The Interruption of Everything Read Online Free PDF Page B

the only way to celebrate anything.
    “Leon’s turning forty-six in April and up to now he behaves more like a senior citizen. I’d swear he’s getting Tourette’s. He’s just been blurting out what he’s thinking and some of it is insulting or stupid or embarrassing and he doesn’t seem to know he’s saying it! He complains about so many things I feel like calling him a bitch! Stop laughing, Bunny! He can’t hear worth anything, so he talks to me like I’m across the room or something. Oh. His glasses have suddenly disappeared and his eyes change colors from one week to the next. I’m about eighty percent sure that he’s been dying his roots black. And on top of all this, he’s grown quite fond of those velour leisure suits that zip and has been wearing them to work on casual Fridays.”
    Now we all crack up.
    “Go, Leon,” Bunny says.
    “With his baaad self,” Paulette chimes in.
    “I still love him but there’s just no passion. No fire. No rush. I can just about predict his next move, his next thought. I miss the suspense of where we’re going from here, since the kids are pretty much grown. Nowhere, as it turns out. Because once we got ‘here’ I thought we’d be free to do all kinds of stuff. But nope. We’ve settled like our old-ass house. And I just don’t buy all the testimonials by the experts who claim that mature love is more comforting than romantic and that as time passes it’s childish to think you’ll feel the thrills of romance like you felt in the beginning. A tremor every once in a while would be nice. And it should still be possible. It’s one of the beauties of life. To feel the joy and thrill of love. Isn’t it? If it wasn’t, then why does everybody want it? On many a night I have rolled over and wished he was just half the Leon that he used to be: tender and attentive and sexy and a little wild.
    “And sex? Don’t even get me started. We’ve done it the same two, three, or four exciting ways in the same two exciting places—his side or my side of the bed for almost a quarter of a century and even though I’ve sort of gotten used to it, I’m really tired of being used to it. Of having empty orgasms—when I’m lucky enough to have one. I’ve told Leon that the clitoris has eight thousand nerve cells…”
    “It does?” Bunny asks.
    I just roll my eyes at her.
    “Roscoe knows where they all are, baby. Sorry.”
    “Anyway, all I want is for him to find one. And remember where it was. He used to ask me what would make me feel good. He used to tell me I was pretty even though it wasn’t true.”
    “But you are pretty,” Paulette says.
    “I agree,” Bunny says.
    “I am not. But hell, lie to me!”
    “He might be trying to lower your self-esteem.”
    “Shut up, Bunny,” I say.
    “Please do,” Paulette says. “And finish the whole textbook before you speak on a topic and embarrass yourself in public, would you?”
    Bunny’s eyes are scouring the room—she’s looking for her notes.
    “I’m almost finished. Anyway, it’s insulting to me that he’s assumed I’d always respond to the same stimuli when even mice don’t. I’m a woman, not a damn mouse! But Leon doesn’t seem to know it. They say ask for what you want. Well, what happens when you ask and you still don’t get it? I don’t mean to attack him.” I take a sip of my drink and sink a little.
    “Finished already?” Paulette says.
    “Just one last thing,” I say.
    “May I interject?” Bunny asks, like she’s in a courtroom.
    “No,” Paulette says. “Carry on, Marilyn.”
    “Try to make it snappy because I’ve gotta be up by six,” Bunny says in what must be her personal-training voice.
    “I just want a little passion.”
    “You already talked about that, Marilyn.”
    “Will you relax, Bunny,” Paulette says, and pops her on the head. “You know how we do this and you know it takes as long as it takes. When we’re listening to every detail of your health club dramedy and the