up at the corners to create a big smile, but the “appropriator” was a talented sculptor, and a light from within suffused the enormous slab of Lexan with a golden glow, and tout le monde loved it. The light here in the parking lot, however, was miserable. Industrial lamps high up on stanchions created a dim electro-twilight and turned the palm tree fronds pus-color yellow. “Pus-color yellow”—and there you had it. Ed was feeling down, down, down… sitting belted into the passenger seat, which he had had to slide all the way back just to get both his long legs inside of this weeny-teeny grassy-greeny Green-proud car of Mac’s, the Green Elf. He felt like the doughnut, the toy-sized emergency spare wheel the Elf carried.
Mac, a big girl, had just turned forty. She was a big girl when he met her eighteen years ago at Yale… big bones, wide shoulders, tall, five-ten, in fact… lean, lithe, strong, an athlete and a half… sunny, blond, full of life… Stunning! Absolutely gorgeous, this big girl of his! In the cohort of gorgeous girls, however, the big girls are the first to cross that invisible boundary beyond which the best they can hope for is “a very handsome woman” or “quite striking, really.” Mac, his wife, his Mac the Knife, had crossed that line.
She sighed a sigh so deep, she ended up expelling air between her teeth. “You’d think they’d have parking valets at a restaurant like this. They charge enough.”
“That’s true,” he said. “You’re right. Joe’s Stone Crab, Azul, Caffe Abbracci—and what’s that restaurant at the Setai? They all have valet parking. You’re absolutely right.” Your worldview is my Weltanschauung. How about if we talk about restaurants?
A pause. “I hope you know we’re very late, Ed. It’s eight-twenty. So we’re already twenty minutes late and we haven’t found a place to park and we’ve got six people in there waiting for us—”
“Well, I don’t know what else—I did call Christian—”
“—and you’re supposed to be the host. Do you realize that? Has that registered with you at all?”
“Well, I called Christian and told him they should order some drinks. You can be sure Christian won’t object to that, and Marietta won’t, either. Marietta and her cocktails. I don’t even know anybody else who orders cocktails.” Or how about a little obiter dictum riff on cocktails or Marietta, either one or both?
“All the same—it’s just not nice, keeping everybody waiting like this. I mean really—I’m serious, Ed. This is so trifling, I just can’t stand it.”
Now! This was his chance! This was the crack in the wall of words he was waiting for! An opening! It’s risky, but—and almost in tune and on key he sing-songs,
“You…
“You…
“You… edit my life… You are my wife, my Mac the Knife…”
She began shaking her head from side to side. “It doesn’t seem to do me much good, does it?”… Never mind! What was that creeping so slyly upon her lips? Was it a smile, a small, reluctant smile? Yes! I’m fed up with you immediately began to dissolve once more.
They were halfway down the parking lane when two figures appeared in the headlights, walking toward the Elf and Balzac’s—two girls, dark haired, chattering away, apparently having just parked their car. They couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. The girls and the trolling Elf drew close rapidly. The girls were wearing denim shorts with the belt lines down perilously close to the mons veneris and the pants legs cut off up to… here… practically up to the hip socket, and left frayed. Their young legs looked model-girl long, since they also wore gleaming heels at least six inches high. The heels seemed to be made of Lucite or something. They lit up a brilliant translucent gold when light hit them. The two girls’ eyes were so heavily mascara’d they appeared to be floating in four black pools.
“Oh, that’s attractive,” Mac muttered.
Ed couldn’t take his eyes off them. They were Latinas—although he couldn’t have explained why he knew that any more than he knew that Latina and Latino were Spanish words that existed only in America. This pair of Latinas—yes, they were trashy, all right, but Mac’s irony couldn’t alter the truth. Attractive? “Attractive” barely began to describe what he felt! Such nice tender long legs the two girls had! Such short little short-shorts! So short, they could shed them just like that. In an instant they could lay bare their juicy little loins and perfect little cupcake