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Speckled Trout In River Ridge
Mandy didn't like using the plural pronoun "we" even when she and I were a couple but overhearing her occasional use of the singular "I" to refer to things that we undoubtedly did together, and also the possessive "my" when talking about things we legally own together ( the Bushy Fork, North Carolina house, and this Dumaine, New Orleans house), kind of makes me wonder how many versions of reality might actually exist at the same time, and how wording may make all the difference in the world.
Today I was working alone doing some repainting in the home of one of the general contractors my boss and I work for, very nice home, richly appointed, River Ridge neighborhood (the ring of that should tell you all you need to know about the desirability of the area). This man, the contractor, and his wife, who sells drugs in the projects, literally, but not in the way the words imply, are good folk with busy lives and an even tempered three year old boy, named after the father, and deceased grandfather. I enjoy my conversations with the boy at seven a.m.--his sincere declaration to me that he has to pee I meet with sincere enthusiam and encouragement, "hey, that's great, why don't you go and do that," and I am proud as a father when I hear the three-year-old sized cascading echo of streaming piss into a toilet bowl a few seconds later. I'm painting a color called "leather leaf" on the beaded board surrounding the bar. When he comes back and calls me "man" I am not put out by this as I might be if a suit wearing professional used the same term, trying to be "simpatico" with the long hair. The boy probably meant it literally, probably brought the issue up with his parents the night before, wondering just what is it with that "person" who is coming to our house everyday. He seems like a man, and you all tell me to call him "Mister Jim," but his hair is long like mommy's. His mom and dad may have instructed him to see me, and refer to me as a man, so he did.
This contractor (we can call him Paul because that is his name) is an avid fisherman and had the day before taken off with his older brother, and fellow building contractor, (whom we can call G, because a lot of people do) to go fishing in this here "the Sportsman's Paradise," and came back with an astounding, or for them possibly average catch, of speckled trout. A couple of seven pounders he was duly proud of.
"I'll make you a plate before I go and you can heat it in the microwave for lunch," he said to me before leaving, and then a few minutes later while I was touching up a ceiling with "summer dew" it was his wife ( at this point I would be wrong for reducing her to four lower case letters and therefore must proclaim as Julie, and hope that being inside the parenthetical is not some sort of slight, or perhaps being outed by name without permission would be the slight, and at one time was the point being driven towards but I can see now that I'll never get there from here) who asked me did I like green beans, which of course I do, and then she came to find me caulking in her son's room, and here I would like to add she is not only a strong independent woman, but strong looking, and by that I mean the opposite of masculine strength, which is to say, she is quite pretty. She had come to recommend the best setting for the microwave, and I thanked her. She left and I was alone.
Not long after this my break time arrived and I went out to my car to retrieve my bag of salted in shell peanuts. To these I added from the pantry a great good many Famous Amos cookies and a half dozen olives from that dwindling supply in the fridge. I turned the small TV in the kitchen on and felt that guilty pleasure surging through my inexplicably disciplined non TV watching self. The day before I had looked at a seductively wrapped Marlboro cigarette with a similar sensation, except there was no guilt, and no pleasure, only a frightening burst of weak willed longing.
I recognized immediatedly the middle of You've Got Mail with Hanks and you know, whatshername (Meg Ryan, it came to me), she's way cute, even if you have to sell your soul to the devil to think so, and after about twenty minutes I know I'm at a crossroads of trouble which is fueled by my need for a drug, any drug, and in this case it's sentimentality in the easy to swallow coated caplet. I had tripped on this prescription before and the comfortability of previous experience had me looking forward to this Big Mac love story even at the sacrifice of real nourishment.
I was into touching up the white enameled woodwork at this point so I just concentrated on the areas surrounding the kitchen, and its 13 inch version of edited love. I let myself cry a little when she said "I really hoped it would be you," because I'm a drug addict and Meg Ryan had just showed up at the door with a kilo, and checking for purity is mostly an illusion. Afterwards I felt kind of dirty, but how you gonna avoid that?
For lunch I had speckled trout, green beans, and mashed potatoes with chives, and watched the last half of King of Comedy.