divorce me, so…”
A note on why Billy and I talk the way we do, Alice and Sam too. Even though we live in Danbury, it has been pointed out that we sound like New Yorkers. This, I say, makes perfect sense. Danbury is a small city, a melting pot of many cultures with a multitude of sounds and smells, but for those of us who’ve spent our lives here it’s a different story. While Danbury is technically in the state of Connecticut, it’s home to the last several highway exits on I-84 before you hit New York State. On top of that, we’re only an eighty-minute train ride from New York City. Hey, if you came from a place whose nickname was Hat City, said nickname having been rendered meaningless when John F. Kennedy refused to wear a hat to his inauguration, thereby decimating the hat industry in general and the industry that was then the city’s pride and joy in particular, you’d be reaching for straws too. Let the rest of the state talk like they’re part of New England. In Danbury we’ve got our own agenda.
Knock, knock .
My hands are sweaty as I knock. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. This is just dinner – me, my oldest guy friend and his new bride. I tell myself being nervous is stupid but I’m relieved and maybe just a little disappointed when Billy answers the door alone.
“You made it!” he says. He says this like it should have been hard or something.
“Well, you know,” I say, “it’s not like I had to drive to a whole other town or something. What’s this, like seven minutes from my house?”
“Come in,” he says.
As I step past him into the house I think that my friend looks nervous too for some reason. I also notice that he suddenly looks older. We’re exactly the same age, but his hairline’s starting to recede a little bit, he’s got a slightly well-fed overlap of his belt that I don’t remember ever seeing before, an honest-to-God striped polo shirt with not a single stain on it, and I swear there’s a crease in his chinos. He looks, for want of a better word, married.
“Hey, I like what you’ve done to the place,” I say following him into the living room.
This is not a strictly accurate thing to say since, as far as I can tell, they haven’t done anything with the place, unless you call stacking pictures to maybe be hanged later against the walls and scattering a few pieces of lawn furniture around the center ‘doing something.’ But it is what you say when you’re invited into a new home. I mean, what’s the alternative? ‘I don’t like what you’ve done with the place’?
“This is just temporary.” He waves his hand. “Between planning the wedding, the wedding itself, the honeymoon and having to sell both our places and buy this one, we haven’t really had time to make firm decisions on the interior design.”
“You have had a busy year,” I acknowledge.
“Plus, Alice wants everything to be just perfect. She says there’s no point in rushing to buy things just to fill space. She says if we do that, we might only end up regretting our hasty purchases. And then where’ll be? We’ll either have to live among stuff we hate or sell it all and buy new all over again. Alice says it’s best to wait until we find the exact items we fall in love with.”
No doubt. It sounds like Alice says a lot. Geez, I don’t remember her being so chatty growing up.
“Well, when you’re ready to paint the place,” I say, surveying the Navajo White walls, an unimaginative color I hate when it comes to walls, “hit me up. Speaking of Alice, where…?”
“Oh, they’re in the kitchen.”
“Wait a second. ‘They’re’ – ”
And then I notice it for the first time. The sound of feminine chatter and laughter. Whenever I hear that sound of women chattering and laughing, paranoid as it may seem, it sounds to me like they’re planning something. A coup maybe.
I lower my voice, hiss at Billy. “There’s another woman in there. You and Alice aren’t trying to
A note on why Billy and I talk the way we do, Alice and Sam too. Even though we live in Danbury, it has been pointed out that we sound like New Yorkers. This, I say, makes perfect sense. Danbury is a small city, a melting pot of many cultures with a multitude of sounds and smells, but for those of us who’ve spent our lives here it’s a different story. While Danbury is technically in the state of Connecticut, it’s home to the last several highway exits on I-84 before you hit New York State. On top of that, we’re only an eighty-minute train ride from New York City. Hey, if you came from a place whose nickname was Hat City, said nickname having been rendered meaningless when John F. Kennedy refused to wear a hat to his inauguration, thereby decimating the hat industry in general and the industry that was then the city’s pride and joy in particular, you’d be reaching for straws too. Let the rest of the state talk like they’re part of New England. In Danbury we’ve got our own agenda.
Knock, knock .
My hands are sweaty as I knock. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. This is just dinner – me, my oldest guy friend and his new bride. I tell myself being nervous is stupid but I’m relieved and maybe just a little disappointed when Billy answers the door alone.
“You made it!” he says. He says this like it should have been hard or something.
“Well, you know,” I say, “it’s not like I had to drive to a whole other town or something. What’s this, like seven minutes from my house?”
“Come in,” he says.
As I step past him into the house I think that my friend looks nervous too for some reason. I also notice that he suddenly looks older. We’re exactly the same age, but his hairline’s starting to recede a little bit, he’s got a slightly well-fed overlap of his belt that I don’t remember ever seeing before, an honest-to-God striped polo shirt with not a single stain on it, and I swear there’s a crease in his chinos. He looks, for want of a better word, married.
“Hey, I like what you’ve done to the place,” I say following him into the living room.
This is not a strictly accurate thing to say since, as far as I can tell, they haven’t done anything with the place, unless you call stacking pictures to maybe be hanged later against the walls and scattering a few pieces of lawn furniture around the center ‘doing something.’ But it is what you say when you’re invited into a new home. I mean, what’s the alternative? ‘I don’t like what you’ve done with the place’?
“This is just temporary.” He waves his hand. “Between planning the wedding, the wedding itself, the honeymoon and having to sell both our places and buy this one, we haven’t really had time to make firm decisions on the interior design.”
“You have had a busy year,” I acknowledge.
“Plus, Alice wants everything to be just perfect. She says there’s no point in rushing to buy things just to fill space. She says if we do that, we might only end up regretting our hasty purchases. And then where’ll be? We’ll either have to live among stuff we hate or sell it all and buy new all over again. Alice says it’s best to wait until we find the exact items we fall in love with.”
No doubt. It sounds like Alice says a lot. Geez, I don’t remember her being so chatty growing up.
“Well, when you’re ready to paint the place,” I say, surveying the Navajo White walls, an unimaginative color I hate when it comes to walls, “hit me up. Speaking of Alice, where…?”
“Oh, they’re in the kitchen.”
“Wait a second. ‘They’re’ – ”
And then I notice it for the first time. The sound of feminine chatter and laughter. Whenever I hear that sound of women chattering and laughing, paranoid as it may seem, it sounds to me like they’re planning something. A coup maybe.
I lower my voice, hiss at Billy. “There’s another woman in there. You and Alice aren’t trying to
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