She was in slippers and a robe when he came down the stairs and into the kitchen. He was in jeans and a sweatshirt. He went to her immediately and kissed her good morning.
“I made you coffee,” she said.
“You didn’t have to do that. I’d have gotten some at work.”
“My pleasure.”
She smiled. He looked at her. She was beautiful, that was his thought. It wasn’t a new thought. It wasn’t an old thought. It was just his thought every time he took the time to look at her.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said. She poured him a mug of coffee, fixed it with the creamer he liked, handed it to him. Then she stood against the counter and watched him sip the hot liquid.
“What’s the day like?” she asked.
“No banquets. I guess mostly setting up. The hams and turkeys are cooked off. Dressing is made. Mostly heating stuff up and finishing it off, then setting up for the service. We’re opening at 1:00 and going till closing. Maybe the jerk will close early. He didn’t yesterday.”
She knew the jerk was Caesar. She knew every name he used to refer to Caesar and they weren’t usually as gentile as “jerk.” They were generally much more colorful, much more gruff.
“Maybe you’ll get home a bit earlier.”
“Doubt it. But I’ll call and let you know.”
Bill sipped at his coffee. He looked at her again, looked a long time. As he did, the knot came to his stomach. When they were like this, alone together and conversing, kind of just being together as husbands and wives do, the knot came to him regularly now. Guilt. Shame. Guilt and shame. Maybe fear, fear of getting found out and losing all he had. Guilt, shame and fear.
He ran it in his mind. They weren’t even married yet and he was fooling with Mary and Bea and sometimes Alfreda. Then there was the host of waitresses that were ongoing in his life, the last of whom was Arlene down there, the one he had gotten close to because she confided in him about her mother being really sick. Her mother being sick was what did it. If anyone knew what it was like to lose a mother, it was him. So they had an instantaneous connection and of course that connection, well, it led to, well…
Maybe if he’d had a policy. Maybe if he hadn’t been so altogether vulnerable based upon what had happened to him at that demonstration he hadn’t meant to go to in the first place… Maybe, maybe, maybe. Before that demonstration everything seemed simple, clear and easy. And afterward…
He was a bigger dog than the dog that was laying there in the corner of the kitchen. He was a much bigger dog. I’m a goddamn dirty dog, he thought. “You’re a goddamn dirty dog,” he said to himself in his internal voice.
He didn’t quite know what to do about it.
Nothing. That’s what he thought. Do nothing. Say nothing. Go on about this life and just stop what you’re doing.
Yeah, right. He bet Rosie and Edelgarde would have fresh mistletoe.
The goal was to come up here and leave all the messing around down there behind. It was supposed to be easy, simple, a new job, a new place where he didn’t know anyone, where he could just do his work and come home. He wasn’t supposed to have any complications, any involvements except the business ones that dealt with the kitchen and the kitchen’s business.
Yeah, right. Millie in a housedress and slippers like his wife was now right in front of him. Rosie and Edelgarde in their skimpy French maid’s uniforms, jiggling and bouncing and flaunting their wares, openly and overtly coming on to him.
Not simple. Not easy. Non uncomplicated.
Bill sipped his coffee and buried that knot deep as he could within him. He walked over to his wife and pressed against her at the counter.
