Eunice spent the first night of the new year at Clarissa’s house, where they were both sitting on the couch in the few minutes leading up to a show by Rea Li, a stand-up comedian they both liked.
“What do you think of the way James died?”
“I think it was terrible for you; he was only thirty-three, after all, and he seemed in good health to all of us.”
“I don’t know; I can’t help feeling somehow responsible for what happened to him. If only I had known; if only I had stopped using as much salt as I did in my cooking. You knew James. You knew how much he liked to salt his mashed potatoes, his French onion soup, and his eggs.”
“I can recall that he quite liked potato chips, but please, Clarie, don’t tie yourself in knots. What do mashed potatoes have to do with anything?”
Clarissa ignored the question about the mashed potatoes. “But we would talk about the superfluous things: politics, economics, the performance of the TSX index, subsidies, history, econometrics, but never the seemingly small things that were so important: what is healthy for dinner, whether we should be taking up jogging, that sort of thing. We were communicating for sure, but we were talking about the wrong things.”
“Clarie, you know that nobody can really be blamed for his death. It was the shock of him being unemployed and you being pregnant, with him not having any idea how to provide for a future child, and you know how difficult it is to get a job.
“Maybe we need to change the subject. How was Christmas?”
“It was pretty good; I had a visit with my mom, and you know she’s getting on.”
Eunice nodded in reply.
Rea Li’s show came on. “Well, good evening, folks,” said she. “I would like to welcome you all here tonight and I would wish to start by dwelling on my dreamboy, which is to say, of course, the Prime Minister. My love for him is no dodo, and Brucie Boy, I assure you I am not going the way of Europe: I’m still here, waiting to fall into your arms. Oh, and I have an idea for saving money, if you’re out there, Brucie: instead of hiring a prostitute, why not do me for free? Please, I’m begging you! I can’t remain single forever!
“Sorry, but anyways, I just wanted to speculate idly on the election; I predict that it will go to Patrick Wakefield! Why do I believe this? The reason is, of course, that one must believe in the underdog, and Wakefield simply embodies the zeitgeist of underdogginess.”
“Meach has actually becoming quite strange lately,” said Eunice. “Would you really want that for a Prime Minister? What does ‘out, out brief candle’ mean?”
“I think what he said today speaks to me on several levels. Remember his response to the query by Andrew Heron about how he was doing? ‘Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more’. That’s sort of how I feel about my life without James,”
“How are your brother and sister doing?” asked Eunice, turning away from the television and desiring to change the subject; she thought Clarissa was much stronger than Meach, considering that she had to contend with the loss of a husband, while Meach was simply ignoring his wife, who returned the favour.
“Quite well; Jacob and Alice’s son Sean is quite the adorable little two year old, but of course only I think he’s adorable; they refer to him as ‘our little monster’, or variants thereof. Mary and Andrew are planning on having a baby, which means that mom and dad will have three grandchildren to dote upon next Christmas.”
Eunice said, “Don’t you think there’s an element of risk?”
“To What?”
“To falling in love. I mean, it’s so unpredictable; I can remember my high school sweetheart Shane; he was romantic, he wooed me, but then I found he was a drug dealer, only after virtually everyone else in the school already knew.”
“Pity,”
“I know, and then there’s always the risk that things might turn out differently from what you hope,”
“I know what you mean,” said Clarissa. “All too well.”
“Oh yeah, and then there’s pregnancy; there’s simply so much to be left to chance: will it be a boy or a girl? Will the baby turn out healthy? Will the pregnancy go as it should? By the way, I haven’t told you that I’m pregnant too,”
“Congratulations! What does Mario think?”
“He’s as pleased as can be,”
“Well, my pregnancy is coming along as it should; I’ve been eating a lot of food lately,” she said.
“I saw the large pile of dishes. What did you have?”
“I roasted a chicken, and had a salad,” said Clarissa.
“I was just wondering: how do you keep your lettuce? I mean, Mario and I simply try to eat it as fast as we can so it doesn’t go brown and stays crunchy; there are few things worse than limp lettuce,”
“Too true; I wrap them in damp paper towels; it keeps for about a week.”
The two turned back to Rea Li’s show, just as she had finished a sight gag. She went on to make comments about the American President, and dwelt significantly on his affair.
“Oops, did I say that? I meant affairs: it’s simply unbelievable; his wife is so beautiful, so gorgeous, it almost makes me a lesbian, she’s that attractive. If I had a wife like that, I would be pegging her every night, regardless of my gender,”
Eunice smiled at the more off-colour aspects of Li’s humour. “She tells it like it is, doesn’t she?”
She was telling another story. “Anyways, there’s this internet meme that’s going around, saying that Brucie’s a drug dealer; I don’t know where that story came from, and I didn’t make it up; probably a clever viral campaign by Duff. But the thing with these is that they can be just about anything, and completely ridiculous. ‘Bob feeds his kittens crack cocaine’ and stuff like that. That’s when I got the idea to start my own viral campaign; tomorrow night, and every night after that, I will do the show nude. Tell your friends! I need ratings!”
Eunice laughed at that joke; the outlandishness of it was ridiculous. After half an hour of her, Eunice bade Clarissa good night, and went back to her house again, where her attention was focussed on the monthly accounting and inventory of her convenience store, a gargantuan task which promised to take the rest of the night and the rest of the following night; she hoped Jared, the teenager she had hired just before Christmas to do the night shift, was handling things well.
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