Winging it

“Get out of the kitchen, Elliott,” Ron said, the red capillaries bulging on his nose and his toupe sliding off the top of his head. “Don’t try to tell me what to do. I’m captain of this ship.”

There would be no talking to him, nor did I even care to. Let the idiot moron try to fix the refrigerator door. So I walked out of the kitchen and past the Marilyn Monroe poster and into the living room. Diana sat on the red leather sofa doing a crossword puzzle.

“Dad,” she yelled out toward the kitchen, “listen to Elliott. We’ve only got an hour or so before the hurricane starts getting really ad. And he’s been a refrigerator repairman for the past seven years. He’ll fix that door hinge in ten minutes flat.”

“Diana,” I said, sotte voce so as not to upset the ‘captain of the ship,’ also known as my bonkers father-in-law, “Wild horses couldn’t drag me back into that kitchen to help your father. The door can fall off the hingers for all I –“

Of course. Just as I said that, we heard a loud crash and a boom and a tenor cry for help from the kitchen. We went into the kitchen and found Ron lying on the floor with the refrigerator door on top of his head.

I looked at Diana. Her face had gone gray. I decided to take her lead. At that moment, the power went out and the kitchen went dark. Nothing happened for the longest time, but I could hear Diana’s heavy breathing.

I broke the ice first. “What shall we do, Diana?”

“Let’s get in the car and drive to a Days Inn. Across the state line into Georgia.”

Skin

Okay, Jack. It’s 6 a.m. at the condo. This morning you’ll take your shower – first thing, no delay, no putzing around he house, no coffee in the coffee maker, no emptying the dishwasher, no cleaning out the birdcage, no de-pooping the litterbox, no walking the dog, no daily write, no checking in with your work e-mail … just a shower, first thing in the morning. Jack, it’ll wake you up – he tells himself.

Jack gets out of bed and heads into the living room, doesn’t bother to put anything on since first thing he’ll do is a shower. Woops, Jack tells himself, I forgot to fold that load of towels last night. So he opens the dryer door, folds the towels and puts them away. Last one, the kitchen hand towel. And those clean dishes in the drain pan – got to put them away, one at a time. Might as well empty the dishes at the same time. Don’t forget to put the doggy bowl down for Trouble – who stands their wagging his tail.

“All right, Trouble, I’ll feed you. But first, Daddy’s got to clean the birdcage and litter box.”

Twenty minutes later, the pets are cleaned up and fed. Trouble ate it right up, now he wants to go outside. “But not until I empty the wastebaskets and the garbage.”

You know, Jack says aloud, I might as well eat breakfast before I shower. I can brush my teeth in the shower. And you know what, use your time wisely, Jack, so eat breakfast in front of the laptop. And do that daily write, and check your work e-mail.

An hour later, all that done. So finally Jack can head into the shower. What’s that smell? Forgot to put the garbage outside the condo door, will throw it down the shute when I walk Trouble, Jack says. Outside he goes with the garbage.

Sarah walks by with her shih tzu, looks down, and raises her Republican eyebrows. Woops, Jack tells himself, forgot to put anything on. “Excuse me, Sarah. So sorry …”

“That’s all right, Jack, I’ve seen it before. Many times," she says, a shrug in her voice. "And by the way, I'd try a different hair dye."

A rock and a dandelion

“If life gives you lemons,” Elena said, the wrinkles in her jowls coming into focus as she gave me that faux intellectual purse of the lips as the whipped cream on top of her Katharine Hepburn-accented ice cream, “just turn it into lemonade!”

I’d had enough of her platitudes years ago, but this time, I couldn’t pretend like someone had rung the doorbell and I needed to hang up the phone. She was actually here in person, sitting in my parlor sipping Lipton Tea in my grandmother’s Wedgewood cups. I’d already made the fatal mistake of confiding my latest firestorm in her.

Georgianna, I told myself, enduring the town’s biggest bag of hot air even for this courtesy call would be far worse than enduring my youngest boy wanting to become a ballerina.

“Mother!” Harry had scolded me with his own purse of the lips, but without the wrinkled jowls, “a dancer. I shall be a dancer, not a ballerina!”

Men didn’t do such things, Henry said, and then turning on me, he blamed me for our son’s prissy mannerisms, flowery language, fairy hobbies. As he usually did when our boys misbehaved, he left me to repair the damage and went to shoot pool with the “boys.”

Harry on one side of the equation, threatening to run away to his Aunt Gertrude in New York if we didn’t allow him to take ballet lessons at Boston University three days a week, and Henry on the other side of the equation, implying he’d disown our son if he so much as looked at a tutu, did not make for the stable household expected of an Andover matron. I was caught between a rock and a hard place.

What a deal!

“Can you believe it, George,” Martha asked, the crescendo of her voice’s soprano creedping across the room all the way to George’s ears. “We got this room at the Hooters Casino for just $79 a night.”

George plopped the luggage on the bed and sighed. He squinted. As soon as they’d landed in Vegas, he’d put sunscreen on his face and head, but schwitzing all the way from the parking lot across the street, it’d run down into his eyes. And they burned.

“That’d be a fortune back in Dubuque, Martha. And even parking across the street’s costing us $15 a day. Highway robbery, paying that much to park. You’d think I was made of money.”

Martha took her wig off – a Marlo Thomas flip-up – and put it on its stand on the dresser. She put a comb through her flattened hair. “Now, George, don’t complain. This is a once in a lifetime trip, sweetheart. Look here, George, the hotel has a buffet and it’s only $11.95 if we don’t drink. All you can eat.”

“Well, four days here will set us back nearly a thousand,” George said, feeling the butterflies creep back into his stomach. “Don’t know how we’ll pay the credit card bill when we get home, don’t know how.”

Martha put the brush down. The furniture had glass tops on it. “Maybe we’ll go across the street and make some money on the slot machines.”

“And maybe we’ll grow wings and fly back home ourselves. Then I can haggle with Southwest to refund us the unused airline tickets.”

Up close

Sleep would not come to Margo that night. She tried walking upstairs to the living, her terry cloth robe wrapped about her. When she reached for the poker to stoke the dying embers in the fireplace, she got a jolt of static electricity. Damn Santa Fe and damn New Mexico, she thought. Always so dry in February. Margo nestled herself among the pillows on her sofa and soaked in the fire’s dying warmth.

At least she’d be going to Florida tomorrow morning, but she needed to have sleep. It would be difficult to deal with her cousins and Aunt Marcia’s friends in Stuart. All those plastic surgery victims her aunt had surrounded herself with. Why hadn’t she moved Aunt Marcia out to Santa Fe after the stroke? But she’d insisted, she’d be happier in her own home.

Margo looked out the bay window. The full moon bounced off the Sangre de Cristo mountains off in the distance. She felt lonely all of a sudden – she always did in those wee hours after midnight when sleep wouldn’t come to her, and Norman’s snoring drove her to this living room of isolation. She stood up and walked over to the window for an up close look at the mountains. Perhaps they couldn’t sleep, either, and perhaps they were lonely, too.

Margo sighed. Better to get it over with now than wait another two hours. She had to be up at seven to make the airport on time. So she went into the bathroom and drank from the Listerine bottle. She stared at herself in the mirror and saw wrinkles she’d never noticed before. Next in line, after Aunt Marcia, she’d be the next one to go. Within minutes, she could feel the alcohol coarse through her veins. She lay in the bed and tuned out Norman’s snoring.

Why am I here?

It came around to Ellen’s turn. She read from the piece of paper. “Describe an incident where you lost control of yourself.”

I had liked her immediately, an older lady wearing an older lady’s blue dress with a white lace sweater. A regal smile, a diamond – not too large, but a size that advertised both wealth and modesty – and a sophisticated pitch to her New Hampshire accent.

She talked about vacationing with her husband and her brother (I still didn’t know what that meant) in the Adirondacks – and her brother went into a CVS with her husband and tried to steal a bottle of Listerine. He put it in his pocket and walked right out of the store and back into the car.

Ellen’s husband calmly got back into the car and sat with his hands at the wheel. “Your brother stole a bottle of Listerine,” he said to Ellen and then turned to her brother. “I told the management inside and they’ve promised not to prosecute if you go back and either pay for it or return it.”

Ellen went beet red and then exploded. “How could you do such a thing to yourself, Gerald, and to us? Haven’t you learned anything?”

I kept picturing the bottle of Listerine – and the addiction – and what that bottle meant for Ellen’s family. It was my turn now, and I had to talk about the effect alcohol addiction had had on my own family. And me.

Something silly

“Vera, darling,” Iris said to her maid, pointing down at her gin and tonic. “Would you be a dear and get rid of this drink? Brian and I are heading down to the Chicken Coop for dinner.”

Vera was watering the plants. “Yes, Mrs. Carrington.” Vera had a bucket in one hand, a newspaper under her armpit, and took the drink in the other hand. She looked around, shrugged – and dumped the excess ice from the glass into the geranium pot. And then Vera marched into the kitchen.

“What are we going to do about her, Brian? She put my drink in the plant.”

“Good for the plant. Let’s get going.”

Five minutes later Brian had helped Iris into her stole. He jingled his keys.

“We’re off, Vera,” he called out into the kitchen. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Enjoy your evening at the Chicken Co-op,” Vera answered.

Tell me about the eggs

Feeling bloated and wrinkled, Gertie stood hunched over the sink in her apron and paisley house dress, chopping onions for the omelet she was preparing. Just so Herb could drive their nine-year old Plymouth to the same damned accounting job he’d been stuck in the past seventeen years. Her reading glasses fell off her face into the raw egg batter.

Gertie broke down. Nothing ever went right where Herb was concerned. What ever happened to the days when she won all those statues for ballet performances? And what ever happened to her lithe figure, the one that’d excited so many admirers? She looked like a square box these days.

Herb sauntered into the kitchen with that smirk on the blotchy face she’d come to despise. Gertie went back to cleaning her glasses.

“Puddin’, add some sour cream in my eggs today. And make my coffee black,” Herb said.

Gertie looked over her left shoulder – oh, how her upper back twinged when she did that.

“Look. You want eggs, Herb? Well, here are your god-damned eggs.”

Gertie picked up the box of eggs and tossed them against the fridge. She walked out the kitchen door a right across the street. And a bus flattened her dead.

A strong attachment

“But Reginald, darling, it is time I must leave … I shall always feel a strong attachment to you al. But for me, it has been simply midsummer madness!”

Payne sat, enraptured, as Rosalind Russell got stuck on the back of Coral Browne’s costume. The play-within-the-movie had everyone in the audience laughing (both on-screen and at the Pantages) .. Payne most of all. He’d saved up the money for weeks to come in from Pasadena on the trolley.

Ever since reading Patrick Dennis’s madcap novel and hearing all about Rosalind Russell’s Broadway triumph, he’d been waiting for the Warner Brothers Cinerama masterpiece. And here it was, with the rhinestones and martinis all the way. Payne had sat wide-eyed, his shoulders not even resting on the seat, ever since Auntie Mame came trotting down the stairs and shook the monkey’s hand.

After the last fade-out when Auntie Mame heads off to India with Patrick’s son Michael, Payne headed out of the theater.

“Excuse me,” a young man with an attractive dimple said to Payne. “I couldn’t help but notice your excitement. What did you think of Roz?”

“The best thing she’s done since ‘The Women.’ Simply fabulous, darling, simply fabulous!”

“Spoken just like Auntie Mame!” the other man said. Payne couldn’t help but notice the violet eyes, just like Elizabeth Taylor’s. But he looked more like a cross between Monty Clift and Rock Hudson. “Would you care to walk over to Johnny Rocket’s?”

“I’m so sorry, I have to catch the return to Pasadena,” Payne said. But Auntie Mame was the treasure that kept on giving. “On the other hand, I have plenty of time.”

Graffiti Art

Chester draped his arm around Barb’s waist. She’d gained a few pounds in the eight years since they’d last been together, but no matter. He liked the feel of his right side nestled into her left. They talked and laughed, walking down Sansom Street. It reminded him of Florence, really, that summer of ’31 before either of them had gotten married.

They crossed the corner of 39th Street. Chester looked down the alleyway and saw two shadows, clustered together in the distance at the foot of a brick wall. Two lovers, no doubt, sharing an intimate moment they thought was private. Well, Chester thought to himself, I’ll give it to them –

But no, the man was pulling his arm back and then struck the woman in the face. And she wasn’t caressing him back, she was struggling, struggling for life itself. Chester broke free from Barb and ran toward them.

Chester bored his eyes into the man. He raced at top speed directly to him. “Stop this! Stop this right now! You leave that woman alone!”

He reached the couple and tore the man off the woman. The man smelled of urine and vodka. A large man, but very soft around the middle – unlike Chester’s lean-muscled physique. The man let out an ogre’s groan and then Chester felt an electric gash in his stomach. Chester let out a scream and grabbed the knife out of the man’s hand before he could take a second swipe – and made a bullseye with it in the man’s heart. He let out a blood-curdling cry and collapsed onto the pavement.

So fast, yet so long. Chester felt sharp pains in his abdomen. Barb came up to them, shaking all over. “Chester, Chester … are you all right?”

“You’d better go, Barb. No one can find out you were here. Go!”

What's in the bowl?

After everyone left from the Stupid Bowl party that Hal and Debra had hosted that afternoon, Debra plopped herself on their ‘70s velour sofa and sighed like a mule. Gosh, she wished Hal would let her get rid of this tacky relic. No one kept these L-shaped sofas any longer.

She could hear Hal tapping away on his keyboard in the den nearby. These days all he did was sit in front of that damned computer of his, surfing the web for God knew only what, usually in his underwear and a baseball cap. Sometimes he didn’t have underwear at all, but then he always wore a t-shirt. He saved his naked time for when they had sex. Which was every Saturday afternoon at 4:30, an hour before she had a cosmo and he had a Michelob. Their weekly treat, sex and cocktails.

Whenever she asked him what he was looking at, he always gave excruciating detail: “stuff.” That’s all, nothing like the news, politics, movies, cars, just “stuff.” She wondered what he was looking at as she sat there, inspecting her finger nails. She’d have to go in for a manicure this week – she was due for another round of “Jungle Red.” But then she noticed the keys in the bowl with the large M on the ring.

They’d be Melinda’s keys. She picked them up and yelled out toward Hal, “Honey, I think Melinda forgot –“ and then she noticed those two odd keys. Funny, they were just like their own keys to their cottage in Half Moon Bay. She looked closer – yes, they were the exact same keys. Same black octagon with a gold fleur de lys icon in the middle. What was Melinda doing with their keys?

She walked ever so quietly into the den. Hal sat there, sure enough, in his underwear and that stupid baseball cap. And then she saw – Internet porn. That slut.

The ticket

Ah, the freedom. Tommy drove down the I-5 at a leisurely 75 miles per hour, past the cattle ranches, and viewed the wide open vistas of the San Joaquin Valley. Was there any feeling like this, knowing he was free now, could do anything he wanted, go any place he cared, screw any babe he put his eyes on? Freedom and money, he’d sought them both for years, and now he had them.

He’d have to get new wheels. The ’93 Deville he’d stolen wouldn’t make it to Mexico like he planned – but it did give him speed. Had to watch it, he found himself going up to 85. Back to 75. No matter – he’d go to a used car lot, pay cash for a 2-year old BMW and be on his way. He’d already gotten the fake license and passport from Ricky in Modesto.

What would he do in Mexico? He’d buy a cantina by the beach – work as a bartender, dole out margaritas to undersexed Missouri housewives on vacation who’d love to have a 9-incher screw them on the beach. The Deville’s speedometer edged to 90 …

The sirens came behind him from nowhere – that patch of grass behind the hill, Tommy supposed. What to do? He stopped and looked about him. The pig got out of his Charger, started toward him with a John Wayne swagger and reflective Ray-Bans like a grunting top from bad ‘70s porn.

Tommy prepared himself. No traffic in either direction.

“License, insurance, registration –“

Tommy lifted his left arm and pointed the revolver straight at the officer’s face. Before the officer could react, Tommy plugged his face. The pig ricocheted backward onto the highway. Tommy threw the gun down on the car’s floor and pulled away.

Ah, the price of freedom. But thank God he was left-handed. Cop would’ve seen the gun in the right hand. Next time – he’d have to watch his speed. One whacked cop was enough.

It didn't work

The television came on again but all Daphne got out of it was snow. She threw the remote at the monitor. “Horsefeathers! You deal with it, Giles. I give up.”

“Now, Daphne, sweetheart” her husband said, that pouty scolding tone coming back into his voice, “you know very well I can’t fiddle with electronica. Reading those pesky user manuals give me a sick headache.”

Daphne groaned. Giles was always complaining of a sick headache these days. “Where’d you put your reading glasses?”

He raised his brows and narrowed his eyes. “On the end table, where I always put them.”

“They’re not there,” Daphne said, hands on hips and wondering why their Friday evening was being wasted on cheap plastic crap from China. “I can’t very well look at the DVD player if I can’t see that damned black-on-black print they put on these damned machines.”

“You’re the one who wants to watch ‘Rashomon’ tonight,” Giles said, all puffed up. “Not me. I’d have been perfectly happy to play gin rummy.”

“We’ve had the movie from Netflix almost a week. It’s about time. Drats, you lost your reading glasses. Magnifying glass? Flashlight?”

“That’s James’s routine, not mine. Why don’t you call customer service?”

Twenty minutes waiting for someone to pick up the phone, make her go through everything she’d already tried, and come from half way around the world with an incomprehensible accent?

“I’d rather eat my fingernails.”

Shoes

Mel ran to the shoe room while Val waited. The tap, tap, tap of Val’s heels on the linoleum could be heard throughout the entire house – from the grand foyer all the way up to Mel’s shoe room. Too bad, Mel thought, waiting would be a good thing for that shoe-tapping Type A lawyer.

What to wear? Granted, it was only April and the Seattle gray hadn’t lifted for the season yet. Mel doubted it ever would this year. It’d been a gloomy year ever since Val had swept Pat up on New Year’s Eve and had that January affair. Well, screw Pat, though Mel had decided to leave that up to Val. And why not? There was this mansion on the lake, the Mercedes in the garage, and a room full of shoes. All Pat had was monthly visits to the salon.

Mel meandered in the shoe closet, organized to perfection. Winter boots, dress shoes for formal occasions, pumps for their most outrageous parties, rows of tennis shoes for the gym (they always belonged to the absolute latest in gyms), flip flops for boating when they decided to cruise, sandals for those trips down to Catalina (Mel could never understand what Val saw in southern California), and of course work shoes, just to remember what it was like before Val punctured a hole into life.

Tonight they were going to an Obama fundraiser. Their president needed all the money he could get, fighting those evil Repulsivecans. Mel knew perfectly well that Pat would be there with that Suzy Chapstick smile, tanning salon tan, and Botox-filled face. Well, screw Pat – and this time Mel would do the srewing. Val would get a lifetime’s surprise tomorrow morning when coming into the guest bedroom and finding Pat in bed with Mel.

In the corner

I sighed when I came home from the hospital. Visiting George every evening after a day at work was dragging me down, I had to admit. Even George had said something recently. Martha, he said in that nicotine gravel of a voice he had, you got to get you some fun sometime.

But how could I have fun anymore? Without George at home I had too much to do around the house. Tonight, however, I couldn’t deal with it, so I opened the refrigerator door. How beautiful it sat there, that bottle of New Zealand white wine. As shiny as a new car on the showroom floor. And I started to reach for it …

No, I promised him. I promised myself. And remember what happened the last time I drank? I ended up in Hayward without knowing how I got there. I can’t do it … but I need something, some guilty pleasure. So I raided the freezer. Thank God! A little of that French vanilla ice cream left. And some Smuckers caramel sauce. Yum … heat it up in the microwave. I went to the corner table in the kitchen and had my ice cream treat … yum. But not enough. It’s too silent here.

I think I’ll go into the bedroom and masturbate to my Victoria Secret catalog. The house is too quiet without George here.

The surprise

Richard had been planning ever since Helen had bought the Lexus without asking him. But this November Friday was the night, the weather windy and stormy just as he’d hoped. No one would hear what he planned for her at the Mendocino cabin. None of their friends would be coming up for the weekend, and Helen’s mother would be expecting her in Scottsdale late that night. But she’d never arrive.

Yesterday, he’d gone up there in a Fusion he’d rented on his fake ID and stored his supplies in the pantry. Bought at different stores, of course, so no one would make the connection. A bungee cord, plastic sheeting, a ball of twine, a steel saw, and a large sack. After it was over, after he’d avenged all those credit card bills, he’d take Helen to the plot he’d already unearthed halfway down the coast on the way to Bodega Bay.

The first part went off without a hitch. He surprised Helen at home, sitting in the foyer, waiting for the taxi to come up Pacific Street to their house. He’d take her to the airport, he decided – he wanted to see her off. Thank you, she said – so much nicer than taking a taxi. But don’t bother calling the taxi, he said – no need at this point, let’s just go. So into the car they went, and as soon as she shut the door, he did it. A well-placed chloroform-soaked handkerchief over her face. Helen, unconscious in less than ten seconds. He gave her a morphine injection to make it last.

His wife … how many years now since they got married, twenty-three? Right around this time of year, he could never remember the date. But she always did. And every year, another expensive diamond he’d have to buy for her. Well, there she lay in the back seat of their Range Rover – no one could see her. He drove very carefully up to Mendocino. No need getting pulled over by the California Highway Patrol.

He drove through the neighborhood. The usual traffic for a Friday evening, weekenders still coming up from the city even this late in Fall, even with the horrible weather – cars lined the avenue going up the hill toward their own house. He pulled into the driveway, around the back, and into the garage. He opened the rear door, dragged Helen out – good, unconscious but alive.

Had she gained weight on the drive? She seemed ponderous for such a petite woman as he lifted her over his shoulder, opened the door, and started up the stairs. When he reached the top, he opened the door into the great room.

The lights went on. Forty people stood up and yelled, “Surprise! Happy anniversary!”

Allow me to introduce myself (again)

The fifteenth of October. We’ve finally turned the corner. Four months of schwizting through my shirt at 7:00 in the morning when I walk my dog, four months of agonizing anxiety over whether a hurricane will destroy my home, four months of cabin fever, Florida variety – all over now. Having weathered the worst weather the country can offer, for the next eight months we can now offer the best it can.

Icing on the cake, we start a new Round Robin today. I think this is #11 for me, though I’m not sure. I’ve stopped counting them, just like I stopped counting the number of trips I was taking to East Hampton to visit Mark. I believe it was #15 when I went up there in August to bury my gallant, dapper 92-year old friend. There’ll probably only be one more East Hampton trip, to close down the house when it sells. But there’ll be lots, lots, lots more Round Robins.

My New Year’s resolution, Round Robin-style, is to do my daily writes when I wake up in the morning. Today’s a promising start. I’m here on the East Coast, looking out the window toward the Atlantic Ocean (can any of you do that from San Francisco) at what promises to be a beautiful morning. I say “morning” because in Florida, the sky’s only good for two, maybe three hours of predicting the weather. But I digress, as I’ve been known to do. My resolution is to do these writes in the morning, because they always put me in a happy mood.

I read the roster of Round Robin participants and found so many people I’ve partnered with in the past. I’m psyched to be writing with such great people. We’ve got a number of great poets in the group, fiction writers, dialogue queens, plot mavens, scene setters, and even a few geek types (count me in there). Let’s get the party started.