know he’d lied. He’d be humiliated far more deeply than Paul Canady had managed to do.
Nevertheless, he found himself smiling brightly and agreeing that he would indeed bring the lovely Giselle. Seven o’clock? Oh, yes, that would be perfect. The smile stretched drily across his teeth as he exited Eleanor’s office.
What to do? He sat inside his car, the key held in an increasingly sweaty hand, waiting for inspiration. None came. Sighing, he drove slowly home, taking a different route. It would not make him happy to see Giselle today.
Despite the pleasant temperatures, he could not sleep. The sheets knotted and wound around his legs. The pillow developed lumps that it had never had before. The slight ticking of the clock magnified into a throbbing that matched the blood beating in his temples. Finally morning came, he drank coffee, and on his way down the stairs to the parking lot, he paused and rushed back to his apartment.
Leaning weakly against the cold porcelain, the regurgitated coffee eating an acid hole in the back of his throat, Richard began to weep.
That Friday morning, squirrelled away in his cubicle, he wondered if he should speak to Eleanor, tell her that he would be unable to attend her party, confess that there was no girlfriend. An image of her eyes full of pity and scorn kept him seated. He’d avoided her and everyone else in the office as much as possible all week, and as usual, no one had sought him out. No one had said, “See you at the party, Richard,” or appeared to be chatting in their gossipy cliques in any way different from usual.
At one o’clock he ventured into the break room to retrieve his sack lunch. A couple of the secretaries were there, but one left as he was entering. He seldom spoke to the secretarial staff, doing his own typing and filing, avoiding human contact—female contact, especially—whenever possible. But this woman looked more familiar than the others. Brown hair pulled back with a hairband, round face, glasses, what was her name?
“Hi, Richard,” she said, gesturing casually to a chair at the table.
“Oh, uh. . . hi. It’s, uh, Eileen, isn’t it?”
“You remembered!” she said cheerfully. “We were introduced when I came to work here, but I don’t think we’ve talked since then. You’re an accountant, so you probably don’t hang out with us secretaries much, huh?”
He tentatively lowered himself into the offered chair. “Oh, uh, well, no, I don’t ....”
She kept on talking, with an ease and comfort that Richard envied. “I’m taking bookkeeping classes in night school, so maybe one day I can run with the in-crowd, too!”
He tried to tell her that he was hardly a member of the in-crowd, but she changed the subject. “What’s for lunch? I brought tuna. Trying to diet again.” She patted her round stomach, pushed up into a roll around her middle by too-tight jeans. But her excess weight—and really, it wasn’t much, she might weigh 150, 175, but she was tall—did not affect her self-esteem. She leaned over the table toward him and peeped into his sack. “Um, smells like meat loaf.”
“Yes, actually, I made it myself from my mother’s recipe,” he told her.
“Oooh, a man who cooks! Well, aren’t you a real Renaissance man!” She twirled a lock of her brown hair around a finger and winked at him, batting one of her brown eyes. She seemed quite monotone in appearance, but her personality added all the color she needed. Suddenly Richard could not imagine why he had not paid more attention to her before. She was really quite pretty, good skin, nice strong hands, a ready grin.
“Too bad about Mrs. Bevin’s husband, huh?” she said, stealing one of his potato chips.
He nearly spilled his rootbeer. “Mrs. Bevin’s husband? Why? Did something happen to him?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t cruel, not the way people usually laughed at him. “Why, Richard, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you lived in your own little world! It’s all anybody’s been talking about all week, for heaven’s sake!” She paused, apparently waiting for him to laugh and admit he’d been teasing, but he knew the expression on his pale face could have conveyed nothing more than confusion.
“The heart attack? Tuesday night?” she prompted. “Haven’t you even noticed that Mrs. Bevins hasn’t been here for the last coupla days?”
“Oh, uh, well, that....? Uh, actually, no, I hadn’t noticed,” he admitted, feeling his earlobes stinging. “I’ve, uh, been busy. So how’s Mr. Bevins doing? He’s okay, isn’t he?”
Richard had met Eleanor’s husband several times during his ten-year employment, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what the man looked like. It was hard to feel pity for someone in poor health when you couldn’t even picture what they looked like healthy. But he didn’t want to show a lack of sympathy, so he tried hard to hold a worried expression in place.
Eileen stood up, gathering her lunch things. “Yeah, he’s going to be okay. They’re letting him out of the hospital today, or so Brenda told me. But of course, the party’s going to have to be rescheduled for when the poor man is up to it.”
The party! He’d forgotten that stupid party! And his lie that now would not be revealed! A real grin leapt toward his face, but he caught it just in time. “That’s a pity. I was looking forward to the party,” he told her. “Were you going?”
“Who, me? Oh, no. I’m just a secretary. Only the higher-ups like you were invited. But we all knew about it because Brenda was going with Gene Chapman, that accountant who works two cubicles down from you.” She tossed her trash away and turned back to him. “It’s been nice talking to you, Richard. Maybe we can do it again soon.”
“Uh, oh, yes, of course, that would be nice.” He stood up. “Thanks, Eileen.”
“You’re welcome, I guess, but I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. Have a good one, Richie-Rich,” she said and was gone.
Richie-Rich. That was the wealthy little boy in the comic books he’d read as a child. That didn’t sound so bad, certainly not like Dickie or Dickie-bird. He could live with that. He said it to himself several times, tasting it in his mouth to see if it was bitter, but it wasn’t.
* * *
“Honey, you know that guy? The one I told you about, in the beige Toyota, who follows me just about every day?”
Her husband stuck his head out of the bathroom. “Yeah? He bothering you, babe?”
“Oh, no. It’s just kind of weird,” she told him. She pulled a red t-shirt over her white-blonde hair and tucked it into her skirt. “I thought he must have moved or bought a different car or something because I hadn’t seen him for weeks. But there he was today, right behind me as usual. I waved at him when I turned on Larkspur, but he didn’t wave back.”
Her husband came naked from the bathroom and pulled her close to him. He smelled like soap, clean, good. “I guess you’ve lost it, babe.”
She pulled away from him and pretended to pout. “I’m just an old crone now, huh? Just a saggy, baggy milk cow?”
He laughed and touched the part of her that provided their six-month-old daughter daily dairy delivery. She was definitely not saggy, baggy.
Just then the baby cried from her crib. She wasn’t really upset, just bored and ready to be picked up, so Stan lifted her out and cuddled her. “When are you gonna grow some hair, little girl? You look more like a boy than a girl.” He tugged at her blue coveralls. “These don’t help, either.”
“I can’t help it if all my sisters have had boy babies and those are the only hand-me-downs we got,” Marge replied. “Here, Nellie, come to Mama. Want to go for a ride in the car? We can put the top down.”
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