The next morning Liliana and Malarkey sit at her breakfast table, Malarkey’s right cheek is still slightly puffy from the trauma of the day before, even though the Vicodin produces a certain amount of forgetfulness depending on what one exactly wants to forget. But today it’s not about Malarkey. It’s a doubly special day: Valentine’s Day and Liliana’s birthday. Malarkey believes she did that intentionally in order to receive two gifts instead of one, but Liliana convinces him he should stop reading tweets by Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann about the lame stream liberal conspiracy regarding the origins of holidays. So, she opens the Valentine’s card.
“Hope you like it. It’s unique,” Malarkey says.
In some kind of floral design, the front of the card reads: “Say it with flowers.” Liliana flips the card open and it reads in letters designed with flowers: “B(Eat) my Valentine! Love, Malcolm.”
“Well?”
“How thoughtful. Did you buy this before or after taking the Vicodin?”
“Thought you’d like it. Even Hallmark couldn’t come up with that.”
“No, I imagine not.”
“Go on, open it.”
She unwraps a gift that only Malarkey could have wrapped since its crushed corners, salvaged Scotch tape and re-gifted holiday ribbon have Malarkey’s name written all over it.
“I see you did your customary creative gift wrapping job.”
“Yeah. Brilliant, no?”
Liliana removes the re-gifted ribbon and the crushed paper revealing a small cardboard box about 5”x7”x3” which she opens and gingerly removes the tissue paper exposing about a dozen edible thongs. She takes them out one by one: red ones, yellow ones, orange ones, fuchsia ones, magenta ones, multicolored ones. It isn’t what she expects.
“Well, wadya’ think?” Malarkey asks, as if he’s just handed her the Hope Diamond.
“I’m … I’m speechless.”
“Thought so,” Malarkey says proudly.
“Just have a question.”
“What’s that?”
“Isn’t this the same gift you gave me for Christmas?”
“Well, yes, but I thought we ran out of them.”
“We?”
“Okay, me, but these have different flavors. The lavender ones taste like blueberry. The beige ones taste like cheesecake and the pink ones, wow, the pink ones taste like pussy.”
“Pardon me?”
“Pussy, you know, pussy.”
Liliana feels like asking: “Whose pussy?” but educated in decorum and refined taste, she refrains from doing so.
“I’m not even going to dignify that comment with a question, but how do you know what they taste like?”
“Well, I had a sample.”
Liliana rubs her forehead.
“I’m not going to ask which one.”
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I have to think about it.”
“Okay, you think about it and let me know what you think about it. Gotta run to class.”
“Bye.”
She dangles the thongs in her hand and shakes her head as if she can’t believe it, but before Malarkey leaves, he stops.
“Oh, how foolish of me. I almost forgot.”
He walks back to her and takes out another Malarkianwrapped, small box from his sport coat.”
“Happy birthday. I love you.” He kisses her. “Gotta run. See you at the Citrus.”
Malarkey rushes out and she unwraps yet another Malarkian-wrapped package gift in which there’s a small white box that reads: MONT BLANC. She opens it to discover a Meisterstück 149 Fountain Pen. Being Malarkey, Malarkey leaves the price tag on it: $1,000 which renders Liliana somewhat speechless. Given Malarkey’s penchant for buying inappropriate gifts for appropriate occasions and vice versa, the Reader might think Malarkey doesn’t know what he’s doing. If so, then the Reader is as stupid as Wilson. Malarkey sincerely hopes that’s not the case since there is absolutely no hope for Wilson.