The beach is looking real fresh today. I ought to get some ice cream before I go outside. It wouldn’t hurt if I brought some sunglasses. But I should leave my cape at home. She doesn’t like it when I bust out the cape. If I brought it, she would probably take it away again. She said it smelled of women’s perfume, but how could that be? She flipped the egg she was frying out of the pan and into my face, calling me a coward. You are such a fucking coward, Howard! A grown man like you wearing a cape? What is wrong with you?
She’s mad because I don’t want babies. At least that’s what I think right now. I was sculpting her cheekbones while she said all this. Maybe I could become Prometheus and just make a new her.
–
I am a sculptor on weekends. It is a hobby. Plaster and clay. I can’t afford a chisel or a block of marble. Before I met her I sculpted fake fruit, mostly pineapples. Old ladies bought the stuff. She came in one day and bought me out of stock. Then she bought me. I slept on her couch and sculpted fruit while she was at work. One morning she came downstairs in nothing but a flannel shirt and some yellow underpants. She took her clothes off and laid on the couch for six hours while I sculpted furiously. My hands would not stop. When I finished, she said, “Come here, dearie.”
It was only after the third night she changed. She came back from the potato shape rock, her eyes bloodshot. Her voice was white as chalk. “I’ll KILL YOU!” she screamed.
She’s bounced from anger to pleasantries ever since.
–
All of this and she wanted to know what was wrong with me! I hid the cape under a couch cushion. Fine, let it stay there. She hated it because she was scared. She was my master, so I should not wear a cape. I changed out of my sculptor’s smock into a pair of raggedy overalls instead. I packed a lunch in a picnic basket and I walked out the door.
I met her by the potato-shaped rock up away from the tide. “I like your overalls, farmer boy,” she said, and kissed my chest. “What did you bring for lunch?”
“Salami and cheese.” I said. I opened the basket, and inside was the cape. “How the–”