From: cass8806@elan.glassboro.edu (KYLE CASSIDY)
Subject: a story
Organization: Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 17:30:24 GMT

--It Takes A Very Bad Hat To Play 
Jazz Like That, Chelsea My Darling--


                    by kyle cassidy


     "I'm sorry," I said. She said. I said.
     "I'm sorry."
     "It doesn't matter," she said. It never mattered. Nothing
mattered. The only things that mattered were things that people
couldn't remember anymore.
     She picked up the kids. I got a job in a factory, shipping
styrofoam packing materials across the world. We encased them in
bubble wrap first to protect them. She bought a hat which I said
was eccentric. I sanded first the boat, and then in a fit of rare
enthusiasm, the car. She said that democratic candidates were far
too honest on television. I took out the trash. The car started
to rust. She set the mailman on fire one afternoon while lighting
his cigarette with an acetylene torch. I drank beers and made
obscene phone calls to directory assistance operators--imagining
them all as plump and naked chickens. 
     She went crazy and bought shoes. I went crazy and shoved
them all down the garbage disposal, chewing them up one by one,
shredding the leather and burying the heels in a hole in the back
yard.
     Throughout all of this the dog watched us stoically.
     "Do you think I could teach English as a second language?"
she asked.
     "Of course not," I said, "it's your first."
     She cursed at me in Italian while I ignored her in high
school French.
     She always insisted that we not speak English in the house.
     This was fine for her, since she spoke German, Italian, and
Flemish and she could have the same conversation with herself
four times before she got bored of it and had to think of
something new to say. While all I could do was mutter a halting
Pardon moi, mai, ou est la W.C.?
     "Ne laisse pas les gen's s'approcher trop de toi. Laisse-les
tes defenses et ces salauds te poignarderont le coeur," she said
at dinner one night.
     I gave her the finger and vowed to stop speaking at all.
From then on in I carved my sentences in a stick of butter with a
toothpick and shoved them in her face when I had something to
say.
     One night I put all of her Bix Blanchly jazz albums in the
oven and baked them at 350 until the parakeet died and then we
both put on gas masks and slept outside. In the morning she
stripped the inner bark from the pine tree (where the tire swing
hung) with the bowie knife that her mother had given her for
Christmas, and we ate it cold and raw. It was chewy and tasted
like bitter tar.
     "I ate an acorn once," I said. Immediately clarifying this
by adding, "when I was a child."
     "What did it taste like?" she wanted to know.
     "Like this bark," I said, spitting a sour mouthful out onto
the ground.
     "Look," she said, pulling her mask off and letting her
straight black hair cascade over her shoulders, "let's either
fuck or kill the dog."
     
     I looked into her eyes which were still beautiful to me, and
winsome, even after all the years in the desert and the lanolin
abuse. We embraced and she held Baskerville down while I
strangled the life out of the worthless little mutt.
     "Better?" I asked when the republicans had gone.
     "Never better. Not as long as we live in Australia."
     "But we don't live in Australia," I said.
     "Then things must be okay," she said looking away. And of
course I could see that they were.