Antelope polishers.
Yay! Update-y goodness! Read it or I will sever your pinky finger and you will cry! When asked what you're doing, you will respond "I cry."
I drive to her apartment downtown. The little one bedroom place which suits her just perfectly, the colors of everything clashing with the colors of everything else, an avocado green fridge next to a pink coffee maker. But somehow, when you look at the apartment as a while, all of those colors just form some sort of fusion of light and appliances that just works so wonderfully well in a place where it shouldn’t. I drive like the wind. Faster than the wind. The sign outside the bank says the wind is blowing at 5 miles per hour, and that it’s 8:25. I’m wonderfully early. My car is stiflingly hot. Muggy air, humid seats. Can seats even be humid? Mine are whether it’s possible or not. My car is a sweltering jungle. There’s probably some fungus growing on some trash under my seat which would count for vegetation. I roll down the window a little and gulp in a few lungfulls of crisp air.
I check my pocket for the ring for the twentieth time in the last ten minutes, but for the first time after getting into the car. I know it’s there, it’s been there since I started getting ready so that I can’t lose it. The ring is definitely in my pocket.
Only it’s not. A momentary panic settles in like fog over London, so heavy that you can’t see anything but it. I shake it off and the fog clears some. I’m just checking the wrong pocket. I feel the other. And my shirt pocket. I glance at the seat next to me. I look on the dashboard and start to wonder if I should pull over and check the trunk. The ring can’t be in the trunk, I haven’t even opened the trunk for at least a week.
The panic comes back, and I try to work my way through it by touch, retracing my steps, visualizing everything I’ve done since I slipped that ring into my pocket. I visualize too well and don’t see the ditch until it’s almost too late. My life flashes before my eyes, and towards the end of the show, I see myself leaving the ring on the coffee table after checking the box to make sure the ring is inside.
I jerk the wheel to the left to save myself from the muddy-looking ditch and end up pointed the wrong way into oncoming traffic. Everyone swerves out of the way, flashes their lights at me and honks a lot. I imagine they’re swearing, too. I’m proposing tonight, cut me some slack, bastards! I speed back home and as I pass a taxi on a one way, one lane street by cutting through a few parking spaces, the cab driver shouts something not in English and makes a few suggestive and rude gestures.
Pulling up into my driveway, I burst out of my car before it’s even done stopping. I’m in a bigger hurry and feeling stupider than that burly guy I saw in Nordstrom’s trying to find his way out of the women’s underwear department, and plowing into a bra display. I hit the door, turning the knob as I put my shoulder into it, trying to open it as fast as possible. My shoulder can feel a new bruise starting to spread, and I start back to the car to get the keys to unlock the door. The car is starting to roll away. I dive into the open door, jab my foot at the brake pedal and my neck feels a sharp snap I know it’ll be complaining about for days to come. I put the car in park and rush back to the door which, not surprisingly is still locked. The keys are still in the car. An image of the worn path I feel my feet starting to make between the car and my front door tugs at the edges of my mind. Snatching the keys, I fly back to the door, surge into the living room and descend upon the coffee table. I swoop up the little box in an overly fluid motion that reminds my shoulder it’s bruised. I open the box to be sure it’s still in there. It is. I snap the box shut and shove it into my pocket.
After running back to the car, I realize I left the front door open and unlocked so I sprint to it, lock it, and hurry back to the car, taking out the box and checking the ring one more time just to be sure. I get to the car and it hauls me back onto the road. The sign in front of the bank tells me that it’s 8:52 and it’s 52 degrees. Only 52 degrees? That’s cold. So why am I so hot? It wasn’t cold when I was running in and out of the house, was it? 52 degrees. 52 degrees is cold. Shit, only eight minutes left to get there. I speed up, pass a car by driving on the shoulder and double check my pocket for the ring. How can I be sweating this much if it’s only 52 degrees out? My jungle car has to be hotter than 52 degrees. I turn on the air conditioning, speed up and hope there’s no cops along the way.
Halfway there, I nearly rear-end a man in a pickup truck that cuts me off. He drives very slowly.
“Speed the fuck up!” I yell through the space between our cars, toward his bright shiny red truck with the dealership placard still in the license plate frame. I get angry when he doesn’t listen, and relieved at the same time because my windows are up and he can’t hear me. He looks like the kind of guy who would have a gun in his car. There’s no shoulder to pass him on, only the muddy ditch. Eventually, he turns and I resume driving terribly unsafely.
Then, every light starts turning red just for me. I swear at the red lights and start getting convinced that they are conspiring against me. As I wait, their sinister red gleam tints my car and everything in it. I let them know that their plan is no longer clandestine, and let them know I plan to break every single light that slows me down tonight. Somehow, they hear me. I thank them. The green lights wink their apologies for the red lights at me, as if they weren’t part of the whole thing to start with. I glare menacingly at them.
I’m almost there when I high pitched whine tickles my ear. When the whine stops, little feet are tickling my ear instead. I swat at the mosquito, but it manages to evade my palm of impending doom. A minute later, it lands on my arm, trying to sneak a quick meal in before I notice it. I smack it, leaving a small smear of legs and wings behind. I consider making some sort of totem or charm with the mess, a message to mosquitoes to make it evident that I will lay waste to the mosquito population of my town, and have no regrets in the end.
I pull up to the restaurant two minutes late and throw a wad of bills at the valet. I bolt inside and people start to stare. The host hostess asks how large my party is, and I tell her it’s going to be the biggest damn party ever. My joke is so corny that even I don’t chuckle at it.
“I’m meeting someone. I think she’s here already,” I mumble to the hostess. My face is flushed, and I can’t bring myself to look at her now, after that dreadful joke. I look up and try to find my ring’s future recipient.
She’s sitting by herself at a small, round table which is complete with candles, napkins with monograms, wine glasses next to the water, and elegant silverware with fancy designs on the handles, almost like vines weaving up their length. There’s too many forks. What are you supposed to do with four forks? And why is the table round? Why don’t I remember the tables here being round? I pictured a small, square table. This table is unmistakably round. Wait, no, it doesn’t matter. I check the pocket for the ring, which is still there. I take another breath to calm myself, shake the nervousness from my hands and walk toward the table4, brushing off the hostess.
She notices me from the table which persists in its obstinate roundness. When she smiles, brilliant white teeth are framed by red painted lips. The color of her eyes seems to be overflowing, bursting out into the room, bathing the table with a dazzling, blue glow. She’s wearing the black dress - the one she loves that she thinks makes her look slimmer, even though it actually makes her hips look larger. She wears it elegantly. As I get closer, she tilts her head to one side, and her hair falls from behind her ear, cascading to the side of her face, staging her features in a blond proscenium. I could stop and stare at her and be happy for days, but she’s looking right at me, and she’d think it would be really weird if I stopped.
I smile back at her as I slide out my chair and almost trip over it as I move to sit down. Too caught up how incredible she looks, I just keep smiling as she says hello and asks how my day went. This creeps her out a little and she asks if I’m okay. I try to collect myself and after I assure her everything’s okay, we end up talking about one of my patients, though I can tell there’s something she wants to say. Just as I’m about to ask her what it is, the waiter comes by with a bottle of champagne in one of those metal things with ice they carry the champagne around in. I’m sure there’s a name for them, but I don’t really care too much to try to remember right now. The waiter is accompanied by a waitress who brings our food. I look across the table and she grins. She must have ordered for us before I arrived. The waiters fuss about us for a bit, ask if we’ll be needing anything else and finally leave.
My salmon smells delicious.
“You’ve been grinning since I got here,” I say. “Are you going to tell me what it is or will I leave tonight, pressing into the chilly night still wondering?” I wink at her quickly, and wonder if it was too quick for her to realize it’s a wink and not a twitch.
She smiles even harder and even giggles a little. “You look like you’ve got something to say, too. You go first.”
I can feel a spotlight on me and several little laser dots pointing out the sweat leaking out of my skin. My palms are slicker than a polished antelope, though I don’t know why anyone would polish an antelope, save for maybe a professional antelope polisher. As I pull the box out of my pocket and leave it in my hand concealed under the table, I realize my mind is concentrating on what I’m doing far more than it is on what I need to say. Box in hand, I look across the table and seep into her radiant blue pools as salmon fumes work their way up to my nose. My stomach growls and she giggles again.
I inhale deeply and begin my proposal. “I want you to know how much our relationship over the years means to me. We’ve been trough some unbelievable times together, and I value everything about what we share.. Anyway, I’m far too nervous to say what I need to, so I’m hoping that this will speak for itself. Hopefully, it will be the start of something amazing.” I can feel my voice shaking, cracking, hitting highs and lows it never has before. I hold up the box, opening it as I go. Her eyes widen and her smile grows even broader. A tremendous weight falls from my shoulders and I can almost hear it fall to the floor behind me, a heavy thud that shakes the table. Or would shake the table if the weight was physically real. That smile is what I need to see after completely screwing up the proposal I memorized and repeated to myself dozens of times in the mirror before I left.
The world is mine, and I’m ready to dig into the salmon as soon as it doesn’t seem that the timing is awkward.
“Oh my god, it’s beautiful!” She takes the box from my hand and stares at the ring. “I’m so happy for you.” She looks up at me again. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
I think I need to vomit, especially since I don’t know what just happened. She’s holding the box with the ring, looking at me, but hasn’t said yes. Or no. What does she mean “Who’s the lucky girl?” I loot at the box in her hands. There’s a new sparkle on her finger. An engagement ring.
She sees me looking. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist showing mine off, too. Michael proposed to me today!” She is wielding her smile like a broadsword now.
Who the FUCK is Michael?
“I think it’s wonderful that we can both be so happy,” she says, swiping the smile around, nearly cleaving off one of my arms. “And I want you to know that our friendship means a lot to me, too. Thank you for being so up front with admitting that both of us being engaged is going to have an impact on our friendship, since we won’t have as much time to spend together. But you’re right. This is the start of something good in our lives.”
I try to dodge the smile’s sharpened sides as it smashes several glasses and slices the tablecloth. My mind is still coming to terms with what has just happened when I notice my mouth start talking. I listen to it, not realizing that I can probably stop it if I try.
“Okay, so right now, there’s this device that has a death grip on my innards. It’s a nasty device, quite painful. Okay, and there’s little birdies around, and we’re in a lush green meadow, and it’s sunny and there’s a gentle breeze blowing. Oh, look! Wildflowers! Okay, so you and I are in this meadow on this wonderful day and there’s a deer frolicking near us, and that’s all Disney-esque and joyful. And what you’re doing, see, is you’re twisting this flower shaped dial which is scented like lilac or maybe lavender. Some L thing that smells good. And you’re smiling as you go on twisting it, smiling at the birds and the flowers and the fantastic weather, basking in life’s glory as you contentedly turn the knob that tightens the device, squishing all of my insides, maybe rupturing an organ or two, just crushing my whole damned nervous system and blood starts leaking out my nose, but you’re distracted by a cute ferret over there, so you keep twisting and I want to scram, but my throat’s cinched tight, and then the blood starts flowing out stronger now, leaking a bit from my eyes maybe. I’m dying on the ground after a few minutes, and you look away from the warm fuzzies and toward me for a moment, confused and ask, ‘What’s wrong? It’s such a lovely day!’”
Her face freezes, then collapses. The broadsword shatters and vanishes. The box tumbles from her long fingers and lands, ring-down in a puddle of a gravy-like sauce, some of which splatters on her dress. People jerk their heads toward our circular table, the din of the restaurant crashes into silence, everything stopped dead by the inaudible sound of a ring falling into a pool of meat juice. The smell of salmon stifles me, makes everything heavy and slow.
Michael. The Kenny G look alike with the glasses. Didn’t he say they were just friends?
She stands up and moves toward the bathroom as fast as she can without running. People stare at the seat she came from. Their eyes let me know what a terrible person I am. The waiter comes back to ask if there’s anything more he can get us. I ask what kind of wine goes well with realizing you’ve just proposed to an engaged woman, and gesture to the fallen ring. The waiter mutters apologetically and scuttles off.
I reach across and fish the ring out of the gravy, feeling very numb and leaden. I slide the ring out of the box which I set aside on an extra napkin, and dunk the ring into my water, swirling it around a few times to rinse it off. After I drop the ring into my shirt pocket, I switch my waster glass with hers, feeling somehow that it’s her fault there’s gravy in the water at all. Then, I begin to think along three distinctly separate tracks at the same time.
First, I wonder if she’s coming back, or if she’s sneaking out through some back door this very moment. Should I go back and see if she’s okay? How upset would people be if I go into the women’s restroom to check on her? I’m pretty sure she’s gone, anyway.
Second, I try to remember if the girl at the jewelry store had said anything about if I could return the ring even if I didn’t have the box, because I am not about to take in the gravy coated mess. Should I try to clean the box off, though? It doesn’t look as though it would take kindly to water. I hope the clerk will be reasonable and not demand an explanation. I guess I could just pay for the box.
Lastly, I think about a story my mother read to me when I was young, and never again because she thought it would instill all sorts of neuroses in my young, impressionable mind. It’s about a lonely old man who is a hundred and fifty years old and he has never gotten married or had a family or anything. But now, he has this ugly yellow wallpaper with little houses and families on it. Every morning, he steps into the wallpaper and is part of the lives of the wallpaper people until the sun goes down, when he steps back out of the wallpaper and climbs into bed, looking forward to the next day. Through a wave of nausea, I wonder if I’ll be lucky enough to have wallpaper like that.
I drive to her apartment downtown. The little one bedroom place which suits her just perfectly, the colors of everything clashing with the colors of everything else, an avocado green fridge next to a pink coffee maker. But somehow, when you look at the apartment as a while, all of those colors just form some sort of fusion of light and appliances that just works so wonderfully well in a place where it shouldn’t. I drive like the wind. Faster than the wind. The sign outside the bank says the wind is blowing at 5 miles per hour, and that it’s 8:25. I’m wonderfully early. My car is stiflingly hot. Muggy air, humid seats. Can seats even be humid? Mine are whether it’s possible or not. My car is a sweltering jungle. There’s probably some fungus growing on some trash under my seat which would count for vegetation. I roll down the window a little and gulp in a few lungfulls of crisp air.
I check my pocket for the ring for the twentieth time in the last ten minutes, but for the first time after getting into the car. I know it’s there, it’s been there since I started getting ready so that I can’t lose it. The ring is definitely in my pocket.
Only it’s not. A momentary panic settles in like fog over London, so heavy that you can’t see anything but it. I shake it off and the fog clears some. I’m just checking the wrong pocket. I feel the other. And my shirt pocket. I glance at the seat next to me. I look on the dashboard and start to wonder if I should pull over and check the trunk. The ring can’t be in the trunk, I haven’t even opened the trunk for at least a week.
The panic comes back, and I try to work my way through it by touch, retracing my steps, visualizing everything I’ve done since I slipped that ring into my pocket. I visualize too well and don’t see the ditch until it’s almost too late. My life flashes before my eyes, and towards the end of the show, I see myself leaving the ring on the coffee table after checking the box to make sure the ring is inside.
I jerk the wheel to the left to save myself from the muddy-looking ditch and end up pointed the wrong way into oncoming traffic. Everyone swerves out of the way, flashes their lights at me and honks a lot. I imagine they’re swearing, too. I’m proposing tonight, cut me some slack, bastards! I speed back home and as I pass a taxi on a one way, one lane street by cutting through a few parking spaces, the cab driver shouts something not in English and makes a few suggestive and rude gestures.
Pulling up into my driveway, I burst out of my car before it’s even done stopping. I’m in a bigger hurry and feeling stupider than that burly guy I saw in Nordstrom’s trying to find his way out of the women’s underwear department, and plowing into a bra display. I hit the door, turning the knob as I put my shoulder into it, trying to open it as fast as possible. My shoulder can feel a new bruise starting to spread, and I start back to the car to get the keys to unlock the door. The car is starting to roll away. I dive into the open door, jab my foot at the brake pedal and my neck feels a sharp snap I know it’ll be complaining about for days to come. I put the car in park and rush back to the door which, not surprisingly is still locked. The keys are still in the car. An image of the worn path I feel my feet starting to make between the car and my front door tugs at the edges of my mind. Snatching the keys, I fly back to the door, surge into the living room and descend upon the coffee table. I swoop up the little box in an overly fluid motion that reminds my shoulder it’s bruised. I open the box to be sure it’s still in there. It is. I snap the box shut and shove it into my pocket.
After running back to the car, I realize I left the front door open and unlocked so I sprint to it, lock it, and hurry back to the car, taking out the box and checking the ring one more time just to be sure. I get to the car and it hauls me back onto the road. The sign in front of the bank tells me that it’s 8:52 and it’s 52 degrees. Only 52 degrees? That’s cold. So why am I so hot? It wasn’t cold when I was running in and out of the house, was it? 52 degrees. 52 degrees is cold. Shit, only eight minutes left to get there. I speed up, pass a car by driving on the shoulder and double check my pocket for the ring. How can I be sweating this much if it’s only 52 degrees out? My jungle car has to be hotter than 52 degrees. I turn on the air conditioning, speed up and hope there’s no cops along the way.
Halfway there, I nearly rear-end a man in a pickup truck that cuts me off. He drives very slowly.
“Speed the fuck up!” I yell through the space between our cars, toward his bright shiny red truck with the dealership placard still in the license plate frame. I get angry when he doesn’t listen, and relieved at the same time because my windows are up and he can’t hear me. He looks like the kind of guy who would have a gun in his car. There’s no shoulder to pass him on, only the muddy ditch. Eventually, he turns and I resume driving terribly unsafely.
Then, every light starts turning red just for me. I swear at the red lights and start getting convinced that they are conspiring against me. As I wait, their sinister red gleam tints my car and everything in it. I let them know that their plan is no longer clandestine, and let them know I plan to break every single light that slows me down tonight. Somehow, they hear me. I thank them. The green lights wink their apologies for the red lights at me, as if they weren’t part of the whole thing to start with. I glare menacingly at them.
I’m almost there when I high pitched whine tickles my ear. When the whine stops, little feet are tickling my ear instead. I swat at the mosquito, but it manages to evade my palm of impending doom. A minute later, it lands on my arm, trying to sneak a quick meal in before I notice it. I smack it, leaving a small smear of legs and wings behind. I consider making some sort of totem or charm with the mess, a message to mosquitoes to make it evident that I will lay waste to the mosquito population of my town, and have no regrets in the end.
I pull up to the restaurant two minutes late and throw a wad of bills at the valet. I bolt inside and people start to stare. The host hostess asks how large my party is, and I tell her it’s going to be the biggest damn party ever. My joke is so corny that even I don’t chuckle at it.
“I’m meeting someone. I think she’s here already,” I mumble to the hostess. My face is flushed, and I can’t bring myself to look at her now, after that dreadful joke. I look up and try to find my ring’s future recipient.
She’s sitting by herself at a small, round table which is complete with candles, napkins with monograms, wine glasses next to the water, and elegant silverware with fancy designs on the handles, almost like vines weaving up their length. There’s too many forks. What are you supposed to do with four forks? And why is the table round? Why don’t I remember the tables here being round? I pictured a small, square table. This table is unmistakably round. Wait, no, it doesn’t matter. I check the pocket for the ring, which is still there. I take another breath to calm myself, shake the nervousness from my hands and walk toward the table4, brushing off the hostess.
She notices me from the table which persists in its obstinate roundness. When she smiles, brilliant white teeth are framed by red painted lips. The color of her eyes seems to be overflowing, bursting out into the room, bathing the table with a dazzling, blue glow. She’s wearing the black dress - the one she loves that she thinks makes her look slimmer, even though it actually makes her hips look larger. She wears it elegantly. As I get closer, she tilts her head to one side, and her hair falls from behind her ear, cascading to the side of her face, staging her features in a blond proscenium. I could stop and stare at her and be happy for days, but she’s looking right at me, and she’d think it would be really weird if I stopped.
I smile back at her as I slide out my chair and almost trip over it as I move to sit down. Too caught up how incredible she looks, I just keep smiling as she says hello and asks how my day went. This creeps her out a little and she asks if I’m okay. I try to collect myself and after I assure her everything’s okay, we end up talking about one of my patients, though I can tell there’s something she wants to say. Just as I’m about to ask her what it is, the waiter comes by with a bottle of champagne in one of those metal things with ice they carry the champagne around in. I’m sure there’s a name for them, but I don’t really care too much to try to remember right now. The waiter is accompanied by a waitress who brings our food. I look across the table and she grins. She must have ordered for us before I arrived. The waiters fuss about us for a bit, ask if we’ll be needing anything else and finally leave.
My salmon smells delicious.
“You’ve been grinning since I got here,” I say. “Are you going to tell me what it is or will I leave tonight, pressing into the chilly night still wondering?” I wink at her quickly, and wonder if it was too quick for her to realize it’s a wink and not a twitch.
She smiles even harder and even giggles a little. “You look like you’ve got something to say, too. You go first.”
I can feel a spotlight on me and several little laser dots pointing out the sweat leaking out of my skin. My palms are slicker than a polished antelope, though I don’t know why anyone would polish an antelope, save for maybe a professional antelope polisher. As I pull the box out of my pocket and leave it in my hand concealed under the table, I realize my mind is concentrating on what I’m doing far more than it is on what I need to say. Box in hand, I look across the table and seep into her radiant blue pools as salmon fumes work their way up to my nose. My stomach growls and she giggles again.
I inhale deeply and begin my proposal. “I want you to know how much our relationship over the years means to me. We’ve been trough some unbelievable times together, and I value everything about what we share.. Anyway, I’m far too nervous to say what I need to, so I’m hoping that this will speak for itself. Hopefully, it will be the start of something amazing.” I can feel my voice shaking, cracking, hitting highs and lows it never has before. I hold up the box, opening it as I go. Her eyes widen and her smile grows even broader. A tremendous weight falls from my shoulders and I can almost hear it fall to the floor behind me, a heavy thud that shakes the table. Or would shake the table if the weight was physically real. That smile is what I need to see after completely screwing up the proposal I memorized and repeated to myself dozens of times in the mirror before I left.
The world is mine, and I’m ready to dig into the salmon as soon as it doesn’t seem that the timing is awkward.
“Oh my god, it’s beautiful!” She takes the box from my hand and stares at the ring. “I’m so happy for you.” She looks up at me again. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
I think I need to vomit, especially since I don’t know what just happened. She’s holding the box with the ring, looking at me, but hasn’t said yes. Or no. What does she mean “Who’s the lucky girl?” I loot at the box in her hands. There’s a new sparkle on her finger. An engagement ring.
She sees me looking. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist showing mine off, too. Michael proposed to me today!” She is wielding her smile like a broadsword now.
Who the FUCK is Michael?
“I think it’s wonderful that we can both be so happy,” she says, swiping the smile around, nearly cleaving off one of my arms. “And I want you to know that our friendship means a lot to me, too. Thank you for being so up front with admitting that both of us being engaged is going to have an impact on our friendship, since we won’t have as much time to spend together. But you’re right. This is the start of something good in our lives.”
I try to dodge the smile’s sharpened sides as it smashes several glasses and slices the tablecloth. My mind is still coming to terms with what has just happened when I notice my mouth start talking. I listen to it, not realizing that I can probably stop it if I try.
“Okay, so right now, there’s this device that has a death grip on my innards. It’s a nasty device, quite painful. Okay, and there’s little birdies around, and we’re in a lush green meadow, and it’s sunny and there’s a gentle breeze blowing. Oh, look! Wildflowers! Okay, so you and I are in this meadow on this wonderful day and there’s a deer frolicking near us, and that’s all Disney-esque and joyful. And what you’re doing, see, is you’re twisting this flower shaped dial which is scented like lilac or maybe lavender. Some L thing that smells good. And you’re smiling as you go on twisting it, smiling at the birds and the flowers and the fantastic weather, basking in life’s glory as you contentedly turn the knob that tightens the device, squishing all of my insides, maybe rupturing an organ or two, just crushing my whole damned nervous system and blood starts leaking out my nose, but you’re distracted by a cute ferret over there, so you keep twisting and I want to scram, but my throat’s cinched tight, and then the blood starts flowing out stronger now, leaking a bit from my eyes maybe. I’m dying on the ground after a few minutes, and you look away from the warm fuzzies and toward me for a moment, confused and ask, ‘What’s wrong? It’s such a lovely day!’”
Her face freezes, then collapses. The broadsword shatters and vanishes. The box tumbles from her long fingers and lands, ring-down in a puddle of a gravy-like sauce, some of which splatters on her dress. People jerk their heads toward our circular table, the din of the restaurant crashes into silence, everything stopped dead by the inaudible sound of a ring falling into a pool of meat juice. The smell of salmon stifles me, makes everything heavy and slow.
Michael. The Kenny G look alike with the glasses. Didn’t he say they were just friends?
She stands up and moves toward the bathroom as fast as she can without running. People stare at the seat she came from. Their eyes let me know what a terrible person I am. The waiter comes back to ask if there’s anything more he can get us. I ask what kind of wine goes well with realizing you’ve just proposed to an engaged woman, and gesture to the fallen ring. The waiter mutters apologetically and scuttles off.
I reach across and fish the ring out of the gravy, feeling very numb and leaden. I slide the ring out of the box which I set aside on an extra napkin, and dunk the ring into my water, swirling it around a few times to rinse it off. After I drop the ring into my shirt pocket, I switch my waster glass with hers, feeling somehow that it’s her fault there’s gravy in the water at all. Then, I begin to think along three distinctly separate tracks at the same time.
First, I wonder if she’s coming back, or if she’s sneaking out through some back door this very moment. Should I go back and see if she’s okay? How upset would people be if I go into the women’s restroom to check on her? I’m pretty sure she’s gone, anyway.
Second, I try to remember if the girl at the jewelry store had said anything about if I could return the ring even if I didn’t have the box, because I am not about to take in the gravy coated mess. Should I try to clean the box off, though? It doesn’t look as though it would take kindly to water. I hope the clerk will be reasonable and not demand an explanation. I guess I could just pay for the box.
Lastly, I think about a story my mother read to me when I was young, and never again because she thought it would instill all sorts of neuroses in my young, impressionable mind. It’s about a lonely old man who is a hundred and fifty years old and he has never gotten married or had a family or anything. But now, he has this ugly yellow wallpaper with little houses and families on it. Every morning, he steps into the wallpaper and is part of the lives of the wallpaper people until the sun goes down, when he steps back out of the wallpaper and climbs into bed, looking forward to the next day. Through a wave of nausea, I wonder if I’ll be lucky enough to have wallpaper like that.