Psycho Ex Game

Chapter 1 LISA When I went out to the driveway to pick up the paper, a Starline Tours bus pulled up. "This is Nick Blake's house," I could hear a nasal tour guide say into a primitive bus microphone. "Looks like we're in luck, folks. I believe the woman in the driveway is his girlfriend, Leona." Reflexively, I licked my forefingers and tried to remove the chunks of black crud from the corners of my eyes as I heard him lead the assorted bus simpletons in a wan greeting. "Come on, everybody . . . Let's all say good morning, and maybe she'll come talk to us. Come on over, Leona! Come say hello!!" "G'mornin', Leona!" said a bunch of people, not quite all at once. First thing in the morning I like to pretend that each new day is awash in infinite possibilities. Being stared at blithely by a busload of asymmetrically featured people did nothing to enhance this already shaky premise. Even if it had been a busful of handicapped children, I would not have acknowledged them. Well, maybe only then. "Nick around?" the driver asked. "Sorry. You missed him," I said, still looking at the ground. "He just left eight years ago." Like he would have played along had he been here. For a brief moment, I could see Nick's compact but chunky form facedown in our bed, unmovable, like a bulldog under anesthesia: his blanket kicked off, a pillow pulled tightly over his head as he angrily waved off all attempts to wake him before two in the afternoon. In response to "Nick, there's a tour bus in the driveway! Come out and say hello!," he would have screamed, "What, are you out of your fucking mind?," his black hair sticking out in all directions as though he had fallen asleep during a monsoon. "Tell them you haven't seen me in weeks. You heard I was flattened by an asphalt spreader." That would have been if he was in a good mood. If he wasn't, he would have just glared at me, too furious at being awakened to even remove his earplugs. "Everywhere you take us is either not home or dead," I heard a woman on the bus whine as I caught a distorted glimpse of myself in a hubcap, dressed in the T-shirt I'd slept in. Silly me, not remembering to dress up for paper retrieval. "Leona! Please! Can we talk with you for a minute?" the driver shouted. "My name's not Leona," I said, tripping over absolutely nothing as I sprinted back to the house, demoralized, no idea what to do with all the anger except phone in sick to work. It was ridiculous that I still let the happy bus people affect me. Though it was once a daily occurrence, the tour organizers had started losing interest a few years back. I'd been so delighted with this sign that my life was now my own again that I'd considered sending the management a bouquet of Mylar balloons that said thanks a bunch!!, thereby expressing gratitude, but in the most annoying way possible. By afternoon I'd been sitting immobile for hours, sprawled on the couch, in the room I had designated as my office, surrounded by piles of catalogs. I was wasting time circling things in red pen that I might like to buy one day. For instance, monkey candleholders, sixty-five dollars. Then wasting even more time debating with myself whether monkeys were still an iconoclastic, offbeat decorating choice or if they had now become an adorable housewife fad that would mark me as cutesy. As if what my big, dark underfurnished house needed was more whimsical pointless medium-priced crap. By evening I had put down the catalogs and begun to go through the giant shoe box of recipe cards from the seventies that I had purchased at a thrift store for two dollars the previous weekend. None of the food photos looked particularly tempting as meal suggestions, but there had been something about the enormous quantity of cards for so little money that hadMarkoe, Merrill is the author of 'Psycho Ex Game', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400060764 and ISBN 1400060761.