“I’m proud to say that I’m an Alaskan Malamute.” He pointed at the pizza. “You’re not hungry?”
“Floyd, you know I’m not into pineapple on pizza. You should’ve brought me a meat lover’s. That’s my shit.”
“Well, you can pick the pineapple off, but I suggest you eat it, and you already know why.”
“I’m not having sex with anyone right now. I don’t want anyone but the one I can’t have.” I paused. “I must be bored to ask this. What are the traits of an Alaskan Malamute? Never heard of it.”
“Good question. And dig this. Alaskan Malamutes have natural hunting instincts. They’re independent, resourceful, and highly intelligent. They’re difficult to train but if an owner understands and keeps them motivated, a successful situation is possible. They rarely bark, but when they do, it comes out as more of a woo-woo than a bark.”
“You’re crazy, man!” I chuckled. “How many breeds did you have to go through to find that one?”
“It only took me about fifteen minutes to define my character traits. Don’t you think they fit me?”
“I have no fucking idea!”
“Well, let’s break it down. I definitely have hunting skills. I can smell desperate pussy from a mile away. I’m independent and resourceful. I’m a wealthy doctor. I’m definitely hard to train. You’re always saying how I don’t let Courtney run all over me.”
“I never suggested that you let her run all over you. I suggested that you allow her to walk beside you.”
“Yeah, whatever. As long as Courtney keeps me motivated, the next trait on the list, our marriage will be successful. And I
don’t exactly woo-woo when I bust a nut, but it’s definitely not a bark.”
I nodded my head. “Like I said, you’re crazy!”
“I’m not crazy. I’m the shit and so is my dick.”
“Keep your dick out of this conversation. If I take mine out, this entire room will go dark.”
* * *
Floyd and I joked around for most of the night. I even ended up eating some pizza—after picking the pineapple off. We downed the entire bottle of Crown Royal. There was no way that I was letting him drive intoxicated. I sent Courtney a text from my phone—so she would know that he was really with me—and included a photo of him passed out drunk on my sofa. It was a “proof of fidelity” shot since so many men would lie and say that they were with a friend when they were out trolling for pussy. This was one time when Floyd was where he claimed he would be.
A lot of women did the same thing, though. One time, one of the nurses at Sibley asked me for hotel recommendations out in Northern Virginia. When I asked her why she was trying to pay for a hotel so close to DC, she said that she needed to get lost for the weekend because her best friend was going out of town to cheat on her husband and told him that they were vacationing together.
I couldn’t decide whether it made her a good friend or a bad friend to agree to go hide out in a hotel. She said that her friend was going to foot the bill for the room, including room service, through her business account. That was an attempt to make it sound more kosher.
At the end of the day, I couldn’t think badly of her. She wasn’t cheating on her man and she was only trying to be supportive of a friend. Besides, I couldn’t talk since Floyd was cheating and I was smiling in Courtney’s face every time I saw her.
Still, it was getting to the point where women would soon not be able to talk a bunch of shit about men. They were on the brink of being at least as trifling as we were. But I couldn’t really blame them. A lot of them were simply adapting to the environment around them. They had developed an “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality. The only problem was that it meant the imminent demise of the nuclear family and it meant becoming bitter, and thus even more conniving. We were in serious trouble, though. Women used both sides of their brains while we used half of our brains and our dicks to guide us.
I couldn’t stand the thought of Jemistry back up on that stage at The Carolina Kitchen on poetry night, reciting a poem that had something to do with me and her hatred toward me. I had to keep looking for her. I had to make things right.
Chapter Eighteen
“When I say I love you, please believe it’s true. When I say forever, know I’ll never leave you. When I say good-bye, promise me you won’t cry. Cause the day I’ll be saying that would be the day I die.”
—Unknown
For the next week and a half, every day when I left work, or all day if I was off, I sat out in Jemistry’s parking lot waiting for her to go in or come out. No sign of her and no sign of Winsome. I knocked several times as well—no answer. So then I resorted to becoming a slipshod private detective and knocked on a few of her neighbors’ doors to ask if anyone had seen her. One elderly woman said that she thought she had seen Jemistry putting some trash in the outdoor dumpster “a week or so ago.”
I was so serious about it that I would bring something to eat and drink with me and make sure that I had plenty of gas to run my air-conditioning in the car as long as possible. It was extremely hot that summer and the humidity was high. One thing that I did notice was that, outside of parents or nannies bringing young infants and toddlers out to the play area, there were hardly any children between the ages of five and twelve outdoors doing anything. And if they were out there, it was because their younger siblings were on the playground. The younger kids would play under the watchful eyes of the parents and the older ones always had some kind of electronic gadget bolted to their hands. Either a handheld videogame system, a cell phone, or a tablet. It was preposterous and made me see firsthand why so many kids were overweight.
Sucking up a bunch of unhealthy calories from sodas and juices. Eating a bunch of fast food or processed, microwavable foods at home. Being too sedentary and not being forced to exercise. Sure, there were parents who still insisted that their kids play sports, but letting them sit on their asses was quickly becoming “the new normal.”
When I was a child, my parents made my sisters and me stay outside all day on the weekends, and for at least two hours after we completed our homework and dinner during the week. They didn’t care what we did, as long as it was some kind of activity. My sisters did a lot of Double Dutch, Hopscotch, and and-patting games. Or they played Mother, May I?, Red Light/Green Light, or Simon Says. My friends and I either skateboarded, rode our bicycles up, down, and around the block, or played stickball. We found something to do because there weren’t any other options. Nowadays, kids were playing high-tech video games, ruining their eyesight, encouraging migraines in the near future from looking at screens so long. They didn’t even know about the majority of the things we used to do outside.
I was sitting there shaking my head and running all of those thoughts through my mind when I heard a tap on my driver’s side window. I looked up to see a Metropolitan Police officer standing there, with the billy club that he had used to hit the window in one hand and his other hand on the latch of his gun holster. I never even saw him pull up in his cruiser, I was so busy daydreaming.