TOKING and CROAKING
Smith and I disagree on a point of grammar.
“I’m your WIFE. You must consider me your equal in these matters.”
“You’re one of those engineering types. But you defected. Came over to our side.”
“Who *am* I, anyways…”
“Yr the person who took me from Cleveland.”
“If I didn’t, you’d still be sitting in the dark, croaking. And toking.”
“Toking and croaking until I died.”
(Smith had had cancer of the larynx, diagnosed after I pushed him to get a biopsy.)
* * *
We’re walking out in the open towards the medina. Everyone stares at us. Smith offers to hold my sleeve, rather than my hand. “We won’t offend local sensibilities this way.”
I say, “You could get me a dog collar, with a leash.”
“Ooh, with spikes?”
“Yeah, one of those leather fetish outfits. And you could pull me along.”
We’re now at the medina wall. Taxis drop people off at the gate, where men with carts wait. They try to pick up customers. Most often, it’s luggage they carry, but I’ve also seen feeble old ladies pulled along in the carts.
Smith says, “You’re gonna have to pull me. I’m gonna attach you to a cart, and you can pull me in your leather outfit. You can wear one of those little French maid skirts as well.”
“What are those?”
“That’s what they wear in the porno movies, the French maids. The skirts come halfway down the ass, and they’re not wearing panties. And then they bend over and dust the bottom shelf of books with their little feather dusters.”
“Oh, how literary.”
“And the rich fat fucks sit in their big soft chairs with their white mustaches and sherry, and chortle as they watch.”
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