Nick Should Be Fun to Be With
By Diane Williams
He has a wife who might reassure him. No doubt she is often sorry for him, so she took his hand.
But for how much longer should she hold it?
She is very knowing about a few things, yet her attempts to embrace her husband ought to have worked out better.
And because she often longs to be unguarded with Nick in her nakedness, she had taken off her clothing after supper.
And in the aftermath, she had little else to say, except, “I am sorry. You don’t say that. Did you hear me?”
She cannot repursue, reuse, or reinspire her husband well, although she is as keen as any to try.
But let the two of them speak more and they discuss such topics as: the insulting compliment and the power of the lie—for them, easy-to-slide-into-subjects.
In fact their house is also a retreat that is lovely to curl up into. And in the morning, as in a happy story, the wife beats eggs for an omelet, looping up the froth with a fork in a china bowl, and listening with appreciation to the fork tines pit-patting prettily.
And the walls of their home are painted duck egg blue and today a pink geranium in a clay pot is on the dining table.
A library bookcase combines perfectly their pottery, candlesticks, and books of humor, history, current affairs, biography and fiction.
As for the wife’s periodic lack of sympathy—yes, it’s true—she has said terrible things to her husband and to others about him.
And the husband’s primary ideas more often than not are about pain and drawbacks—both combined.
So, in order to have intercourse, Nick usually enters Linda from behind, but not cheerfully enough. And his probes are not pleasurable for either one of them, but their effects linger.
Certainly there is plenty of opportunity to piece together a proper picture of the Demulemeesters. Just a moment ago, they lived, pleasingly ever after, by such a narrow margin.