“I saw a coyote in the backyard.”
“When?”
“Just now. I was looking out the kitchen window. Why do we have ceramic tiles in here? My feet get cold.”
“Wear your slippers, silly.”
“I hate slippers. And I would much rather have hardwood floors.”
“The house came with tiles, Richard. We’ve been living here for ten years and this is the first time you’ve ever bitched about it. What was the coyote doing?”
Richard hiked his shoulders indifferently. “Just sniffing around the garbage. He saw me in the window there and I think I spooked him.”
“You would spook anybody lately, as morose as you’ve been.”
It was then that the she spied the glass of orange juice and the open bottle of Grey Goose on the kitchen table. It was a faux Old Colonial table she bought at the Swap Meet in Pasadena two years ago.
“Do you …” She approached him hesitantly, like a mouse sneaking up on a slice of booby-trapped cheese. “Do you need to go to a meeting?”
“No.”
“Do you need me to call your sponsor?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’re drinking, Richard.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
He poured three more fingers of vodka into the tall glass of juice.
“Watch this,” he dared, downing the Grey Goose and OJ in one Herculean gulp.
“Okay. Alright. Let’s get a handle on this.”
“On what?”
“On whatever is making you drink, Richard. What happened at the studio this afternoon?”
“It went swimmingly,” he said with a definite slur in his speech. She knew that slur. It meant he was drunk already and had probably been drinking for hours. In all likelihood he started before he ever got home, which meant that he drove drunk, traversing those winding canyon roads three sheets to the wind. She suddenly wished that she had scheduled her massage session for another day so she could have caught him in the act when he staggered through the front door. It was too late to berate him now. He would just get belligerent and all the old shit would churn to the surface.
“I got the job,” he continued, pouring another drink. Not so stiff this time.
“Well, you’re certainly not drinking to celebrate. Pour me one, will ya?”
“It ain’t exactly the job Andrew told me it would be,” Richard said with a smirk. She hated that smirk.
“An agent lied to you? Let the universe cease spinning.”
“You wouldn’t be so fucking sarcastic if it was you that had to write a goddamn cartoon!”
“A cartoon?” She stifled a laugh. “You said it was remake of ‘Moby Dick’.”
“It is! A fucking cartoon remake. In outer space, no less.”
She couldn’t hold the laughter in any longer. “Moby Dick in outer space.”
“That’s the goddamn title!”
A convulsion of laughter erupted in the kitchen, both of them giggling like children. When Richard dropped the bottle of Grey Goose on the tile floor, the laughter abruptly stopped. His bare feet were annointed in vodka and shards of broken gass.
“That’s it. No more. I want hardwood floors installed tomorrow or I swear to fucking Christ I will divorce you.”
Hey, fun detail in this one. I liked the old married couple dynamic. Interesting thoughts on the alcoholism too… my Uncle got divorced three times before he figured it out.
I liked her being nervous to approach him and the part about all of the bad stuff coming up again…
These stories have you got you spilling about your family a lot lately, David.
It’s odd, innit?
I love your line, “his bare feet were annointed in vodka and shards of broken glass.” Nice imagery, nice religious reference there, referring perhaps to the divine inevitability of artistic disappointment.
Hey, I just found out that Craig Ferguson was Mr. Wick on Drew Carey, aka my favorite sitcom villain ever!
Now I am torn!