You know how the song goes:  “When you’re in love with a beautiful woman, it’s hard….”  That’s how I’ve always felt with Suzanne.  I try to hide it, but there are times when my insecurities emerge low in my viscera and refuse to go away.  We’ll be at a dinner party and I’ll glance across the table at her and catch her talking with another man.  She’ll be bright and animated and wholly engaged.  She’ll be that sparkling jewel I fell in love with, but she’ll be that sparkling jewel with everyone she meets.  When my insecurities are at their worst, I wonder to myself:  what if she meets another man who wants to hoard that jewel for himself as much as I do?  I tell myself that, as a matter of prudence, I should assume all men are as ill-intentioned as me.

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Norm and I had been on vacation when Ed across the road from us took his spell or whatever it was he took that ended up killing him and left poor Thelma all alone in that big old house of hers.  So, on account of us being in Wichita Falls at the time, Norm and I never had a chance to console Thelma or even bring her a casserole until three weeks after the fact.  We didn’t know a thing about it until after we got home.  Ray next door said there was quite a ruckus the night Ed died what with the sirens and flashing lights and police and ambulance people and even a big red fire truck parked a little down the road.  And there was poor Thelma in her housecoat wandering after the police, following them down the front walk and floating around like she was in a fog.
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If you’re gonna rat me out to my boss then you can just go fuck yourself. And besides … there’s no way on god’s green earth I’ll ever tell you what I’m doin’ home on a weekday watchin’ the Maury show. Oh ya, there’s Springer too. And I’m praisin’ the lord god almighty for inventin’ the remote so’s I can flip from one t’other. I’ve got this beauty of a flatscreen I’ve mounted on the wall in my den with a bar fridge in the corner and my favourite sofa plunked square in front of everything so’s I can just lie there and watch and when I get thirsty I can reach over to the fridge and pull me out a can of somethin’ cold. Today’s the perfect day for this – warm enough so’s you can leave the window open and even enjoy a cool one now and then, but not so warm as you’d work up a sweat. Don’t want my sweat to mess up my favourite sofa. Funny how’s you can get attached to somethin’ like a piece of furniture. There’s nothin’ fancy about the sofa; in fact, I bet you’d never find anythin’ like it at the Art Shoppe – though I’ll never be absolutely sure seein’ as I pulled it from the garbage two streets over. They could’ve bought it from the Art Shoppe and just decided to change their decoratin’ scheme. Doesn’t matter where it come from anyhows. It’s mine now.
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I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for nearly ten years now.  Not alone, of course;  I have the requisite wife with her weekly manicure appointments, and the requisite dog with her poufy tail, and the requisite two point four children.  Two of the children are easy to find.  They each have a bedroom on either side of our bedroom, one pink, one blue, in day-glo shades that would burn out your eyes if you stared too long at the walls.  As for the other four tenths, he’s not so easy to find – at least not if you’re looking for him.  But he pops up in odd ways.  He’s there in the vestiges of a teen-aged immaturity.  He’s there in a spate of disappointed hopes, the sense, as we survey the lovely homes above and below us, that it’ll never get any better than this.  He’s there, too, in the pressure to strut, to buy bigger toys, to program our kids with lessons and play groups and sports teams until our days are one long breathless sprint.  Point four.

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