Eye on the ball (b)

I've known Monica for over half my life. I've lived with her more than I have lived with anyone else, including my own family. She IS my family too, I meant to say my own 'Blood Family', my parents and brother.

Twenty-two years. Twenty-two years we have lived together, not counting the eleven months she was married that one time. During those eleven months she spent a good deal of time in our house anyway, at least for the last half of it. Her room had remained pretty much as she left it. I had a feeling about that thing, not to gloat. He wasn't right for her. Obviously.

I had almost been married twice myself, and both times Monica seemed to know something I didn't, she had warned me that she didn't have a good feeling about either one, and as usual, she was right. I can't tell if she is actually looking out for me or sabotaging my potential marital bliss, but either way here she is still, and those other women are gone. We'll circle back to this later.

We've been living in our current home for 6 years now, longer than in any other place. We're getting old, I think. We just don't have the energy any more to want to live on the other side of town where more things are happening, don't have the energy to put everything in boxes again and load up a couple of U-Haul trucks and drive back and forth, painting and sweeping and arranging and putting screws in a wall, and taking screws out of other walls and all of that type of thing. It's hard to believe, but we just want to come home and eat something that won't upset our stomachs, complain about our romantic endeavors or lack of them, and then read while our cats slink around the room staring at the aquariums, licking their lips and watching the fish swim around behind the glass. We have a fireplace. We enjoy a lot of fires together. Summer, Winter, doesn't matter. We like to watch the fire the way those cats watch the fish. I think we see something in the fire that we want, and we silently try to figure out how we can make it ours, but we are too lazy or tired to actually do anything about it.

She works as a mental health therapist for a college in town. This means she gets to sit around and encourage people to spill their gossip and dark secrets and this also means she gets to come home and tell me these other people's gossip and dark secrets. Sometimes it feels wrong, but that is usually only when I find her stories boring. Otherwise, I don't mind her breaking her confidentiality agreement and risking her position. Some of the stories are pretty good, and SOMETIMES they are even newsworthy, or involve local celebrities, athletes, people of that nature.

I fix old cars and restaurant equipment, and sell things online. I operate under the radar, more or less. I make my own schedule. Some people envy me my freedom, but Monica does not. Monica knows that I am the sort of rare person who does not know what to do with his freedom, or how to enjoy it. Monica knows that I squander my freedom worrying about how I should be doing something else, no matter what it is I am doing at the time.

I heard her keys in the door rattling around for a moment and then the door opened up and she was standing there, a force of nature in a leather coat and a stylish dark red beret and she was pushing the door open with her knee and balancing two large grocery bags in one arm and still trying to remove her keys with the semi-free hand, hopping on one leg after the arc of the door as it swung inside. I hadn't heard her car pull up outside, the music was up too loud and she was home early.

I froze, caught in the act of rebuilding a Maserati brake caliper on the kitchen table, shirtlessy sweating and drinking wine straight from the bottle. Guilty, I stared at her for a moment, planning my escape strategy.

She froze too, staring back at me for a couple of seconds before speaking, "Are you going to help me or what?"

"SUUURE!" I answered, relieved. If she were really angry like I thought she was, she would not have spoken to me at all. I stood and sauntered over to her, grabbed one bag out of her arms, and removed her keys for her. She walked past me with the other bag, glancing at my mess on the table as she passed it.

"You like nice," I offered hopefully. "Are those pants new?"

She put the bag down on the counter and returned to where I was standing still, and reclaimed her keys, knowing I would lose them in another few seconds. She reached behind me for the door, and when I stepped away she closed it.

"What happened to your shirt?" She asked rhetorically. She looked at the brake caliper resting in a large glass baking dish, surrounded by brake fluid. "Is that for the guy in Florida? Ferrari brakes? Why are you doing that on the kitchen table again?"

"Maserati." I corrected her "Florida though, yes. I put cardboard down this time. AND some plastic bags. I wanted to be inside, it's too hot out in the garage."

"Is that mine?" she asked, nodding her head at the table. I thought she was indicating the Pyrex baking dish full of dirty brake fluid.

"No," I lied "That's one of the ones I got at that flea market a few months ago, remember?"

"Not the dish, the wine. Is that mine? That better not be the bottle that What'shisface gave me."

"No, no... I'm pretty sure it's mine," I assured her as she walked past me again and and into the bathroom. I heard the sound of the toilet seat slamming down through the open door, immediately followed by the sound of her urine splashing into the bowl.

"This is just some cheap stuff here. Came from Trader Joe's. Nothing to celebrate. Not yet, anyway. You want some?" I yelled at the open bathroom door.

There was the sound of toilet paper being pulled off the spindle, then a flush, then she emerged pulling her shirt down and wiping her hands on the front of her pants.

"I didn't hear you wash your hands in there. GROSS!"

She walked past me again, glaring silently first at my bare torso, then my poor brake caliper resting in it's puddle and then warned me; "Don't even talk to me right now about gross."

She returned to the kitchen and began to unload the grocery bag onto the counter. I followed with the bag I was still carrying and put it down beside hers and started to rummage through it, but only after pouring her a glass of wine and handing it to her. Her hand hesitated for just a moment before accepting it, this would mean we were at peace, but she could not resist even if we did like to bicker.

"Blah!" she spat after sipping the wine "That tastes awful. Why are you drinking that?"

"Because it was only four dollars." I answered, right in her way now, examining her purchases. "Did you buy any cheese? You ate the last of it last night."

Ignoring my question, she began to relay another installment in a never-ending story about the hiring politics in her office, the various egos and personalities involved, names I recognized but could not put faces to although I had met these people many times, these people she worked with, these people who spent 8 or 9 or 10 hours a day in little cubicles, filing reports, using copy machines.

"I understand. Jesus yes, I understand. That is AWFUL." I had learned to give her what she wanted. I learned to listen and agree with her. I learned to do it, and I was happy to do it. But, I had my limit, and I had not taken food all day. "I agree," I cut her off as she was saying something, standing beside the refrigerator, the door of which was wide open, a bunch of celery hanging in one hand and her empty wine glass in the other, and YES, I interrupted her, "And those people should all be wiped from the face of the Earth, but God woman! IS THERE CHEESE?"

**************************************************

A couple of hours after I made dinner and we ate, I cleaned up the kitchen and we found ourselves installed on the couch in front of the fire, despite the heat in the house. There we were, like an old loving couple, her feet up on the coffee table in front of us where our cold highball glasses were sweating, making rings of water there on the table top. We were sufficiently relaxed now, and I had my head in Monica's lap while she absently played with my hair while we continued to gently insult each other.

"You know something," She began in a typical fashion I recognized as pre-insult, "You have more hair on your back than on your head."

"So do you."

"No I don't." She stated, watching the flames dance around in the fireplace.

"Well, YOU'VE got a mustache. Or you would, if you didn't shave it off. Bleach it, whatever." I said, tracing my finger around on her thigh. She had really great legs. Strong. Meaty. Long. "Don't take this the wrong way," I continued "But sometimes I sure wish you weren't YOU. You know?"

"I know." She said and leaned over my head, smashing my face into her shirt as she reached for her drink on the table. "But then I wouldn't be ME. Right? I'd be different."

I understood her logic. This was the pattern of thought and conversation we would fall into about once a week. I reached for my beverage and carefully took a sip sideways, my head still resting on her legs.

We watched the fire for a few more minutes and then I removed myself from her bubble and stood up, digging my finger around in my bellybutton and then sniffed at it. "Smells like a vagina," I said proudly.

"You're a pig." She told me without much conviction "It's no big mystery why no one will marry you."

"I'm going to be nice now and ignore that commentary," I replied "I don't want to stay up all night discussing who has more failed relationships and the hows and the whys. Can you wake me up when you leave tomorrow? I have to get going early."

"Okay," She said "Don't forget to water the stuff in the greenhouse before you go out though, alright?"

"Never do." I said, turning away and wandering towards my end of the house, then stopped and reminded her: "Put the screen up if the fire is still going when you go to bed. Goodnight Gorgeous."

"I will. Goodnight." She said, picking up her iPhone from the arm of the couch and began to return text messages or browse Facebook, something hideous like that. Women and their phones. Jesus. What a nightmare.

I set a course for my room and made my way down the long hall, bouncing only two or three times off of the walls on my way there, careful to knock nothing off or down, I entered my room and flopped down on the bed, on top of all the blankets and pulled nothing over me, and thought about her out there sitting on the couch by herself. I fell asleep clutching a pillow next to my bare chest, confiding some admission of fondness into it's imagined ear for the thousandth time. I fell asleep and dreamed of being late to class, late for a test and finding I was naked, I dreamed of getting in fights and losing, I dreamed of finding dying animals and not being able to help them, I dreamed of my teeth falling out, my mouth full of blood.