Dean looks back to the garage doorway. The door to the house is shut, but the music inside is nonetheless audible. He grits his teeth. Two months and a day, he tells himself, but {gods above} a drink would be nice about now. A steak wouldn’t be too bad, neither, but there’s a different story. Never, Dean tells himself, will he understand vego-tarianism. Or how Grace can listen to that awful fucking music all day. Dean Martin belting out overblown love songs with that cheesy orchestra in the background. She knows he hates that shit. He’s given up so much to make her happy {two months and a day}; can’t she aim to please a little? Tête à tête[i] like? The garage smells of stale wood shavings and used motor oil. It used to be Dean’s sanctuary {two months and a day} from the music and the stupid monologues about tiddling nothing. She must be turning the stereo up louder than before. She’s trying to mind-fuck me, he thinks sourly. That’s Grace all over though, always teasing too long and too far. Didn’t she just listen to this song? Dean suspects she’s got the disc on repeat, but maybe it all sounds the same. He puts the screwdriver down on the workbench. The birdfeeder suddenly doesn’t seem to need fixing, and the music {two months and a day} is driving him up the wall with anxiety. Fucking Dean Martin. If he wasn’t dead already… Dean wonders where the old wop is buried. Two months and two days ago, he might have looked it up and made the drive; maybe to piss on the grave, or just shout at his tombstone. Probably has his own mausoleum, the hackneyed cunt. Dean steps outside, on to the lawn. No, the windows are all open, and he can make out the words to “Mack the Knife” with painful clarity. He goes around the far side of the house, behind the garage. Finally, {finally!} the music disappears. A newfound calm gradually settles over him. For a full two {months and a day} minutes Dean stands on the far side of his garage, hands in his pockets. The weather is fair and somewhere a bird is twittering away happily. Very peaceable out here, he muses. Maybe he can live outside in the yard amongst the pine needles and recyclables. Just pitch a tent and surround himself in the relative solace of the trees and his neighbor’s privacy fence, at least until the ‘Neighborhood Watch’ filed a complaint. Or maybe he could take a shit in Grace’s flower garden; that would show her. Tête-a-fucking- tête. Dean strides over to her azaleas with a profound sense of fairness as the band strikes a new tune.
[i] Author’s note: The expression “tête à tête” is intentionally misused as a matter of character construction. The man is a bit of a boor, ken.
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