The Man with a Thousand Wives

Dimitri noticed his wife deliberately not looking at the man in the booth. He pretended to flip through the book she had given him to celebrate her promotion: an antique Grimms’ fairy tales in mint condition. The pages, although yellow along the edge, were still white, and many were not cut.

“Nobody likes a fat accountant.” Dimitri rubbed his thin belly, carefully watching his wife’s eyes to see if they would betray her. “You always let me eat too much.”

“Sorry, dear.” She talked through her nose, imitating the whiny wife of his imagination.

Outside the Funky Chicken Dimitri pretended to blow his nose in a twenty dollar bill. “I saw you looking at him.”

“At who?”

“‘At who?’” Dimitri exaggerated her innocence. “Don’t give me that. At Dumbo in the booth across from us.”

“Now I forget, which one was Dumbo?”

“Dumbo, the one with the ears in the booth across from us.”

Dimitri’s wife shook her head slowly. “No, you’ll have to be more specific. Which one of my secret lovers was it?” She was very good at this.

“I said, it was Dumbo. The one with the ears. Wearing a grey jacket. Smoking a cigarette with just two fingers, you know, waving his cigarette like a magician, holding it between two little fingers and flicking it with his little thumb. In the booth across from us.”

“What booth? The one by the ceramic mule?”

“What booth? You know the one I’m talking about. Right by the bathroom door.”

“Ah yes, where my lovers always sit, in case they have to beat a hasty retreat or retire to pluck some offending hair from their nostrils. Remind me again, what did he look like?”

“How should I know? He’s your lover. I could only see him from the back. That little bald triangle at the point of his tiny head, those big, galumphing ears that flap when you kiss them. Tell me, what’s it like to kiss a man with a trunk?”

“Jealous?”

“Ah-ha!”

“Ah-ha what, Dick Tracy?”

“You can always tell when a woman is cornered. She attacks your masculinity, it’s a sure sign. Come, tell me, where did you meet him? At the health spa, jiggling around in his little circus tights? At Safeway, pinching tomatoes and stealing peanuts?”

“How much did you drink tonight, anyway? I think you’re sufferings from the DTs.”

“Don’t try to change the subject. I want to know, for reference. Where did you meet him? Was it one of those ads: ‘Horny chimpanzee with large ears, etcetera, seeks well-endowed companion to service. Discretion assured and expected.’”

“How did you know? Did you read it in the paper?”

“I didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face.”

“Still? I thought I washed it off last night.”

“Make jokes if you want to. She who jokes confesses.”

“That’s deep, Confucius. Now give me the keys. You’re not driving anywhere.”

Dimitri held the keys up to the streetlight. “Look,” he rattled them. “The Star of Bethlehem.” His wife grabbed the keys and unlocked the passenger door. Dimitri fumbled in his coat pocket. “And don’t think I haven’t forgotten your lover. Don’t think you’re fooling anyone, I know the likes of you, young — have you seen my keys? — young lady. You’re not the first wife I’ve had, you’re only one of many. Hundreds. Thousands.” Dimitri tried to open the car door with his left hand. “I’ve studied the feminine psyche. I know how it works. Ah . . . you have them. A clever ploy.”

Dimitri’s wife started the car in silence. She craned her neck to check for traffic coming up from behind before she slipped onto the road. Her grey and black hair was pulled into a bun; she looked old and severe. Dimitri tapped the bun. “I love it when you look nasty.” His wife smiled. Dimitri closed his eyes and tried not to think of his stomach, too full and upset with alcohol. “Just tell me one thing.” Dimitri realized he was slurring. “What did you find so attractive about this lover of yours? He looked like a pineapple with ears and sideburns.” His wife smiled again and did not speak. Dimitri wondered how she could still love him.

Waiting for them at home was a large bouquet of red and white roses. “Ah-ha!” Dimitri pointed to the flowers, then wagged his finger at his wife. “An elephantine gesture if ever there was one. Let’s decipher . . .” He opened the card buried at the bottom of the bouquet.

“Congratulations, Winnie, on your promotion. Yours, Frank.”

Dimitri thought for a moment, scraping the card across his thin beard, the kind of beard that some men grow to hide their bad skin but Dimitri wore in a vain effort to look debonair.

“Hmm. Obviously it’s in code. What do you think it means, honey?”

His wife said, “It beats me,” and Dimitri thought, she’s humouring me now.

“That’s one thing about your lovers: they’re so . . . sensitive.” Dimitri got the bottle of scotch from the shelf above the fridge. He filled two mismatched tumblers with ice and poured. “I propose a toast.” He handed one tumbler to his wife and held his glass aloft. “To your new job: Vice President, Employee Relations.”

“And congratulations to you. You got the title right for once.”

“Thank you.” He took a gulp, then put his tumbler on the coffee table. “I just need to know one thing. Does that mean you have relations with every employee, or just some?”

“That all depends on what day of the week it is.”

Dimitri sat down on the couch and tried to undo his shoes. The laces kept slipping from his fingers as he swayed from side to side. Finally he gave up. He sat up straight and tried to cross his legs, succeeding instead in kicking the coffee table and knocking over his scotch. “It’s official.” He held one arm up in victory. “I’m pissed.” Dimitri bent forward and wiped the spill with his jacket sleeve.

“Frank, Frank, Frank,” he said. “Do we know a Frank? It’s not our old friend Frank Furter of Frankfort, is it? He’s a diabolical dog. I can’t believe you’d sleep with him.”

“I believe, unless I’m mistaken, that Frank is that brother you’ve had for forty-one years.”

Dimitri covered his ears. “My own brother. Is nothing sacred?”

The black cat, Adolph, paraded into the room. He stopped by the coffee table, spread his paws and stretched to the end of his tail. “Precious,” Dimitri sang, smacking his lips to call the cat. “Hi, kitty. Hi, precious.” His wife, too, saw the cat. She knelt down near the kitchen door and scratched the carpet, smacking her lips. The cat rolled towards her and rubbed his head on her thigh. She picked him up and hugged him.

“You know, he likes me better.” Dimitri picked up Grimms’ from the coffee table and opened to the title page. Grimms’ Tales, from “Kinder und Hausmarchen.” Thomas Lloyd McKenzie & Son, Publisher, 1883. “He only pretends to like you because you feed him. In the army, we used to call people like him brown- nosers.”

“You were never in the army.”

“Is that so? Oh, of course, I’m married. I always get the two mixed up.”

Dimitri ran his finger down the table of contents. “You know, I’ve always wanted a book. Really, ever since I was a young man. A book like this is a good investment, look after you in your old age. When your cat is dead and buried and the rest of the world has left you to rot, a book will remain by your side. True blue. Dependable.” Dimitri flipped the pages. “I’m looking for a story called ‘The Man with a Thousands Wives.’ Do you know it? It’s about an accountant who has a harem of women at his disposal. He changes women like other men change ties, depending on weather, social occasion and mood.” Dimitri put the book back on the coffee table. “It’s based, I think, on a true story.” He looked up. Adolph sat on the floor near the kitchen doorway, staring at him. His wife was nowhere to be seen. The cat jumped onto the coffee table, then into Dimitri’s lap. Dimitri stroked the length of his back. “You’re lucky,” he said. “A cat has only nine wives. A man has a thousand, each more deceitful and troublesome than the next.”

Adolph looked up and mewed. Dimitri was certain the cat understood.

He was falling asleep when he wife came into the room and declared, “Well.” On its own that single word suggested more to follow, which always meant bad news to Dimitri. Coming from his wife, it was even more alarming. She always spoke in complete thoughts. Simple noun-verb-noun sentences, like they teach in a foreign language class.

“Well, what?”

“That was your brother.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“He’s just been to the hospital.”

(Noun-verb-noun). “Again?”

“Again.”

“Is he coming over?”

“No. He just wanted to talk.”

Dimitri looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. “It’s getting late.”

Dimitri’s brother had the unbelievable number of seven children, which included two sets of twins. He did not live in a shoe, as Dimitri often expected, but in a very nice house on the edge of the woods that circled the university. Frank, a lawyer, made more money than even a man with seven children could use. Once, three years ago, Frank’s wife was supposed to do the laundry. Instead, she decided to drink what was left of a bottle of bleach. Now his oldest daughter was in and out of hospital all the time. She was, the doctor said, schizophrenic. She heard voices, voices that suggested she kill herself.

“Frank has just been to the hospital, ergo we can conclude that Kitty’s hearing voices?” Dimitri said to no one.

“Do you want another?” Dimitri’s wife shook the scotch bottle, a mute bell.

“Well, I really shouldn’t. It’s getting late. Just half a cup.” Dimitri took a sip, then shivered. “That’ll warm me up. You know, you never told me about the man in the restaurant. Who is he?”

“Dumbo? He’s been my lover for six years now. I met him while you were at a linguists’ conference in Montreal. Don’t let his big ears and pointy head fool you. He’s very hot in bed.”

“Well, you know what they say about men with big ears.”

“No. What?”

“I don’t know, I thought you knew.” Dimitri’s wife sat on the piano bench, her body on the edge of a corner, barely touching it seemed. She held the tumbler of scotch in her lap with both hands, her head bowed, her eyes lightly closed. Was she meditating or fighting back a migraine? Her red lipstick smeared at one corner of her lips, and she looked like a cartoon drunk, although Dimitri believed she was very likely sober. She looked old and tired. “You know, you remind me so much of my first wife.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She was a bitch too.”

Dimitri’s wife smiled for a moment, then sighed. “He has so many children.”

Dimitri woke shivering. He had slid off the couch so that only one leg, the one with the shoe at the end of it, was elevated. His tie had folded onto his face. He pulled himself to his knees, then pushed up to his feet, using the couch and coffee table for support. His head throbbed, and he wondered for a moment if he might not vomit. This is why he never drank. He picked his jacket and Grimms’ from the floor and stood tottering. He saw the light on upstairs in the bedroom.

Dimitri’s wife lay facing the wall, the down comforter pulled over her shoulder. Dimitri slipped onto the bed and softly shook her, realizing at that he was still elegantly hammered.

“I want to know the truth. If you had any secrets, you’d tell me, right?”

“But then they wouldn’t be secrets. Besides, even if I told you any, you’d forget them by morning. That’s why I love you.”

The wind blew against the house. The floorboards creaked. “Did you hear that?” Dimitri asked, his voice hushed. “I believe there is a presence in this house trying to communicate with us.”

“Yes. And it’s saying, shut up and go to sleep.”

Dimitri removed his tie and dropped it on the floor.

“I have a confession to make. I threw the book you gave me in the fire. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it. I can’t believe I would do something like that. Sometimes I can’t believe the things that go on in my head, almost on their own. Almost without me being aware of what they’re doing.

“Really?” She was very tired.

Dimitri nodded. “I’m sorry. It was a lovely gift, it really was.”

“I didn’t know the fire was plugged in.”

Dimitri shrugged. “Perhaps I stuffed it down the Garburator, then. My recollection is hazy at best.”

She turned her head to get a better look at him. “That’s all right,” her voice was dreamy. “I’ll get you another. Chapters had a sale on limited first editions.”

Dimitri sat on the edge of the bed and undressed. Sometimes he wished he had a thousand secrets he could tell his wife. Sometimes he wished that she did not know him so well, that maybe she did not know him at all. Instinctively, she knew the number of hairs on his back, the weight of his breath, the sound of his spine when he turned his head.

Dimitri lay down and turned off the lamp on the bedside table. “I think there is a presence in this house trying to communicate.” He spoke in a whisper.

He closed his eyes and imagined himself sitting on a tropical beach, surrounded by antique books with perfect, uncut pages.

“Honey?” Dimitri’s lone wife rolled over and put her arm around his waist.

“Yes dear?”

“Surprise me.”

Dimitri lay very still for a long, long time, then reached over and touched his wife very gently on the cheek.

“Once upon a time,” he said, “they all lived happily ever after.”