Jenn again

 Actually I did send something to the New Yorker years ago and got a no.  When I was quite young I thought that I was going to be a writer and so I never actively pursued a responsible job, so as not to sell out you know, but of course that was a thinly disguised reason to hang out with my buddies and drink a lot of beer.

I did send stuff out those days.  And that was when you had to use a typewriter which meant if you did a typo there went the page, or you could attempt to fix it with one of those gadgets whose one side was a hard rubber circular eraser and the other a brush, then there was white out, and later than that a tape you could put over your paper and type in the letter you had hit by accident.  All were a pain in the ass and none quite covered up the error.  And then you had to take the whole mess and shove it into an envelope with some kind of snappy cover letter and include another envelope with postage on it so that you could get it back when they rejected it.  If you were lucky you would get a little handwritten note at the bottom of the rejection letter.  Nice try old chap, you show promise, try us again.

I did manage to get a handful of those notes, but that was as far as my writing career ever went.

Now in the cyber age you can write your opus with a word processor and send it out for free with the click of a send button.  Which is so easy that a lot more people send stuff in.  Magazines all claim that they have somebody read every manuscript, but I imagine it is a bleary-eyed intern who knows if he brings something to his betters, Hey guys you ought to look at this, they will likely be annoyed at the waste of their time.  Still now that it has been mentioned and, as I have pointed out, it takes so very little time, perhaps I will give it another go.

But for the nonce Gentlemen, I give you the conclusion of Jenn.

Women, well they can’t help it, they are the gatherers of the tribe you know.  Empty space in the fridge is something they abhor.  They have to fill it up with something, so that when the hunter returns with two six packs of Old Milwaukee, which he was able to get at an incredible price because the liquor store was dumping the brand, and which is best served very well chilled, and throws open the refrigerator door, he finds a full house.

 Compromises have to be made.  The game is already in the third inning, so three-four cans should do it. Eight cans can be set on top of the fridge for the time being.  And you know, that square blue container is just about two cans long on each side.  What could it hurt for it to sit on the kitchen table for an hour or two? 

 Who ever expects extra innings or a rain delay, and especially who expects both?  And who expects that when making tuna salad, something which even I know can go bad quickly, the gatherer wouldn’t use a transparent rather than an opaque blue container so that the hunter could see what was inside and maybe choose something else to displace to make room for the Old Milwaukee?    

 Anyway in the excitement of the thrilling extra-inning victory, and the couple celebratory more beers, and the nap that ensued, perhaps that blue container remained on the kitchen table too long, which it wouldn’t have had I known it contained tuna salad, which I would have known had it been in a proper transparent container.  

 And you know, she’s always talking about losing weight, and she was fit as a fiddle just a couple days after the unpleasantness.  So I don’t know why she makes such a big production about it.

 But she does.  Every time we have a little disagreement about anything the tuna salad incident comes up.  There’s no point in interrupting her, the story will be told.  The best thing is to play along, like I’m agreeing to what she is saying, almost like the two of us are discussing some third person.

 And this is not so unfortunate because this will give that maddeningly slow barmaid time to make her lackadaisical way to our end of the bar.  So all in all things are going well. 

 “I thought I would die,” she finishes, and fixes me with that piercing look.   

 “First of all,” I begin, raising my finger to illustrate that this will be the first of many points that I will raise in my defense, and begin with the folly of placing a perishable food in an opaque container, and before I even get to the part of so many transparent ones being right at hand, to my astonishment the barmaid has slipped a new beer in front of me.

 This is the purest serendipity.  There is no way that I would have ordered a beer at this sensitive point in our conversation, but the barmaid has clearly mistaken my enumeration of points for that very act.

 And so there it is, the tenth beer, or the twelfth if Jenn’s probably slanted calculations are accurate. But the point is it is the cornerstone, the acme of the evening, the pathway to fulfillment.  Oh, there will probably be some unpleasantness from Jenn, but I will be able to deal with this from the pleasantness of a comfortable barstool with my hand tightly wrapped around the cool base of the capstone beer. 

 And actually this is the best way for this little spat to proceed.  Were I irritable from being cut short, then I might speak sharp words to Jenn.

 This would be unforgivable.  This woman had this very evening, spurning my offer of help, prepared me an excellent meal.  To repay that kindness with wounding words would be most unfair.  How much better it was then for me to be ensconced and enbeered and kindly disposed to deal with the situation.

 So this was all for the best.  But then right at this point when all was going well with the world, as I was pushing my money towards the bar, I realized that I only had three dollar bills.  I was a dollar short.  Two options came immediately to mind.

 The first was the quick nod to Jenn accompanied by a sheepish look, my eyes darting from where the dollar was missing to Jenn’s purse.  No, that had best be discarded.

 The second was finessing the barmaid.  It was only a lousy buck after all, and hadn’t I enlivened her evening with my enchanting conversation?  Hadn’t I enhanced my volume so that she could partake of it?  Yes, this would almost surely work.  I shoved the three bills towards her with a little complicit shrug, imploring eyes, and that sheepish look which always works so well with women.

 And yet it doesn’t work.  “That will be another dollar,” she says, and worse yet she does not relinquish her firm grip on the glass.

 It is standing there right before me.  Right before me.  And yet for want of a buck I would be denied what fate had so clearly granted.  I give Jenn the quick nod, sheep it up to max. I even extend my hand towards the steely clasps of her purse so she won’t have to reach so far to slip me that single slim bill.

 Jenn’s a wonderful woman, a caring considerate woman who, noting that her man was immersed in the news of the day, would not disturb him by requesting his aid in a meaningless banging of pots and pans, even were he to generously offer his assistance.  Hardly would a woman of this nature deny him one paper thin, almost worthless really, scrap of paper.

 Yet she does, and worse yet she yanks the purse back off the bar and into her lap leaving my hand dangling where once the clasps had clasped, where surely behind this purely mechanical contrivance in sweet perfumed comfort resides at least one lousy buck.

 “Jenn,” I say, and then I say her name a little more softly, a little slower, a little deeper.  Women love a deep voice.  “Jenn, may I borrow a dollar?”

 “Borrow?” she asks.  “Borrow?  You mean in the sense that you will be paying me back?” 

Oh here is a sore point.  There have been times in the past when I have treated Jenn to an enchanted evening at a fine restaurant only to discover, when the bill was presented, that the previous evening when I had stopped at the bar for one quick one, but had unexpectedly met up with a lively and philosophic crowd, that the ensuing give and take, symbolized by the buying of rounds, had depleted my wallet, and I had required her financial assistance.

But this is all in the past.  We are living in the present now, this little present of just one more beer which is presently sitting before me, little bubbles rising from its base like giggles. 

And then in a second incident of serendipity the pool players are ready for another round and are being quite vocal about it and the barmaid has released her grip and then she is gone, gone down the bar, and my glass of beer is all my own, steady in my hand.

I seize the beer and the moment, take a quick quaff, and the whole thing is a fait accompli, the triumph of logic accompanied by a couple small quirks of fate, a heroic ending for my quest. 

Oh the glare from Jenn’s gimlet eyes.  There is trouble ahead, and more troubling yet is the realization that, what with all this consternation, this beer will not be the capstone anymore.  One more after it will be required.

 But with all my legerdemain, and with my current lucky streak going strong, I don’t see how this will be a problem.