Otherwise Engaged Read Online Free PDF

it. Hire a
photographer.
    Good things, I pointed out to Michael, cost money. Money is why we operate wheelbarrows in hell, I reminded him. We have money, I believe. Michael disagrees. To Michael, we are clinging with one fingernail to the lip of poverty’s yaw, about to plummet into complete skid row destitution at the next unnecessary extravagance, like heat.
    He’s out there, right now, chopping onions for dinner. Chopping is helpful. I would like to chop. Now that he is, of course, I can’t.
    I hear a jar pop as it is twisted open. The marinated artichoke hearts I buy for salads. No silverware sounds, which means he’s standing in the kitchen and eating them right out of the jar. A sharp report; he’s uncorked a bottle of wine.The television is switched on, the small Sony that gets the best picture in the house.
    I want to watch television and drink wine and eat artichoke hearts. It seems more important than any principle I may have been hanging on to.
    I want to have a good time, too. Or I would like to ruin it for him.
    He’s sleeping, covers spooled around him. I can just see his head above the pillow. Michael has what I call a stubborn neck, which means that from the rear it looks like his neck is as wide as his head. I observe once more how his hairline curves gently and comes to a point at his nape. In a crowd of necks, I’d know his right away. Still. I wish he were younger, because I am afraid he might die before me.
    I wish he had never been married before, because he’s already done everything with his first wife, Grace. He was thirty-one when they went on their honeymoon in Spain. I resent him being thirty-one with someone else. Deeply. Somehow he should have known, and saved himself for me. If he really loved me, he would have.
    First wife, second wife. I will always be second. Even if his first wife dies, I don’t move up the ladder. It’s not like being an understudy. It’s much more complicated.
Second
. It’s so Nancy Kerrigan.
    I told all this to Graham over lunch at Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store today, while we ate focaccia sandwiches. Graham said, “Why don’t you just have his memory erased?”
    Graham always has the best suggestions.
    Phoebe, Michael’s daughter, is thirteen. I haven’t mether. No one finds this unusual or even particularly a bad thing. The unspoken consensus is that it’s cleaner this way. I wrapped her gift at Christmas and on her birthday; she doesn’t know this. But I suspect Grace does. She knows Michael couldn’t come up with those bows.
    Michael sees Phoebe once a year, in Vermont, for two weeks during the summer.
    Reuben says that “And they both lived happily ever after” are the most false and damaging words in the English language.
    Michael talks to Graham about movies, they like each other despite the eighteen-year age difference. Michael sometimes telephones Graham to ask him about music when he’s looking for something new. He is not ashamed to ask, What are the kids listening to? Whereas I surreptitiously copy down the CD titles from Graham’s music collection, then buy them and act as if I knew all along.
    Graham knows which CDs the kids are listening to. Graham knows because he knows actual kids, genuine nineteen-year-olds, some of whom he sleeps with.
    Michael once recommended a film to Graham and said it was a feel-good movie.
    “I don’t want to feel good,” Graham said.
    Yesterday, Michael had to take the Cow to the vet on upper Fillmore, and it was a hundred dollars.
    He has been spending a hundred dollars every day this month, he told me this morning, and is putting a stop to it.He alluded to the ring, also. The ring which has sucked him dry.
    I look down at my hand and the diamond dances and sparkles in the warm overhead light from our bedroom fixture. I laugh wickedly to myself, like the chambermaid who ripped off Scrooge’s bed curtains. But only to myself. I realize that it is important to act as if I am not driving him to