Fiction: Movie Night(a short story)

By Pat Hamilton

“Remember you told me I’d have to tell you about all my lovers someday,” Paula reminded, “but I was so cool that I never did? Haha!”
    “I do remember, and yes, you are so cool. I said you didn’t have to.”
    “Yes, which is why I never did.”
    “But I need to hear stories like that.”
    “Just not from me.”
    “Not from you. No. Thank you.”
    “Yet I will tell you about Santiago,” she declared.
    “You never knew any Santiago!”
    “I did! But no one ever called him that.”
    “Tell on, then,” Billy said. “You know they say men can’t.”
    “Men can’t create realistic female characters. Yes, that’s probably your most frequently repeated old saw you use every time you try to mine me for new material.”
    “It’s not an old saw. But you are an old slattern. But go on, then, about this Iago.”
    “Sandy. Hahaha! He was a very dark dude, wiry black curls. Went by Sandy!”
    “Now I know you’re lying. Sandy’s a beach-boy name.”

“My Sandy never said much about his history”

    “My Sandy was Persian, Lebanese, Mexican, Angeleno. Maybe not Persian. He never said much about his history.”
    “Shady. All right. How did you meet him?”
    “I don’t know! I mean, we met three different times. The first meeting was through somebody, somewhere. Doesn’t matter. I’m going to tell you about the next time we met. We lived together.”
    “How come I’m just hearing about this now?”
    “Haha! We ‘lived together’ for about two, maybe three weeks. He lived on my ratty old sofa in my very first apartment. I thought of him as a gypsy, as an Odysseus.”
    “A magic man!” Billy mocked.
    “He was, really was. First, he taught me to make Mexican rice, to fry it first, and to be scrupulous about draining all the oil before adding just a bit of tomato sauce and onions before the water, which makes this giant swash-sizzle-sizzle cloud of steam and noise. He taught me about twelve things you could do with tortillas if that’s all you had and it was midnight and you were starving.”
    Billy offered that Iago sounded just like Odysseus.
    “Mock on, wise guy,” Paula sneered. “I bet you never had cinnamon toast made with corn tortillas.”
    “That does sound good.”
    “But my story today is about my first chiles rellenos. Sandy taught me.”
    “I am sincerely feeling a bud of respect growing.”
    “What’s hilarious is I didn’t have a whisk, which he called a whip. I had no electric handmixer.”
    “That’s not funny,” Billy said.
    “It is, if you have to whip egg whites into stiff peaks. Haha! I’d never done that before, and all I had was a fork. He said I could do it with just a fork.”
    Billy said, “I’ve got a laugh all ready here. Just waiting on you.”
    “Right. It’s not funny at all. Do you have any idea how long it takes to whip egg whites into stiff peaks with just a fork?”
    “Actually, yes, I do. By hilarious, you mean it’s one of those things that’s funny in recollection, but.”

“I was cussing like a Tartary pirate”

    “But yes, I was cussing like a Tartary pirate after about the second hour.”
    “Hahaha! I bet. Poor baby. Will you make those for us tonight?”
    “So, but yeah,” she said. “He crashed on my couch, and I let him. He told great stories, and we had this you-buy-I-fly deal: I’d give him money in the morning, and he’d run up to the Circle K convenience store and get us two packs of Marlboro reds, or beer, if we needed that, too.”
    “He knew just how to satisfy your needs.”
    “It wasn’t like that, Billy. Stop being stupid.”
    “You don’t have to hide it from me, baby. I realize you’re insatiable.”
    “Don’t you want the rest of the chiles rellenos story?”
    “Ahhh, misdirection!”
    “Never mind. It was a sweet story of a sweet August afternoon, and I’ve made his rice and chiles rellenos and migas and enchiladas and other stuff he taught me for decades, now. Ol’ Sandy.”
    “Where is he now?”
    “Dead. I saw him once more after those early days. He moved away; I moved away. I asked a mutual friend about him a while back who said he’d died. I didn’t ask how.”
    Billy sang a Dylan line: “Seen pretty people disappear like smoke,” noticed his wife was weeping now.
    He wrapped an arm over her shoulder. “I like him, too. Wish I coulda met him. I’m glad you met him, lil sweetie. Did he have any kids?”
    “No, none,” she said, sniffing. “That’s a miracle in itself. He was a chick magnet.”
    “So you did sleep with him. On your ratty sofa?”
    First Paula yanked Billy’s ear with force, then punched him in the stomach, again knocking the wind from him. “Did not, you stupid sonofabitch! Anyway, you’ll never know.”
    His gaping mouth tried to speak, but could not.
    She rose and retrieved and handed him a beer, saying, “I told ya you didn’t wanna hear that story, but you insisted.”
    His contorted mouth still could not speak to refute this claim but did manage to guzzle down healing beer.

“Never did learn the names of the twins in Venice”

    “Then there were the twins in Venice,” she continued. “Never did learn their names.”
    “No, please!” Bill croaked. “Please!”
    “One was a gondolier, if you can believe that, and the other—”
    “Bullshit! Gondolier, my ass!”
    “And he’s back! I’m sorry, baby. Really, I am. One of these days, I’m gonna stop punching you. I just don’t know my own strength!”
    “You let it build up for so long. Babe, I hate it when I can’t breathe for an hour.”
    “Or I guess, to be more precise, I always forget what a pussy you are. May I have one of your beers, please?” as she rises to go to the fridge again.
    “Help yourself, babe.”
    “I actually do crave chiles rellenos tonight and some refried beans. You wanna run to the store for some poblanos and some cans of refried beans, Dahling?”
    “Bring me a beer. And while you’re in there, see what kind of cheese we got. Do we need cheese?”
    She handed him a beer.
    “So?” he wants to know.
    “So what?”
    “Do we need cheese? Never mind. I ain’t going. Why don’t you send Santiago or Santaclausio or whatever his Persian fucking name is?”
    “I wish I could. Oh, how I wish I really could. That poor, dear man!”
    “I wish I could punch you in the stomach right now. Oh, how I wish I really could. But I shan’t. Why spoil our good mood?”
    “I’ll just order some from Tres Hermanas, and then we’ll watch Pitch Perfect 2 again.”
    “Now you’re talkin’!”

“What else you want?”

    “What else you want?”
    “A big, like a whole quart of guacamole! And beans, but no rice.”
    “I’m gonna get rice. I’ll get a small cup of guac and one of salsa. Shit. I can’t have it delivered. We’re outta beer, anyway. Guess I’m going out driving around now.”
    “You’re the greatest, my love. Oh, shit! Is it our anniversary again, already? Tortillas and tostadas, babe. Be careful driving. You want me to go?”
    “No, Sugardimples. You buy, I’ll fly.”
    “Oh, yeah! I like your guy. Moonshaman. Or whatever his Persian false moniker was.”
    “You’re drunk. Don’t fall asleep.”
    “Be careful, baby, but hurry back. I’m starving.”
    “Okay, baby. Don’t fall asleep.”
    “Hey, Paula?”
    “Yeah, babe?”
    “Can we get cheeseburgers, instead?”
    “Hell, no!”
    “Love ya, babe!”
    “Love you, too. Don’t fall asleep.”

So they ate before the modestly sized flatscreen, and about halfway through the movie, Paula asked for a pause for a stretch, and looking around at the inexplicably mountainous debris of Styrofoam, cardboard, tiny plastic cups of red sauce, green sauce and sour cream, napkins, old, cold chips and beer bottles in all stages of emptiness and fulfillment, told her old man to get up and help her clean up this mess, reminding herself of one of their early, life-changing fights, back when they’d fed several friends at a get-together at their own small apartment with a big pig butt. Billy had cooked it at 300 degrees, for, fully, eight hours and then left the remnant standing in a pond of viscous, congealing grease after everybody’d pigged out and sat around the table, laughing and talking louder and louder and drinking and praising the host and hostess until Billy felt positively Henry the VIII^thian.
    Paula’d surveyed the gelatinous mess everywhere from table to kitchen and fretted how to begin to attack it first, and had extracted the leftover butt with tongs and set it in the cast-iron where the cornbread had cooked, and had turned to look again at the amount of red-gold liquid fat gleaming among white bumps already solidified and to consider what size vessel she’d need to store it, or whether it would be better just to dump it over the railing into the parking lot below, when Billy came in to open a new bottle of Riesling and noticed her intent on that lake.

“Don’t put that piggy away yet!”

    “Hey, don’t put that piggy away yet, please!”
    “I have to! It’s already been sitting out for hours.”
    “I know, but babe.” He pinched off a bit and pushed it gently right to her lips, rubbing them back and forth with it until she opened them to receive it, chewing and swooning anew.
    “Uh-huh! That’s right,” he exulted. “See? These folks won’t leave till tomorrow sometime, so every time we come in the kitchen to get ice or Coke or water, we just grab another little taste! That’s the finest part of the whole ordeal.”
    “You might, finally, have taught me something, Wild Bill.”
    “You’re not worried about bacteria or infection? Blood poisoning?”
    “That beautiful beast roasted for fully eight hours!”
    “And sat out raw and bleeding for a couple more before going in!”
    “The taste is so addicting and exquisite, I’m gonna drink more beer tonight just to give myself the opportunity to pinch off a pinch every time I pass by. Luscious piggy! Feed me more, Bill. Now!”
    “That’s my girl! Go ahead and stash the mashed potatoes away, though. We’ll make pancakes of those for breakfast.”
    “You put them away. I still want to drag a finger through them.”
    “I did the cooking. You do the cleaning.”
    “You popped a bigass pigass in the oven and plopped down and drank beer for the next eight hours!”

“Low and slow, baby!”

    “Low and slow, baby! The only way to go, baby. Look: still a ton of baked beans left. You gonna drag your nasty, fat fingers into them, too?”
    “Don’t be an idiot. Cold baked beans are gross.”
    “I bet you never had refried baked beans.”
    “Of course not. No one ever would.”
    “Oh, but you’re missing out. A taco with refried baked beans and reheated dried-out mashed taters? An utter delight.”
    “You’re such a freak.”
    “I invented a whole genre of food: Tenn-Mex. Slightly based on Tex, but made, partially, with southern delicacies. Pulled-pig enchiladas with my own just-slightly-sweet barbecue sauce in which to dip, lightly, the tortillas. Topped with cole slaw. Or refried beans made with white beans instead of pintos. Delish!”
    “You’re just so mightily impressed with yourself. Well, somebody’s got to be,” she sneered, pinching and twisting his cheek and enjoying the water that gushed from his eyes.
    “Is that a—?” He moved in closer, closer still, studying. “It is!”
    “It’s what? Some more of your childish bullshit?”
    “No, no. This is serious. You have the beginnings of a third chin coming in.”

When that flashback had run its course, they dipped two spoons into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and Billy was not surprised when Paula asked if he was sleeping with her tonight, or down in the basement.
    “Well, you know, dear, that’s just up to you. Entirely up to you.”
    “I have been kinda lonesome.”
    He waited.
    She waited. Relented.
    “So come on up, if you want to.”

Copyright © 2022 by Pat Hamilton Pat Hamilton has written three novels, hundreds of songs, and a handful of book reviews for the papers. He taught College English for 30 years, which helps him blend popular and classic literature in his writing. As an Army brat, he traveled the USA and Europe before settling into the beauty of Tennessee, but the rock star he used to be still lives on inside him.