He knew why he’d said it: he’d thought it was funny. But remorse set in, as it did for Ray, quickly, on little cat feet, and smelling like little cat breath.
Audrey had been inspired the other evening and got out of bed just as the two of them were getting into it (not the bed). She’d said, probably pushing some hair out of her face – though Ray didn’t know because it was dark – that she wanted to try something new.
“You’re going to clean the house?” Ray said, and regretted it immediately, not because Audrey couldn’t take a joke, but because the joke sounded like someone else might have said it. For the next 48 hours Ray tried to narrow it down to certain comedians or people in his acquaintance. Finally, he determined that if someone else hadn’t already said it, someone famous would say it very, very soon, and imbue it with his special crowd-pleasing style, and Ray would be left nothing.
Perhaps anticipating this, Ray was petrified when Audrey came back into the bedroom.
“Turn over on your stomach,” she told him. Ray felt his whole body clench, folds of skin grabbing onto other folds of skin, the way a hamster will carry fistfuls of sawdust with him when you pick him up by his eye. Ray did as he was told because he didn’t want to offend her. He wanted to encourage adventuresome behavior. Still, he was scared as hell that she would begin putting things up his ass, the result of some overheard cafeteria conversation or the advice of some sassy overweight friend from Brooklyn he knew she didn’t have. First would come a finger, and then a broom handle, and then a taxiing Boeing 757. When would it stop? Soon, so many things would be up his ass that there’d be no room left for him.
This relationship must go forward, Ray thought, chewing the pillow, so I will make the ultimate sacrifice, despite the fact that that part of him had never even seen direct sunlight, only the reflected kind, like Plato.
But nothing like that happened.
It was something else. Something not horrible at all. She dumped a canister of Lincoln Logs on his back and built a model of a futuristic YMCA, using every log in there. Audrey’s talent was in convincing Ray she’d done this, because there were no mirrors in the room for him to check her work. As the logs depressed him further into the bed, he thought he could really feel the indoor track, the locker room, and the sauna. He could feel the limited parking outside. He could feel neighborhood kids getting a second chance through basketball and boxing. Audrey had done all this.
Audrey kept surprising him, so Ray had to continually update his Audrey database with new fields. Now he could perform additional sorts on Audrey Who Builds Things On My Back and Audrey Who Appears As If She’s About To Put Things Up My Ass. Wonderful new things to think about.
Later, he said: “I thought you were going to put things up my ass” and she said: “I never, ever will.”
He wondered if she’d ever clean the house.
See also: “I inserted a thumb and she perked up immediately“
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