“No, love. I’m done praising the virtues of our freckled leguminous friends. Allow me just to add that adding a spoonful of vinegar to each bowl right before you serve the beans serves miraculously to solve the flatulence problem.”
Paula knows this. “You’ve told me this same thing every time I ask you why you put vinegar in.”
“Then why do you ask? Well, it doesn’t really eliminate the gas, but it neutralizes the stinky hitchhiker on the farts.”
“I hear you, but I never pay attention.”
“Well, if you could try to concentrate on remembering, I wouldn’t have to tell you every single fucking time. Not to get off track here, but you never listen to me.”
“Oh, Dahlink! I would listen, but you never say anything memorable. But hey: I’m having a flash!”
“This can’t be good,” Billy mumbled.
“You get your vinegar from pickle jars!”
“Yes,” he verified.
“And olive jars!” she almost shouted.
“Yes. Dumbasses just throw away all that liquid gold. Another good use of it is—”
“In Bloody Marys!”
“Yes, and in marinades for everything. Perks up bland soups.”
“It’s good for digestive health.”
“Gut problems, yes. Finally, pintos together with rice creates a protein better for you than steak.”
“I pay sporadic attention” |
“Well, it’s the strongest point, so I get to repeat it. For emphasis.”
“Or forgetfulness. But you splurge, sometimes, on a standing rib roast at Christmastime.”
“I used to, when red raw cow blood conspired with my imagination to make me hard.”
“But I am a woman. I must splurge! You will agree I rarely, rarely splurge.”
“I do agree, both that you rarely, rarely ever splurge, and that you must splurge, occasionally, because you are a woman.”
“Yes! Thank you, darling. And you are a woman, too, and you must splurge. Isn’t splurge such an erotic, wet word?”
“Right now, it has driven me to drink. Do we have beer?”
“That’s your job. Must I do that for you, too?” But she’s already in the kitchen, looking around. “Let’s have Tequila Bloody Marys.”
“I must, yes, and I do. I splurge on books. Warm socks online. And cheese. Before I cooked my first quiche Lorraine, I searched all over town for Gruyere. It was ten bucks a pound, and I found a little chunk. Had to try a little sliver, to see what the big deal was. It’s Swiss cheese. It tasted no better, to me, than the chunk I could get for two bucks.”
Paula declared she gave no damn about his cheese, and Billy said he knew she wanted to talk about shoes. “I love it when you talk about shoes, and even when you splurge on shoes, because I have noticed that when you do splurge on shoes—”
“So, so rarely.”
“…you do so with both me and yourself in mind.”
“And still I wait,” she answered, “for that wing you promised to build for my shoes that was a condition for my acceptance of your marriage proposal.”
“Thank Aphrodite that you throw shoes away faster than you splurge on them. You can wear shoes more than once, you know.”
“Such an idiot. Do you know nothing?”
“I know stuff.”
“Isn’t splurge such a juicily erotic word?” |
“Slurpily, sloppily so, yes. But cheese is not so much of a splurge. Let’s talk about lamb. My favorite memory is before we wed. You showed up for my family’s Easter feast and professed your vegetarianism, and I’ll be damned if you didn’t accept some slices of the perfectly cooked rare lamb. I loved you then, all at once, a secret agent double-crosser who went back for seconds and even thirds of the rare, rosy, smelly lamb. Now, lamb is a controversial topic. And just as controversial as abortion, so let’s agree.”
Paula exclaimed, “Lamb? You eat baby sheep?”
“And there it is,” mumbled Billy, realizing she had stopped paying attention somewhere a ways back. Next, he realized that her insistence, from out of seeming nowhere, on an erotic word signified her horniness now.
“Do you eat baby deer, too? Baby veal? Baby bunny?”
“I did enjoy veal in the form of schnitzel in Germany, but I didn’t know, back then, what it was. I haven’t touched it since I learned. I have loved my friends who brought me fresh-killed ground Bambi so I could make a spicy gamey chili.”
During all this, Paula poured herself a gin and tonic and decided she didn’t need any lime juice or bitters in this one and sat back down to wait until Billy made a fool of himself again, and she admitted, “Okay, I do like a nice slice of lamb roast. But only like once every five or six or ten years.”
“Oh, me, too,” Billy said. “I hesitate to buy it because I tire of it after the first meal, or at least after some leftovers the next day.”
“But that’s when you cut it in chunks and make a stew with potatoes and carrots, lots of garlic. And make a gravy,” offered Paula, like a heavenly host.
So Billy asked, “Do you put tomatoes in yours?”
“Daddy used to, yes.”
“Simmer it slowly for hours, pouring in some red wine?”
“If you got some, yes. And mustard.”
“Jalapeños?”
“You can put in anything you want.”
“But is it splurging if you make it last for ten days?”
“Ten? Stick half of it in the freezer and come back for it a year from now.”
“So a cut of cute baby sheep that lasts for a year doesn’t qualify as a splurge, despite initial appearances. Is this what you are saying to me, tender, precious newlywed bride?”
“You trapped me” |
“You must never think that way. For now we arrive at my one undeniable splurge, besides books and cookies and meals of pork.”
“And booze,” Paula chimed.
“Booze, manna from Heaven!” Billy sang. “But speaking of juicily erotic words, I love raw oysters. I splurge. Not that there’s anything vaguely erotic about the word oysters, and so accept my apology for the ugly transition.”
“Go on, quickly, if you still can,” she forgave.
Billy stood. “In my youth, I loved the oyster. First of all, it’s 60% anticipation, cos you have them so rarely that when you know you’re going to have them, you know it’s about to be a special occasion. Your mouth begins to water well in advance.”
“Do not presume to speak for my mouth.”
He laughed and paused, looking around, wondering what they had, and what he wanted, with which to replenish his empty vessel, while Paula opined that oysters were so gross.
“But, baby, why do we never have bubbly when I’m trying my best to extol the magnificence of an occasional splurge?”
“I’m pretty sure we do have some, so go on with your oysters while I hunt some down.”
“We don’t have any” |
“I’ll be back soon, my dahlink, but go on. I’ll probably hear you.”
“A good champagne accompanies oysters on their half shells so exquisitely perfectly.” He gave the French, trisyllabic pronunciation to the French wine, mostly to amuse himself, as he was now talking to himself and he needed some cheering. “Your mouth waters, and you begin, in your imagination, to feel the squishy, slippery sensation in your mouth, on your tongue, teeth ineffective now, the bivalve sliding down your gullet, making it cold, and that’s not to mention the entire preliminary ritual of squeezing the lemon, opening the saltines, picking up that adorable tiny fork, spearing the fresh, slimy critter and dragging it through the horseradish and the thick cocktail sauce, realizing just before pilfering the fork that you’d have no use for it at home.”
“Yeah, cool. I knew a guy who died from eating them,” Paula, returning, seating herself, said.
“There is that, yeah.”
“And plus, they’re just nasty.”
“Also true.”
“And don’t even say it: the alleged aphrodisiac effect or hardening mojo is, as you have learned, hogwash.”
“Hogwash! Delightful, darling! But could you please say it Hogwarsh, now that you’re down here? Even as you manage to kill every joy.”
“We both share equally in that diversion,” she smiled.
His eyes lit with a thrill as she produced the bottle of cheap champagne she’d unearthed.
“It’s not Vulva Clicquot or anything,” she said.
| Copyright © 2023 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. |  |
OMG!! 😊
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