D(Inner) Time

"Lou? Have you seen my socks?"

She steamed in, slammed the drawer open and threw a pair of socks at him. She steamed out. She steamed in and slammed the drawer closed. And steamed out.

Ray looked at the little ball of socks on the floor. They'd fetched up against a leg of the nite table after bouncing off his shoulder and rolling several feet across the floor. They were grey. Ray looked at the cuffs of his blue serge trousers and wondered if they were grey enough, the trousers, to support grey sox. Lew would know.

He took breath, let it out.

He went across the floor on "all fours" to retrieve the socks, crawled back up onto the bed and set about installing the socks.

*****

The Maitre'd, they call them hosts now, seated them at a small table in the middle of the room. Not at the back, the fiver saw to that, but not near any of the tall windows where you could look out on the steady yellow lights of the community.

Ray could feel the Maitre'd staring at his sox. The fiver hadn't covered that. Lou sat across from him, still cross. She interposed the tall, plastic-encased menu between them.

What had happened, Ray wondered. He noticed they had Blanquette de Veau on the menu. Blankety View he always called it. He always ordered it, when it was on the menu, he always liked the soft, kind of grainy texture of the pieces of view, with the blanket of smooth white sauce.

As he recalled the texture, the smooth whiteness, an image of the blanket, on the bed he shared with Lu, came to his head. It was smooth and white, with a grainy texture when you pressed your finger in through the nap of fine, soft hairs.

He'd been sitting there, in his undershirt and trousers, leaning back on his hands, feeling the blankety texture, his bare feet suspended just above the carpet. He hadn't been smoking. He'd quit. Again.

She was in the bathroom. He could hear the bottles and jars of condiments rattling and slamming in her cabinet. He wondered why she was mad, had been mad. He couldn't remember what he'd done.

He'd asked her about his sox, his calcetines; he liked to call them that, calcetines. Maybe she'd misunderstood. Or hadn't heard him.

"Lou?" he'd called out, more loudly, making his voice hearable over the clinking cosmetics. "Have you seen my socks?"

At that moment he'd remembered what he'd done to incur his wife's wrath. He thought "I never put my socks away like she asked me." He assumed they were still in the laundry room. He couldn't go there. He was barefoot. And they hadn't cleaned up that jar of mayonnaise that fell and splattered salad dressing and flakes of glass all across the laundryroom floor.

He looked up as she came in, her face, half completed, tilted toward the floor, reminding him of a bull at the charge, head lowered, bringing horns to blare.

She didn't look at him. She went to the dresser. She yanked the drawer.

He'd had troubles with those drawers, he remembered. He'd bought that dresser at the unfinished furniture place. He'd finished it himself. He'd sanded it, primed it, undercoated it, overcoated it, lacquered it, waxed it, polished it. He'd brought it, in pieces, because it was so heavy, into the bedroom. He'd been proud. She'd said it looked nice. He'd started to put it together.

That was when he discovered the curious thing about the drawers. They were equipped with a kind of stop. They didn't just slide in. They kind of tilted in, in an odd way, that had taken him some time to figure out.

That was why she could slam the drawer open, slam it against the little stop. He heard it crack and wondered how much longer it would be before her slamming broke it off altogether, before the drawer became free to slide all the way out like he thought it would when he was about to put it together.

The ball of stockings came as a surprise. They were soft, and didn't hurt him as they bounced off his shoulder. But they'd been a surprise. He followed their flight across the carpet, fetching up against the leg of the bedside table, not bouncing off, lodging there like the tennis ball he used to throw at a cyclone fence and it hit just right and lodged itself into one of the interstices.

She slammed the door as she steamed out. He saw the steam, like a fog of smoke in the room. How many times had smoke fogged the room from the cigarette he always burned in the ashtray on the bedside table, until he quit smoking, again, making it like a dry steam room.

He sat up. His feet touched the floor. He felt the texture of the carpet with his toes.

Grainy. He let himself slide off the bed, his knees bumping down on the carpet. He put his hands on the floor, put his head down, blaring his horns, and shuffled to where his socks lodged against the leg of the commode. Louise had installed a skirt around it, hanging like a matador's cape. He gored the matador, who hadn't been fast enough.

He picked up the little ball, the tight round roll with its tongue sticking out, the head and tongue of the matador. He crawled back to the bed, limping on three legs from his battle in the great ring, the grain of the carpet crunching like sand and cinders under his hooves. He regained his seat, the grey, ruined head triumphant in his hand, listening to the applause of the crowd that came faintly to him, now, from beyond the bright door of the bathroom.

He had changed. His suit of lights had been put away and here he was dressed in the trousers of his blue serge suit, the grey knitted bundle like the blot of a gray-painted ship on the deep blue sea of his lap.

He sighed deeply. He unrolled the stockings and put them on. He pulled his shoes from beneath the edge of the blanket that hung lopsidedly, greatly moved by his recovery.

He finished dressing. She finished dressing. He held the door. She drove the car. He held the door. She spoke to the Maitre'd. He held a fiver inconspicuously in his hand, where the Maitre'd could see it. She followed him to the table. He held her chair. She removed her wrap and sat. He gave up the fiver. She took the menu and interposed it between them. He unfolded his menu on the table.

They had Blanquette de Veau. He always enjoyed that. He always called it Blankety Vu, the little points of veal, soft and grainy in texture, napped with the soft white, vaguely flavored sauce.

Ought he to bring it up, Ray wondered. How could he do it? He could say, "Louis, is something wrong?" Then she'd say, "No." Or maybe she'd lower the menu slightly, so she could look at him over the top of it, with only her eyes, like an Arabian woman, and say, "No."

"But you seem mad," he'd say.

"What makes you think I'm mad?" she'd say, and drop her eyes behind the menu, pretending to consider the choices; the Blanquette de Veau, perhaps, which she knew he always chose when it was on the menu. "They have veal in white sauce," she'd say. She didn't like his little word plays.

"I don't know. It's not that I think you're mad. But I feel that you're mad."

"So, where does this feeling come from?"

"From the way you look at me, I guess."

"How am I looking at you?"

"You're not.

"Why not?"

"Because you're mad?"

"I'm looking at the menu."

"I know."

"But you think I'm mad."

"No. I don't think so."

"But that's how you feel?"

"Yes."

"Well I'm not."

"You're sure."

"I am."

And, looking up from her menu, over the top edge, like over a plastic chador, "They have Blanquette de Veau."

"Yes."

"Are you going to order it?"

"Yes. I always like it. Don't I?"

"Then I won't."

"You were going to?"

"I was thinking about it."

"You've never ordered it before."

"Because you always do."

"Blankety vou."

A pause, with eyebrows lifted, above the edge of the menu.

"Are you feeling alright?"

"Was it the socks?"

"The what?"

"The sox."

"The stocks?"

"You threw."

"I threw socks?"

"This evening."

"Didn't you want them?"

"Yes."

"Didn't you ask for them?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand."

"You threw them.

"I tossed them."

"You tossed them?"

"Didn't I?"

"It seemed like you threw them."

"No."

"You tossed them."

"Yes."

"Oh."

"I think I'll order the fish."

"You're not mad."

"What makes you think I'm mad."

"Well.... What's the fish?"

"What makes you think I'm mad?"

"Were mad."

"Was mad."

"You slammed the drawer."

"I slammed the door?"

"In the bedroom."

"I slammed the bedroom door?"

"The dresser drawer."

"The dresser door?"

"The sock drawer."

"I slammed the sock drawer?"

"Didn't you?"

"It sounded slammed to you?"

And then she would explain, like she always did, how the drawers of the dresser always seemed to stick open, and she always had to jiggle them, and push in just the right way to break them loose and then of course they always just fly home and slam themselves against the dresser.

Perhaps he hadn't got them installed correctly. You had to tilt them, in an odd kind of way - they didn't just slide in and out. Unless you broke off the little stop. Like the bottom drawer, that always fell out if you weren't careful. She'd been mad. She'd yanked the bottom drawer open, like she'd always done when she'd been mad, and she'd broken off the little stop. And she'd thrown the drawer on the floor.

Or perhaps it just fell.

"What's the fish?"

"Lyonnaise."

"Mayonnaise?"

"Lyonnaise. De Leon."

And then he'd explain how he couldn't get them because of the mayonnaise. After dinner. In the car on the way home. Or afterwards, in bed.

She straightened the blanket, greatly moved by his recovery, and turned down the lights. He explained about the sox. She said she wasn't mad about the sox. He asked her what she was mad about. Makeup, she said. He said he was trying to. She said, no, she meant her makeup, it wasn't going the way she wanted it. So you were mad, he said. Yes, she said, at the makeup.

So they made up. It went fine. And they made love. She tasted like fish, he was vaguely soft and white. And they went to sleep. He wanted to smoke a cigarette. But he quit. Again. And they went to sleep.