“Sounds like you’re under a waterfall,” they’d say.  “Well, as a matter of fact...” He’d say.

On a Thursday, I asked for a raise and got it.  Drinks were on me that night.  The Sears and Roebuck catalog was at my command.  On Friday, I told my wife I was leaving her.  “Shelly, my world’s moving, and I got just the shoes to move with it.  It’s time for me to start living my life.”  That’s when she clubbed me in the eye and kicked me in the groin.  I fell to the floor and began choking.  Time stood still.  I couldn’t open my eyes.  I felt like two birthdays had passed me while I was hunched there in pain on the linoleum.  I just got a raise the day before.  This was not supposed to happen.

I got up in time to escape her.  She had gone back to the hallway closet to find the baseball bat we kept around to defend ourselves from intruders.  She had obviously missed the point.  I was trying to leave.

I stumbled out the door, hunched over and holding my groin.  I managed to start my car and escape without ever having to see Shelly again.  Before I left, I kicked in the door of her car.  Bad idea, since it was in my name and I was still making payments on it.

At the bar later that evening, and every day for the next two or so weeks, I told my buddies about my raise and my clean break from Shelly.  I told them about how Shelly cried for me, how she begged me not to leave.  Tears in her eyes, nearly grabbing my leg as I walked out the door.  “She knew where the good stuff was at,” I told them.

I leaned back on my stool against the bar with confidence.  Like I just told a great story about getting some or kicking somebody’s ass.  I’d call the bartender “barkeep” when I ordered my drinks.

Millard, sitting on a stool down the bar a ways, cupped his groin with his hand and began kneading it like a fistful of dough.  He was listening to my Shelly-talk.  We both shared the same taste in drinks.  We even shared a few friends.  But that was it.  That fuckin’ slob was a Steelers fan.  Steelers!  I mean, who could like any team more than the Saints?

“Heh heh,” Millard chuckled, his eyes red and glassy.  He eyed me with this look of satisfied drunk, like he was relieving himself.  “Then you won’t mind I smell her roses, would ya?” he said.

Well, I didn’t have to take that, damnit.  In situations like that, I’ve usually shouted to Shelly, “C’mon, we’re outta here!”  I learned early on that nobody will swipe at you if you’re holding on to your woman.  But of course, I’d have looked pretty stupid doing that, at the time without Shelly around.  I kinda felt like I brought a knife to a gun fight.  The only thing to do was cut and run.  I grabbed Millard’s beer and took off for my car. 

I took my business to the airport lounge.  Drinks were a little more, and parking was a bitch, but I felt comfortable there.  If I arrived early enough before dusk, I could see my office from the bar.  Things looked really different from that airport window.  Small office in a pre-fab building.  “I’d hate to be one of those schnooks who had to work in one of those buildings every day,” I said one time to a guy sitting next to me in the lounge.

“Yeah, right,” he said.  “I’ve gotta catch a plane, fella.”

“Yeah, catch your damn plane, you schnook,” I said.  But I don’t think he heard me.

It was at the airport bar where I got to know Carla.  She drove one of those carts for old people that plow through airport terminals.  She had the voice for it.  “EXCUSE ME!  COMING THOUGH!”  That’s how I noticed her.  She was shouting at me.

Carla had long, thick, curly, wild hair.  It made her look wild, like danger.  Her ass looked like she was hiding two football helmets.  She wasn’t very tall either.  Not quite like Shelly in the looks department, but she seemed like my kind of lady.

The first evening we had drinks, she invited me to her apartment.  This was about one month since Shelly kicked me out.  Carla’s son was spending the night with her ex and would not return until lunch the next day.  She hadn’t had a night to herself in ages, she complained. Since the divorce, she continued to sleep with the ex-husband, but since he remarried, he didn’t come around so much anymore.

“This is a lot of information to absorb on the first day,” I told her.  “Shouldn’t there be a little mystery at least?”

“Fifteen years of marriage, a mortgage, a kid, a dog, and a divorce were not hard to notice,” she told me.

I liked her honesty.  She said things matter-of-factly, but so compelling.  We had sex that night, and I moved in with Carla and her son within the month.

That was October.  I was there for her son’s first Halloween.  He dressed as Conway Twitty.  We also shared Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Thanksgiving was good.  My life, it seemed, would have some normalcy.  Carla’s kid was over at the ex’s house.  Carla and I ate turkey dinners in front of the television.  We watched the Macy’s parade in the morning, football in the afternoon.  We napped on the couch and in our chairs.  We were as lazy as lions.  I smiled at Carla.  She smiled at me.  I was content.  Carla looked puzzled.

“What?” she asked.  “Do you have gas?”

She threw her head back and laughed.  Dark hair jumped over her head.  Shelly’s blonde hair did that too.  Flying around like that.  Looked like sunbeams radiating from her head.  Like a Shelly-eclipse of the sun.  Sometimes when I enjoy a few drinks at the office I can see the sunset behind the airport.  I see Shelly’s face.  I pour another drink.  The sun feels warmer.

Christmas, on the other hand, was not what I expected.  Carla talked about family: how it was important for relatives to spend time together on the holidays.  “Great,” I said.  “What’s not to like?”

Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, and for as long as I could stand it, I spent my time with Carla, her son, and her ex.

I had written “From Santa Claus” on the presents I got Carla’s son, but her son thanked the ex for the gifts.  “Carla, those gifts are from me,” I complained.  “I got him those presents.”

“Oh, sure,” replied the ex, “make sure you get credit for everything.  While you’re at it why don’t you take credit for the blue in the sky!”

“That’s not the point,” I said.

Carla told me to shut up.  “Stop being a Grinch!”

I took my egg nog in front of the television.  I drank a lot of egg nogs.  A Christmas show was on.  Husband, wife.  Kids and a dog.  I thought of Shelly. 

When Shelly and I were dating, she invited me over to her parents’ house to meet them.  I never got quite acclimated to the parents thing, even with my own parents.  There had never been any real connection.  My dad used to call me Stinky.  He called me Stinky at the parent-teacher meetings, Stinky at Little League, Stinky when he drove me out on my first date with a girl.  That shithead even toasted me as Stinky at my wedding.  Mom and Dad would get drunk together and yell Stinky!  Stinky!  Stinky!  Mom would pat her chest and wheeze out a laugh.  Sounded like sandpaper dragging heavily on concrete.  Mom and Dad thought I was worthless.  At least Shelly’s parents paid me the courtesy of just remaining skeptical.

I expected that I needed to put my best face forward for her folks.  I had a few gimlets before we headed to their house.

When we arrived, they greeted us at the door.  “Fred and Ethel,” I said, “you got quite a spread here.”  Their names were not Fred and Ethel.  I said it to be funny.  They looked puzzled.

We sat down for dinner.  “What kind of work are you in?” asked Shelly’s father.  “Where do you see yourself in ten years?  Are you a Kennedy Democrat or a Wallace Democrat?”

My head spun.  I felt like I was in front of the draft board.  I tried to change the subject.  “I wanna have lots of kids,” I blurted out to Shelly’s mother.  I hate kids, but it seemed like the appropriate thing to say to her mom at the time.  “I wanna have a barnful,” I said.  “I can’t wait to begin.  In fact, depending on how dessert goes, I may get started with Shelly right here, heh, heh, heh, heh.”

Shelly’s mom emptied her glass in my face.  Her dad just kept shouting “Out!  Out!”

I ran from the house to escape.  Shelly and I drove away.

On the ride home, I stopped the car on the side of the road.  “Shelly,” I said, “there ain’t much more to me.  I’m never going to be a great man -- even if I won the lottery.”

I trembled and sighed.  My voice became weak.

“There’s nothing special in my life.  That’s why I need someone special in my life.”  I sniffled and inhaled deeply.  “Please be my wife,” I asked.

Shelly’s face became soft.  She leaned over to hug me.  “Yes,” she whispered.  “I will.”

We embraced.  I pinched her ass.

Christmases were always spent at Shelly’s folks’ house in Tennessee.  I hated Christmases.  I still do.  I don’t believe in God, and I don’t appreciate this holiday for commerce, and I’m particularly annoyed by the annual emergence of the world’s fat men who get off their couches, turn off the football games, and earn minimum wage to dress up in a red coat, black boots, and fake white beard, all to take pictures with bunch of spoiled brats.  If there is one thing I can’t blame these faux Santa Clauses for, it is drinking.  I usually pay my respects to the Santa Clauses by toasting them several times each day at the bar.  If I had a gift for every gimlet I raised and drank for St. Nick, I could be J.C. Penny himself.

Shelly’s parents were perhaps as fond of me as I was of the shitty Christmas pilgrimages to their house each year.  One year I really blew my fuses.  I guess I had been sulking the whole trip.  The trees outside were brown.  The ground was brown.  The weather was dank and musty.  Tennessee in the wintertime was like a soiled diaper.  What was to like?  Little brats ran through the house making cowboys and Indians racket.  The television was out, so there was no football.  I think I actually would have preferred sitting in my office watching the planes.  In fact, I know I’d rather have been in my office.

Most of the men -- Shelly’s brothers and in-laws -- were outside smoking in the yard while the women were in the kitchen admiring each other’s sweaters that had reindeer stitched on them and sprinkles of glitter glued in the shape of Christmas ornaments.  The kids were running throughout the house yelling and screaming, popping cap guns and shooting plastic arrows.  Shelly’s dad was asleep in his reading chair with the newspaper spread out on his lap.  And damn it was hot in there!  The freaking furnace was working overtime.

I had been trying to sleep off  the Christmas Day lunch when Joey, one of my bratty nephews, struck me in the face with his plastic tomahawk.  Damn, that smarted!

I was furious.  I had had enough.  I grabbed Joey by the shoulders and shook him while I screamed at him.  “You little shit!  There is no Santa Claus.  In fact, most fat people can’t see their shoes, much less tie them.  How do you think a fat child molester like Santee Claaws is going to even fit in a sled and make it to all the houses in the world and still make it to this backass hole-in-the ground in Tennessee?  Do you believe that shit?  Do you really believe it?  Huh?  Well, do you?  Say something, damnit!”

Joey bawled.  He stood right there in front of me like a little crying Indian statue.  He looked alone.  All by himself.  Another one of the brats stared at me in disbelief.  Another ran to the kitchen yelling, “Mom!  Mom!”

Seconds later, the women appeared. So did the men.  Joey remained still and crying as if he would perish if he moved one muscle.

Shelly said, “How could you?”

The room moved in on me.  I felt like grabbing Joey to protect myself.  A sort of Indian shield.

There was no argument.  Joey’s father Barry entered the house rolling up his shirt sleeves.  He never said a word.  Just grabbed the collar of my shirt and led me out to the yard where he clubbed me once in the eye with his meaty spam of a fist and kicked me in the stomach.

I got over Christmas dinner pretty quickly.  I vomited.  All I could think of was how this began.  Fuckin’ Santa Claus. 

One Christmas was spent at my grandparents’ house when I was a boy.  The mood was somber because my dad had not yet returned from the night before.  He left saying that he was going to look for Santa Claus.  He called to my mother, who was in the kitchen, that Santa was having two-for-one until ten p.m.  Naturally, I wanted to tag along.  “Cool yer britches, Stinky,” my dad said.  “You’ll get yours tomorrow.”

Dad returned Christmas morning with a young lady dressed in red.  “C’mere, Stinky,” he hollered.  “Yer old man brought ya an elf!  Ho!  Ho!  Friggin’ Ho!”

The elf must have been cold because she wasn’t wearing many clothes.  Mom raised her hand to her mouth.  She ran out of the room crying.  Mom must have been naughty this year, I thought.  Grandma followed.

Grandpa kicked Dad out of the house.  He kicked twice because Dad kept falling.  His breath smelled like cough syrup.  “Jesus, ya damn Scrooge,” yelled my father.

“Get outta my house, you no count!” yelled my grandfather.

The elf drove away in her car.  Dad fell asleep on the sidewalk.

My grandfather led me back inside.  He said, “If that’s Santa Claus, then no thanks right?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He held me in his arms.  He stroked my hair.  “You’ll be all right, boy,” he said.  Grandpa never called me Stinky. 

Then there’s Christmas at Carla’s.  That morning, her son woke me up.  I was a little dizzy.  Too much egg nog.  On the television, a little girl squealed to some old fella, this is the greatest Christmas that ever was.  I thought of Shelly. 

What ever happened to our kids and dogs?  How come I never had a little girl ever hold me and say, “This is the best”?  What the hell is going on, I wondered.

“Wake up, old fart,” said Carla’s boy.  “Dad’s in his Santa suit and he’s puking in the toilet. You need to pull him outta the can and into the shower.”

I left my thoughts of Shelly and the little girl with the TV.  “Okay,” I said when I entered the bathroom, “get your head outta the can.”

His face was pasty.  Dinner was on his white beard.

“Who the fuck are you to talk to me?” he roared.  He reached up for my collar and pulled my face into the toilet.

Me?  I’ve been living with a divorcee -- who still sleeps with her husband -- and her son.  I get my rocks off at a airport lounge watching planes come and go.  Fulfillment, I’ve come to learn, is always the blonde at some other guy’s table.  It’s the fine riding lawnmower in your neighbor’s backyard.

Carla is in bed wearing nothing but her panties.  Her legs haven’t been shaved and she farts.  When she gets drunk, she yells at the television.  To endure it, I usually yell, “Shut up, bitch.”  She reminds me who pays the rent.  I start drinking with her.  Things fade away. 

Shelly and I used to drive to my grandparents’ house on occasional Sundays.  Late one night, we were driving the country road that led to their house out in the sticks.  About five miles out, in front of Geeter’s Pak-A-Sak, there was a commotion.  Lights flashing.  Cars everywhere.  People rushing here and there.  Grandpa had split the front of his car around a pecan tree.  We got out of the car to investigate.  Pecans still fell from the tree.  It sounded like hail.  The cops had a difficult time negotiating their way to the car.  Rolling all over pecan shells.  Cops spread on the ground like bowling pins.

Grandpa was in the car nursing the star-spangled gash on his forehead.

“Old man, you better stop drinking or the next time you’re gonna hit an oak,” I joked.  Nobody laughed.  Breaking the uncomfortable silence that followed, a cop explained to me that Grandpa had gotten lost again.

There is one road from Grandpa’s house to Geeter’s, and it is straight.  And the old man gets lost?  “Sure he’s eighty-four, but c’mon,” I said to Shelly as we returned to Grandpa’s house from the hospital.

“You’re unbelievable.  I can’t understand the way you think sometimes.  That’s your grandfather, for Christssakes.  Show some damn respect!”

At the house, all our relatives gathered in the kitchen.  Everyone being the grandparents and my aunts and uncles -- my grandparents’ children.

The scene was nothing unusual, but it remains forever etched in my memory.  Grandpa sitting in the folding chair in the kitchen, elbows on the Formica table, face in his hands.  He wept.  Like a scared little boy, he wept.  Grandma held him in her fat arms and shushed him gently as she used to do to me when I was a scared little boy.

“It’s all right,” she’d say to me.  “It’s all right,” she said to Grandpa.

Up until that night at my grandparents’ house, I always thought my grandpa was a little nuts.  Now I envied him.  All those people touching him.  Comforting him with him sobbing like that. 

I tell that story to Carla.  She picks her toenails and drones “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

The other night, when Carla’s ex was leaving the aprtment and I was coming in from work, I said to him, “Howdy, Buster Brown,” which isn’t his name.  I didn’t mean anything by it.  Just being friendly.

He said, “What the hell’s that supposed to mean, smartass?”

I tried to explain, but he socked me one in the eye and kicked me in the scrods.  He spit on me then left.  I think he’s the one who broke the antenna off my car.

I stumbled into the apartment.  Carla sent her boy to his room.  She sipped a gimlet.  “Boy, I could use one of those,” I said.