Me and My Manny (4 page)

Welcoming Harry Home

The day before Harry’s four-month-long tour was over, I had my hair frosted and cut in a style that, to my dismay, made me look like a wilted yellow chrysanthemum, one with freckles and an overbite. That done, resplendent I stood in a colorful Hawaiian muumuu and silvery flipflops, waving a small American flag and waiting most of the afternoon for Harry to gangplank off the destroyer at the Everett Naval Station. Though thrilled he was back home, I felt a sense of sorrow. Spouses often change when separated for long periods. As with other tours, I worried he might have cooled toward me.

“Not in the least,” Harry assured me, when I related my concern. “You’re the one more likely to stray, always here alone.”

“Thanks to the manny, you know that thing I told you about on the drive home?” We were now in the apartment, and I watched Harry nodding as he neared the manny on the recliner. “It always kept you close by.” I braced myself and mumbled, “Sort of.”

His eyes on Wolf, Harry circled him with caution. “Is that a sex surrogate or something?” He glanced from Wolf to me.

“He doesn’t have the hardware.”

Harry again stared at his imitation. “You think I look like that? He looks like a cartoon. I don’t look like that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way he looks.” Now that they were together, I saw how much Harry differed from the exaggerated caricature of him. His ears didn’t stick out nearly as far as Wolf’s.

“He looks like a stiff the Italian navy forgot to consign to the deep.” Harry examined Wolf’s outdated uniform. “He must have gotten this at a military surplus store, the antique section.”

“His costume may not be authentic,” I said, aware that nothing about the manny could be construed as copied. Mr. Gippo’s creations were supposed to be unique.

For some time, Harry stood, stroking his neatly trimmed mustache. Then suddenly he yelped, “Six hundred bucks! I can’t believe you blew six hundred dollars on that…that dumbass dingus.”

To my mind, the wooden dingus was worth every penny I’d blown. He was an investment, the returns of which ought to be manifold. Yet I empathized with Harry. Now that we both lived wholly on his military salary, a mere pittance by any stretch, squandering hundreds on an oversized doll was an extravagance.

Harry flared his nostrils as he reached out and snapped Wolf’s beanie upward. “What’s his ship? The
Pinta
, the
Nina
, or the
Santa Maria
?”

Harry’s show of aggression troubled me. Despite worrying that any moment now he’d challenge the manikin to a fight, I tried to see Wolf through Harry’s eyes and concluded that only a mother could love that funny little face.

Harry checked the manny’s uniform for patches. “I can’t figure his rank.” He yanked the braided red string from the manny’s pocket. “Judy, he’s got a boatswain’s pipe.” Harry blew the high-pitched whistle. “All hands on deck. I guess that makes him a petty officer too.”

“See, he is a copy of you—somewhat.”

I went on to explain that Wolf was made from a snapshot of Harry himself, but Harry interrupted to point out that pictures are flat and two-dimensional. And you can’t make much of a full-body replica from a photo.

“Obviously, it’s a replica with a few slight differences, an artist’s rendition, the best that Mr. Gippo could do on short notice,” I said.

“It’s not me,” Harry insisted.

“Of course it isn’t.”

“Being replaced feels strange.”

“You’re not being replaced,” I told him. “You’re being celebrated. All the great lovers in history have been celebrated.”

Allowing that I was right, Harry steered me into the bedroom so that I might show him my appreciation.

“What about Wolf?” I asked.

“He stays out in the living room.”

Minutes later, in bed with Harry, I grew antsy and unable to partake in marital bliss.

“Poor Wolf, out there in the dark alone.”

“Where he belongs,” Harry said.

“It’s not like I’m cheating on you. It’s more like separation anxiety. I feel like a child who’s lost her security blanket.”

In Harry’s absence, the manny filled a void; he made me feel less empty. Now that he was gone from the room, I began to miss him almost as much as I had Harry.

“I’m back now, so just forget him.” Harry sounded resolute.

“I tried, but it’s just not the same.” Seeing Harry tense up, I spoke faster. “Wolf cheered me when I felt down in the dumps. He’s been a loyal companion while you were off to…to who knows where. And we thank him by abandoning him. I’ve got to go get him,” I said, throwing the covers back.

“No!” Harry seized my arm.

“He doesn’t take up much room.”

“Judy, he’s as big as a man; he’s not a toy.”

“Oh, you take everything so seriously.”

“And you don’t take anything seriously.”

“Just for tonight,” I begged.

Wrenched free of Harry’s grip, I slid from beneath the sheet and padded into the living room. I gathered up my manny and returned to the bedroom where I sat him on a cushioned chair.

“Now, isn’t that better?” I said, smiling at Wolf’s adorable face.

“Not for me,” Harry groused, now sitting upright.

I crawled back into bed, reminded of how inhibited Harry was. He did just fine when involved in passionate sex. Getting him involved was the issue. Harry was slow to arousal, a trait I’d ascribed to months aboard ship surrounded by buttoned-down service people. Harry’s restraint resulted from his squeaky-clean conditioning.

I snuggled closer to Harry. “In a way, with him watching, sex feels naughty. You know, a kind of guilty pleasure.”

Harry grimaced, making it evident that I had said the wrong thing. Voyeurism aboard ship was difficult to avoid when cramped into close quarters.

“Sometimes,” I resumed, hoping to get my foot out of my mouth, “if you’re not creative, things can get kind of ho-hum. But if you add some spice, it sort of beef’s things up, so to speak.”

“An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Harry crossed his arms over his chest. “And having that manny join in on our conjugal relations proves it.”

“What are you talking, idle mind?”

I pushed up onto my elbow, recalling how busy I’d been since acquiring my manny.

“I’m talking about the depravity you’ve apparently gotten into since I’ve been away,” Harry said.

“Just because I think getting down and dirty could be fun, you think I’m depraved?”

“And you think it’s perfectly normal to perform in front of that… that wooden Peeping Tom?”

“Perform?” I was beginning to get it. Harry must have been alluding to performance anxiety—as if the manny could experience a vicarious thrill and grade him on it. “This is not a test. Wolf can’t cheer you on. If anyone around here’s acting kinky, it’s you.”

Actually, I knew better than to toss his accusation right back at him. Harry was as principled and proper as a stuffed shirt with a starched collar. It was unwise to tinker with his emotions.

“I’m sorry,” I said, groping. “Let’s kiss and make up.”

By way of punishment, Harry gave me the silent treatment.

“This night, my first night at home,” he said at last, “and you prefer that goofy-looking dummy.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Okay, okay, just one thing.” He got up, whipped the top sheet off the bed, and threw it over Wolfs head. “That’s more like it,” he said, again snuggling next to me.

“Wow, swabby. Permission to come aboard granted.” My amorous words indeed had the desired effect.

Publicity

The next morning, I was preparing a cheese omelet for breakfast, when Harry came bounding back into the apartment with the newspaper clutched in his hand.

“Half the tenants in the building are down in the manager’s office laughing their asses off over this.” He slapped the newspaper down on the table and jabbed his forefinger at two cowpokes in western outfits against the backdrop of a high school marching band. “Is that you?”

I read my name in the caption beneath the photograph in the entertainment section, of all places, not on the front page as the reporter had promised.

“Is that you, parading in front of a million people while tied to that dummy?”

I examined the colored photo, struck that Señor Kin had appeared rather silly in his gigantic sombrero, but I doubted a million people had been on the parade route. Though after doing a rough calculation on how many saw us in the papers and on TV, a million got darned close.

“It’s me all right. And I wished we’d been on horseback. Those clunky cowboy boots killed my feet.”

Last Sunday, I along with Wolf had participated in Seattle’s Grand Parade, one of the many pageants that kick off the yearly summertime event Seafair. Insofar as life with a manny was still uncharted territory, I had figured that the July parade would be another opportunity for me to show Wolf to the public and get people’s reaction. Since we’d be traveling the parade route as a pair, with me in the lead of course, I needed to come up with costumes that were both colorful and coordinated.

I dressed Wolf in one of Harry’s old plaid shirts that, however ill-fitting, went well with his bell-bottoms then I drove downtown to a western-wear shop and bought him a Mexican sombrero that engulfed his head like a flying saucer. For myself, I chose a “ten-gallon” cowboy hat. I couldn’t get Wolf’s painted-on deck shoes into pointy cowboy boots, so I settled on a set of spurs.

Further, I favored a hank of rope to the holstered six-shooter, a rope that twirled nicely into a lasso secured around Wolf’s waist. As the final touch, I strapped a bandolier full of fake bullets across his chest and tied a red bandanna over his lower face.

Likewise in western duds, with a glinty sheriff’s badge pinned to my chest, I used the lasso to pull the masked outlaw on his wheels through the streets of Seattle. That’s when the cheering crowds gave me another possibly lucrative idea. I could promote mannys to man floats in parades.

Not being one to procrastinate, I never put off till tomorrow what I can screw up today, I had taken the opportunity to pitch my manny to a
Seattle Times
reporter. During the brief interview, he said the several pictures he’d snapped of us would appear on the front page of next Sunday’s paper. Though I eagerly awaited the publication, I regretted that Harry got the
Times
before I had a chance to.

“I can’t believe that you and that dope on a rope actually marched in a kickoff parade. How would you like it if I went and had some inflatable copy made of you?”

“I’d be flattered.”

Actually an inflatable likeness of me—something I viewed as a gigantic balloon floating high above the streets of New York in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—did not sit well with me. But I dropped the subject, lest I find myself bringing the ever-behind-the-times Harry up to speed on those high-tech, robotic sex dolls with motorized orifices.

“Would you really take it as a compliment if I spent long hours talking to her, passing her around to my friends, even taking her to special events?”

Harry’s comments indicated that he’d already heard of my manny-mate business, probably through the nosy neighbors. Whitehall was Gasbag Central.

“I don’t pass Wolf around; I rent him out. And I’ve yet to receive a customer complaint.”

Harry thumbed his chest. “What’s that got to do with you making a spectacle of me?”

“Spectacle of you?” Finally it sank in. The way Harry saw it, Wolf existed more to belittle him than extol him, and he took it as a personal affront. “It just so happens that my so-called spectacle was a brilliant marketing strategy. One that in a matter of hours captured loads of potential customers.”

“Customers for what?”

“For my escort service, as if you didn’t know.” I thought the phrase “escort service” was less provocative than The Manny Ranch. “The job market’s an economic war zone. So I figured I’d take a crack at being my own boss by renting out manny-mates right here from home.” I motioned toward my desk in the alcove off the kitchen. “Once the cash starts flowing in, we can write off a portion of the apartment as an expense.”

“Does Lisa know about your plan to run a call-boy service from here?”

Call-boy!
The pejorative term rankled me. “Lisa was my second customer.”
That extortionist.
“She wanted to sample the manny on a trial basis. She’d rather Siegfried and Roy, but they’d be a distraction to all the tenants forever traipsing in and out of her office. But as I told Ruthie, unlike a dog that can’t be trusted not to tear things up when alone for even a short while, a manny can be left out to gather dust or mothballed in a trunk.”

Harry shifted toward Wolf, who, sitting on an arrow back chair with his hands resting upward on his knees, looked oddly absorbed in our debate.

“Ruthie rented him too?”

“Uh-huh. To help her reflect on her marital problems.”

Harry looked bewildered. “He’s a marriage counselor?”

“He’s whoever you want him to be.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, sounding pensive, “he’s just about everyone except the insensitive guy who leaves you stranded in some dingy seaside motel.”

I had the vague impression that Harry was alluding to something that happened a while ago, on the night before he shipped out. The very vagueness of that night caused me to let it slip away like a dream.

“Not him,” I said, glancing at Wolf’s merry face. “He knows his priorities. As well as his limitations, right, hotshot?”

Harry again studied the newspaper picture of me and my wooden amigo mugging for the camera. “You never took me to a Seafair event.”

“I don’t have to; you can take yourself.”

Harry then leaned closer to the table and tapped the colored photo of me and Wolf in the newspaper. “So you’re telling me that the attention you lavish on your bunkmate is all part of a business venture.”

Though disliking the term
bunkmate,
I stayed with the theme. “Passion, Harry. You’ve got to
love
what you do. Playing with a manny is way more fun that slaving for penny ante wages and bashing my head against the glass ceiling.” While speaking, I got the impression that Wolf from his seat was egging me on with a two-thumbs-up.
Way to go, girlfriend!
“Yes siree, Harry, financial independence. I’m out to snag me a pink parachute, and I aim to pack it myself.”