A Tapless Shoulder (11 page)

“
I know;
you’re a monkey.”

“
No, I’m
three.”

“
Three? How
on earth did you get to be three? Weren’t you two
yesterday?”

It wasn’t so
much what I was saying, but rather how I was saying it that had him
laughing really hard. I was exclaiming everything as though I just
could not believe it at all.

A serious
expression formed on Ding Ding’s face, “Nukkobutt is the biggest
baby I know.”

I nodded my
head. “Me too,” I said ambitiously, “and Knuckle Butt is the
oldest
baby I know: since he’s two.”

“
He’s not as
small as a raisin.”

“
I’m not
going to argue with you there, Ding Ding. Knuckle Butt is totally
not as small as a raisin,” I said to him with my face now very
close to his. I rubbed his cheek, and smiled. “You are very
smart.”

I had knelt
down to tidy up some of the boys’ books. Ding Ding came running at
me and jumped onto my back. “Your back is not a ladder,” he said
into my hair. I removed him, and gave his bum a light
pat.

“
Daddy?”

“
Yeah?” I
said, while I was helping Knuckle Butt retrieve a car from under
the couch.

Ding Ding
pointed his
sippy cup
at my face, “You just need a drink,”
he said, “It won’t hurt you.”

I laughed,
and kissed him on his cheek. “Well, thank you,” I said to him, my
face close to his, “but that’s okay. That’s your drink; I have
water up on the counter.”

“
Daddy?”

“
Yes?” I
asked, feeling myself begin to unravel.

“
I want some
dinner,” and at that he went up the stairs and climbed onto his
chair at the dinner table. He looked at me, then at the
television.

“
Okay, of
course,” I smiled at him, “but what do you say?”

“
Say please
can I have some dinner?”

“
Thank you,
and, yes, you may. What would you like?” I asked since it had been
his idea, and raised my eyebrows at him expectantly.

“
I want some
dinner,” he repeated.

“
I know that, but what do you want
for
dinner?” I
said.

He looked at
me, then said slowly, “I … want … dinner.”

His brother
was pushing his car along the coffee table in the living room,
driving it off, saying, ‘Oh no.” I laughed, “Okay, but what do you
want to
eat
? Momma won’t be
home for a while so it’s just us, so what do you think we
should
eat
?”

“
I want to
eat dinner.”

“
Of course, sure, I love you, and I will get you some
dinner,
and
patience will be appreciated and
rewarded,” I told him as I turned and walked into the
kitchen.

“
Dinner,” he
called after me.

“
Yes, I know,
thank you,” I called back and fought the urge to head-butt
something.

I set the
plum sauce into the grocery cart and continued down the aisle. My
cell phone rang. I checked and saw it was Nate, so I answered with
a firm, but friendly, hello.

“
I have
something for you,” he sounded rather smug.

“
Oh yeah,” I
was unable to bring about much more interest than that.

“
Oh yeah
,” he said
with much exaggeration, “I’ve been thinking.” He then made a
fraction of a giggle as he tried sadly to draw an ounce of
curiosity out of me, but I had none and waited.

“
Okay,” I
broke finally, expecting the worst, “what are you getting at,
Nate?”

“
I’ve been
tapping my head on this one, I tell you,” he said
overconfidently.

“
Careful,” I
warned.

“
Seriously,”
he said, “are you ready?”

“
No.” I
stifled a yawn that I felt couldn’t have come at a better time, and
then shook my head as though he could see me.

“
So,” he ignored me and continued, “let us say I was
guarding
something, okay?”

“
Uh huh,” I
said, “just another day guarding something, got ya.”

“
And I left, so I was no longer guarding it,” he continued,
“but then I came back.” He paused, as though it mattered, “okay,”
he continued, “my question is would I now be
reguarding
it?”

Neither of us
spoke, well, aside of course from him saying,
huh
,
repeatedly, but that’s more of a sound, than a word. “You’re pretty
damn, I don’t know, entertaining,” I confided, hung up, and then
texted him:
memo regarding
reguarding shut up
.

My cell rang
and again it was Nate. “What,” I asked, skipping the impromptu
hello, a disregard for phone etiquette I rarely
practiced.

“
Come on,” he
goaded, “it’s a bit funny.”

“
Dude, seriously, this is why you’re single,” I said with a
shallow laugh that I regretted. “Like okay,” I cleared my throat
and continued, “yeah, it, I guess, is funny or something, but there
has to be a lot of thought about the words, and not a lot of people
are going to get it when you tell them, or, I don’t even know.
Sometimes I
think
stuff
that
I
think
is funny, but I often just kind of keep it to myself
sometimes too. Know what I mean?”

“
Sydney liked
my jokes,” he replied defensively. “If she and I were on speaking
terms I would call her and tell her. And she’d probably laugh her
head off, I bet you.”

“
Uh, Nate, she may have liked
one
little verbal
ditty
,
sure
, but I remember why she
left you and it was exactly over you thinking you were funny.” He
exhaled loudly into the phone. “I’m not trying to bum you out,
Nate, its ancient history, man, alright,” I said wanting to get off
the phone and finish grocery shopping.

“
She
overreacted,” he said in a manner suggesting he was surprised even
still.

“
No, I don’t
think she did,” I said, emphasizing my disbelief, “let me just say
it out loud for you because I really think it is much different in
your head than it was in real life.”

“
Whatever,
man, it was a harmless joke.” He skirted truth like a professional.
I stopped walking.

“
Okay, no, no, no, it wasn’t.
You
squatted
NAKED
over her face in the dark.
Okay,
naked, over her
face, squatting
, and to
indicate how wrong you were already, people are looking at me like
I’m doing it to them right now. So let’s take it to the next level,
right, I mean, that is funny right there, but when you turned on
the light
and
farted at that exact moment, oh,
funny, funny man. And I guess she didn’t want to keep you up with
her laughing that’s why she made you sleep on the couch. I mean I
really don’t know why she wasn’t impressed with your hand-ass
co-ordination.” I felt red in the face for retelling his
misadventure so enthusiastically.

On the other
end of the phone Nate was laughing uncontrollably. I could not
believe it and thought for a moment that I was mistaken and that he
was perhaps actually crying. No. I had it right the first time. I
turned around like sense may have been the other way, and saw a
woman staring at me like it was the last thing she would do in life
and she was not happy about it at all. “I just killed someone with
your stupidity,” I said to Nate and turned away from the horrified
woman.

“
Come on,
man, it’s fucking funny,” he had to struggle to say through his
laughter.

“
No, it’s not, it’s really not. You were a bodily misread
away from crapping on her eyes. That is not cool, not good, and not
something she thought was funny.
And
that is why she’s
not around. It took her a day to undo a year or whatever she had
lost to you. I would say what if she did that to you, but I’m not
letting you go there. So again, harmless joke, um, physically yes,
but mentally no. No one wants to look into anyone’s sphincter
unless they’re making the big doctor dollars to do so. She wasn’t
in med school.” I hung up. My phone rang again; I winced and
laughed, then thought it best to turn the ringer off, and keep
moving toward the salsa.

6:55

“
Where you
are in life is much like a destination: you can go
elsewhere.”

“
What?”

“
I had that rolling around in my head today. Thought I’d
share it with you; you know, just trying something different,
starting out with something
more
or I just set
the stage for a bit of a… different type of, something with a
conversation, ah, fuck, maybe just, never mind.”

“
So, you
didn’t
watch it last
night?”

“
No
, the only show I
ever watch is The Simpsons.”

“
Oh. Yeah, I
watch that too. Well, no, not really.”

“
Hey cool, we
share the same commitment.”

“
...”

“
Nice shoes,
dingus.”

“
Hey, thanks
man. What’s the time?”

“
Lots of
time, too much time, time to kill, man. Don’t worry about
it.”

Everyone
rolled their eyes, sighed or swore.

“
Yeah, wasn’t
really worried, I was just, you know, doing my part.”

“
Your mom did
my part.”

Everyone
laughed. My cell beeped with a new text message, from Katie:
guy in front of me is 900

I
replied:
thats me!

6:56

“
You on
Facebook?”

“
No, but my
mind twitters all the time, does that count?”

The moment
slowly filled with awkward silence.

“
What?”

“
Never mind,
my wife is. I’m not on anything anymore, and if I hadn’t dried out
my tear ducts I’d cry right now. It’s kind of another TV for me I
think. And I’m a part of the cyber sulk movement. Our online
absence is our identity, you can see us high-fiving at the mall.” I
laughed, “Viva la revolution or something, not sure; I’ve only been
a radical for… what time was it when you said ‘What time is it?’
Ah, forget it, it’s hard to explain. I’ve got primary distractions
I stick to and Facebook didn’t make the list. Know what I
mean?”

“
Um, I was
just going to see if you were friends with Ankle Sox. He posted
this video yesterday that’s friggin’ hilarious.”

“
Well, I’m friends with him, but not online, I had to draw
the line somewhere. Yeah, so no; lately I’m just busy, man, raising
the boys. I might play a video game here and there, and maybe try
to
read and write –
and
hey, did my face go red when I said
that?”

Another
moment slowly filled with awkward silence.

6:57

“
Did you
watch Survivor this season?”

“
Yes, but
only if you know what contradiction means.”

My cell
beeped with a new text message from Katie:
oh hi! Can you go a bit faster. And that’s not what
she said.

I laughed and
then scrolled through my email messages on my
phone
.
I deleted all the messages in both the inbox and
sent folder. I texted Katie:
okay seriously your children and I love you! you need to
stop bloody texting while driving!

I felt like
I’d just texted a short novel; it should have been time for bed,
never mind the end of my shift. I stared at the punch clock, unable
to believe that it was all down to that square box saying,
not yet
,
not yet, not
yet,
and,
hey fucker, not yet
.

6:58

“
There’s
Rodriguez. I thought he quit.”

“
Don’t know.
I avoid him ‘cause I think he’s an idiot and I don’t want to have
to tell him that.”