Fifty-Boy
6
I'm Not Taking A Salad
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| Pheromone-Jones |
I heard her car pull in the driveway.
I slipped on the penny-loafers I kept by the door,
pulled on the jeans and muscle-shirt she liked and ran to open the garage.
I was a sucker for Molly.
Before long I knew she'd disappear upstairs to
the computer-room with the dinner I'd prepared.
I knew she'd do it, ignore me, take me for granted, but I tried anyway. I trimmed the beard, hid the quilted journal so she wouldn't call me Herr Professor or Sigmund, put on the tight jeans, years ago she mentioned she liked a guy in tight jeans, wore the muscle-shirt she wanted me to buy, figured I'd show off my exercised arms, see if I could get a reaction on my fiftieth birthday.
But I was no match for the guys at the gym or the anticipation of her chat-room buddies. What I got was the usual flat-line.
Hmm, hmm, hmm, I'm thinking as she walked in the door. "How'd the boys at the gym like that outfit?" I held the door and her bag.
"They liked it." She handed me her towel and walked to the kitchen. She lifted a pot lid. "Something smells good."
"Yeah, you girl."
"I meant food, silly."
"I take care of my girl. And your salad's all ready in tupperware for tomorrow."
She leaned over the sink and washed her hands.
"I'm not taking a salad."
"I'm not taking a salad."
"Why?" I stared at her calves.''
"We're having a going away party for Mary."
"She's leaving?"
Her arms and shoulders looked so good I wanted to bite her neck. "Remember I told you about the conversation I overheard?" She dried her hands on the dishtowel hanging from the refrigerator door.
"The guy she snuck away to meet at the Shore, from the chat-room?" I said.
Her clevage jiggled ever so slightly as she dried her hands. I hoped I wasn't visibly drooling. She picked up her dinner tray and headed for the stairs. "Yep, moving the Shore."
I watched her walk away thinking, Nice tight little ass. "You're kidding? She's leaving her husband for a chat-room dude? You can't be serious? Where ya' going? What about her kids?" I tried to catch up.
"Upstairs."
"With the chat-rats?"
"Her kids are grown, just like ours." She said. "You don't mind, do you? Just serial-killer talk. You'd be bored. You could go down and have a coffee at the bookstore, make mental notes in your first diary."
The door to the computer-room closed. I stood at the bottom of the stairs holding her gym bag and towel. "No. Me? Why would I mind? ...Bored, by serial-killer talk? Hey, I can be as macabre as the next guy if that's what it takes to get a date."
She didn't even notice that I'd dressed for her. Or, if she did, she didn't say anything. Maybe the loafers threw off the outfit. Maybe sneakers would've been better, or sandals...
Nah.. I had to face it. I could ride a bicycle naked down Broad Street and she wouldn't notice or comment unless I hit a pothole, flipped over the handlebars and caught my nuts in the spokes.
"That was stupid. Why'd you do that, ruin a perfectly good bicycle?"I'm twisted in the wreckage and she's looking at the hole.
"...City's going to surcharge you for that pothole."
Me, on the other hand, I see her and I'm thinking, succulent, luscious, round-in-all-the-right-places.
Now women, of course, would claim it was all in our minds or we did it to ourselves. They would complain about having to dye their hair, or point to their ever so slightly rounded little belly, or butt and say they could be better, or to their breasts and say they weren't as high as they used to be. And I guess there are women out there who count every wrinkle and I understand all that, but men will know just what I'm talking about.
When certain women reach a certain age they begin to radiate this primal heat and it doesn't matter if every hair is perfectly in place. Shit, we like it better if it isn't. It just the fact that finally, here's a woman who enjoys us a much as we enjoy them.
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| Primal-Heat |
We walk into stuff, spill coffee, act like fools, she pets our head, makes us clean it up, we wag our tail and everybody's happy. And I can understand all that in person, but explain primal-heat, explain a pheromone-jones in the chat-room. How'd she do that, send it out through cyber-space and zap men right in the giga-byte, long distance? Some things, boy, you're better off not knowing.
Hey, look." I called up the stairs. "I'm gonna' go out and pick the next victim for my birthday murder spree, okay?" I baked myself a cake with a knife in it."
"Get me a Cadbury with almonds at the Wawa while you're out. Ann says hi." She wasn't listening to a word I was saying.
"I'm going naked." I was really taking off my jeans and putting on the long blue windwopane pajama-pants I found in a Gap bag uner her desk, two sizes too big, but she kept her cool and swore they were for my birthday.
"Okay, just be careful driving... And take your car."
I'm thinking, Who the hell is Ann? I pulled on my Wal-Mart robe and cinched it around my waist. My journal fell out of the pocket. I picked it up and put it on the end table. Wal-Mart was where we usually got my pj's and underwear, which usually ended up two sizes too small after the first washing. I wondered who the big windowpanes were really for.
I got my TV tray, sat down and aimed the remote. On clicked Cheaters with Tommy Grand. He was chasing another errant husband, catching him and the other woman on camera. Shit, what about the errant wife? I ought to call that show. It was always on when I least needed seeing it.
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