You're in a tent

“Clifford!” Marjorie asked, summoning thirty-seven years of impatient irritation at the befuddled buffoonery of her erstwhile husband. “Get over here and help me set up this tent, you nincompoop.”

“All right, dearest,” Clifford said from the other end of the glen – let’s shift into his point of view for a moment, shall we? – wishing that she’d get eaten by a bear, starting with the feet and munching ever so slowly up the leg, right through that dried-up you-know-what and her frozen raisin you-know-whats and her neck and her receding chin and her big fat nose and her bossy eyes and that stupid damned forehead – but Clifford digressed from the moment at hand to fantasize about the Land of Oz.

Clifford breathed through his nose. “I’ll be there in a jiffy, love of my life.”

“Honey dearest,” Marjorie said, the consonants as hard as Stonehenge rocks (and just as mysterious, no one really knows where they come from) – back to inhabiting Majorie’s mind – “I need you now. Get your sorry ass over here.”

Clifford looked over to that stupid khaki tent, Marjorie flailing about underneath it like a dog suddenly covered in the unexpected blanket. All right, he thought – let’s get back inside his head – I’ll go over there and help the bitch out. He took fifty-seven seconds to cross a path thirty-two feet wide. Ho, hum.

He lifted the tent over Marjorie’s head. “What’re you doing under there, sweetheart? You’re supposed to set up the frame before you put the canvas on it?”

Okay, let’s invade Marjorie’s head: That no-good son-of-a-bitch has ruined my life. I could’ve been a society hostess on Park Avenue, but no – he got laid off from Dupont at thirty-nine and never worked again. “What was I thinking, darling,” she said.

Now it’s Clifford’s turn, we’ll invade his head: You weren’t thinking, you wrinkled-up ball squeezer. “Don’t worry about it, Marge. I love you anyway.”

“What took you so long over there?” Marjorie said. “There I was, flailing about …”

Clifford looked at his gremlin wife. The truth, or a lie? He decided on the latter. “I was wondering, what in the hell is Jimmy Carter doing these days?”