LAUGHTER AT NOON

When he arrives and our bi-weekly ritual begins once again, the waitress writes down two orders of coffee and fried eggs. She doesn’t need to ask.

Today’s topic: shopping.

I’m a wanderer, he says. Ashley always has to fetch me from the technology section. It’s the movies. I always look for discounts on classics. Habit I started in college that I never knocked.

I think: My Jake likes to lose himself too, in the books. For him there’s nothing like a beautiful book cover with a discount. Those percentage signs reach out for him like tendrils. $15 for the latest Stephen King hardcover, X % off.

% % % %.

I tell him about the % thing, and we chuckle. He says, exactly, that is exactly the thing! Ashley gets annoyed with me, too; she, like, hates it, poor thing, she’s got to stand that kinda thing from me!

We laugh and clink, and if it were later in the p.m. the sun would be setting on us and the night would envelop and swallow the oak tree’s silhouette. What I mean is, laughter is different at noon.

He goes on: there’s one thing Ashley and I can’t not shop for together: ice cream flavors. Do you and Jake have something like this?

Oh yes of course. Chips, I say: We obligate ourselves to pick only one bag, out of the zillions.

[Don’t get me wrong. Our spouses are not our only topic. But it’s quite the fixture. For example, these are the some of the things that I have gotten to know over many plates of fried eggs: Ashley likes the Bond movies (he thinks that they’re ultra-chauvinist, and they argue about this but he always relents when she reminds him that he reminds her of Bond, in a physical way, and that this played no small role in their relationship); Ashley sleeps with socks on and always wears socks, even when they make love, the latter which he admits turns him on—he thinks maybe she doesn’t use socks in the shower, but that is just a theory; Ashley’s right-hand pinky finger wiggles when she gets angry; on the car radio, Ashley can only listen to classic rock in the morning, R&B during the day, and Jazz Fusion at night (he has no say in the radio choices, and she let him know this the day they met); Ashley’s hair is black like that of a Native American (he did not tell me this—this I know from knowing her—but I say it because he talks about it in different contexts, like: I brush it when we’re watching movies together; I have the ability to distinguish it in a large crowd, and I don’t know if this is some special power I have or if her hair is simply that out-standish; I have never threatened to snip it, and I don’t know who would, I’m not the kind of person who humorously threatens to cut off a part of one’s most sacred body part for the curiosity of watching that person’s reaction; she’s protective of her hair and she told me one night two years into our relationship that I should consider myself lucky to touch it, etc.—the thing is that I am left with the impression these moments give of that blackness, the way it works on him like some Native American charm); Ashley snores the way he imagines an overweight Italian man would snore if frogs lived in said man’s throat; Ashley doesn’t like it when he talks about me; Ashley has never woken up after eight-thirty in the morning, even after wild nights of sex (she’s a screamer, like I am. I don’t know this because he told me, but because one time he forgot to hang up the phone, and it just lay there, un-hung up, on the nightstand. He must have noticed the next morning that he had a 55-minute conversation with me. He’s never mentioned it.)

That’s very Native American of her, I remember saying, re: the jealousy and the eight-thirty thing, and we laughed because that’s Jake’s humor shining through me: Jake would say that, he said, and I said, I know.]

When we’re done with the eggs and with our shopping talk, we talk about football (I could mention how Jake wields a stress ball whenever he sees F. S. U. games, but I’ve sang that ditty before). Then we leave and I go pick up Jr. at school. Jake has bought some David Foster Wallace rare edition. I jot it down.

That is, we know all the important things about our and each other’s others. We observe our spouses like they are specimens, little animals whose quirks we record in journals; we make sure to remember a gesture, a phrase, a fight, a particular twitch of their lips, all for the biweekly ritual. But sometimes it is so urgent that we turn to texting. Tonight is one such occasion.

Him, 12:30pm: There go the socks.

On my nightstand, the cell phone goes VRRRM VRRRM. My little Pavlov’s bell. Jake is a deep sleeper.

Me, 12:31: Where?

H, :31: She came in/out of shower w/them, don’t know if she EVER took them off.

M, :31: Maybe she has magic sockS.

H, :32: MAGIC

M, :33: Nobody knows the secret

In all probability: she asks him who he’s texting, with those slit eyes and that wiggly finger of hers. He’ll say: I’m checking the latest stats on X quarterback, while he changes the screen, erasing the text message history. That’s why he never answers my message.

Tomorrow he’ll call me and tell me how he almost got into trouble for getting a text message while the cell phone was on the nightstand, because then Ashley said one of her your other girlfriend comments and he might have resented that and then resentment resentment resentment. But I always keep my cell phone on the nighstand. He keeps it there, too; and Jake’s a deep sleeper.