Extreme Circumstances

It happened on a Tuesday while I was driving home from work, not thinking of much, certainly not thinking of extreme circumstances. I mean you don’t, do you, ever think of extreme circumstances. A damned Tuesday, you know, most ordinary day of the week. I didn’t call Dale about dinner like I usually do because I had a late lunch. An eleven o’clock meeting ran over, so the boss, big spender that she is, sent out for sandwiches. By the time we got them, it was two o’clock, and I ate two, the tuna and the egg salad.

Something was off with one of them. They both had mayo, and mayo, you know -- anyway, so my stomach was already up and down in the car. I couldn’t eat a thing. If I were a guest on one of those TV cooking shows, I’d pass every dish by, even dessert, put my hand right up in front of the camera and all.

So, as I said, I wasn’t thinking dinner when I pulled in our driveway. Dale’s car wasn’t there. For a minute I sat wondering where she was. On the radio, they talked about the deficit, and I said to myself, I’ll be eighty years old, half-deaf, living God knows where with Dale, and they’ll still be talking about the deficit. Course, Dale made the eleven o’clock news.

I walked in the house and just as I set the baklava from lunch on the kitchen counter -- because Dale loved baklava, and to tell the truth, I don’t need the sweets -- the phone started ringing. I don’t remember who said extreme circumstances, the cops or the doctor. Maybe it was me. After awhile I realized I’d eaten that baklava. And it’s been that way ever since.

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