Marge

She had great big old arms like maybe your grandma had, the kind with fleshy skin hanging off the back, maybe it scared you when you were little but as you grew up and angrily faced puberty with a fist on your hip you came to love that sack of skin and secretly wished you would never grow old but might someday have that flap to hug your grandkids with anyway. Well Marge's arms weren't all happy and fun and warm cookies and spicy chicken chili on a February Sunday at grandma's. Marge's skin was hairy and had veins in it and all manner of freckles and moles and sunspots and liver spots and bruises and needle tracks cause she was a diabetic.

Marge had a teeny tiny little man husband, he was named something innocuous and appropriate but Marge called him Henny and beat him everyday, cause she loved him. She beat that boy, beat him black and blue till he whimpered like a puppy and looked up at her with those big brown bruised blackened eyes as if begging for no more pain but just a few more raps on his noggin for comfort, for love. She beat that boy, hit him as hard as her flappy-skinned arms could, and once she kicked him, and once she threw a frying pan at him because he looked at that moment to be the sort of person that a great big old maydene of a marge oughta throw a frying pan at. Beaned him good, too, and down he went, whimpering and moaning and bleeding like some kind of stupid puppy dog that wets itself whenever the mailman honks his horn.

Marge never had sex. Never had it. Not never like your little brother never got to go into your room and mess up your crayolas, but never like the priest never goes to the pool hall and smoke cigars. Maybe tried it. Maybe liked it. Maybe would try it again and would like it some more and make a habit out of it if he wasn't a priest. But never did it. Marge wasn't a virgin cause because only Mary was allowed that honor, but Henny better have been one because if Marge found out otherwise she'd have beat him till she died, then beat him some more, for spite, for the days ahead when she wouldn't be able to beat him, since she was going to be dead and everything.

You should have seen Marge's house. Clean as a pin, in fact a pin would be embarrassed to go in to Marge's house. That pin would hem and haw and make excuses and go right to its pin home and take a shower and clean its ears and cut its fingernails, for want to be like Marge's house. Henny worked down at the drugstore and sold lollipops to brats to buy that house, and the hoover, and the turtle wax and the feather duster from Woolworth's. But it was Marge's house by rights, and she beat that house like she beat Henny. It had a living room with tiny little chairs that no one was to sit in or Henny got a whipping, and a little couch where you could maybe relax before you gave Henny a belt yourself, and a little table with the TV guide on it in case you hadn't memorized channel 4. The kitchen was all warm and like a waiting room, and in the dining room there was real wood and the kind of meals that make you wish you'd eaten only them all your life. That way you wouldn't have to worry about other meals being better, maybe. Those meals got Henny beat plenty. The upstairs was all sterile lace and stiff cotton, and there was a bed next to a wardrobe, with clothes in it that never asked anything of anybody, honestly, just a nice sit-down every now and again and maybe a little of that Alex Trebek. The bathroom- well, nevermind the bathroom. If you are a good person you won't need to mind the bathroom.

Marge liked her books about Indians and her occasional attempts at quilting and beating Henny till he couldn't breath and that smart Canadian Trebek and writing illegible letters to her stingy sister the nun and all manner of thing's that great women her age liked, except children and babies and old time radio shows and flowers and puppy dogs and her damn husband and other old women and gossip and the library. She put up with them, sure, the way you put up with fly buzzing around your head when your sunning yourself for vitamin D, you don't want to put forth the effort, so you ignore it. Marge ignored the children and the babies, she managed to seem awfully nice at the library and the garden shows, and no one knew she could burn the best cookies in the county and of course no one knew that she cracked Henny's ribs once and gave him a concussion and once came within a wig-hair of severing his toes with a butcher knife, on sale at the K-Mart for only five dollars and sixteen cents.

Marge's day went something like this. Wake up. Rape Henny awake, hit him in the ass with something handy, like a lamp or the stick she kept near her bed for that reason. Bustle into her houseclothes,. put her long gray dead dishwater dead old nasty smooth dead clean gray hair into a bun, walk down to the kitchen. Eggs and bacon and toast and juice for Henny, some oatmeal and gnaw on a bagel for her. Give Henny a kiss on the cheek, send him to the drugstore, go through his mail and rip up anything with his name on it like credit card applications and advertisement circulars and letters from his poor dead mother. Clean the house, top to bottom, every dust mote, every speck, every germ and potential smudge eradicated with the delicious pleasure of a well seasoned executioner finally getting a taste for killing children. Make Henny's lunch, soup and something with the crust cut off, feed it to him when he got home, glare at him, threaten with the stick. Throw forks at him maybe. See him back to work, take a little nap, think very awful and sinful thoughts. Wake up, laundry or baking or a call to the electricity to complain of unfair prices and monopolies. Maybe the library or garden, maybe visit the newlyweds new baby, maybe kick a puppy on the way home. Lurk in the hall for Henny, really give it to him when he arrived from work, right in the solar plexus, right in the family jewels, poke him in the eye dump the umbrella stand on his foot knock him over the head with something handy like a picture of Jesus on the mantle or maybe a log. Time for another lie down with a cool rag on her head. Next comes dinner, something with gravy and onions. Throw dishes at Henny, pour gravy on his head. Off to bed, rape the poor man asleep, think awful and wicked thoughts, pray to her lord, then asleep herself. That was Marge's day. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes they did special things on special occasions. The occasional anniversary at Gaston's Room. Wine made poor Margie just silly and gave her a wicked little grin, and, thank God, for Henny, she usually fell asleep too. Sometimes they visited friends, nice older people that Marge really despised, I mean really hated, I mean with the kind of passion that puts stakes in peoples eyes. Compliment them on their furniture, ask for another delicious cookie. Sometimes they drove to a relative's for the weekend. Poor Henny. He hardly got it between the eyes on those weekends. The point is they weren't sterile, they weren't in a rut. They were so much not in a rut that they were in a rut of being not in a rut.

Marge loved: God, her damn sister, Henny's sweet dead mother, Henny, Alex Trebek, her curtains from London, herself, the idea she might be one of those women that Dickens or Austen or Flaubert may have written about, and a nice man she met on a train when she was very young, in that order. You already know what she liked, that she liked more things than she loved, like not flowers and not babies and so on. She disliked several more things even, and in general was a content person.

Marge was, altogether, the kind of woman that if you met her on the street you would begin to wonder about mankind and how mankind has come so far that mankind would build actual things called streets and then you would trace the evolution of the motorcar back in your mind and dwell on carriages and horses and primitive mankind and primitive means of transportation and then if you were the type to commit murders you would probably kill her. Most likely with an ax. Maybe a dull one.

John Smith

John Smith.

John motherfucking Smith.

Look at John. Will you look at him? Will you just look at him, John, John Smith, John mofo Smith? He's got clean white teeth, strong teeth, good teeth that never needed braces, never need tartar control Crest, never need Pearl Drops. He's got a square chin, the kind of chin that rides horses, pitches horseshoes. You can just imagine John mofo Smith's chin sitting on a porch rail in shirtsleeves in August in Montana in the evening smoking a Marlboro slowly and sipping a Coors beer. John's got cheekbones. John's eyes squint wisdom over his cheeks and glitter at night and will sparkle impishly when he's an old man. They're blue.

Look at John's skin. John has transcended what it means to be beautiful, to be human, with his skin. It is tanned and brown and glows like a pregnant woman glows. Manly John's skin has gotten the kind of tan that no sun or booth or cream can give a man; John's muscle's beneath his skin is tan and his blood is tan and his bones are tan too. John's perfect beige brown hint of red suggestion of orange reference to yellow tan skin is wrapped around his muscles and bones and veins of blood and John wouldn't be anything without his skin and his skin would be nothing without John.

John wears jeans like men were meant to wear jeans. Look at John's jeans. When frat boys see John wearing jeans that remove their own jeans and wear dockers or they quit the frat and go to work in a mine for three years and then die of lung cancer, happy in their jeans. John's jeans aren't the kind of jeans liberated women who are just like men wear. When liberated women who are just like men see John in his jeans they take off their jeans and put on a skirt and gain lots of weight and fall in love with Spanish club singers like Julio Iglesias and Pedro Santos. You can be pretty sure John was born with those jeans on, that the doctor gave John his first swat in those jeans. Those jeans will keep John walking around the ranch a long time after he's dead. Those jeans will have whole conversations with men in trucks and on horses and deep inside construction sights. They're blue like John's eyes, creased like John's legs, long and straight. Those jeans discovered gold, tamed the first wild stallion three thousand years ago on China, they even took a bullet at the Alamo and kept Texas alive for another fifty years. They're good jeans. John's whole body is made out of denim.

John's boots. They have never run a step in their life. They're made out of real cow hide, honest bull leather, animal rights activists with skinny cigarettes eating leaves and bark sitting in New York in skinny buildings taller than the original tower of Babel built by intellectual homosexuals with degrees in child psychology even think that John's boots should be made out of honest animal skin. They approve. Everyone approves of John's boots. A young punk with pubic hair on his chin once burped in front of a lady and John Smith had to kick his ass and the young punk nodded through his nose ring and knew it was good and loved John a little bit more for kicking his ass with those damn fine boots. They're detailed in red thread and black thread, little curlicues and pigeon wings, the bootstyle way, and in a million years archaeologists and anthropologists and paleontologists and maybe even reborn phrenologists will nod their heads when they discover John's boots sitting on a rock gazing at the setting sun and smoking a Marlboro, sipping a Coors beer, they'll decipher the language of the curlicues and write it down in books and the country will learn to love the fear of God again. They got dirt on 'em and dust and a little shit but not on the heel and sweat cause a man that don't sweat is a man that don't breath.

John likes to sit in his truck and listen to his radio stations, maybe sings along, maybe doesn't, depends on the mood, depends on the way sun sits on the sky or how blue the sky is or how many clouds are skating around in it. John's got a cell phone in his truck and beeper and one of them satellite things that'll tell a man his longitude and latitude and a laptop computer with a shitload of memory and a mother of a mother board and more ram than a man can stand. John sits in his truck and watches the sun come up while he smokes his Marlboros and waits for the modem to get done sucking web pages of the night so John can read them and and send e-mail to the company saying I did a damn fine job now pay me.

The road is John's living room floor. Sometimes he sets himself by the TV for days at a time, the air molecules in his tires getting up a union and filing past the rubber atoms in his tires one by one until he gets an itch for Montana and peels out. Then the rust flecks on his banged up truck commit suicide into the wind, his engine turns itself over and washes itself with heat and oil, the headlights blink out two days or two weeks if he takes the long route. If it's dark and it's late and John's been coding for a few weeks and driving for a few days and eating fast food barbecued lizard he just goes to sleep while he drives down the highway, his hallway, smoking a Marlboro and sipping a Coors beer and dreaming about big fat women who love to listen to Julio Iglesias and Gorge Abrillo. John smiles in his dreams, winks at them great big beautiful women, and they dance a slow dance in between the slats on the back of his fucked up truck and then give each other a quick kiss before John Smith wakes up outside of Billings, his jeans shining in the morning sun, his laptop computer beeping and farting and whining to get back on www.hooters.com.

John loves chili, spicy, but not too spicy, John never needed to compensate for any inadequacies behind his zipper with that fire brand chili nonsense. Just spicy enough to wake up the nicotine-fried buds. Cracker's of course, because if the fork don't stand up it ain't chili it's soup. John loves big fat juicy steaks served so rare that the cow is still complaining. Just back it up and hand me a lighter and a knife, as his daddy used to say. He likes Marlboro's, of course, and Coors beer, but any beer will do, even that wussy beer, hell, sometimes you have to kick some hackerboy's ass into a tavern and he whines and moans and buys you lemon beers and beers made out of bee guts and beers filtered through a Buddhists left sock and you have to drink it if you want the URL to the latest on the dodgem virus. John hasn't acquired a taste for it, he's just good at finding the hops cause that's what beer is all about, anyway. An occasional whiskey. A rye but never scotch, whiskey's for sipping, not pickling your attitude, preserve it for your other cigar chomping art fart friends and their cancerous wives who would just as soon sneeze at you as talk to you, but who deep down want to eat Doritoes and play Nintendo and listen to Julio and Carlos. He likes apple pie, burnt, with ice cream, runny. He likes fried chicken buy he peels off the tan skin and sets it in a pile next to the biscuit and the corn on the cob. He'll try the occasional toot of cocaine, the occasional drag of Fancy Nancy's Wicked Indian Weed. John Smith calls them Native Americans but that weed is pure Indian. John tolerates ketchup on his fries, mayonnaise on his burgers, dressing on his salads, but no bacon bits, they get in between a man's teeth and make him curse and his eyes water and his nose runs and he's fit to finger his molars even when he's in the loo replenishing the drought. That can be embarrassing.

Beside's eating and kicking ass and maybe a two step with some nice plump mama in a canteen, John loves his truck, his fucked up truck. That truck is fucked up. Fucked up good. Got bullet holes in it and rust spots and rust holes, peeling paint, bald tires, the bed sags and the roof is dented and the engine has been known to make mechanics break into tears like baby. But it runs. It's got a.m. and a cigarette lighter and the speedometer is close enough and the odometer is within the correct order of magnitude more or less. John's fucked up rust bucket piece of shit truck has been in every state of the union, every country that touches Mexico, every single one of the providences in Canada, and has killed more possum than a rube could eat in a lifetime. John has had sex in that truck, toes curling, chest heaving, heart taking off to do laps around the mountains, the kind of sex that will ruin your thighs for life, puts lines on your ass, twists your back into weird shapes, makes you wish you could come back in the next life as a rabbit or a hamster, the kind of sex that starts races. He's coded award winning pages in that truck, built up entire empires of corporate web design in that truck, put together entire libraries of internet URL knowledge in that funky old falling apart bucket of bolts farts when you start it shimmy at sixty shake at seventy remember eighty as a fond memory from the late fourteenth century truck. Motherfucking John Smith loves that truck and maybe would even have sex with that truck if it were a hefty lady with a nice dress on.

But John's not all happiness and good weather. For example. John will kick your ass if you're rude to a lady. Don't matter if she is the grand prize bitch at the state wide annual naggathon, he will put his boot so far up your ass you'll have a taste of toe for a month. He does not tolerate cruelty to his truck. Don't lean on it, don't spit on it, don't look in the windows at his hardware or John and you will come to an understanding, a Tex-Mex understanding, one that involves your face and your ass and their close proximity. John hates hackerboys who code pages in a few hours when a better job takes three days. They put shit on the web, warp young minds looking for research on the armadillo for their third grade report, and besides, corporate dipshits in three piece suits with bad racquetball backhands expect everyone to code up five hour crap as a result cause that means less pay. Fuck that, as John's African-American friend who is a Mormon bishop will sometimes say.

John ain't religious himself and he sure don't believe in destiny and fate and karma and kismet and ka and all them other k words that mean it ain't all in your control. He's not a rebel. He's just John Smith, John motherfucking Smith, and he goes his way and that's they way it is. Sometimes he does what he wants. Sometimes he does what he doesn't want. But he always does it, whatever it is, and fate and destiny can kiss his well-tanned ass right through his dusty blue jeans. As a matter of fact, lately John's been getting a hankering for Chinese food. Noodles in sauce, crispy duck and them fried rolls with the vegetables inside. He's been eating in this place or that one, the buffet, the menu, the daily special. Sometimes it's good. One waitress was a little on the well-proportioned side and John later showed her his Netscape bookmarks in his truck and that was good, sharing a Marlboro and a Coors beer afterwards. But his hankering hasn't gone away yet. Maybe it'll become part of his personality. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe John will get the gun out form under the seat of his truck tomorrow and put a fist sized hole through his skull on the I-70 between Lymon and Denver.

Roger

He wouldn't hold doors for old women, and he always took the last can of ravioli at the supermarket, or screwed up the gumball machine with the wrong size coin. Roger took too goddamned long on the crosswalks, or somehow got in front of you at the library and asked too many goddamned questions, and often farted in swimming pools. On the bus he listened to your conversations and made comments to himself. Like you're talking to your buddy about the state of your affairs at work and how your boss is a prick and you can't stand the foreman who has really bad breath and when they hell are they going to get those new helmets, anyway? These yellow pieces of crap are pulling the hairs right out of your head! For the love of God! And then out of the corner of your eye you would catch Roger, nodding his head, pretending not to look at you, and under his breath he would say, "Laborers." What a dick! Roger was a real waste of bum-wipe and everyone who crossed his path wished they'd or he'd staid home with the cats.

But when he was all alone, Roger was the nicest guy you would ever meet. He was charming and sweet and considerate. He was all pleases and thankyous and how do you do's, he always put the seat down on the toilet, always washed his hands, never channel surfed too fast, buttered your toast just they way you liked it. If you could talk to Roger when he was by himself he would nod and encourage you, if you were having a bad day he would be concerned and try to find out what was bothering you. Say your mother was ill and she needed to take her medication but she was being a real B-word of a mother and refusing because, she said, it made her dizzy. And say Roger is the only one in the room when you tell him this. Well. John would say that's too bad and pat your hand, even though you're not there, and he would say I know, I know, and he would make you feel okay without making your mother look like a real B-word- you could tell he respected both you and her at the same time. But if you were both together in a doctor's office, you for bunions and Roger for some ailment that assholes get, he would shake his head like you were an idiot and without even saying anything, just by moving his eyebrows around in a certain way, he'd make you think your mom wasn't worth the paper that she used every afternoon at 2:30, right after The Young and The, if you know what I mean.

So that was the deal with Roger. In public he had stains on his shirt and he belched at babies, but in private he wore a very nice tie and always cleaned his plate. If he was alone he kept his shoes on and never picked his teeth, but as soon as anyone entered the room he picked his nose and cursed at the weatherman. Maybe Roger should get pet, you say, and learn to transfer that wonderfulness when alone onto another, and work his way up to the human public. But that wouldn't work, Roger knew. He would be rude to the cat too, give it a dumb name like Morgan Freeman or Dancing Plaid or Cream. Feed it the same flavor of Friskies everyday. Only half clean its litterbox.

And Roger knew he suffered a split life, and it pained him. He felt bad. He didn't have any skills like being a doctor or a painter or a message therapist. He couldn't spell very well and was only good at easy fractions in math. Obviously he was no leader. He wasn't really handsome or really ugly, so Mr. America or the Carnival was out. He didn't read a lot or shoot guns or make sculptures out of staples. He was pretty boring, which added to his butt-wipeness in public and added to his soothing wonderfulness when alone. And Roger knew all this, and it didn't make him happy. His ma and pa were dead, didn't have any family, wasn't going to get married anytime soon, and so he thought, what's the point? Why not just end it all? Why not slit the wrists or pop the pills or pull the trigger or wash the radio, right? And since he was alone when he thought it up, he couldn't really disagree with himself. So he decided to do it.

But he was an asshole in the end, because he did it with the razor and the wrist, and he did it in the bathroom at Sung Lee's, and he did it right in the middle of the rush.

Sung Lee's

Marge was in a mood. She got in them sometimes. Not often enough to comment on them, and call them, "her moods," but not only once, so it wasn't a Life Event, either. Maybe it was an age thing, or a planet getting aligned with another planet thing., She woke up and her eyes weren't even open, but she opened them anyway. It was exactly three minutes before she always woke up. She wasn't tired, she was just bored. She sort of shrugged her shoulders and laid her hand on the lamp and thought about giving Henny a good one to the rump a little early, stir things up, maybe he was getting to expect it, but when she lifted the lamp it was like, eh, why bother? She sat it back down and got dressed.

She got dressed in her flowery old house dress and put her long old hair into a big old bun and nudged old Henny and wandered downstairs to fix some old eggs and old bacon and old old old orange juice. Sigh. Henny appeared in his shirt and pants and gave her a look and stuck out his bottom lip. He sat gingerly in his chair and she thought she might go tower over him and rub his eggs into his face but then she thought, eh, who cares? She gnawed on her bagel and looked at her oatmeal. Henny finished most of his breakfast except for the parts that weren't burnt which today was a good deal of it, and looked at her again like she might pick up his leftovers and dump them down the back of his trousers. She just thought about eating the leftovers instead.

Henny put on his coat and made to leave, actually handing her an umbrella from the umbrella stand and looking at her with great big puppy dog eyes that said don't you love me anymore, Wargie? Marge looked back at him and ran her fingers over her diabetes tracks on her arm and thought about giving Henny a kiss on the cheek but halfheartedly swatted his behind instead. That seemed to content him so he left half-smiling.

Marge sat down on her divan. It squeaked, and she thought maybe what she needed was to get some of them plastic covers that made your couch squeak and made your living room smell like a showroom. Yes, that's what she needed. She stood up. She would just go upstairs and put on her shopping clothes and go get a divan cover, and she would sit on it all day and listen to it squeak and inhale that fine showroom scent. Happy, she marched back upstairs. She would buy the cover and then when Henny got home she would throw him on the couch and sit on him and beat his bald head with a stick till he passed out loving her.

Marge did what one does in a bathroom to become clean and refreshed, then she danced down the stairs and found her purse and made sure she had insulin and needles if she needed it, and then espied an impish lipstick. She grabbed it and bounced back upstairs. In her bedroom mirror she applied the stuff, and kissed the air till it was even. She looked at her reflection. She closed her eyes and thought to herself, I'm sorta foxy. She smiled and opened her eyes again, and then saw in the reflection, behind her, the unmade bed. The old unmade bed. Better make that. She turned around to it. The bed, the old bed where she been when she woke up. She halfheartedly grabbed the coverlet, sort of smoothed over her side, over Henny's side. She decided to sit down instead. Beds. Blah. It was no good. What's the point?

Eventually she wandered back downstairs and and sat on her divan in her shopping clothes and her lipstick. She stared at the TV for awhile, then turned it on and stared some more. A Cheers re-run was on. That Norm. It was the one where Cliff goes on Jeopardy and later Alex himself comes to the bar. Marge thought about getting excited and getting glad that she wore her lipstick for that nice Trebek but she stared at him and then Tic Tac Dough which was next. Feh.

Henny came home for his lunch. He didn't even moon about it, he grabbed the stick directly and handed it to her. She looked at it and stood up, went into the kitchen. She opened a can of soup and threw a spoon into the can, then took two pats of butter and dropped them on a piece of bread and folded it in half. Then she went back to her couch. While Henny ate his cold lunch she flipped around one of her books, one about the Chactaw and their ways with spiritualism. It was boring. She tried to read it upside down. Boring. She felt like a nibble so she wandered into the kitchen and caught Henny throwing forks at himself. She didn't care. He left for work. She ate a cracker.

Marge woke up on the couch. She hadn't realized she was asleep. Her face felt puffy and she looked around the dust motes that floated in reflected sunlight. She felt a little better. She decided what she need was to just get out, go for a walk, find those couch covers or fuck 'em, just move around, some how. So she moved. She put on her hat and waddled out the door and decided not to lock it. She made her way down the street.

The bus came- she got on, but there was no one to glare at. Sometimes school kids rode it to the library and she stared at them until the got quite and when they got to the library they were demure and only read books from the William Allen White list. Marge shrugged. She decided to stare at the back of the driver anyway, and she imagined pulling out his neck hairs one by one. That was better. When her stop approached she didn't bother with the bell string, she just shouted Here Driver at the exact instant when he had to start braking hard. She glared at him for braking hard like that. Good.

She got off and the sun smacked her in the face. Damn, was she hungry! The hunger welled up inside her like a volcano or a tsunami. She could eat a horse! Right there on the street. She had no idea a person could be so famished. She looked down to make sure she wasn't wasting away. No, she was still sturdy. But no wonder she'd been in a mood! She was starving to death! She needed food!

She made her way down the street, nodding at old ladies and winking at children. She was certain the hunger came off her in waves, like a smell, making everyone else famished as well. She hoped she didn't happen across any homeless people. She knew they were already hungry and she usually felt like kicking them when she saw them anyway. She might not be able to resist this time. She was starving!

A smell snuck up and smacked her on the back of the head. It was lovely. A sort of fried, salty, soy type of smell. It was beautiful, a smell that belonged in the Louvre, an inspiring smell. You could start religions with that smell. It was a smell that the pope would beatify. Saint Smell, patron of the hungry, blessed be thy nose. Marge wished she was just one big nostril. She giggled at the thought. The giggle and the smell made her shiver with delight.

It was coming from Sung Lee's, a little Chinese diner on the main street of the town, not two blocks from where Henny worked. Marge was sure it was going to be full of lunching business men and unemployed teenagers with their avant garde girlfriends and maybe a student or two. But she didn't care. She welcomed the opportunity to sit with them and share noodles. She was in a mood. She headed to the door.

A man entered before she did. His pants were tacky and his shirt was stupid and in general he gave off the air of trying to piss you off with his haircut. His timing was completely perfect. A second earlier and the door would have closed before Marge got to it, a millisecond of consideration on his part and Marge could have got the door as it closed. But instead, it slammed in her face right as she got to it. If Marge had been here on any other day she wouldn't have been there at all. But if she had been there anyway she would have ripped the door off its hinges, stalked into the restaurant, and pulled the guy's head out of his ass long enough to give it a good smack before shoving it back in further than it had been before. And then a kick to his shins if she was feeling feisty. But she was in a mood so she ignored the asshole and waded into the aroma.

God it was wonderful. The place was crowded and an absolutely beautiful Chinese woman was seating people at about hundred miles an hour and Chinese men in white were sprinting back and forth between the kitchen and the buffet. Marge had to control herself, and swallow a few times. The buffet! She could see it from the door! Noodles and rolls and suey and choy and pao, chicken and pork and beef and broccoli and shoots and mein, good God, Marge wanted to run down to the pharmacy and give Henny a good solid punch right square in his face, she was so happy at the sight of that food.

The beautiful Chinese woman raced up to her and said One Buffet? and ran off again. Marge followed her to a table not three steps from the end of the buffet, the starting end, where the white rice and the fried rice and egg drop soup sat and watched her, wondering which she'd eat first. Help Yourself, You Want Chopstick the woman said, and ran off. Marge grabbed her plate and went to the buffet.

She sat down again at her table. Her plate was piled high and Marge just about slammed her face right into the plate like the time on her birthday when she'd pushed Henny's face into the cake when he had given her that wonderful tennis watch form the pharmacy since he got an employee discount. But she held herself back. She savored the smell which assaulted her, the rice and the rangoon and the shrimp and the General Tao's and the lemon and the sweet and sour, she gazed at it, tried to see into an extra dimension, the food dimension, the place where your soul goes when it wants to feed.

She picked up her fork and was about to dig in like she never dug in before when all activity in the room stopped, and all heads looked at the front door. It was closed. Then it opened. John Smith walked in. John Motherfucking Smith. He was smoking a Marlboro and expertly spat it back over his shoulder, and everyone went back to bustling, certain in the knowledge that that cigarette flipped end over end as it fell and hit the pavement behind John's goddamned boots lit-end first, extinguishing it.

Everybody except Marge. She continued to stare. For no reason she could understand Julio Iglesias songs began to run through her head, and only the drool that was building up in her mouth distracted her enough to look away. Was it the food or the man, who knows. Her mood was on.

The absolutely stunningly beautiful Chinese woman ran by, saying Here Your Chopstick and You Sit Here, This Nice Lady. The restaurant was full and it was time to buddy up. John sat at Marge's table.

Marge took half a millisecond to moosh her lips together and make sure the lipstick was still there. It was. John nodded when the half-millisecond was up, and then leaned back in his chair, casual like. Looks like the Chinee is a matchmaker, he said He gave Marge a wink.

Marge smiled back daintily and shoved a humongous forkful of low mein into her mouth. Strands of noodles hung from her greasy lips as she chewed, and she thought she might just die.

John nodded and said, That looks pretty goddamn good, then rose from the table with his plate.

The man was wonderful, with his denim and his boots and his blue eyes and his tan that made Marge wonder if other men even had skin at all. But the food! The food was, she would whisper it to herself, very quietly as she passed a church, God love her, the food was orgasmic. Marge actually felt her toes curl. She couldn't believe what was going on in her mouth. The noodles were getting chewed up and the sauce they'd been cooked in and the bits of vegetables- Marge was going to have to chase Henny home form the pharmacy, no doubt about it.

John returned, Marge noted with some satisfaction, with a plate piled twice as high as her had been. He chewed an eggroll in half, his lips greasy and his eyes twinkling. Marge looked into his eyes as he eyed a crab rangoon. Blue like her favorite dress, the one that she sometimes wore when she and Henny had some champagne or a nice red wine. Marge and John continued to smile at each other as they went completely fucking nutso with their lunches.

After a while they both leaned back, a little bit full but with room to spare because the food was so goddamned good that they were going to get more. Marge wiped her mouth with the back of one hand and said You're not from around here.

No I'm not, ma'am, John said, wiping his own mouth with his fingers and then wiping his fingers on his jeans.

Well what brings ya? she asked, picking a bit of beef from between her tooths.

John leaned back further in his chair, crossing one boot over the other thigh, putting his hands behind his head. Damn, she was a fine piece of woman. Now there's an odd question, ma'am. Most folks ask a man where his from, first.

Marge shrugged. Well, you aren't there, are ya? You're here.

Fair enough, John replied. The food, I guess.

What? Marge asked. She had to go pee.

The food, ma'am. I had an itching for Chinee, and this was the first place I saw

Is that so? Marge wondered what it would be like to punch him in the chest.

Kind of weird name though. He smiled his great big white teeth at her. He had Julio in his head, too.

Marge bit her lip. Her lipstick was all gone. I'll be honest with you, she said. I didn't even notice the name when I came in.

So you ain't from 'round her neither, John said.

Of course I am.

John nodded. Then how come you don't know the name of this place?

Marge opened her eyes wide and her mouth a little. I would never eat in a place like this!

John smirked and smiled at her. Good God but she should see his CD player. But you're here now, he said.

Marge just frowned. She had to pee really bad, and probably needed a shot after this meal.

Sung Lee's, John said.

What? Marge smiled at him. He looks like he was born in those jeans, she thought.

Sung Lee's. That's what it's called. Most Chinee places are called Mandarin Buffet or House of Prawns or somesuch. You never see the fella's name.

Maybe it's a woman's name.

Whatever.

Marge really had to pee bad. She hadn't even touched the green tea on the table, but still, she'd even get up in the middle of Jeopardy for a pee like this. So, was it worth the trip? Marge said.

Hell yes, John thought but didn't say. I suppose so. I like them rangoons. The General's pretty good too.

Isn't it though? Marge said, smiling broadly.

Just then, amid the bustle and hustle of the diner, John's beeper went off on his hip.

What's that?

John checked his pager. Jes' my beeper. Says I got some e-mail. He winked at her.

My, aren't we a big man.

John just smiled at her for a while. Then he leaned forward. Would you like to come out to my truck, see my laptop and my e-mail?

Marge gazed into his denim-blue eyes. Let me just go to the bathroom first, she said, blushing. She'd never said bathroom in her life.

John leaned back and nodded. Yes. He couldn't remember a time when he'd invited a woman out to his truck but she had to go to the bathroom first. They all did it. He loved them for it, he guessed. Made him feel good, that they adjusted things and freshened up before taking a peek at his web pages and listened to a little Santo Del.

He stood up from the table as she did, and nodded at her hat when she sat it on the table. She had lovely locks, they were in a bun but maybe in his truck she would let her lovely silver gray white shiny wise ashen hair down. He thought about lighting a quick Marl but couldn't find an ashtray and decided to chew on his chopstick instead.

Marge went around one of those silk screens and found a hallway which led to the bathroom door. There was only the one bathroom, unisex they called it, and got their mouths washed out if they were in Marge's house. The door was locked. Marge looked at it for a while. She really wanted to see this beautiful man's truck but she wanted to pee even more. It was like a hot ball of fire in her loins and a tiny part of her that whispered to her as she passed the parish suggested that she was kind of enjoying her full bladder. Goodness. She'd have to wash her face while she was in there, too.

Damnit, this was her town, right? She would just knock, and to hell with whomever had a problem with that. She knocked just once, and stood back. She eyed the sill of the door, and saw the light inside the bathroom turn off.

So someone was definitely in there. Marge put her hands on her hips, and looked around. This was absurd. She went back to the table.

Wonderful man, he stood up again. All set? he said.

No, it was occupied.

John frowned. The tan skin on his face made lovely wrinkles when he did that. Come on, I'll get ya in there.

They walked back to the door together. Marge couldn't believe it. Henny would get an extra helping of gravy on his plate and on his head tonight.

John slammed his fist on the door, shaking it. Pinch it off sailor, he shouted, and blushed.

Marge looked at the floor.

They waited. Well dagnabit. John disappeared and returned with the excruciatingly beautiful Chinese woman. She yanked some keys from a pocket. Light Not On, she said. No One There, Lock by Accident. She had a beautiful voice. She found the key and unlocked the door.

It was dark, but the smell went straight down John's throat and tugged at his guts, He knew that smell. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that smell. Very bravely, he reached into the dark room and flipped on the switch.

Of course, there was blood everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Roger sat on the floor next to the commode, his head resting on the seat. He had two absolutely garish gashes on his wrists, and the room was painted in blood. It was pooled on the floor, all over the toilet, wiped on the walls, overflowing from the sink. He must have bled into the sink for a while, before falling down, brushing the light switch on his way. His face was completely white, almost blue it was so white.

Of course, Marge peed herself.

Of course, John Smith just curled up his nose. What kind of asshole, he said, kills himself in a locked Chinee restaurant can?

And of course, the awe-inspiringly beautiful Chinese woman just snorted in frustrated disgust. Huh. Too Busy For This. Call Police. She raced off.

John had a little bit of blood on his fingers from the light switch. He wiped it off on his jeans. Ma'am? Can I give a ride home?

Marge thought about Henny. Yes, yes of course, he would be wanting his dinner, she should get home and make his dinner. After she changed.

Ma'am?

Marge continued to not say anything. Yes, poor Henny. she'd been so mean to him. She'd make sure to beat him good and proper when he sat down to dinner. Maybe pork chops tonight.

Right this way ma'am. John led her through the restaurant. There was commotion everywhere. John decided he could pay next time, if he ever stopped by again.

He put her in his truck, and played some Manuel Lopez on the CD. That seemed to calm her down. She gave him directions, gazing out the window. At her house, she thanked him for the lift and apologized for the upholstery. He just winked at her, and said See ya later, and kind of wished it could be true.