Alternate Addiction

Sally gave Harry a dirty look, again, and muttered, “O for Pete’s glory!” while shaking her head as if suddenly laced with random cobwebs.

“O husband of mine, dear husband, what, pray tell, is the fascination?”

Harry lowed as if imitating a far off foghorn and peered ever so tentatively above the edge of the newspaper containing his newfound numerical interest, namely a Sudoku puzzle.

“What’s that you say, dear?” Harry piped as if garlic lay nudging his windpipe.

Sally threw up her arms and gave her cropped blonde hair a shake, yet it moved very little.

“The fascination, husband, the fascination with these puzzles?”  Sally got beside herself with greater resolve and pique.

“Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?  Addiction is not a virtue, you know!”

Harry hummed a hum as if disappearing down some long and forgotten tunnel, then seemed to come back to the reality of his marriage as well as essential common courtesy.

“O, yes dear, well you see, these number puzzles are just the most amazing things!  You see, there nine blocks in all, with three groups of three and you put in the numbers one through nine...”

“Yes, yes, you explained that before,” Sally cut in, standing like a blonde sword with short hair and white teeth and piercing eyes.

“I know what Sudoku is and I am familiar with the technicalities, dear husband.  But the point here is that you are overdoing it!  Even the children find it irritating!

“They do?”  Harry asked like someone who had taken half the meatloaf at a dinner party while there were still guests to be served, yet remained utterly dumbfounded at all the incredulous looks.

“Yes, they do.  They wonder why their father is, “far off,” as both of them have put it to me--they are indeed irritated, and quite frankly, they are worried.”

Harry tried staying in the moment of the discussion, but slipped as his eyes dropped back to the puzzle at hand, and began his mental calculations of filling a row from one to nine or a 'three by three' quadrant without repeating a number.  Sally noticed, felt her blood pressure rise in her pretty five foot four frame, and closed in on her husband to where she rapped her knuckles on his thinning pate and uttered, “Hello!”

“Now, you don’t want you days to be numbered, do you?”  Sally said in a voice both playful and serious.  It was effective enough to finally get Harry to set the folded newspaper on the end table.

Harry Laughed.  “No, you are right, I do not want my days to be numbered,” Harry said slowly and evenly. 

He got up, gave Sally a kiss and asked, “Where are the kids now?”

They’re both in their rooms doing their homework.

Harry nodded to his wife but then hesitated and looked back at the paper on the end table.

Sally noticed and chided, “No, no, no!” as if verbally swatting her husband with a rolled up newspaper.

“O the addiction!  My, O my, the addiction!”  Harry issued the words as if auditioning for some Shakespearean outdoor art’s festival.

Sally guffawed and gave her husband a warm smile.  Their eyes met.  Harry paused and breathed deep, as did Sally.  They embraced, staggered in unison bumping the table and sending the paper containing the Sudoku puzzle to the floor where it wedged itself between the baseboard and base of the table.

Sudoku took a well-deserved back seat as the couple retired to the bedroom in horizontal bliss, and even Robert Palmer’s, Addicted to Love, played at one point during the evening's delight.


603 Words
Writer’s Cramp
July 28, 2014


(Addicted to Love is a song by English rock singer Robert Palmer released in 1986.)