Cute Little Faces

The penultimate installment. Thanks for reading!

Just before Halloween, Lori took me back. She called one night and said come over and I did and we ended up having some great make-up sex. It's like when your car hasn't been working and it does and driving seems like the best thing ever since you've been denied so long. I felt sad about Melody, though, because I'd been seeing her kind of regular and didn't know what to say. So I didn't say anything, just stopped calling and coming over. I felt like the biggest loser ever. We lived in a small town, and I knew she'd figure it out through the grapevine, but I knew I was wrong in not saying anything. She deserved better.

The next week, I moved some of my stuff out of the Trace, but I still had a couple of weeks on my month-to-month lease so it wasn't like there was some big hurry. And even though I loved Lori, part of me had gotten used to living on my own. I didn't like the thought of not seeing Hank every morning. I'd finally gotten used to all the weird noises in the place.

But I tried to play it straight -- no Woody's, no Mel, just work and home and looking in the want ads for a new job, submitting my resume to other schools. I made an effort to keep my clothes off the floor and to be nice to her friends, dysa all the way. Lori's beauty made me weak, but it also made me tired She drove to Ft. Worth to teach, which kept her out of the house during the week, which felt good, but during the weekends she'd decorate the house by putting pumpkin shit everywhere from the Martha Stewart K-Mart collection, and I'm thinking about my Aunt Edna who used to paint the tops of crushed beer cans and put eyes on them and hang them on the Christmas tree. They were supposed to be cute little faces, but it always looked like they were screaming children. I never thought I'd miss those ugly cans, but I do. And I miss K-Mart when it used to be a cheap place with dirty diapers in the parking lot. I thought about Melody a lot, the way she tried to fix up her small place and her little cartwheeling girl who looked just like her daddy, which was to say tall and lean and wiry. And then I'd think about how Lori looked and how much we had invested in the house and imagine that it was worth it to stay where I was.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."
Bill Gates

Cocktail Hour
Drinking Thanksgiving suggestion: deep fried turkey (this seems like an idea whose time has come)

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!