Cogitor, Ergo Sum
“Promise!” she insisted.
“I’ll try. I promise. See you real soon. I better get back to work.”
He left behind him a pungent, rancid odor of grease, sweat, and tobacco.
THE MECHANIC’S VIEW OF VERA
He had often been envious of Jimmy’s luck in getting to hump a great looker like Vera. It was the kind of thing that made him hate being married. But what could he do? Put the arm on a customer? Everybody in the neighborhood knew him, and they knew his wife too. Charlene would hear about it in twenty-four hours. Jimmy, of course, would talk about it as if it was nothing. He even pretended to be disgusted at how noisy she got when excited, but he knew he’d get his friend’s tongue hanging out even more at such descriptions. Jimmy, the lucky bastard, even moved in with her! He said she wanted it that way. But he stayed with her only a couple months and split! Voluntarily left paradise, the asshole. Said she didn’t let him breathe. Bullshit. With that kind of babe who’d ever want to come up for air?
So here he was, this golden opportunity he used to cream over sitting right in his lap. But when push came to shove, all he could do was chicken out. He’d tell her something came up. Next time he saw her he’d have an excuse ready. Maybe it still could work out. Maybe some other time…
At six o’clock Vera was home. She took a long, languid shower, doused herself with her most flowery perfumes, and slipped into a lacy, translucent-white negligee of the sort she knew men had fantasies about. She checked the refrigerator for beer, puffed out the pillows on the crewel-embroidered sofa in front of the TV, arranged her own bed to look a little carelessly rumpled, and then closed all the curtains to keep as much daylight out of the apartment as possible.
In the few minutes remaining before six-thirty she wandered around aimlessly, then remembered she had forgotten to look at the mail she had tossed on the kitchen table on coming in from the hall. It was just the usual advertising. Full-color supermarket and department store brochures as big as small-town newspapers. A telephone bill. And that little card with the black-and-white photo of a child on it, and the blaring words beneath the lost angelic face: HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Her breath stopped in her throat and she clutched her left breast to still the pounding of her heart. Crumpling the card in her hand, she tossed it into the trashcan next to the refrigerator.
Six-thirty-two. Still no knock on the door. Now she knew what else she had smelled on him at Louie’s besides tobacco, grease, and sweat. Fear! She smelled it on herself, seeping up from her armpits, from her groin, not to be vanquished by all the rose gardens of Persia.
Twenty to seven and she turned up the sound of the TV in the living room. A man spoke loud and clear, phrase after earnest phrase, but his patter meant nothing to her. They were not words spoken to her.
A quarter to seven. Suddenly she remembered that she had neglected to set the alarm. She always set the alarm-for seven a.m., to be sure to be up for work the next day-as soon as she got home. She rushed into the bedroom and flicked up the alarm switch on the digital clock next to the artfully mussed up bed. She thought of daubing herself with a little more perfume but then shuddered convulsively. She would not dare glance at herself in the bathroom mirror before she felt she absolutely had to. Mindlessly, she tossed her little bag of rolls into the refrigerator. A moment later she pulled them out again, muttering “Stupid!” to herself. Talking to herself didn’t work, however, because she knew she was only playing a game.
