“Oh, Al!” she wailed. “You don’t listen to me; you really don’t! Half the time you don’t hear a word I say!”
“Why, sure I do, honey.” I was rattling the hangers, hunting for my pants. “You were talking about knitting.”
“An orange sweater, I said, Al-orange. I knew you weren’t listening and asked you how an orange sweater would go with- Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“No, don’t turn around! And close your eyes.” I closed them, and Marion said, “Now, without any peeking, because I’ll see you, tell me what I’m wearing right now.”
It was ridiculous. In the last five minutes, since I’d come home from the office, I must have glanced at Marion maybe two or three times. I’d kissed her when I walked into the apartment, or I was pretty sure I had. Yet standing at my closet now, eyes closed, I couldn’t for the life of me say what she was wearing. I worked at it; I could actually hear the sound of her breathing just behind me and could picture her standing there, a small girl five feet three inches tall, weighing just over a hundred pounds, twenty-four years old, nice complexion, pretty face, honey-blond hair, and wearing-wearing-
“Well, am I wearing a dress, slacks, medieval armor, or standing here stark naked?”
“A dress.”
“What color?”
“Ah-dark green?”
“Am I wearing stockings?”
“Yes.”
“Is my hair done up, shaved off or in a pony tail?”
“Done up.”
“O.K., you can look now.”
Of course the instant I turned around to look, I remembered. There she stood, eyes blazing, her bare foot angrily tapping the floor, and she was wearing sky-blue wash slacks and a white cotton blouse. As she swung away to walk out of the room and down the hall, her pony tail was bobbing furiously.
Well, brother-and you, too, sister-unless the rice is still in your hair, you know what came next: the hurt, indignant silence. I got into slacks, short-sleeved shirt and huarachos, strolled into the living room, and there on the davenport sat Madame Defarge grimly studying the list, disguised as a magazine, of next day’s guillotine victims. I knew whose name headed the list; and I walked straight to the kitchen, mixed up some booze in tall glasses and found a screw driver in a kitchen drawer.
In the living room, coldly ignored by what had once been my radiant, laughing bride, I set the drinks on the coffee table, reached behind Marion’s magazine and gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger. The magazine dropped, and I instantly inserted the tip of the screw driver between her front teeth, pried open her mouth, picked up a glass and tried to pour in some booze. She started to laugh, spilling some down her front, and I grinned, handing her the glass, and picked up mine. Sitting down beside her, I saluted Marion with my glass, then took a delightful sip; and as it hurried to my sluggish blood stream, I could feel the happy corpuscles dive in, laughing and shouting, and felt able to cope with the next item on the agenda, which followed immediately.
“You don’t love me any more,” said Marion.
“Oh, yes, I do.” I leaned over to kiss her neck, glancing around the room over her shoulder.
“Oh, no, you don’t; not really.”
“Oh, yes, I do; really. Honey, where’s that book I was reading last night?”
“There! You see! All you want to do is read all the time! You never want to go out! The honeymoon’s certainly over around here, all right!”
“No, it isn’t, Sweetknees; not at all. I feel exactly the way I did the day I proposed to you; I honestly do. Was there any mail?”
“Just some ads and a bill. You used to listen to every word I said before we were married and you always noticed what I wore and you complimented me and you sent me flowers and you brought me little surprises and”-suddenly she sat bolt upright-“remember those cute little notes you used to send me! I’d find them all the time,” she said sadly, staring past my shoulder, her eyes widening wistfully. “Tucked in my purse maybe”-she smiled mournfully- “or in a glove. Or they’d come to the office on post cards, even in telegrams a couple times. All the other girls used to say they were just darling.” She swung to face me. “Honey, why don’t you ever-“
“Help!” I said. “Help, help!”
“What do you mean?” Marion demanded coolly, and I tried to explain.
“Look, honey,” I said briskly, putting an arm companionably around her shoulders, “we’ve been married four years. Of course the honeymoon’s over! What kind of imbeciles,” I asked with complete reasonableness, “would we be if it weren’t? I love you, sure,” I assured her, shrugging a shoulder. “Of course. You bet. Always glad to see you; any wife of old Al Pullen is a wife of mine! But after four years I walk up the stairs when I come home; I no longer run up three at a time. That’s life,” I said, clapping her cheerfully on the back. “Even four-alarm fires eventually die down, you know.” I smiled at her fondly. “And as for cute little notes tucked in your purse-help, help!” I should have known better, I guess; there are certain things you just can’t seem to explain to a woman.
I had trouble getting to sleep that night-the davenport is much too short for me-and it was around two forty-five before I finally sank into a kind of exhausted and broken-backed coma. Breakfast next morning, you can believe me, was a glum affair at the town home of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred E. Pullen, devoted couple.
Who can say whether the events of the night before affected those which now followed? I certainly couldn’t; I was too tired, dragging home from the office along Third Avenue, heading uptown from Thirty-fourth Street about five-thirty the next evening. I was tired, depressed, irritated and in no hurry at all to get home. It was hot and muggy outside, and I was certain Marion would give me cold cuts for supper-and all evening long, for that matter. My tie was pulled down, my collar open, hat shoved back, coat slung over one shoulder, and trudging along the sidewalk there I got to wishing things were different.
I didn’t care how, exactly-just different. For example, how would things be right now, it occurred to me, if I’d majored in creative botany at college instead of physical ed? Or what would I be doing at this very moment if I’d the job with Enterprises, Incorporated, instead of Serv-Eez? Or if I’d gone to Siam with Tom Biehler that time? Or if I hadn’t broken off with what’s-her-name, that big, black-haired girl who could sing “Japanese Sandman” through her nose?
At Thirty-sixth Street I stopped at the corner newsstand, planking my dime down on the counter before the man who ran it; we knew each other long since, though I don’t think we’ve ever actually spoken. Glancing at me, he scooped up my dime, grabbed a paper from one of the stacks and folded it as he handed it to me; and I nodded my thanks, tucking it under my arm, and walked on. And that’s when it happened; I glanced up at a brick building kitty-corner across the street, and there on a blank side wall three or four stories up was a painted advertisement-a narrow-waisted bottle filled with a reddish-brown beverage and lying half buried in a bed of blue-white ice. Painted just over the bottle in a familiar script were the words, “Drink Coco-Coola.”
Do you see? It didn’t say “Coca-Cola”; not quite. And staring up at that painted sign, I knew it was no sign painters’ mistake. They don’t make mistakes like that; not on great big outdoor signs that take a couple of men several days to paint. I knew it couldn’t possibly be a rival soft drink either; the spelling and entire appearance of this ad were too close to those of Coca-Cola. No, I knew that sign was meant to read “Coco-Coola,” and turning to walk on finally-well, it may strike you as insane what I felt certain I knew from just the sight of that painted sign high above a New York street.