a short outtake

"I got your birthday present today," I told the Guy the other night. It had been delivered at work that morning, and I'd left early to rush home before him and wrap it in shiny silver paper. No card.

"What is it?"

"A thing," I said, vaguely.

The Guy's curiosity is rabid to the point of being incapacitating. The prospect of receiving a gift he didn't know the nature of was enough to drive him around the bend and down insanity's Lombardi Street.

"What is it? What is it? What is it?" He grabbed my arm and began jiggling in place. His eyes grew huge. This is how one can tell that Asians are excited: one suddenly discovers that they have pupils. "What is it? What is it?"

"It's a thing," I repeated more firmly, and added as an afterthought, "I don't understand why you need to know. Your birthday isn't until the 25th anyway."

"What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?"

I eyed him sourly. I had the sneaking suspicion this was presaging a trend.

He discovered the open Amazon.com box I'd used to carry home some stuff from work, and peered into it hopefully. "Is it from Amazon? Is it in here? What is it?"

"No." I wandered down the hallway towards my bedroom, leaving behind a glimpse of the Guy pawing through my belongings.

"It is," the Guy cried craftily. "I bet it is. Aha! If it isn't, what was in here?"

"Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk-and-White. Are we going out to dinner or not?"

The Guy discovered the receipt -- 'Strunk and White,' it said. 'Chicago Manual of Style,' it said -- and reluctantly tore himself away from the box, thwarted. He prowled after me.

"What is it?" was the new Guy theme song. He wailed it through the living room, out the door, down the steps, across the street, and into his car. He chanted it without pause for breath down the road, across Jefferson, and down Veteran's Way. It tumbled trippingly off his tongue while we pulled into a strip mall, took a commercial break long enough for him to quiz me about a dissolute Chinese eatery ambitiously named "King Chopstick," then rattled into play again across the parking lot to our goal. Two-year olds probably had more pitch, but he compensated with tenacity.

"You know, there's probably some streak of sadism in me that takes pleasure in this sort of thing," I remarked thoughtfully, interrupting his high-pitched mantra in front of Sizzler's.

That night, falling off the precipice into sleep, I heard him muttering to himself while he ripped the apartment to shreds. "Did she hide it in the kitchen?" Cabinets banged, the refrigerator hummed, and his voice bobbed back into earshot once more. "...not edible, it's not in the kitchen. Maybe it's in the bathroom." More cabinets banged. "--Or maybe it's in your roommate's room. That's the sort of thing you'd do, hide it in your roommate's room...."

He tip-toed ponderously off in stockinged feet.