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"It was maddening, he always seemed to know exactly what to say in every situation. It made her feel so..."
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It was maddening, he always seemed to know exactly what to say in every situation. It made her feel so stupid and helpless.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when they went to a restaurant, and the waiter brought her a steak instead of the lobster she had ordered, it was Rick who let loose a volley of cold calculated complaints that reduced the waiter to a snivelling heap on the floor. And the lobster arrived five minutes later. And they didn't have to pay for it. Left to herself, Frances would probably have just eaten the steak, hating every mouthful of it as she forced it down her throat.
It wasn't just a man-woman thing, either. Rick was probably the only man she knew who could get away with that sort of thing. Not that he was naturally aggressive or anything - he just knew how to use words like a top-flight fencer uses his foil - coldly, calmly, and efficiently, until the opponent is dead.
And he knew how to use words to charm her as well. That's how they'd ended up in bed together the first time. Let's face it, he wasn't God's gift to women, as far as looks went. But that first evening when he'd really talked to her, as opposed to exchanging polite nothings… There really wasn't anything she could do to stop it. It just seemed so natural. But it wasn't an act - at least, she hoped it wasn't. She'd never caught him out in it, if it was. He was always smooth and charming, in the best possible senses of the terms, and his actions matched the words. Kind and considerate, in bed and out of it.
No wonder he was regarded as the top salesman in his division. The bonus cheques just kept getting larger and larger. Until that day when he returned home, with a most un-Rick-like look on his face.
"What's the matter, darling?" she asked. She'd never seen him like that before. He looked like a kicked puppy.
"I don't have a job any more. They say I talk too much and I'm putting the others out of work."
It was maddening, he always seemed to know exactly what to say in every situation. It made her feel so...
ReplyDelete“Filled with loathing,” he said.
That was exactly it, yes, loathing, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. “No,” she said. “That’s not it at all.”
“Vociferous, then. Excited.”
“No … “ His breath stank. How could she desire such a man. She felt like puking on his shoes.
“Meretritious, then” Yes, probably; she wasn’t completely sure what, if anything, that word meant.
“Oh, my goodness, no.” She laughed, chuckled really. The silliness of it. The foul taste of it, a vessel, long-harbored.
“Gosh, I’m off my game, he said. Are you feeling maritime somehow? Mud-flatticious?”
Think of something, anything, to keep the thoughts from leaking out, into the treasonous air, where they could float, exposed, caught and swatted like so many mosquitos. She tried another tactic, a magic trick, fill up her thoughts with magic, with thoughts of the future, a crystal ball just for her to touch the future with.
“Are you ignoring me? He tried. Are you feeling somehow … globular?”
“That’s ridiculous!” She screamed inside, Must keep my thoughts from him! Keepaway, keep away!
“What is this game you’re playing,” he said. “You silly women and your little games . Of tag, for instance. You are chasing me round and round.”
Think of anything, anything at all! She thought. Lederhosen! Lederhosen! Lederhosen!Lederhosen!Lederhosen!Lederhosen!
“Chafed?” He said. “Teutonic? Oh, how adorable!”
AAAAugh! She wished she could just bash his head in, old-school.
“What’s on your musty, drafty mind, young lady? SOme sort of gym^class-trauma-asticness?”
His pyorrhea was making her eyes water. If she had a rock, she could end this once and for all.
“Paleolithic? Quaternary? Metamorphic? If so, you should put something on that. “
She remembered the gun in her purse. She edged toward it.
“Are you feeling savage? slaughterous? Sanguinary? Aroused?”
She pulled the gun and shot him in the face. “Yes,” she said, “that’s exactly it.”
It was maddening, he always seemed to know exactly what to say in every situation. It made her feel so plodding, so deer-in-the-headlights, naive and wide-eyed as he ducked and dodged and dissembled, and each time came up smelling of nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteThis was a man who left no trace, who made no mark, whose words slipped through the brain so easily they left no more meaning behind than smoke slipping through an air vent. And that was why he had survived in this business, a dissembler so professional few could hold him in mind long enough to be impressed by him or offer him a promotion.
And so they had found themselves on the same team, him fifteen years older with (she sometimes thought for the merest of instances when she glanced over at his desk when he probably thought nobody else was looking) something of a slump about his shoulders. And then, with a strange little reptilian shimmer, it was gone, the glitch repaired, the gash already healed.
She tried not to hate him, which was infuriating in itself, because she was pretty sure he’d never hated anyone or tried not to hate anyone, or gotten stressed or-. God! Here she was feeling hot blood pound her temples, over a man who to all intents and purposes didn’t even have blood pressure. Or a pulse. Who was clinically dead.
A sound brought her back to right now, and she swiveled her chair to face his. Crack, came his head again, down upon his desk. Crack, crack, crack. She felt her stomach go hard and her tailbone burrow into the chair. This couldn’t be happening. She must be losing it.
http://carolinehutchinson.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/cablowrimo-mr-nobody/