Call Me Harry

“Don’t forget!” she said.

Harry waved over his shoulder.

“I mean it, Harry! Don’t come back without it! We’re having chilidogs!”

Harry turned just as his hand reached the car-door. He studied Helen on her knees in the garden wearing her usual wide brimmed hat. The morning was already hot, and his wife looked as withered as the tomatoes she tended. She wiped her forehead with a gardening-gloved hand and sat back on her haunches, her dark eyes steady and cold looking back.

“Without what?” he asked himself, pausing for a moment.

What had they been talking about...? Don’t come home late. You tell that little slut, no raise! Chilidogs for dinner. The can-opener’s gone, disappeared from the face of the…

“Yeah, right, the can-opener,” Harry said opening the car door quickly now and sliding onto the blazing hot plastic seat as more frigid words came from the front garden:

“You’re going to forget. Should I write it down? Can you remember this one thing?”

Slam went the car door. Turn of the key and the old Buick roared to life. On went the air-conditioner. On went the radio which he lowered to hear his wife saying something about forgetting his head if it wasn’t attached to his neck.

He shot backwards out the driveway to the street where the thin, shade-less trees looked close to dead in the desert heat.

Harry knew his wife was waving to stop him and he drove away tooting the horn. In the rearview mirror he saw her throw her gloves after the car.

He cranked the radio and tapped the steering-wheel and imagined Monica’s big blue eyes when she read the new numbers on her payroll check.

“You’re the best, Mr. Houser!” she’ll probably say.

“Call me, Harry,” he’ll remind her.

299 words