I had a mild attack of kidney stones last night, so was up during the wee hours drinking water by the hogshead to alleviate the pain. At last things calmed down, around 4 in the morning, and I hibernated for a few hours until Marilyn came knocking at my hollow plywood door at ten. All the doors in this apartment building are stained to look like burled walnut -- but the effect achieved is more like curdled fudge.
Marilyn was radiant, dressed in a black and white outfit that showed off her becoming figure admirably. She was excited to go to Church. When she found out I would not be going with her, she immediately wilted and began fuming like a Bessemer furnace.
That’s when I smelled the Rice Krispies -- at least I thought they were Rice Krispies. It turns out that Marilyn, following the advice, somewhat, of one of the Relief Society ladies she talked to in Church last week, microwaved some rice for a minute to put into a sock to wrap around her aching neck. All well and good, but Marilyn used a bag of Uncle Ben’s Minute Rice, and left it in her microwave for a good five minutes, just to be on the safe side. The plastic pouch the rice was in melted and the rice started to smoke when Marilyn decided to extricate the whole mess, wrap it in a towel, and apply it to the back of her neck for pain relief. So she told me. Snap. Crackle. And Pop.
When I suggested she might consider using just plain old regular uncooked rice, and to just microwave it for a minute at most, all I recieved for my trouble was a surly growl. So I dropped that subject like a hot potato. I just hope she doesn’t try Cream of Wheat or Plaster of Paris next time . . .
If I wasn’t going to Church then she wasn’t going to Church. But understanding of the feminine psyche is not totally beyond my grasp. I worked on her vanity. Told her that her outfit was beautiful, a standout. Too bad none of the ladies would get a chance to see it today, I sighed; they’d either swoon with delight or turn green with envy. Marilyn remained quiet for an unusually long time, for her -- about five minutes. Then she announced perhaps she would, after all, deign to go to Sacrament Meeting. I rewarded her in Pavlovian fashion with a Hostess Cupcake and a glass of milk. From now on every time she makes a good decision I’ll condition her to expect Hostess cupcakes and a glass of milk.
I had promised her chicken with rice and mushroom gravy, for Sunday dinner, and while I still felt a bit seedy, I cooked the whole shebang while she went to Church. I even swiped an elderly card table from the building’s storage room so we wouldn’t have to eat off of TV trays. Marilyn likes to cut her meat with gusto, causing her wobbly TV tray to shake and scatter napkins, utensils, crumbs, and beverage cups all over my carpet.
The meal was a great success with Marilyn, restoring her good humor until it reached flood tide, when she called me the sweetest man she’s ever had in her life. To emphasize this, she accidentally flipped a plate of sliced tomatoes with cottage cheese onto my living room carpet. As I cleaned up the curds and whey I asked her what they had talked about in Church.
In response she used an indelicate word that indicates the end product of a bull’s digestion.
“Huh?” I grunted, on my knees collecting stray slices of roma tomato.
“Oh, it was something about staying home on Mondays and playing games and making fudge. It sounded so fricking stupid I wanted to leave.”
Family Home Evening.
When I finished removing cottage cheese from my rug I sat down at the card table to explain FHE to Marilyn. But I might as well have tried to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity to Donald Trump. Marilyn was having none of it. She belligerently declared that back in Cincinnati, where she’s from, Monday night is “Half Priced Chicken Wings Night” at all the sports bars in town -- a person would be a fool to forgo such a pleasure to stay home and play games with the rugrats.
“It’s any night the family wants to designate as a time to get together for some games and religious instruction -- it doesn’t HAVE to be Monday” I continued, thin wisps of steam stealing out of my ears. What WERE those missionaries thinking of when they baptized her?
But her interest in learning anything about Family Home Evening had already evaporated after she mentioned her old stomping grounds of Cincinnati. She had something else on her mind; something of immediate and tremendous importance.
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Yes, Marilyn, I do.”
“Should I get a tummy tuck?
“What in the . . . what in the world is a tummy tuck?”
She explained. I said it would be gilding the lily. She didn’t know how to take that expression -- apparently not being familiar with it. Was I complimenting her or dissing her?
“It would be superfluous, unnecessary for you. You are remarkably thin already.”
“I’m not anorexic, if THAT’S what you’re trying to get at.” she replied huffily.
Feeling now that I was in an old Burns & Allen comedy routine, I threw in the towel and simply replied that she should do whatever she felt like and I would be happy to support her.
“Yeah, but . . . should I get a tummy tuck or not? I could start saving this month, about two hundred I think, and then in a few years I’d have enough for the plastic surgery . . . “ At this point she became completely downcast once again, because it came to her as a blinding and devastating epiphany that if she saved for a tummy tuck she couldn’t simultaneously pay for a new car.
“But you think I’m pretty, right?” she asked through a few brave tears.
I was tempted to say “Tell the folks goodnight Gracie” just to see what would happen, but instead I reiterated my belief in her overall yumminess, and then asked if she was going to watch the Super Bowl. She has a plasma big screen TV, which is lying flat on her living room floor for lack of a few nuts and bolts to mount it.
“Will you watch it with me?” she asked, batting those fiendish eyelashes of hers at me in a manner reminiscent of Mae West inviting Cary Grant to “Come up and see me sometime . . . “
Here was the Moment of Truth. What man could possibly turn down a lovely woman’s invitation to watch the Holy Grail of football games with her in her apartment. I scratched my head, pulling on my hair like Stan Laurel. I sighed deeply. I rubbed my fingers all over my face in a fine fettle of indecision. Then said no, I would rather stay at home and read myself to sleep with a book. She gave a disappointed cluck and then arose to give me a quick kiss on the lips and head out the door. Her last words were “Hope I’ve got some dip and chips left.”
Well, not her last words really. I just got a text from her: “Have diahrea bad. You think it was the chicken? LOL. Be a sweetie and get me some Immodium at the store. K? Love, M”
So if you’ll excuse me I’m just headed out the door on an errand of mercy. Or a wild goose chase -- with Marilyn, who knows?
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