The round robin

Aaron Aardvark stood by my shoulder and sipped his gin martini. "Jane Underwood knows how to throw a fabulous Bring your Favorite Fictional Character party."

"Yes," I agreed. "I've never seen such a colorful collection of sexually-repressed housewives, passive-aggressive mothers-in-law, egomaniacal businessmen, and neurotic yuppies all in the same room at the same time."

"Must be fun, writing about people who don't really exist," Aaron said, surveying a nubile blonde whom I didn't know -- I wondered if she were fictional or a fellow writer? "Or do they? Maybe they really do exist. I know I exist."

I had to laugh. Aaron was toying with me. He knew full well that I'd send him back to my imagination at a moment's notice, but he liked being out in the real world for once. His time machine hadn't yet brought him out to the real world. It was still caught between the pages of the as-yet-unwritten book. The most Aaron could hope for was to read between the lines occasionally.

A young man with a beard and narrow waist walked by Aaron, and I saw him stare at the boy's behind. Poor Aaron, so relentlessly bisexual. If he remained in the real world for too long, he'd have to have sex with a man. And a woman.

I sniffed, feigning indifference to Aaron's game. But instead I breathed in the scent of almond biscotti through my nose. I always loved Jane's Round Robin cookies.

My next move

Aaron finally got a ruling on his petition to attend the Nativity, and before too long his time machine transported him to Bethlehem. He emerged from a cave in the forest, God only knew where, and walked to the nearest town.

“Who goes there,” a black-bearded man in armor asked when Aaron walked by the market. “Halt and make yourself known.”

“It is I, Aaron Aardvark of California.”

“I’ve never seen hair that color before in my life, nor a face so white. Not even among the most northern of Romans. And your robe wears too closely to your legs.”

“I come in peace and blue jeans, sir. Please forgive my appearance.”

The guard reached for his saber, but paused. He squinted his eyes, looked at Aaron shivering in his dungarees and flannel shirt. “Where is this tribe of California? Somewhere east of Persia?”

After a fashion, Aaron supposed. “Quite east. I come to witness a very special birth. I seek Joseph and Mary of Galilee.”

The man grunted. “Never a more pitiful pair of nomads did I see enter the village. Off you go then, in that direction.” He pointed and went back to the market and all those hides and pelts.

Aaron turned down the alleyway the man indicated. Before too long, the small houses of the village came further apart, and then he came upon the stable. A star shone brightly above the structure and light came from within. Aaron entered and just as he turned to witness the Savior’s birth, he saw a three-ringed circus with ponies, acrobats, clowns, and a strong man.

“Damn that time machine,” Aaron thought. “I knew I should’ve downloaded the latest upgrade when my Macbook prompted me.”

It's funny

Chester darted forward when he spotted a squirrel at the base of a tree, and I broke my wrist on the leash.

“Horse manure,” I said, looking down at my twisted arm. “Chester, get back over here!”

The dog had galloped over to the tree, but he didn’t get his prize, for the squirrel outsmarted him once again. Cripe, I thought – I broke my wrist and Chester didn’t even get the squirrel.

Oh, the pain in my wrist – I felt every tendon, every bone, every fiber of muscle in my right arm shout a fierce complaint at this point, and it felt as though any slight movement, and my whole arm would fall off. I could see it there, lying on the street.

I sat down on the sidewalk and began to cry. Chester came over to me, sniffed my tears, wagged his tail, and began to whimper. He had this guilty look in his eyes, the sly little devil. Like he knew he’d done wrong. Why is it, with pets and children, when they give you that “I’ve been a bad boy, please forgive me” look, we always forgive them?

Looking back on this incident, it’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. Especially since I’d wet myself, didn’t even realize it until I sat down in the car when my partner took me to the hospital. Another loss – I took the dog for a walk, and he didn’t even pee.

This is my vision

“Hi, Alex, I’ll take Things That’ll Never Happen for $200,” Sonya said. The game had an unreal quality to it.

The electronic blip revealed the answer, and Alex said, “This never happens when someone says, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’”

Sonya beat out her opponents, Herbie Blaunox and Matilda Golddigger, to the button. “What is a telephone call, Alex?”

“Correct! And the next selection is?”

“Passive-aggressive Dyslexics for $400,” Sonya said, a smile on her face. She was on a roll.

Alex recited the clue: “He slept with your best friend without telling you.”

Sonya groaned. “Who is my boyfriend Oliver, Alex.”

“It’s as if this game were made for you, Sonya.”

“Let’s move onto to Self-centered Adjectives for $600,” Sonya said, becoming fidgety.

“A compound adjective that describes a man who sits naked on your finest sofa after having a bowel movement.”

Sonya felt that queasy breath of air rise in her throat at the thought of Oliver. “What is hyper-gross, Alex?”

“You are correct again, Sonya, and you’ve now taken the lead. Final question before double jeopardy. The category is Two-eyed Monsters for $800. And the answer is …”

The square turned, and Alex continued. “The life partner I’ve chosen because no one else is beating down the door.”

Herbie Blaunox punched down on his button one-tenth of a second before Sonya did. “Who is Sonya’s boyfriend Oliver?”

“Yes, Herbie!” Alex said. “And you’ve now become our Jeopardy champion! But our Consolation Prize for Second Best goes to Sonya Schlossberg!”

Sonya woke up and sat up in bed. It was still dark, and Oliver snored beside her. She wished he’d get his deviated septum fixed.

A lie

Charlotte sat at the desk adding up the column of figures. The numbers just wouldn’t make it this month. Vera and Boris would be wanting their paychecks, and she just wouldn’t be able to give them. What would she do?

She took another look at the expenses for the month. Piano books, higher than last month. The electricity bill, much higher – Boston’s worst January on record. The phone bill, long distance to New York, all the instruments they’d bought but hadn’t yet sold. Insurance, medical bills for Vera and Boris, herself and the children – all normal. No, expenses weren’t the problem. It was income – or the lack of it. No one was buying instruments in the middle of stagflation, fewer students came to take lessons from Boris or any of her other piano teachers.

She’d have to tell Vera and Boris the truth, that they’d have to close the shop – at least temporarily, but Charlotte knew it would be for good. After so many years, too, all the hard work and labor. She’d tell them the whole truth. A lie would be so much better, but no – she’d never lied to her mother-in-law, and she’d never lied to her best friend. Today wasn’t the day to start.

The real reason

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The last time I used a pair of scissors

Honey Lou speared the scissors into the cutting board and went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. The red blood soaked the white porcelain like cherry juice on white tile – suddenly, and with full absorption. All of a sudden, Honey Lou oticed she had to urinate – but she had to wash her hands thoroughly, get all the blood off, before she walked around the house any more than she had. She tapped her feet to forget the burning urge.

Just when the water began to run clear and the sink began to turn white again, Honey Lou eard the front doorbell ring.. Two seconds later, the door opened and she heard steps walking on the hardwood floor toward the kitchen.

“Honey Lou,” a high-pitched soprano called out. It was Trudy Bixler. Honey Lou nsides froze in place, her heart seemed to stop, and she ceased breathing – the scissors! She reached over for the scissors and washed them in the sink, concealing them with her body.

“Trudy, what brings you here today,” she said, her voice far more calm and even than she’d have thought possible.

Honey Loulooked down – blood was cleared. She rinsed off the scissors again and placed them behind the faucet. Turned off the water. Reached for the white hand towel – but stopped, and reached for the dark one instead.

“Just passing through and realized I need to borrow eggs for my cake. Would you mind being a dear?”

“Of course,” she said, “Take whatever you need. Oh – and let’s go out the back door. I want to show you my lilies. But quickly, because I have to pick up Charles and Sofia.”

Please leave, Trudy … so I can attend to the rest of this business and get on with the whole charade. Honey Lou ooked toward the dining room. She could see a gray hand under one of the dining room chairs, the fallen vase, and a pool of blood. Trudy needed to leave right away.

Behind

Before Sofia had even placed a foot on the ground outside the car, Charles had made it to the Tylers’ front door. East Grand Avenue might have larger mansions, but for Charles, single-minded in pursuing the management job at Plymouth Motors, the Tylers were simply the end. George Tyler was president of the motor division.

“Hurry up, Sofia, don’t be running behind all the time,” Charles said.

It was difficult, rushing to step out of this car, Plymouth’s latest incarnation of the small car, the Valiant Barracuda. She’d borrowed Charles’s mother’s mink stole for this occasion, too tight in the midsection, and she had a tough time getting out of the car. And then walking in these high heels – Charles insisted she must dress her best for this cocktail party.

“Just one moment, sweetheart.”

Sofia tried to adjust her face into happy lines, her beehive into a neat pile on top of her head, and her skirt into place. With all the snow, the air was so dry, her skirt stuck to her stockings, and this mink stole simply didn’t help. When Sofia reached to close the door, her finger felt a shock on the handle.

But she’d do anything to help Charles in his career. It was a wife’s duty, after all.

The new plan

Zachary unpacked Tyler’s Wedgewood china.

“Sweetheart,” Tyler said, an ever-so-slight hint of uneasy condescension in his tenor voice, “place those in the dining room china cabinet. You remember where we always kept them.”

He placed a white plate on the countertop and shrugged. Since Tyler had gone, Zachary had replaced the formica with an off-white stone. Tyler had inherited the Wedgewood from his mother, but Zachary gotten the house. He turned to face Tyler and faked a laugh.

“But darling,” he said, wary of where this might go. They’d never managed conflicts over domestic issues well at all. “You know very well I sold the china closet. We now have a credenza over there.”

Tyler paused a moment and looked down at his shoes, as if making sure he stood on his marker for a photograph. “What was I thinking. You put it where you think best, love of my life.” He said this in an even tone.

Ten minutes later Tyler came into the room with a charcoal painting of his mother as a young woman – Hildegaard, the mother-in-law whose every compliment came laced with an insult about Zachary’s domestic achievements. “Honey, would you mind if we hung this in the foyer above the crystal vase?”

Zachary massaged his forehead at the point where the crevice between the left and right brain resided. “Yes, dear. You may hang your mother anywhere you like.”

Plain and simple

“Mother,” Samantha yelled. The situation was dire. “You come here this instant!”

Endora popped in, wearing a New York Yankees uniform and umpire’s mask. “Oh, Samantha,” the old witch groaned. “I wish you hadn’t interrupted the game. It’s the bottom of the ninth inning in the World Series, we’re one run short of a victory. Babe Ruth is at the plate and Lou Gehrig’s on second base.”

“You take the spell off Darrin now, and I mean now!”

“What are you talking about, my dear? I haven’t done anything to Derwood.”

“Nonsense, Mother,” Samantha said. “Everything he’s saying is coming true, as if he were one of us. This morning he go mad at Larry Tate, who ended up jumping off the George Washington Bridge.”

“The plain and simple truth, Samantha, it wasn’t me,” Endora said and made the V sign on her nose. “Witch’s honor.”

“Really? Then who could it have been, Uncle Arthur?”

“If you’re going to summon that nincompoop, I’m heading back to the game. Ta-ta, my dear!”

And with a flash of the arms, Endora was gone. All of a sudden the television came on and Uncle Arthur appeared inside.

“Uncle Arthur, what’re you doing in there?”

“You turn me on, Sammy. And wait until I catch up with Endora. Nincompoop, my foot.”

If I could choose just one

The grandfather clock ticked its way toward six, and every fifteen minutes it mocked Christine with those Westminster chimes. She lay on the sofa, trying to read Anna Karenina, but couldn’t concentrate. Every twenty or thirty minutes, she’d get up to go to the bathroom. Odd, how frequently she was going to the bathroom. She hadn’t had much water to drink all day long.

Mama came into the room. “Christine, dear, do you have a decision yet?”

She looked at her mother. Of course, she’d ask. “No, I’m still thinking about it.”

Mama sighed and gave Christine a look of withered impatience. “Well, you’d better decide. Marcus will be here for cocktails at six, and Tobias is coming for bridge at eight.”

Christine felt her pulse quicken at the mention of those two names. Marcus and Tobias, she wondered why she’d gotten herself in this fix. But she needed time to think.

“I know, Mama, I’ll have the right decision.”

Mama left the room and Christine breathed more easily. Back to Anna Karenina and the same scene. Levin was courting Kitty, yet again – just like Marcus and Tobias were couring her. But Kitty didn’t have two suitors, and she wasn’t pregnant – and even if she had been, she probably would’ve known which one was the father of her child.

In my medicine cabinet

The high-pitched clackety, pingy sounds reached Elliott’s ears and he opened his eyes with a pop and looked at the white ceiling, as bare as the dull thud in his heart. The cascading sounds of doom could mean only one thing. Briony had reached for the pills in the medicine cabinet.

He turned his head to the right. Yes, Briony’s half of the bed was empty, as empty as it had felt last year when she’d overdosed on seconal and gone to Soft Landings for rehab and then come home, eyes as vacant as a recently converted scientologist. Would it start again, Elliott wondered, starting to feel the pressure of the heavy blanket on his stomach, the quickening of his heart rate, and the familiar nauseous breath of air floating across the back of his throat. He tossed the blanket off his belly and lifted his knees up. That’s how he managed his nighttime panic attacks.

He heard the quiet click of the medicine cabinet door shut – not a casual closing, of course, but a gentle swoosh intended to conceal the fact from anyone within earshot. Briony tiptoed back into the bedroom.

“I woke up, feeling nauseated again,” Elliott said. “Were you able to sleep?”

“No,” Briony said. Was it Elliott’s imagination, or had her voice lowered since rehab? When they’d gotten married, she spoke as high as Julie Andrews, but lately sounded more like Bea Arthur. “The usual rough night for me. How long have you been awake?”

“Just a minute,” Elliott said. He saw the hypnotized expression in Briony’s face, the same one he observed during that dreadful year leading up to Soft Landings. She climbed into bed next to him. “The nausea will pass. It always does after a few hours.”

Briony began to snore, light at first and then sawing away. Elliott crept out of bed, grabbed a plastic wastebasket, and went into the den with it to do crosswords and anagrams. He always wanted to vomit when these attacks hit him, but his body always retained the nausea, retained the panic. He knew, even as the nausea began to rise, as his heart began to race, that his body wouldn’t let him expel this terrible feeling.

A storm

“Norbert,” Karl said, swallowing his impatience and putting on a surface smile, “bring the deck chairs inside. And be quick about it. We haven’t got all day.”

Karl hammered the final nails in the plywood box he’d been putting together for the garden window. He’d planned on doing it some day, but had never thought they’d need it so soon after moving into their dream house by the ocean.

“Now come over here, Norbert,” he said. In the five minutes since he’d instructed his lazy partner to bring in the deck chairs, he’d taken in two. “And help me hoist this box up to the window.”

The two of them lifted it onto the ladder Karl had set up by the window. “Ouch, oh my God, holy crap!” Norbert said, dropping his side right onto the ladder. The other side slipped out of Karl’s grip and collapsed onto the pavement. The screws popped out of two sides and the wood panels came undone.

“Look what you’ve done!” Karl said. “You’ve set us back two hours. The way we’re going, the storm will have crossed Florida into the Gulf before we even get this up.”

“Oh, this hurts so bad,” Norbert said, heading toward the kitchen door. “I got two splinters in my thumb. I can’t believe it, and just after the manicure at Terry’s.”

What a complete lunatic he lived with. It served Karl right, he thought, for staying with him here in Delray Beach – and buying this house for half a million, against his better judgment. He could hear the voices of those little men on his right shoulder, issuing their “told you sos” even as the voices of the little men on the left said, “all part of living, all part of living.”

Norbert watched the Weather Channel while he sucked his thumb. “Turns out, sweetheart,” he said, “storm’s turned north and is heading up to North Carolina. We’re in the clear.”

“Oh, no we’re not, Norbert.”

Hot

“Would you open the window, Paul?” Eugene said.

“It’s hotter outside than in this house,” he replied. “And stop your complaining. I can’t help it if the power’s out.”

“Power’s been gone three days since the hurricane, and it’s still ninety degrees in this house.”

“And it’s ninety-five degrees outside, Eugene.”

“I wish you’d let us go over to Richard’s house, Paul. He’s got power and an extra bedroom.”

Paul felt the familiar stirrings of resentment whenever Eugene mentioned Richard’s name – Richard, the fling who refused to go away; Richard, the friend who flirted shamelessly with Eugene even now, three years into their own relationship; Richard, the hot man with the hairy forearms, the square jaw, and the even, thin lips.

“Sure, he’s got power – power over you. If I’ve said this once, I’ll say it again – boundaries, Eugene. Have some boundaries.”

“We’re roasting in here, love. We’re roasting.”

He had a point. And then Paul thought about Richard being in the next bedroom with his forearms, chin, and lips. Lying in bed, perhaps … hot.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Last but not least

Wilbur ran up the hill, holding the rifle close to his body. No one would see him in the dark enclosure of the trees and bushes. What luck that Peter Runyan would be walking down Dallas Street, greeting late-day shoppers on his way to a fundraiser in River Oaks, the most exclusive enclave of wealthy donors – at this time of day, no less.

Wilbur set up his stake-out. Good, a large elm at the top of the hill, only forty feet to the street. He looked down the backside of the hill at his car, keys in the ignition, door slightly ajar. All he had to do was get in two shots – only one if he hit Runyan in the head – and sprint down the hill.

He began the long, slow wait for Runyan to appear, and thought back through the years. Back when Runyan came out of Rice and Wilbur took him in, paid for his law degree at S.M.U. Back to their sex life, first every day, then every other day, then once a week for a few years, then once in a blue moon. And then not at all. Back to the day Runyan won his first election – city commission – and they celebrated in town. Back to when Runyan dumped him and took the house in their settlement – and Wilbur lost his job that year, same year Runyan got elected to Congress. And now he was running for vice-president. Youngest candidate, the only one who’d ever modeled his biceps in People Magazine. The only one who’d ever had biceps, really.

Wilbur saw him walking in the distance. A crowd of people stood around him, but thank God – Peter was tall, with that wide smile and jet-black clean-cut hair of his. Peter’s height would work to Wilbur’s advantage. Peter made his way down the sidewalk, and just as he came into full view, Wilbur lifted the rifle to eye level, took careful aim, and –

“Hold it right there, buddy,” a baritone voice came from behind. Wilbur heard a metallic click and felt the heavy barrel of a revolver behind his ear.

Runyan’s self-satisfied smile was dead center in the rifle’s viewfinder. What the hell, Wilbur thought. He’d come this far. So he first his shot. His last shot.