it is hope for the dope

The corner store: a box of cigars, a six-pack of beers, a paper and the latest racing form. Familiar sights, familiar sounds, familiar surfaces, familiar scents, familiar savors. All the same, all normal, all done without thinking.

Oscar does a lot of things without thinking. He fishes out his wallet without thinking, gets an eyeful of ratty rubberband snapping without blinking, lays a buck on the counter without sinking, starts in chatting with the cashier without drinking.

It's as he's doing this chatting that he remembers a specific prescription - what was it, nasal spray? probably something generic like that - he was meant to pick up from the pharmacy, which carries many of the same products as the corner store but is a decidedly different establishment all round, and so he pats the elderly store attendant on the back of her age-spotted hand with a conciliatory, "Look, I gotta run, see, I promised my wife I would pick up a prescription - you'll tell me about-" (what's her name, what's her name, what's her name) "-Cheryl next time, alright? Alright..."

Some hapless daughter been through three too many divorces, and the name had been given as "Shirl" vocally but it had to be Cheryl because the locket with her picture in it was engraved with a spangling C - all these thoughts that Oscar thinks, fact-checks himself on, as he's hustling-bustling thistling-whistling his way out on holey wing-tips, trencher trailing, where is the nearest pharmacy anyway, Felix probably doesn't even go to one that's within any reasonable distance of the apartment, should I maybe take a cab?

Left foot, right foot, down the sidewalk, don't step in concrete, try to bring your insoles out one at a time like Felix does - he's like a dancer, the way he does that, ain't that something - it's exercise, you should be thanking him, it's not so far, anyway.

And then Oscar stops, and he realizes. Like any rational person would, he realizes. I just called Felix my wife. And where any rational person would say well that's not right, I'm a man and Felix isn't a woman and so he can't be my wife, Oscar fixates on the compact marital contract of it all.

He's my wife.

Is he my wife?

For a moment, Oscar makes the desparate consideration of bounding back in front of good old Merle's wrinkled face and clarifying, see, I didn't mean my wife, that was just a slip of the tongue, he's not really my wife, I just live with him and spend most evenings with him and wind down the national anthem on Carson with him, and--

What the hell?

I mean, sure, he cooks for me and he cleans for me and he tells me off when my shirts are wrinkled - no, he irons my shirts, too - and he makes sure I don't drip on the carpet and he wishes I would stop smoking, and all of that is the kind of bullcrap a housekeeper would do. Felix isn't just a housekeeper, much as he'd excel at it. Bend over backwards, Mr. Amelia Bedelia himself - herself, I might as well say - to go above and beyond. But that's not all Felix does.

What does Felix do? He worries after me when I'm sick, and he gets interested in my columns, and he leaves little notes in my lunchbox, and he offers to cut my hair when I don't feel like going to the barber (this probably as much for his comfort as mine, but what the hell, really), and he...

"Mr. Unger?" No. I'm not Mr. Unger. But to the spiffy-white pharmacist, Oscar grinds out an earthless, "Sure, Mr. Unger. Come on, kid, how much do I owe ya?"

"It's prepaid," says said spotless med-school youth. "This is just the monthly refill."

And oh. Of course. So now, because I wasn't thinking, I've been diagnosed as the other kind of Mr. Unger. Just swell.

Oscar snatches up the uncrinkled white bag, rattles the spray bottle inside as he turns to leave before shoving the parcel irritatedly into his coat pocket, and gives the jingling shopdoor a ferocious tug on his way out. Nasal spray. What ever happened to drinking tea?

Up, up, up, he goes, and there's no doorman at 1079 Park who cares to pick picayunities about his proper name anymore, which, of course, suits Oscar just fine. Goodness knows if the staff paid attention to who he came and went with, and then again who he didn't...

What a crummy apartment. What a crummy door. In he goes. "Honey, I'm home!" he calls out in a stumbling sarcasm as he flaps his thankfully bone-dry coat over the railing, and then realizes he means it.

The second half is easy enough - it's his apartment, after all, and it can be a home even if it's not really a house - and "honey"? It's what he calls Blanche, and Gloria, and Edna, and Myrna, and all those uber-feminine A-names that pervade his life, again without thinking.

What's that woman's name? Miriam? No A. Not so easy. No A for Felix, either.

You're 1-A in the army, and you're A-1 in my heart. Stupid. Why'd they have to go and romanticize the crummy army, anyway? He got married to Blanche when he was in the army, so obviously the whole thing stinks.

Stink, stank, and stunk, Oscar finds himself humming the disgustingly major reveille call nevertheless as he crosses the carpet, kicks the ottoman, flings his racing form unceremoniously (that is to say, with all possible stinging, singing incensed overimportance) to the couch, and slams the six-pack on the counter to wrest out yellow-brown liquid solace.

Where's Felix? From the sound of it, he's in the bathroom honking. Honking?

Oh, yeah. The nasal spray. Still in his pocket. One suffering-shuffling retrieval later, and Oscar is knocking on the bathroom door, engaging himself willingly if not willfully in whatever the heck it is Felix will do behind that unpresentable closure.

Felix emerges, nose-first. "Yes?" Well, it's more of a "yesh", but regardless.

"I brought you your prescription." Dear.

"Aw, gee," and the congestion only shows itself worse and worse the longer he, they, lingers, "thanks, Osc. You're a pal."

Oscar all but runs away before Felix's arm can emerge to thwack the upper his in a bravacious show of summoned-up jocularity.

You're a pal. Wives don't call their husbands pals. Deep breath. Let it out. Just a slip of the tongue.

"Oh, Oscar!"

"What, Felix?" He snaps it, distorting the vowel sound into a rhomboid shape.

"Would you please clean your room? I have Leonard this weekend and I'd really prefer not to have to obstruct that corner of the apartment as a toxic waste disposal zone."

Mothers tell you to clean your room. Most wives don't because most husbands are naturally inclined to pick up after themselves.

But you're not most married couples, now are you, men?