We were having this conversation yesterday morning while I was still in bed, and in the middle of it the apartment buzzer began ringing incessantly. I put several pillows over my head, but it’s no use. Hubert goes downstairs, then comes back up and says, “Get up. D.W. is here.” Instead of staying to comfort me, he goes back downstairs and makes another pot of coffee, like he’s some kind of real person (he actually takes pride in this), which I can never help but believe is a total act.
I hear some kind of commotion downstairs, and voices, and Hubert calling, “Come on, sleepyhead, come downstairs.” And then D.W.’s voice: “Get up! Get up, you lazy thing!” I therefore have no choice but to wrench my drugged and tired bones from the comfort of my bed. I go immediately (do not pass bathroom) downstairs with my hair in a mess, still wearing my silk spaghetti-strap negligee, which is all wrinkled and has tiny stains on it because I’ve basically been wearing it for four days.
Just as I enter the kitchen, I hear D.W. say, “I declare, Hubert, you get more handsome every time I see you,” which nearly sets me off, because who does D.W. think he is, acting like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind?
Hubert is dressed in a gray suit with a white oxford-cloth shirt and a yellow tie, and unless you’re actually married to him, I suppose he does look pretty amazing, pouring coffee into large mugs, smiling and making light conversation about a movie he’s seen called The Seventh Sense.
“Why didn’t I see this movie?” I ask.
He pulls me to him and puts his arm around me. “Because you were sick. Remember?”
“I wasn’t sick,” I say. “I was only pretending to be sick because I hate movie theaters.”
“That’s right,” he says, to me and not to D.W., which actually makes me feel a tiny bit good, “because you think movie theaters are filled with germs.”
“Germs and sick people,” I say.
“She’s such a princess,” D.W. says. “I always told her that if she didn’t marry you, the only other person she could have married would have been Prince Charles.”
“I’d be dead then,” I say.
“That would be a terrible tragedy. Not just for Hubert, but for the world,” D.W. says unctuously.
“I’d like to be dead. I don’t think it would be bad at all,” I say, and I can see Hubert and D.W. exchange glances.
“Besides,” I say, pouring myself a cup of coffee even though coffee is yet another one of the FORTY MILLION things in the world that makes me VOMIT, “if I hadn’t married Hubert, I would have married a movie star.”
I hand my cup of coffee cup to D.W. “Try it.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Just try it.”
D.W. and Hubert exchange glances.
“It’s coffee,” he says, and hands it back to me.
“Thank you,” I say. I cautiously take a sip. “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.”
My poor, poor husband. He ditched the European girl and got something much worse. Something crazy. Which he has to ignore.
“But you wouldn’t be happy,” Hubert says, again trading glances with D.W., “because a movie star wouldn’t love you as much as I do.”
“Well,” I say, “since you love me zero, what difference would it make?”
“Oh, come, come,” D.W. says.
“What do you know?” I ask hatefully. And I look over at Hubert and see that closed-down look has come over his face. Again. For the millionth time.
He empties the rest of his coffee in the sink and rinses his mug. “I’ve got to be going.”
“He’s always going to that stupid office,” I say casually.
“Studio,” D.W. says. “When a man is the executive producer of a hit TV show on a major network, he goes to a studio.”
Hubert kisses me on the forehead. “Bye, kiddo,” he says. “You two have fun today.”
I look at D.W. balefully.