Laughter of the Sad

“Get in the shower!” Leslie whispered. She catapulted out of bed.

“Why? Do I smell?” I asked.

“Don't be an idiot!” she said. She was ferociously running around the bedroom picking things up.

“I'm sorry, what?” I said.

We could both hear her husband calling, “Honey?” from downstairs. I pictured him in his little bow-tie at the foot of the stairs looking up.

Leslie was grabbing clothes off the floor and throwing them under the bed. Every other second she looked at me and waved with her head, nodding me towards the bathroom. It was glorious to watch her.

She grabbed a robe off a hanger in the closet, and she grabbed it so quickly and so hard, the hanger spun around the bar about thirty times before it finally plopped off onto the closet floor. She put the robe on, a big white terrycloth one, that looked great on her with her black hair.

“Honey...?” came her husband's voice. There was no doubt he was closer now. He was coming up the stairs...

She looked at me with terror in her eyes.

“Gerald!” she said, “If he finds out...”

“If he finds out, what, Leslie?”

She began pulling me from the bed. I let her pull me. Then I was standing up and being pushed bodily toward the bathroom.

“What are you up to?” came her husband's voice.

I was standing in the shower now with the curtain pulled closed. Jim sounded like an accountant. I mean, even if I didn't already know he was an accountant I would have known he was an accountant. I would have guessed it just by the wimpy, nasal tone of his voice.

“I was about to take a shower,” I heard Leslie say. Then she giggled about something. It was her fake giggle. “Stop it!” she said, “Really, Jim, stop it.”

“What have you been doing?” he asked.

“Yoga!” Leslie said too loudly. “Stop it, really!”

“Where's your car?” he asked.

“It broke down. I had to get a lift,” she said, which was actually true.

“It did! You poor dear!” Jim said. He was such an ass.

“Stop it, Jim, really! Go downstairs, get us both a drink, let me take a shower and I'll be right there, okay? Okay Jim?”

I heard the bathroom door open and close and the lock click and the shower curtain flew back and Leslie stuck her hand in and turned on the water. It came out freezing cold and if I had screamed the way I wanted to, the jig would have been up.

Leslie held her index finger to her lips and looked at me, pleading with her eyes.

Jim knocked on the door.

“Why don't I take a shower with you, sweet-heart,” Jim was saying in that wimpy, nasal, accountant tone.

“Honey, please!” Leslie called back. “I'm tired and I had a really hard day--”

I laughed and caught myself and Leslie looked at me with such hatred I froze there in the shower with the water now too hot.

Jim knocked again on the door. A timid, lone little repetitive knuckle.

“Let me just take a quick shower,” she called to him. “I'll be right down, really. Okay, Jimbo?”

I looked at my ex-wife standing there talking through the bathroom door to the man whom she had cheated on me with five years earlier. It was now, for the first time ever, that I realized without doubt there really is a God, and that He is a just and merciful God. He loves us all, each and every last one of us. It was also becoming more and more evident the Big Guy has a wicked sense of humor.

I looked at Leslie and lip-synced, Jimbo?

“Shut up, Gerald!” she lip-synced/spat back at me. It seemed my ex-wife had completely lost her sense of humor.

She paced around the bathroom; up and back on the small white rug from the toilet to the door and back again. I dipped my head under the water flow and grabbed the shampoo.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I'm taking a shower,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Oh God!” Leslie said. She clutched her shoulders together and squeezed. Her face went into a terrible expression of something that looked like pain. Deep pain. Agonizing pain.

“Leslie,” I said, a full head of rich, girly-shampoo lather working now as I scrubbed away. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Would you let me think!” I believe she said. I couldn't really hear with the shower running.

I put my head under the water. I truly don't know if I have ever been happier
in my life as I was at this moment watching Leslie pacing up and down in the little bathroom. Toilet. Door. Toilet. Door. She seemed quite beside herself. To think I was just on my way home from work tonight, minding my own business, when I happened to look over and spot my ex-wife standing on the side of the road.

I turned off the water and reached for a towel.

“Anything yet?” I whispered.

“What?”

“Did you think of anything yet?”

“No,” she said.

There was another knock on the door.

Good old, Jimbo.

“I'll be right out,” Leslie called in a falsetto voice.

Jimbo knocked again.

I wrapped the towel around my waist and stepped around Leslie who had her face up talking against the bathroom door.

“Jim, please!” she said. “Go downstairs...”

I quietly closed the toilet lid and sat down. Something told me—as a lone knuckle continued less timidly against the bathroom door-- that this was going to be a long and wonderful night.

987 words--