Why would anyone be fearful that the man might become distressed or that he might lose his temper in their bedroom?
He is a calm man by nature and not liable to break anything really nice by accident.
He had decided to disrobe in there—where they keep their Polish woman statuette and the fish dish they use for loose coins.
To be civilized, this man had asked to meet with his wife’s new husband.
The three drank tea together, impromptu, from souvenir mugs and paid mind to one another’s questions and the uninformative replies. Next, the man had stepped into their bedroom, towing his roller board, after inquiring if he could change into more comfortable clothes in preparation for his travel.
He said he’d be leaving soon enough—flying into the northeast corridor that he’d heard was an absolute quagmire.
Hard rain had been falling freely and for several days. In addition, now they were suffering occasional sleet. The pressure, the moisture, and the black clouds were progressing.
This is a humid, continental climate in turmoil.
“You’re wearing that?” the wife said, when the man reemerged in Spandex fitness apparel.
“We found it in Two Dot! You don’t remember?” he said—fondly patting lightly his own chest. “It’s breathable. It’s stretchable.”
“I thought it was in Geraldine,” the wife said.
“But look here, maybe you should stay the night,” the new husband said. He offered seed cake and coffee—the mild and friendly kind—this time, to drink.
“What are you doing?” said the wife—for her husband’s hands were filled with the sugar bowl and the creamer and several cups were swinging from his fingers by their ears.
All so beautifully turned out, the dishes found the table’s surface safely. These were specimens of the most romantic china service. The gilding was very good—the glaze finely crazed. There were hand-painted sprays on an apple-green ground.
“I hope you are a comfort to her,” the man said, “and that you show good sense. Because this is what it is—doesn’t everybody have to take care of Tasha?” He did not refer to her sex behavior and instead spoke generally about the dell they had once lived in and lunged silently at his disappointment that he could no longer touch his former wife. He extolled the mountain town where the wife had often reflected that looking up and out, say, over at an elevated ridge—was to her advantage.
Now she resided in this flatter state in an apartment on the third floor across from the church—from where she could see its spire.
Her glance often ran recklessly toward it, as if spurting over a rim, or through a spout.
The chancel and the sanctuary had lately been under ugly scaffolding. A few years back, one of the two aisle rose windows had been carried away for restoration and had not been returned yet.
Fortunately, the inner-draw draperies of the couple’s window facing the church were made of cheerful chintz.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if I stayed,” the man said. “Well, sure, yes, absolutely, you bet!” he said. “I’m a little nervous.”
He prepared to eat by sitting down and stressing his jaws with a big smile.
His cheeks are elongated and hollow—his brow highly peaked. His face is not difficult to explain—it’s cathedral-like.
The new husband’s whole head has an unfinished look that promises to work out well. Whereas the wife’s furrowed face—some have said—shows heavy evidence of deception and is cause for alarm.
Right then, in front of them, the woman uncapped a tube of gel ointment and applied a dab of it under a long fingernail. Next she opened a cellophane packet from which she withdrew a cracker that produced plenty of crumbs.
The husband told the man, “Surely you’d be welcome to stay!”
As the wife mopped up her particles and the traces, she spoke somewhat rudely to the man and also to her husband.
“I went somewhere…” the man said, expanding on a point. Hadn’t he been molded to better express himself?
A small object’s overall smallness on a shelf caught his eye—a round-bodied jar of free-blown glass whose neck was straight, that had flat shoulders—a flask he would not get to smash! It was streaked with permanent crimson and cold black. It had about it the real suggestion of the softness of human flesh.
“Did you imagine me the way I am?” the man asked the new husband, who answered no.
“What do you mean?”
“But I am not against you,” the husband said.
“Say a little more.”
Sirens in the street produced a brief, headstrong fugue.
“Say a little more,” said the man.
The husband got up from his chair. Why should anyone be fearful of his certain combinations of words, narrowly spaced?
The husband gave himself ample time to speak.
No gross vices were explored. His is not the voice of a man in the pulpit. No personal impulses were defined or analyzed.
He did deliver a slovenly interrogatory.
He went uphill, downhill with—“Wah-aaaaaaaat waaahz it ligh-ike, with herrrrrrrrr-rah, for you-ooooooo—?”
That’s all that he was saying.
Nothing seemed to want to end it.