Foliate Oak April 2015

Fiction

Screwdriver
By T. E. Cowell

He had just had another argument with his girlfriend about his drinking. They had been living together about six months now and had the same argument about once a week. She didn’t like his drinking and he didn’t like her getting on his case about his drinking. As usual when she got on his case he left the apartment, left her standing there all twisted up inside.

It was dark outside, the sun down, and cold as ever. A lot of last week’s snowfall had melted away after yesterday’s rainfall, but there were still some mounds of old hardened snow against the curbs and at the edges of parking lots. For the most part the sidewalks were clear again for walking, just some slush here and there, but there were spots he knew he had to watch out for, icy patches invisible to the naked eye that if he wasn’t careful could land him in the hospital.

He had his big brown thrift store coat on and his big warm goofy thrift store Russian Cossack hat, and sweatpants under his go-to thrift store charcoal-gray pants. Also his warm thrift store winter boots, so he was all right, he was warm enough. He’d forgotten his thrift store gloves though inside the apartment in his rush to get away from her. Luckily his big brown coat had deep warm front pockets for his hands.

He stopped at the corner and waited either for the light to turn green or for the cars to stop coming. He knew they weren’t right for each other, knew it couldn’t last. He knew the breakup would be painful, that breakups always were. They might’ve broken up by now already if he wasn’t always leaving her apartment before the argument could turn into something bigger, like a full-blown fight with irrevocable consequences. Plenty of times he almost said something that would’ve ended it. The words “I’ve had it! We’re fucking through!” forever stayed on the tip of his tongue. Part of the reason for this was because he was living with her in her apartment and didn’t want to move back in with his parents. The other part was that he liked her.

He walked two blocks then veered into a cheesy sports bar that drew a younger crowd than most of the other bars in the area. He’d been in this bar before and hadn’t thought much of it but didn’t feel like going to any of the other bars, which were pretty much all workingman’s bars. He didn’t want to see all the sad aging work-tired drunk tradesmen sitting slouched on the barstools, didn’t want to hear them blabbering on about sports or exes or mortgages.

The music in the sports bar was horrible and the lighting too dim and everyone was talking too loudly, just a continuous wave of sound. He found a stool that no one was sitting on or standing too close to and sat down. He took a menu that was on the bar in front of a young woman sitting next to him who had blonde neck-length hair and a slender neck like a giraffe’s. This young woman was talking to another young woman, talking animatedly like pretty much everyone else in the place was. The muscles around her shoulders kept jumping in accord with her arms and hands, which she continually raised up and down as she talked.

He studied the menu, decided life was short and that he’d try a cocktail he’d never tried before, one he’d noticed on the menu on a previous visit. It was a drink named after F. Scott Fitzgerald, a drink that apparently Fitzgerald had been keen on drinking, though who the hell really knew––maybe the menu was just a scam like everything else. He didn’t have much respect for Fitzgerald, had never cared for the guy’s writing, had always thought of him as effeminate and too intellectual, but Fitzgerald had made it as a writer, and if he couldn’t respect the guy for his work then he could respect him for having been a success. He ordered the cocktail when the bartender came his way.

It tasted too fruity, too girly, as he had anticipated. But because it had some gin in it he drank every last drop. Giraffe Neck was looking at him now, for some reason that he couldn’t figure. He could see her looking at him out of his periphery but made a point of not looking back at her.

Giraffe Neck surprised him by saying something to him. He couldn’t understand what though with all the noise around. He looked at Giraffe Neck. “What?” he said, and brought his ear closer to her mouth.

“I said what’s wrong?” he heard. “You look all pensive.”

Giraffe Neck’s vocabulary took him by surprise. He’d assumed everyone in this place except himself was an absolute moron. He looked at Giraffe Neck, leaned closer to her ear and said, “If you had half a brain you’d be pensive too.”

It shut her up, as he’d hoped. A few seconds later Giraffe Neck and her friend got up and walked away.

He’d tried to explain to his girlfriend why he drank but she refused to listen. She thought drinking was bad for him, that it was killing him, and maybe it was, maybe he was as selfish as she often accused him of being. But he didn’t want to stop drinking, not now. Maybe later he would, or at least cut back, but not now, not when he was in the prime of his life. He drank because when he drank ideas often came to him and when he was lucky he was able to write these ideas down and turn them into stories. He drank because drinking seemed to clear his head of some if not all of the bullshit that his head was constantly cluttered with when he was sober. He got in a zone when he drank a certain amount and when he was in this zone he felt great, felt amazing. It cost him in the mornings, of course, the hangovers, but they weren’t that bad most of the time. He felt kind of guilty though after he finally got up to start his day and found his girlfriend gone, already off at work. Every morning after they’d had an argument the night before she’d leave a note for him, something short and sweet and apologetic. He was surprised, really, that she’d stayed with him for as long as she had, that she hadn’t kicked him out of her apartment yet or had her brawny dad do it for her. He was surprised but at the same time he wasn’t. He knew that he had something and that she knew it too. He was still relatively young and had already been published numerous times. It was only a matter of time before he’d be published in the bigger magazines and start gaining some recognition. This he believed and his girlfriend did too. He had something and his girlfriend knew it. To her writing was a big fat beautiful mystery. She had an English degree and enjoyed reading and even tried from time to time to write, but unlike him he didn’t think she would ever know reading and writing as intimately as he did, she’d never hate it and love it and be consumed and transformed by it. His girlfriend thought writers had this mysterious aura about them, and it was this more than anything else that he thought turned her on to him. He was largely a mystery to her and until he was no longer a mystery she would lust for him and share herself and her life and her apartment with him. That was what he thought.

After the cocktail he paid the bartender and left the cheesy sports bar. He walked to a café a block or two away that was still open, paid for a day-old scone and then sat on a worn leather couch in the corner to eat it. As he chewed the scone he stared at students who stared at laptops. After the scone he walked back to the apartment.

He found her already in bed, sleeping or pretending. He didn’t bother her. He slept on the floor in the other room, as he usually did after they’d argued.

In the morning the note was different. It basically said that she’d had enough of him and that she wanted him out of her apartment by the end of the day. He read the note twice, and afterwards immediately started cramming his things into his backpack––clothes, his laptop, a bagel he’d bought the other day.

He left her apartment for the last time and walked to a breakfast spot he knew. He ordered a screwdriver, nothing else, and drank it staring out the window, at the traffic going by on the street, feeling twisted up inside. He didn’t feel hungry enough to eat the bagel. He ordered a second screwdriver, asking the waitress if she could please make this one a little stronger.

T.E. Cowell resides in Washington State.  He has been published in The Milo Review, Storychord, Gravel, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and elsewhere. 

* * * 

Carpe Diem
By Grove Koger

Karen and Jane had done the planning, and then Karen had made the actual reservations. That meant that Margie didn’t have to do much more than pay some bills online with a credit card and show up at the airport at the right time with a passport and a week’s worth of clothes. Which was why, when she started back to the hotel that afternoon, she didn’t know the name of it, much less which street it was on.

Karen had turned on the television as soon as they had gotten to their suite and squealed with delight to find a channel in English, which was so wrong. Because now that Margie was really here, really in Paris, she wanted to do something Parisian, try out her French. She’d go for a walk, maybe have a coffee, un café.

As soon as Jane had finished sorting through the complimentary toiletries on the counter, Margie brushed her teeth and fluffed her curls and told the others she’d be back in an hour. Took the tiny elevator down to the first floor—no, make that the ground floor, the first floor was one up—and stepped out into the street. La rue.

Well, here she was! An American in Paris! And at just that moment a passing car honked—at her? —and immediately she heard the bouncy sequence of car horns from that Gershwin piece. Yes! Oui!

She wandered a bit, humming to herself, gazing in store windows. Here were bakeries with displays of plump brown loaves and pale lean baguettes, there an agence immobilière (what on earth could that be?), a chocolaterie (mouth-wateringly obvious, that one), a narrow little shop selling gleaming plumbing fixtures, and café after café bustling with a kind of insouciant casualness. Should she? Of course. She chose a spot out of the sun and after a few moments a young man, a boy really, sporting a day’s growth of beard and a kind of abbreviated white apron, strolled over to her table.

“Mademoiselle?”

“Un …” She hesitated, changed her mind. “Un vin.”

“Blanc? Rouge?”

“Blanc.” Of course.

She saw herself sitting at this charming little café in Paris drinking a glass of white wine, un something de vin blanc. She knew how she would describe it when she got home: “There are these charming little sidewalk cafés, you know, simple but so chic. You can while away the afternoon drinking wine and …” She remembered the feel of the little tube between her fingers even before the word came to her: “smoking.” Of course! It had been ages, but … She glanced around. Could you smoke here? Yes, it seemed so, judging by her neighbors. Just then the boy appeared with her tumbler of wine and she raised her finger before he could slip away.

“Mademoiselle?”

“Cigarettes?”

“Oui, mademoiselle, cigarettes. Filtre?”

“Oui.”

“Quatre euros. Four euros.” She realized that he must be getting them from a machine and reached into her purse. How clever they had been to change some bills at the airport! After a few more moments he brought her an ashtray and a blue pack with an odd kind of winged helmet on the front and a book of matches that he fished out of the pocket of his apron. Somehow the wine had disappeared by then and she ordered another.

She drank more slowly now, savoring the moment. Carpe diem, someone was always saying back in college. Seize the day. She would try to work that phrase into conversation when she got home. She watched the passing crowd, lit another cigarette, and was wondering whether she should buy a beret, when

she realized that the shadows had grown quite a bit longer.

It took some time to get the pretty boy’s attention and then pay, but by the time she got that little chore taken care of she had to face up to what she already knew. She had no idea where she was. OK, where she was specifically. Paris, yes, but several, too many, streets radiated from the cafe where she had been sitting so blissfully, and none looked particularly familiar.

Well, actually, they all looked familiar.

She started down one, and here, yes, there was a bakery, but the loaves weren’t arranged in the right way, not at all. She turned back, tried another street.

Here was a display of faucets and spigots and God-knows-what, but coppery, not pewtery the way she remembered. She turned back, tried another.

Here was another agence immobilière, but the photos of—villas, OK, she got it, it was a real estate agency, and a pretty upscale one at that—the photos didn’t look like anything she’d seen recently. She--

She stopped, took that deep breath they’re always talking about--they!—and

a man in a crisp uniform took a few steps toward her and asked, in a reassuringly kind voice, “Mademoiselle?”

She explained, in slow English, what had happened, tried not to sound frantic, and he seemed to understand perfectly.

“Have you your passeport?”

Margie reached for the holder she had worn around her neck, but it was back at the Whatever-Its-Name-Is Hotel, and the passport itself, of course, was at the front desk where she had been required to leave it. Damn!

“Papiers? Réservations?”

She opened her purse, started rummaging through the tissues and mints and such. Had she brought any of the printouts with her?

“Mademoiselle?”

He reached gently into her purse and pulled out a book of matches, turned it over in his fingers, raised his eyebrows, and smiled.

“S'il vous plait, you will come with me.”

There was something seriously nagging at the back of Margie’s mind, but the man—he was surely a gendarme—seemed so confident that she gladly fell into step beside him. Gladly. They passed a bakery that did look vaguely familiar, a bookstore that didn’t, and more cafés. The traffic had gotten busier and the sidewalks more crowded. They came to a corner, trotted across the street as the gendarme held up his hand to the oncoming cars, turned again. She was wondering whether she really could have wandered this way, and knowing the answer perfectly well, when--

“Marguerite! Marguerite!”

The gendarme came to a halt and she nearly ran into him. He turned, handed the matchbook back to her, smiled again, and bowed ever so slightly.

Margie opened her mouth but the man had already disappeared into the crowd.

Stunned, she looked around. She was standing in front of an unremarkable pale stone building that looked neither new nor old. Tables and chairs were clustered beside a doorway leading into a small foyer, and above the door a marquee bore the legend “Hôtel Avenue Colette” in pale blue letters. The matchbook, which she now looked at for the first time, carried the same legend. The matchbook that, in her mind’s eye, she saw the waiter--

She gasped as someone pulled her into a chair. A babble of voices assaulted her, and half a dozen women leaned forward to stare eagerly at her.

“Marguerite! Mon ami! Où avez-vous été? Nous avions peur que vous ayez été perdu!”

“Marguerite, your sweater! Très chic!”

“Vos chaussures!”

The women went on and on and one leaned forward to rest a hand on her knee, but she couldn’t follow any of the words.

“Marguerite!”

She realized that she held a glass of something in her hand, something pale and bubbly, and she drank it.

“I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. I’m not—”

“Oh non, Marguerite! Nous avions convenu de trois heures, oui?” The woman looked at her watch, a tiny gold thing that must have been terribly expensive. “Yes, trois heures, it is now …”

Her head swirled and she took another drink. By now Karen and Jane must be wondering where she was, would surely start looking.

“You see, I can’t find my hotel!”

At that one of the women leaped up to point at a window over their heads and said, “Ah, il y a une chambre prête pour vous!” The window was open, and she could see a filmy curtain billowing invitingly in the late afternoon breeze. The sky was turning pale.

A waitress appeared with another bottle, popped the cork, filled their glasses, replaced the empty bottle in the bucket. They all took a sip. The bubbly was really quite good, and, well, “Marguerite” was such an attractive name, wasn’t it? Evocative …

Then she realized that one of the women, a blonde her age wearing a black beret, had been staring even more intently than the rest. She stared back boldly for a moment, at which the blonde pulled off the beret, leaned across the table, and snugged it down on her brown curls. The blonde sat back to consider the effect, smiled at last, and they all laughed and raised their glasses.“À Marguerite!”

Grove Koger is the author of a guide to travel literature, When the Going Was Good. He writes for Laguna Beach Art Magazine, is Associate editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal, and has published fiction in Bewildering Stories, Phantasmacore, Lacuna, Two Words For, and Eternal Haunted Summer.

* * * 

Maybe You Are
By  Erin Kuhlmann

You are not the kind of person who would do this.

Your friends have said, “It’s great. You should try it.” Or “You’re always so busy. This is a great way to meet someone.”

You tell them online dating just isn’t for you. You’re fine meeting girls at the bar, promising to call, but never do. You’re a hit-it-and-quit-it type of guy.  But here you are, typing away at your computer screen.

And forget paying for this. You are not going to fork over sixty dollars a month to find the worldwide web’s idea of your “soul mate.” It’s as foolish as people who buy stars. Last time you checked stars were free, too.

The site page opens to welcome you with a virtual shower of red and white hearts, collecting at the bottom of the page like a pile of snow. Mid-screen sits a beaker, half-filled with pink liquid that bubbles and fumes: All it Takes is a Little Bit of Chemistry!

You move the curser to close down the tab, but pause. You may not be the type of person who meets strangers online, but you’re tired of being alone. Tired of always being the friend going stag to weddings. Tired of sitting at the coffee shop or restaurant alone. Tired of always making excuses.

You click the beaker to enter the site. All it takes is four easy steps. The curser floats over the “create a profile” button.

Now or never, you think.

Step 1: Select profile picture. You don’t have many recent photos. You select one from the previous summer, taken at your best friend’s wedding. Your hair was longer, but you figure the women looking at your profile won’t care. They’ll be much more interested in who you are now, rather than what you looked like six months ago.

Step 2: Personal information. The questions feel like you’re filling out a resume, or a patient history.

“Male or Female?” Male.

“Are you currently employed?” Yes.

“Highest level of degree?” Bachelors.

“Do you smoke?” Constantly.

“What is your diet like?” Pizza and beer.

“What is your body type?” Athletic.

“What are you looking for?”

This question makes you pause. “I am looking for . . .” then you hit delete.  You leave the box blank and decide to return to that question later. Something to think about.

        
Step 3: Who are you? Question after question is fired at you. Sometimes you answer with one word, a sentence, maybe a paragraph. Most of the questions are no-brainers. Favorite color, cats or dogs, genre of movies you enjoy watching. Others ask about your stance on religion, politics, and sex.

The questions seem to go on forever, like an overflowing toilet.

Finally, you go back to the blank box. This is the question you get up from the desk for. The type of question that requires a pot of coffee. The type of question you’ve thought about in the bathroom while you washed your hands. That you’ve asked the mirror covered in splattered toothpaste. That you’ve asked your reflection, over and over again, for years.

Back at the desk, second cup of coffee in hand, you try to think of a witty response. The first sounds creepy, and the next like a punch line to a terrible joke. You delete them both. You consult the Internet for an alternative. Hundreds of articles on creating the perfect profile to attract the right potential dates pop up. You read a few and immediately close them.

You are still not the person who online dates.

No, don’t give up. Attempt a different approach. No funky list of qualities will ever land your potential soul mate. One of the articles you skimmed said that’s a fast way to get zero messages and zero dates. Instead you choose a more generic answer. One that won’t set you apart from the thousands of other people on this site, but for now it will suffice.

You type, “Looking for a woman between 25-30 who enjoys conversations over coffee or dinner.”

You imagine a girl, no woman, with dimples and long hair. She sits across from you in a crowded Starbucks, drinking the most expensive coffee on the menu. She’s sweet, a college graduate, from the south, and likes football as much as you. You take her out on a second then third date. By next Christmas she’s meeting your mom and talking about the future. You like the sound of “forever”. Like wearing a worn tee shirt and sleeping in on Saturdays.

It wouldn’t be so bad, you think, to find all that on the Internet.

You shake your head and light a cigarette. The sweet, dimpled, southern girl in the café isn’t some figment of your imagination. She’s the girl who sits in the cubical across from yours at work. She’s the girl you’ve flirted with in the break room and know her coffee order by heart. The girl who flashed you her new engagement ring three weeks ago. And while you don’t want to admit it, seeing her admire that diamond has finally driven you to this site. It’s never going to happen, and you need to move on.

Step 4: Confirm your profile. This is it. One click and your profile will be seen by hundreds of strangers looking for love on the Internet. You click confirm.

You sit back in your chair and swallow the rest of your coffee. You are the person who online dates. You weren’t expecting a cannon to fire confetti or a marching band to parade around the room, but at the very least you expected there to be some kind of prize for finally signing up for online dating. You debate calling your buddies to tell them the news, but note the clock on the computer reads 2:45 AM.

You refresh the page, as directed, but nothing pops up. Defeated, you head for the bathroom to brush your teeth. When you spit into the sink, that’s when you hear the ding.

You race back to the computer. On the left hand side of the screen is a small pink number on the messages tab. You sit down and lick the toothpaste residue off your teeth. You cannot click the message fast enough. The screen takes a few seconds to load and you sit at the edge of your seat.

The message turns out only to be from the site creator. You don’t even bother reading the congratulatory. You shut down your computer, and sigh.

Tomorrow you’ll have to face her at work, knowing she’s in love, and it’s not with you.

Tomorrow you’ll have to try and find someone else when you know you’ll always wonder what life would be like with her.

You light another cigarette.

You are not the kind of person who should be online dating.

Erin currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a recent graduate of Chatham University’s MFA program. She’s a children’s writer that has one foot in childhood and one in adulthood. Her work has previously been published in The Minor Bird Literary Magazine.

* * * 

Reservations, Darling
By Eugene Murray

Almost a month after he had given up on her, they began going out again when she called him, on Christmas night, and slurred that she thought she may have overdosed on gin and Seconal.  After a frantic drive in his pajamas, never thinking to call for help, he pounded on her apartment door. She opened it, droopy eyed and naked, and then collapsed.  He wrestled her into a robe and brought her to a hospital.  An exam, blood test, and a long talk with a psychiatric intern revealed that she had taken about a third of a bottle of gin, and two Seconal, and that she would be fine in a day or so. 

“Just take her somewhere she can sleep it off,” they told him.

He put her on the couch and found a quilt for her, and slept on the chair across the room.  Logy and sleepy, they stumbled around each other for the rest of the day, and that night they finally slept together.

“Oh, my,” she said to him, only once actually, but several times in his memory, “this is really special.”

And later, spooning, she said, “I’m so sorry I spoiled your Christmas.  It’s just, you know, this is me.  This is just me.”

“Oh, no, no,” he said.  “This is the best Christmas ever.”

“Oh, that is so wonderful to hear.  Maybe we should plan something for New Year’s?”  He just nodded.

Classes were cancelled and his part time job in the mailroom was closed for the holiday, so he had time to make phone calls that afternoon.

“Chez Veronique. Maurice speaking,” the squeaky French accent answered his first call.

“Hello, I’d like to make a reservation, s’il vous plait.  Dinner for two on New Year’s Eve, please.”

“Ah, monsieur, you are too early.  Reservations for next New Year’s will not be taken until the summer.”

“No, I meant for this New Year’s Eve.  This Sunday.”

“A thousand pardons, mon ami.  Chez Veronique has been booked for New Year’s since Thanksgiving.  Je suis desole.  I mean I am very sorry.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize.  Well, how about if I stop down there this afternoon, and provide you with some motivation.  Something green and foldable perhaps?”

“Listen, Jack,” the French accent was gone now, “you can fold up your little five dollar bill and stick it in your ear.  We’re booked, got it?”  He hung up.

When they met, she was a bartender at one of the few clean, well-lit places near where he worked sorting and delivering mail. The first time he saw her, standing behind the bar pulling on a beer tap, he felt like he had swallowed a stone.  He leaned against the wall near the rest room and just watched her move up and down behind the bar, flirting and schmoozing.  She did this tiny flip of her head to move the hair out of her eyes that stayed in his memory for days afterward.  He abandoned the friends he had come with and sat at the bar until his cash ran out.

“This is Trattoria Napoli.  May I help you?”

“Yes, hello, I’d like to make a reservation, please.”

“Oh, yes, sir.  For this evening? And how many?”

“No, I’m hoping for a table for New Year’s Eve.  It’ll just be two.”

“I’m sorry, we are booked for New Year’s.  We stopped taking reservations around Halloween.”

“Ryan’s Steak House.  Will Ryan speaking.”

“Hello, Will.  I’d like to see about a reservation for this Sunday?  Just two people.”

“We have a brunch we should be able to squeeze you into.”

“No, I don’t think a brunch is going to do it.  Any possibility for dinner?  An early dinner maybe?”

“We start serving at four, but we’ve been booked since Labor Day.  Have you tried any of the sushi places?”

He came to her bar about twice a week after that first meeting, and always got that stone-swallow feeling again.  She was cordial to him, but professional, and always busy with other customers.  She still did that hair flip, usually about five times per minute, and he was transfixed by the way her blond hair leaped obediently into place, if momentarily, with each nudge.

They went out once to a movie, and once to an afternoon concert, but that was a month before Christmas.  She was pleasant, but distant, and rolled her eyes a lot. His name was Jim, and twice she called him John.  She seemed to always be looking behind him.

Her desperate phone call on Christmas night was a complete surprise.

“Anita Sushi and Martini Bar.  This Mae, can I help you?”

“I’d like to book a table for New Year’s Eve, please.  Just two people around nine o’clock?”

“Oh, sorry, sorry.  We close New Year Eve.  Whole family go to Times Square watch ball come down.”

“Really?  I don’t think I ever knew anyone who went to Times Square on New Year’s Eve.”

“Oh, yes.  Great big fun.  Drink champagne, shiver all night, look for TV camera to scream.  Great big fun.”

“I’m having trouble getting a reservation for New Year’s Eve,” he told her.  “I never realized that places seem to be booked months in advance.  Why don’t we just maybe have something here?  We can set up a nice late dinner, snuggle up for a movie, a chick flick if you want, and then watch the ball drop on TV.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Yes,” she said, “I used to love to do that, you know, when I was twelve.”

“We can make it fun.  We can decorate the place, cook something exotic, and drink champagne.  You know.  We just need to get creative.  Make it fun.”

“I’m not much of a cook,” she told him.  “Coffee and toast on a good day.  On a not good day, I wouldn’t attempt to even boil water.  I don’t think I would be much help to you in the kitchen making a big meal like that.”

“Katie’s Country Kitchen. ‘We Make Eggs The Way You Like ‘Em’. Can I help you, honey?”

“Are you accepting reservations for New Year’s Eve?  I know it’s late.”

“Well, we’re usually pretty busy for New Year’s, but Mr. Anderson is a fast eater, and we could give you his stool at the counter when he’s done with his usual fried chicken on a waffle special.”

”There’ll be two of us.”

“Two?  Oh, that presents a problem.  I’m not sure I can promise two stools together.  But how about this?  You wait out in the parking lot, and I’ll give you the high sign if something opens up.  How’s that sound?”

“Number 118.  118 is next”

He dropped his ticket with the bright red 118 into the bowl on the counter and said to the butcher, “I’m looking for something special for New Year’s Eve Dinner.  Any suggestions?”

The butcher, about seventeen with an eyebrow ring said, “Turduckhen is very popular these days.”

“Turduckhen?  That’s a new one on me.  What is it?”

“A combination roaster.  It’s chicken stuffed into a duck, and both stuffed into a Turkey.  Comes with regular stuffing too.  Usually for the holidays we make up complete dinner platters, appetizers, a turduckhen, veggies and a pie for desert.”

“That sounds great.  Can I get a turducken dinner for two, please?”

“Oh, sorry.  We stopped taking orders day before yesterday.”

“Oh.  Well, a turkey then?  Can I get a good-sized turkey, maybe a twenty pounder or so?  I’ll do the veggies somehow.”

“Sorry again.  No turkeys left.  Maybe I can interest you in a capon?  It’s kind of like a turkey, but in miniature.  It’s a little bird, not much meat on them, but I’m told very tasty.”

He came back to her apartment with two large grocery bags; three capons, potatoes, carrots, peas, ice cream and an apple pie.  Just to be sure he bought a baster, a roasting pan, some knives, an apron and a couple of oven mitts.  He had rented three Jennifer Aniston movies, she had to like one of them, and spent fifty bucks on two bottles of champagne.

The door was unlocked, but the chain was on and he could only see into the hallway.  In the mirror he saw her, naked again, pressed against the wall by a man.  Apparently he had said something she agreed with because she was shouting, “Yes!  Oh, Yes!” in his ear.

He tried to yell something at them, but nothing came out.  He took his groceries home.

Next day, New Year’s Eve, he left a different bag of supplies at her door; a quart of gin, a bag of ice and two boxes of sleeping pills. 

He added a note, “Sorry these are not prescription strength, but hope they do the trick.”

Eugene Murray was born on the day that Douglas MacArthur invaded Inchon, Korea. He's been a dirty face toddler, a reluctant Catholic school student, an altar boy, a crossing guard, body surfer, Mickey Mantle wannabe, self-absorbed adolescent, job-seeker, and receiver of unemployment benefits before finally finding a crevice he could comfortably shape-shift into. Eugene Murray has a family, nuclear in more ways than one, that he cares for deeply and worries about in the traditional ‘wee small hours of the morning’. They are the star around which his wobbly planet orbits. 
To quote Woody Allen, “My only regret in life is that I wasn’t born someone else.” Maybe next time.

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