elinka and Murray get married in the spring. Lilacs
and robin’s red breast and soggy March. Jennie stands up
for her, Géraud for him. Celinka has flowers in her hair,
white blossoms against thick black Asian tresses. The photo album
from their wedding is two feet by one and a half feet, a tome of
neatly decorated memories, an urbane occasion stained with muted
pastels and the warmth of summer to come.
Murray’s speech is touched by a faraway land. Celinka
loves the sound of his voice. He collects art books and she strokes
the bindings of beautifully-bound editions of Man Ray, Degas,
Klimt, Kandinsky, Miró, never pulls them out. On the handmade
coffee table, arranged in a slight fan, his books on countries
older than this one, more proud, sexier. Between two black ceramic
coasters.
These coasters, Celinka says, fucking rock.
Celinka went to
art school for half a semester, designed jewellery a couple summers
at the Ex, has worked as a bartender three years at a hip joint,
surely you know of it, called Castro’s. That’s where she met
Géraud, who took her to a party, where blue drinks were served in
oversized martini glasses and water spouted from a small stone boy’s
penis in the middle of a marble-coated room. It was Géraud who introduced
her to Murray.
I like that you were wearing a turtleneck, she tells him the
day after they get married. Your neck was real.
A real neck is good?, Murray wonders.
Celinka looks at him, as they walk arm in arm around the garden,
fluffy overdone flakes falling from a slate grey sky.
Uh huh, she tells him.
He smiles and squeezes her shoulder.
He found her endearing
that first night.
Do you like the statue?, he had asked her.
You mean the kid pissing?
Snow falls heavier.
When he visited her at the bar, she screamed,
hugged him, bought him a drink, ordered his meal for him. Chicken.
The fish here isn’t good enough for a mangy whore.
Introduced him as her new Man Toy and announced that he would
make an honest women of her. Everyone laughed.
When he left, she slipped him a note:
I’m all yours.
Shit it’s fucking cold, Celinka says.
They leave the garden.
Sex is good. She always comes with Murray.
He tells her that his father taught him one thing only: Always
please a woman.
Where is your father now?, Celinka asks.
He left when I was nine and a half.
Perhaps, he has always thought, his mother was finished being
pleased. He tells her so.
Celinka guffaws.
No such thing.
She quits her bartending job and makes house.
He gets a full time job and buys a tie.
Why the tie?, Celinka asks when he comes home with it. Her
face registers suspicion, doubt.
I have a nine to five job, he says.
Not really. Ten to quarter to seven.
Are they making you wear a tie?, she asks.
No.
She stares at him.
It won’t make my neck real?, he asks her.
Too real.
She takes it from him.
She makes him lunch the first few weeks.
He opens his canvas bag and finds smoked salmon sandwiches,
pita and red roasted pepper dip, last night’s
fusilli, homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, yellow Delicious apples, notes
that say I luv you or Last night, Bingo! or Move
away from the screen, your sperm is precious.
He calls her every day at three.
I’m thinking about you, he’ll say.
I’m butt naked, she’ll tell him, dressed in her
Caban track pants and crummy black t-shirt.
One night, over gourmet
takeout pizza, she tells him she has a new job.
Assistant to a photographer.
Géraud.
Murray is pleased. He eats a hotdog from a street vendor that
day, later goes to the bank and takes out thirty bucks, lunch
for the rest of the week. Phones home and gets the machine.
Hi you’ve reached the happy happy home of Celinka and
Murray. He’s the exotic one. I’ve got great tits.
Leave a message and maybe we’ll let you in on our beautiful
life.
She is right. She does have great tits.
The assistant to the
photographer job lasts a week.
He’s an asshole, she says Friday night, over pints at
the local English pub. He told me to sweep.
Maybe the floor needed to be clean.
If I wanted to be the housekeeper’s assistant, I would
have found a housekeeper to be assistant to.
It’s not all glamour.
Why are we here?
Good beer.
Let’s go to Castro’s.
But you used to work there.
That’s the point.
Maybe Géraud will be there.
Her pouty Asian face falls into her dark ale.
The next week
she calls Murray at work and tells him she has a job.
Assistant to a location scout. Jennie. She told me she thinks
I’ll be great.
Murray nods, Sounds fine.
Did you hear what I just said?, she asks.
I nodded, Celinka.
It’s the phone, asshole.
Sounds fine.
It too lasts a week.
Jennie’s a cunt.
Murray makes veal and asparagus, opens a bottle of cabernet,
sniffs at it.
Just pour, for Christ’s sake.
He does.
She told me not to smoke so much in the car, Celinka says as
she lights up.
I thought Jennie smoked.
She gave up. Sanctimonious floozy.
She’s mad later, when the asparagus gives her gas cramps
and she misses her favourite tv show.
The bad guys won, he tells her.
She paints the bedroom, arranges
to have new curtains sewn for the bathroom and gets a cat from
the Humane Society.
What do you think?, she asks him.
The black and white cat looks at him from its hiding place
under the bed.
Is she scared?
What do I know?
The sound of his voice grates, she discovers. His emphasis
is wrong.
Is it a boy?, he asks.
She stops.
I didn’t ask.
They eat Doritos on the floor and share the last beer from
the fridge, lean back on the couch.
Dolph?, she suggests.
Oliver.
Laverne.
Gypsy.
Abraham.
Eleazar.
She calls it Stinky, after it finally uses its box. The vet
tells them it is a she, or used to be, still is, mostly.
New job,
she tells him the next Sunday.
Assistant to the buyer. Likes there’s only one.
For a store?, he wonders and asks.
For a commercial.
How’d you get it?
You know Romwyn.
No.
My good friend, Romwyn.
I’m happy for you.
He makes her lunch to take the next day, at midnight while
she sleeps soundly in their bedroom. He wraps ham, lettuce and
brie in a pita, baggies three Oreos, washes a Macintosh, writes
a tiny note:
A bag of goodness for my goody.
She races out the next day, a flurry of dark hair and Shalimar.
The brown-bagged lunch sits on the front table. Murray takes
it into work with him. Reads the note and pretends it is from
his endearing wife named Larissa who does not say words like
Cunt or Bingo!
Celinka tells him she has found her true vocation.
You are still enjoying Romwyn?
I absolutely love Romwyn. She’s my best friend in the
whole world.
He runs himself a long bath.
She wonders but doesn’t ask what kind of man takes two
hour baths.
They break up in the fall. Everything is dry.
It’s like, she says, I started forgetting who I was.
You’re Larissa, he thinks.
I belong to me, she states.
She peels off a piece of chapped bottom lip.
Are you mad?, she asks.
Does she want him to be?
He goes for a walk and buys a bottle of champagne. She is plucking
out grey hairs when he returns. They toast their imminent separation.
What about Stinky?, he asks.
You can take her, she replies.
Then you take the coasters.
[END]
© 2005 Sarah Eddenden - Contributor's
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