It Won't Always Be This Great by Peter Mehlman

Author:Peter Mehlman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: comedy, farse, Mehlman, jewish, New York
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Published: 2014-08-05T15:07:05+00:00

IX.

Driving home, we stopped at a light. It was about one o’clock. I know because I had WINS playing low on the radio and, at the top of the hour, they led with an item about the cloned dog that bit off the little kid’s finger. It was the report saying how the local pet shelter had finally been green-lighted to put the dog down until, at the last second, two teenaged Latino kids came forward to adopt it. As you know, the guy at the shelter suspected the kids were gangbangers, so the kids called a lawyer, who called another lawyer, who called a third lawyer, and that’s when everything was put on hold until a judge decided what would be best for the dog: Latinos or death. I remember thinking, Fucking case will probably wind up in the Supreme Court. The kid’s pinkie will have grown back by the time those embalmed judges make a decision.

At the end of the report, I caught the correspondent say, “Reporting from Hilton Head, South Carolina, I’m . . .” And it crossed my mind then that Clonegate was happening in your neck of the woods but, you know, so what? I just shook my head and was about to tell Alyse I’d been following this dog story, when I saw that she’d fallen asleep. She looked good in the red of the stoplight—sweet, you know? But, as I looked at her, I realized that not all of the red was from the traffic light. Looking around, I found that, from the headlight of a SUV waiting across from us, there was this laser beam that had zoomed in on her face as she slept in the passenger seat, all curled up—her mouth was even hanging open and a droplet of spittle was shining on her lip. I just froze for a minute. This girl I’d spun my entire adult life around was ambushed by a halogen spotlight at the most unattractive moment of her life and I swear, she just looked so goddamn beautiful, I got choked up. That was really big for me, just being in that moment and knowing I was feeling something I was supposed to feel.

Shit. I mean, don’t you think that, for most guys our age, the deepest feeling of love we feel anymore is, I don’t know, the love we feel for someone who pulls out just when we really need a parking spot?

Did I mention that I drive a Saab station wagon now? I like it. It’s a non-statement car. I don’t need to have a car that says something about me. I’ll talk. Let the fucking car shut up and drive.

Anyway, that moment in the car with Alyse sleeping is a moment I go back to a lot now. It steadies me, tells me I’m kind of emotionally healthy. Or, at least, emotionally intact. In a weird way, that moment for me has become something like the one when I saw Jenji’s nipple at the pool—the fifty-year-old’s version.

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