Bobby and Florence in the Dark

 A short story that gives a flavor of things between Donny and me…

They dozed after sex.  At one point, Bobby woke up and said to her, “I just had the coolest dream.”  Florence opened her eyes.  The room was dark.  The light from the street outside the window shone through the blinds of Bobby’s empty apartment just enough for her to see the black shadows where his blue eyes would be.

“There were these little Catholic school girls and they were hunting teddy bears with uzis” he said.

A whole world opened up before her: his religious southern upbringing; his disgust with anything falsely sentimental or cute; his love of violent Japanese karate films; the harsh language his mother used to communicate with him.  To Florence, Bobby’s dream was a wonderful web of clues to his psyche, and if she could scale the sticky, intricate network of clues, then when she reached the center she would understand not only him, but his motivations.  That just might lead her to the answer to the question that seemed constantly in the back of her brain, like a hungry, pulsating bell: “ding, dong, ding, dong, what do I mean to you, Bobby?”

“Why do you think you dreamed that?” she asked him.

“I don’t know, but it was cool,” he answered. 

“Well, don’t you want to understand it, to know what it means?” she pressured.

“No, not really,” he said.  “I like that it doesn’t make any sense.  It’s just random.  It’s like a ride I can take in my mind.  If I knew what it meant, then I wouldn’t be riding it anymore; it would be riding me.” 

Bobby thought about the women before Florence: the professional boxer who needed him to hold her after each of her bouts while she cried; the suicidal Ph.D. student who finally had slit her wrists, relieving him of the responsibility for keeping her alive; the lawyer who insisted he tie her up while they had sex.  To Bobby, the women of his life seemed like an endless parade of requirements.  Florence was different.   

Bobby was different for Florence, as well: he was available.  Her parade had featured an actor who recited lines convincingly, but wasn’t intelligent enough to follow anything she said; a husband who had lived alone for five years in the bedroom next to hers; and then a string of married men whose bodies were hers for an afternoon, until they went back to belonging to their wives. 

After Florence’s divorce, she and Bobby had met online.  Their conversation was challenging, but relaxed.  The sex was close, hushed, intense, and satisfying.  It had been almost three months. 

Florence spoke again.  “You’d just prefer not to understand it?” she asked him once more.  It was dark in his bed, but she felt him nod “yes.” 

“Okay,” she whispered, and she let go of the web.  She closed her eyes and felt herself begin to float out into space.  Her trajectory was slow and pleasant, but nonetheless disconcerting.  The stickiness of the web had been soothing, if confining. 

The teddy bears and the Catholic school girls with their uzis were calling Bobby back.  He looked at Florence.  Her brown eyes were closed.  He could see she was trying to get somewhere, and he knew she needed him.  She opened her eyes.  He rested his warm lips on her forehead and held her hands in his. 

They laid in bed like that for a long time, holding hands in the dark, and looking into what they were sure were each other’s eyes. 

No Accounting for Love

 

The Pink Panther doesn’t love me.  I’ve done everything I can think of to make her love me, but nothing works.  I launder and press her costume (pink rhinestone leotards).  I go to the corner every lunch time for her favorite udon noodles, the best in Tokyo.  I massage her lovely tired muscles every Tuesday through Sunday midnight after the show.  “Thanks, Joe,” she tells me with a kind kind of a smile, and I glow from the inside out. 

            Then the Pink Panther runs her long fingers through her thick blond hair, her sad blue eyes settling on the stage door of the theater, and I am again outside the perimeter of her glowing, loving attention. 

            “It will never work,” my mother tells me.  “She will never love you.  You are too short.”

            “I am three foot nine,” I tell her, proudly.  “Father was only three foot five.  I am only sixteen years old and already, I am taller than my father ever grew to be.” 

            “She will never love you,” mother repeats.  But what does she know?  Mother is only a stupid woman, sold to the circus at three years old and raised cleaning up after elephants in two-bit travelling circuses on the Japanese countryside.  It wasn’t until I came along, with my super-human strength and my sub-normal height that we made it to the big time. 

And now we are in Tokyo, and my act, “Little Strong Man,” shares a bill with “Six Brawny Babes,” the American women’s wrestling act, at the Golden Turtle, Tokyo’s fourth largest venue.  The name is odd, because only five brawny babes perform in the act.  Perhaps the slightly exaggerated name is what the Americans call showmanship.  Or perhaps Americans just can’t count. But it doesn’t matter.  I love the Pink Panther.  She is what I want most in the world.   

♥♥♥

From the day I was born, it was clear I would be a little person, like my father, but in 1960s Japan my parents knew they had only two choices for me: a life in the circus or a drowning in the river. 

My parents hiked the five miles to the river nearest the small town in which their flea-bitten circus was stationed.  I was swaddled in a brightly colored patchwork shirt that had been stolen from the most minor of the circus’s terrible clowns.  Mother handed me to father.  He held me over the river and they took one final look at each other, and then at me. 

“He is just a puny little rat of a human being,” father said, by way of justification for what he was about to do.  Mother reached her finger out and the baby me grabbed it tightly. 

“And yet,” she said, looking down at father, “he has such strength.  Still,” mother reasoned, “at his size, he’ll never make a comfortable living.  After all, have you ever seen a midget rich man?”

“That is true,” father said.  His arms were beginning to tire from holding me out above the rushing river currents.  “And yet,” father contended, “Money isn’t everything.”

“You have a point,” Mother agreed. 

“Then again,” Father said, remembering his own sad youth, “he will live his life all alone, tortured and scorned by the beautiful and rich, as well as by the poor and ugly.  What kind of an existence is that for a child?”

“Still,” mother said with a slight smile, envisioning my possible future, “You will love him because you will understand him.  I will love him because I am his mother and I was born to love him.  And, perhaps, if he is lucky, (and he was born under a lucky sign,) then when he is older, he will find a woman to love him with all her soul, as you found me and as I love you.  And the circus isn’t such a bad life.” 

“My wife is a wise woman,” Father said, looking up at her, his forearms shaking, his biceps throbbing, while I giggled and gurgled and looked up into the cloudless, limitless Japanese sky. 

Before that evening’s show, the circus’s most minor clown was reunited with his shirt and I was reunited with the circus.  Everyone was surprised that my parents had decided not to drown me in the river.  The minor clown had expected he would never see his shirt again. 

“Well,” said the circus ticket taker to the monkey trainer, “there is no accounting for love.” 

That is a true story.  I know it is true because my father told it to me on the night he died. 

♥♥♥

As I grew older, my unusual strength became evident.  When I was just four, I could wrestle the circus weasel into its cage.  When I was merely seven, I could hammer a tent stake into the ground.  When I was only twelve I lifted one end of a Datsun pickup truck over my shoulders. 

Every night in our tiny circus train car, Mother cooked me dinner on a battery operated hot plate: tofu for endurance and octopus for strength.  Father trained me twice a day.  We borrowed barbells from the Strongman, a former Hungarian Olympian with a lisp.  My parents believed in me.  I was little, but I was always strong. 

Slowly, word spread about the tiny boy with the tremendous muscles and our circus bookings improved.  Then, last April, a telegram arrived announcing that we had been booked for eighteen weeks at the Golden Turtle in Tokyo.  It was no small feat.  Mother packed our things while father and I drank Saki and toasted my brilliant future.  Inebriated and elated, Father told me the story of the day my fate was decided by the bank of the river.  That night, he died in his sleep; a dull end to a sharp life. 

♥♥♥

  I tell mother that I am going to declare my love to the Pink Panther.  “Don’t do it, Joe,” she pleads with me.  Why doesn’t she want me to be happy?  Perhaps with Father gone, she is afraid the Pink Panther and I will not want her in our home. 

I assure her “Even after the Pink Panther and I are married, you will be welcomed to live with us.  You can take care of the children while the Pink Panther and I are on tour.  Don’t worry.  There will be plenty of money for servants.  The Pink Panther and I will be a famous couple.  Photographers will take our pictures outside of discotheques and film premiers.  All the world will know us as that brilliant, beautiful, and unusual couple: she, tall, strong, and stunning; he, short, strong, and handsome.”

“Don’t do it, Joe.  She will not love you back,” Mother cries. 

“Mother!” I yell at her, “You are just an ignorant fool!  All you know is elephant shit and peanut shells.  You know nothing about the ways of the world and of love!  And if you will not love the woman I love, then I cannot love you.”

Mother stops crying.  She looks at me calmly and says “It doesn’t matter if you love me or you do not.  It doesn’t matter if you stay or go or walk or run or fly.  I love you because I was born to love you, and when you need me I will be here.  Remember that.”  With a look of resolve on her face, she turns and walks away.  I go looking for the Pink Panther. 

♥♥♥

She sits on a metal folding chair by the stage door, depressed and staring out into space.  I can make her happy, I think.  She is lonely and needs a respectable, virtuous man.  I will promise to love her.  I will promise to take care of her.  She is what I want more than anything in the world, and I am what she needs more than anything in the world. 

“Pink Panther,” my trembling voice breaks the silence, but not the steady gaze of my love’s sad eyes.  I take a deep breath.  “Pink Panther,” I repeat, anticipating the love, the hope, the happiness we are about to share. 

It is as though she is hungry and holds a pea pod.  “Here, my love,” I imagine myself telling her, “allow me to pull apart this pod and nourish you with the sweet peas within.”  

“Pink Panther,” I repeat, and I realize I don’t know her real name.  So silly!  Thirty years from now, as we blow out the candles on our anniversary cake, I will tell my grandchildren (short and tall), “I loved your grandmother before I even knew her name.” 

“Pink Panther,” I say, “Your love has arrived.”    

The Pink Panther looks up at me.  Her brow furrows.  Her cheeks flush.  Her eyes sparkle and well up with tears.   It is then I possess everything I have ever wanted.  It was I who broke open the pea pod, but it was she who placed the pea on my hungry, wet, red tongue. 

“Your love is here,” I say again, my heart exploding in ecstasy.  

“Brenda?” the Pink Panther says.  “Brenda is here?  Where is she?”  The Pink Panther leaps out of her chair and dashes to the stage door. I feel two feet tall. 

♥♥♥

I stand on the bank of the Sumida River.  I have stolen the strongman’s barbells and tied them to my ankles.  Not the Hungarian Strongman with a lisp.  Another strongman.  There is always a strongman.  It was not hard to carry the barbells all the way from the Golden Turtle to the river bank.  They were heavy, but, I am, after all, strong for my size. 

It was always my fate to die in the river.  This is where I belong.  My parents just made a mistake.  They thought I was strong.  They thought I was special.  They thought I would find love.  Anyone can make a mistake. 

My hands hold the barbells over the river, tied to my ankles.  My toes hang over the edge of the bank.  The cold Tokyo wind makes my nose wet and cold.  I think about what will happen once I drop the barbells into the river…

“Don’t do it, Joe,” comes a voice from behind me.   

“I am just a puny rat of a human being,” I tell my mother. 

“But you have incredible strength,” she says. 

“I will never be rich and famous and beautiful,” I tell her.  “Photographers will never snap my picture in front of discotheques and film premiers.”  I continue to hold the barbells above the river.  My arms begin to tire. 

“The circus is not such a bad life,” mother says, and something about her words sounds familiar. 

“But no one will ever love me,” I say, my forearms shaking and my biceps throbbing. 

“I love you,” she says.  “I love you because I was born to love you.  And your father loved you because he understood you.  And perhaps, one day, if you are lucky, (and you were born under a lucky sign,) then you will find a woman who will love you with all her soul, as your father found me and as I loved him.      

♥♥♥

The strongman thanks me for returning his barbells.  “I-I-I’m e-e-ever so glad you’ve b-b-brought them b-b-b-back,” he tells me in a stuttering British accent.  No one at the theater had expected me to return. 

“Well, I suppose,” I overhear the carnival barker saying to the bearded lady, “there is no accounting for love.”      

The Difference Between Fantasy and Reality

I wrote this as a 20 minute exercise in my writers’ group.  The prompt was: “a time you realized the difference between fantasy and reality.”

 

The baby is crying.  I’m alone in the house, but I’m not.  I haven’t showered in three days and I’ve barely slept.  I’m starving.  Husband is sleep.  Still.  Now.  Always.  I pick up the baby.  I walk and rock to the kitchen, trying to calm him with one hand and microwave myself a lasagna with the other. 

Take care of the baby.

Five minutes and thirty seconds of rocking and staring into space, eyes bleary.  The microwave timer beeps.  I sit with the Boppy pillow around my waist, breastfeeding while I eat my lasagna, and it dawns on me that I am married, my husband is in the next room, but I am alone. 

Just take care of the baby. 

The perception I’ve had all these years of our relationship was a fantasy I could not let go of.  He wasn’t sarcastic.  He was cruel.  He wasn’t adoring me.  He was using me.  He didn’t want me.  He tolerated me.  and now we are not a happy family.  I am a single, though married, mother. 

Take care of the baby. 

What do I do?  I want to run away from my husband.  Fleetingly, the thought of running away from my husband and child passes through my mind, and my own thought so terrifies me that my entire body gets hot and starts to buzz and that heat moves all the way down into my fingers.  I take my hot finger tips and use them to massage my baby’s head, trying to transmit the love in my heart to the brain of my three-day-old baby.  

I will never leave my son, but should I leave my husband?  Where would I go?  What would I do?  How would I manage?  Who would I be?  What should I do? 

Take care of the baby.

The Curse of Inflation

 

 

 For nine cents I will look back at you as you as you search my eyes for affections lost.

You won’t say anything and I won’t say anything

And the coolness between us will pool around our ankles. 

 

For eight dollars I will fail to call you by your name. 

I’ll call you “honey” without any sweetness in my voice

And the deepest part of my mind will forget the sequence of the letters of your name. 

 

For thirty-nine dollars I will neglect you.

A kingless queen in your king-sized bed, your Calvin Kline sheets become a desert. 

You are Scheherazade propped up against your pillows, a thousand-and-one stories told but never heard.  

 

For two-hundred-and-sixty dollars I will…uh…

Were we discussing something, honey?

I wanted to talk to you, but the flea hopping across my flat screen television captivated me. 

 

For my love you would mortgage three of your left toes and four of your right.

For my body you would sell your favorite cat. 

For my consideration you would walk on your hands as you played the cello with your feet, and strangers threw coins on the cold ground around you.

 

But this shop is closed.

Anyway, a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to

And the more you pay, the less you get. 

Winter’s a Bitch

I wrote this as an in-class exercise today in my my creative writing class.  The assignment was to become a season of the year and write about yourself in the first person. 

Come to me.  You can’t stop yourself.  I know you don’t want me, but still, you’ll have me.  You are lost in facile ruminations of times lost: things in blossom, Indian days, and golden shimmering leaves.  But that’s too bad.  I don’t care.  Come to me. 

I will shut you up in your house and make you my prisoner.  I will make you tremble and cover your head.  You’ll hide your body from me under your blanket, but I’ll creep into your bed at night.  I will bite your toes and pinch your ears.  I’ll freeze your blood. 

You will awake in the morning and I’ll make you hate the air you breathe.  Your house won’t be a home.  I’ll make it a frozen cage.  That is who I am. 

I am not your best friend, May.  You and May might hold hands and swing arms, as you frolic in a sunny meadow.  I don’t care.  I’m not your lover, July.  He might rip your clothes off so you can sleep all night naked in his arms.  I’m not interested in seeing you naked.  I am definitely not your grandmother, September.  I won’t bake you cookies and allow you to feel warm and cozy in my embrace.  Fuck your grandmother. 

I am not your friend and I don’t want to be your friend.  I’ll teach you a lesson.  I’ll whip you into shape.  I’ll slap your face with my cold, harsh hand. 

You’ll run from me.  You’ll try a week’s vacation in balmy Mexico.  but even as you lay naked with your sunny lover in a foreign bed, you’ll know I’m here waiting for you.  You know you must return to me.  And I know it too.  So come back now. 

It’s March and you think you’ve conquered me.  You are congratulating yourself and wearing short sleeves.  But your good buddy, the sun, will betray you.  You are out alone on a walk with no sweater or hat, and he abandons you.  Who will you turn to now?  It’s just you and me and your painful goosebumps, and I’ve taught you my final lesson: never trust he sun. 

Soon, you’ll go back to your best friend, your lover, and that pink-cheeked grandmother.  You might even enjoy their company, but you’ll never forget me.  Even as you frolic with them, I will lurk in the background of your mind.  So wear your bathing suit.  Don your sundress, and your light, fashionable coat.  But I know you now, and you know me, too well. 

And now that we are acquainted, you’ll always keep a parka in your car and a sweater around your waist.  I’ve left my mark on you, and I’ll forever haunt your weather and your whether. 

The Secret to Happiness, the Haiku

Be happy like this:
sex, puppies, pancakes, and love
Not in that order

 

 

 

Pancake photo by By WayTru

http://www.flickr.com/photos/waytru/528949873/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peanut Butter Man

 

Detective Dave was a peanut butter man.  Every Wednesday afternoon for a year, we would lie together in the bed of a seedy motel room: my trashy lingerie, his huge muscles, and a 16 oz. jar of Skippy Super Chunk.  I prepared PB&J Nachos, Banana-Peanut Butter muffins, Peanut Butter and Fruit Quesadillas.  Dave sampled my peanut butter embellishments, but I always knew it was with a sense of polite obligation.   He preferred his peanut butter straight. 

The mornings of our assignations I would pack lunch for my daughter and husband and walk the two of them outside to our three-car driveway.  I’d kiss my husband on the cheek, hand him a laundry bag full dirty dry cleaning, and buckle my daughter into the car seat of my husband’s gray Audi station wagon.  Then I’d reenter my house to prepare for my afternoon with Detective Dave.  I’d shower, wax, perfume, and dress.  He liked me to wear short skirts, high-heeled boots, and garter belts with stockings. 

I’d go into my marble-countered kitchen and pack a cooler of food for Dave and me to share in our love nest.  I always supplied the peanut butter munchies.  Dave always brought the Jack Daniels and Coke. 

We met each week in the parking lot of a sleazy Alhambra motel.  Returning from registering in the small, curry-scented motel office, Dave would place the hotel key and his Triple A card on the hood of my SUV.   Then, he would slowly look me over.  His examination made me feel deliciously uncomfortable.  In the parking lot, with our long afternoon ahead of us, he studied me the way an army general surveys a battlefield before an invasion.  And I couldn’t wait to be invaded.   

Pushing me up against my car, he would gently take me in his arms, and roughly kiss me.  As we kissed, I could hear the traffic on the busy street outside the motel.  I could smell the auto exhaust.  I sensed the meth addicts and the discount tourists milling about us. 

“You got my peanut butter, baby?” he would ask me, grinning like a tall, handsome wolf. 

“You know I do, Detective Dave,” I would answer, and we would walk up the stairs to our room. 

Inside, he took off his gun and his badge, and set his cell phone to vibrate.  I unpacked our food and made our drinks.  He drank a lot of Jack with a little Coke, while I liked a lot of Coke with just a little Jack.  I would hand him his drink, unscrew the lid from the peanut butter jar, and sit down next to him on the bed.

My favorite way to eat peanut butter is spread on apple slices.  The peanut butter is dark, salty, and heavy.  The apple is its opposite: crisp, juicy, and light.  Their textures and sweet flavors balance each other perfectly, drawing out the best in each food.  Dave would eat a slice or two of peanut-butter-smeared apple while I talked to him about my inattentive husband, my drunken mommy friends, my boredom, and the way that while I was shopping at Target with my husband and daughter I sometimes felt like my brain was on fire.  But he left most of the apples and most of the talking to me.  He would nibble, listening patiently and stealing quick glances under my dress to determine the exact color and variety of my undergarments.    

Finally, satisfied with our peanut butter pre-game, he would forcefully dip the first two fingers of his left hand into the peanut butter jar, and then lick the peanut butter clean off his fingers with his tongue.  It made his fingers sticky, but I didn’t mind sticky fingers.  I considered it pre-game tongue calisthenics.  After all, we didn’t want any embarrassing sex-related injuries.

The sex was always amazing, of course: sweet, salty, and delicious.  In bed, Dave had a dancer’s rhythm and a marathoner’s stamina.  Afterwards, as the sun set through our iron-barred motel room window, and the motel maids gossiped in angry-sounding Spanish outside our room, we would lie together under the clean white sheets and plunge back into the peanut butter.  Post-coitus peanut butter consumption was entirely carnal.  No courteous conversation or unnecessary food-related accouterment.  It was just our naked fingers and the raw Skippy Super Chunk.  After sex, Dave liked to lick the peanut butter off my fingers.  I loved the way his tongue felt on my skin: slimy and wet, yet strong and forceful.  I considered it a post-game tongue stretch. 

Eventually, our real life would interrupt our steamy Alhambra oasis.  My mother would ring my cell phone to ask if I’d finished my quilting for the Children’s Guild.  Dave’s partner would call to announce that their sergeant had assigned them to court the next day.  Once, I overheard Dave bickering with his wife about whether or not to have chicken for dinner. 

And then it was time to prepare to leave.  Detective Dave would shower.  I would take my spare panties out of my purse and gloomily step into them.  I never showered.  I liked the scent of peanut butter to remain on my fingers until the next day.  My husband never noticed the smell. 

After about a year of these encounters, Detective Dave received a new, more challenging police assignment.  We began to see each other less and less frequently.  Eventually, he stopped calling and e-mailing me altogether.  He never told me exactly why, and I never exactly asked.  But it stung for months. 

Dozens of times every day I would check my secret e-mail account. 

“Mommy,” my daughter whined, “My kitty cat won’t golf with me.” 

“Okay, honey.  I’ll be right there,” I said, ignoring her as I pushed the “Check Mail” button on my computer over and over, mentally willing a new message from Dave to appear in my e-mail inbox.  “Check Mail.  Check Mail.  Check Mail.”  But it never worked.  Dave and his peanut-butter-encrusted love were gone.

Standing in my kitchen and looking at the unused collection of peanut butter recipes set aside for my missing-in-action lawman made me feel depressed, so I took the instructions for Peanut Butter Fudge, Frozen Peanutty Pops, Peanut Butter Banana Boats, and all the rest, and threw them in the trash.  I tossed them into the black bin, not even into the recycling.  It felt good to be bad. 

Slowly I worked Dave out of my system.  Whole hours went by when I didn’t pine for him.   Entire days passed when I didn’t check my e-mail account.  I ceased hungering for him in the peanut butter aisle of the supermarket.  I started buying my family Laura Scudders. 

 ♥♥♥

And then, because a watched pot never boils; because you don’t remember your boss’s wife’s name until after she’s walked away from you at the office party; because it’s on December 26^th that you realize you stored all of your Christmas tree decorations in an old diaper carton in the kitchen cabinet above your refrigerator; because it’s not until you’ve finally stopped obsessing about your ex-lover and his hands, his voice, his eyes, and you really feel like you are over him that you run into him; because life is like that; I stood in the check-out line of the Trader Joe’s near my house and, looking up from my checkbook, locked eyes with Detective Dave.    

For a moment I felt like I was staring at a ghost.  I had yearned for him, then mourned for him, then finally wrenched myself from my bond with him.  And now here he was, on a scorching summer day, standing in front of me again: the same wolfish smile, the same broad shoulders, and the same “Hey, sweetheart, how ya doin’?”

“I’m great,” I answered, trying too hard to sound like I’d just won the lottery, discovered the cure for cancer, and become engaged to George Clooney. 

“Well, you look hot.”

“Thanks,” I said, “You too.”

As my mouth continued this polite, banal prattle, my mind began to race.  He’s here, standing in front of me.  It’s a good thing I blow-dried my hair and put on makeup before I left the house.  I look good.   He’s regretting breaking things off with me.  He is totally checking out my legs.  He wants me.  He’s always wanted me.  Something must have happened to keep him from calling me.  His wife found out and threatened divorce.  His kids got sick.  He got very busy at work.  He was really in love with me, but didn’t know how to tell me.  He didn’t think I would love him back.   But now that he’s seen me again, he can’t resist me.  He wants me too much.  He’s going to explain all, take me into his arms, and swear he’ll never let me go again.  I’ll act unsure.  I’ll question him and accuse him and ask wise, worldly questions that will demonstrate I’m a woman of substance and that will just make him want me even more.  But eventually, lustfully, I’ll surrender.  We’ll scandalize our families and shock and impress our friends.  But when they see us together, they’ll feel our connection and understand our love is a thing that simply couldn’t be denied.  They’ll see the way Dave worships me.  They’ll feel our sexual connection.  They’ll wonder what we are like in bed together and admire our virility, passion, and beauty.  

In the midst of my reverie, I looked down and noticed the single item in Detective Dave’s shopping basket: a 64 oz jar of Skippy Super Chunk.  It was then I remembered what my mother always told me: never go to the supermarket hungry. 

“That’s a really big jar of peanut butter,” I said. 

“You know how much I like peanut butter, sweetheart,” he answered, smiling, as though nothing was the matter.  I knew then what I’d been too proud or insecure or idiotic to admit to myself before.  Dave hadn’t forsaken peanut butter afternoon sex-fests.  He had just quit having them with me. 

It suddenly dawned on me how unbalanced our association had always been.  My chatting, my stories, my recipes, my cooler full of ingredients, my grooming, preparing, and daydreaming.  Dave had always arrived in a t-shirt with a can of Coke, a bottle of Jack, and his Triple A card.  He had never wanted anything more from me than an afternoon in bed and a jar of Skippy Super Chunk.  I was always too convoluted for him: too much work, too much talk, too many ingredients.  He had never wanted all of that.  He had only ever wanted one thing from me, and nothing more.  Detective Dave was a peanut butter man. 

 ♥♥♥

I accepted my receipt and coupons from the check-out lady, gathered my grocery bags, and said goodbye to Detective Dave.  The automatic doors of the supermarket parted for me and I passed through them into the muggy wasteland of the parking lot.   The thought of getting back into my SUV, unloading my groceries onto my marble kitchen counters, and cooking dinner for my family made me feel like a lost, thirsty, desert wanderer.  I turned back at the market, searching for a place to sit down and collect myself.  There was no place to sit, so I collapsed onto the cool cement ground and leaned against the concrete wall of the store, my brown paper grocery bags falling around me.   

I remained there for a long time, thinking about Dave, what he had meant to me, and what I had meant to him.  I got that tense, strained feeling behind my eyes and in my throat that you get when you are about to cry, but I never quite did.  Eventually I felt hungry, so I reached into a grocery bag and brought out a fresh jar of peanut butter.  I unscrewed the lid, removed the protective foil seal, and immersed the first two fingers of my left hand into the jar.  I licked the peanut butter clean off my fingers, thinking about the wetness, strength, and agility of my own tongue.  But my taste buds ached for something else, so I reached my clean right hand back into the brown paper grocery bag, exploring and considering what else I wanted.  The paper bag crackled and my hungry fingers grasped an apple.