‘My Name is Norm’ by Kit Andis

from the forthcoming novel

Chapter 1 

Early one morning in September I stop by a produce stand in a strip-mall parking lot near my apartment building. There is an orange canopy keeping the produce in shade, and I am under there looking at some fruit, talking to a young red headed kid stocking tomatoes when I hear someone behind me say, “Norm? Is that you?” 

I turn, and it takes a moment to recognize the bleached blonde smiling at me is my ex-wife Linda. I mean, it's been almost twenty years and everything, but she looks so different. She’s not only bleached her hair, she’s had it cut short and spiky, and she’s lost about twenty pounds. She's wearing shorts and a tank top and sandals. She looks—I don’t know—kinda sexy. 

Kit Andis, author of Halfway House, on recovery and poetry

We say hello. Linda looks me slowly up and down. She says, “You look great, Norm. Must be taking care of yourself.” 

We strike up a conversation. What her kids are up to and so on. 

The red headed boy wearing the green apron has stopped stocking tomatoes and is standing next to us, grinning ear to ear, blatantly eavesdropping. Linda finally notices him and reaches out and takes his hand. “Harold, I’m upset with you. Last week, two bruised tomatoes. I won’t have that. Now, I want to see your three very best cucumbers. I mean the best three, so you’ll have to examine them. I need grape tomatoes. I want one cantaloupe, and you’ll have to step away from the stand to smell it. Otherwise you smell all of the cantaloupes. That’s it.” 

Harold just stands there, grinning ear to ear. 

Linda finally says, “I don’t have all day, Harold,” and that's enough to send him bounding off like a little puppy to fill her order. 

“Sorry,” she says to me. “What was I saying?” 

The second time Linda says how good I am looking, I volunteer, “Well, I’ve been going to AA, you know.” 

“Really?” 

And the next thing, one lie after another tumbles out of my mouth. I tell Linda I have a sponsor, I am going to five or six meetings a week, I'm working the Twelve Steps, and so on. Like most people, Linda doesn't know shit about AA, not really. I could tell her almost anything. She just stands there beaming up at me. 

And the next thing I know, we’re sitting at a sidewalk table in front of a coffee shop up the street, sipping café Americanos and flirting. I keep looking at her legs—letting her see my interest, because I remember she was always vain about her legs—but making an effort not to be crude or too obvious about it. Linda tells me all about her garden and about the kids and her granddaughter and what is going on with the house, and so on. I tell her a little bit about Minneapolis and New York and the other places I’ve been, but I don’t say much about San Francisco because, even after almost twenty years, the whole Shauna thing might still be a sore point for her. Mostly I just listen while she talks.

After a second Americano, while listening to Linda describe in great detail her plans for remodeling her house, she abruptly ends the conversation, standing and pulling her purse strap over her shoulder, handing me her bag of vegetables. “You can walk me to the car,” she says. This isn’t a request. Linda speaks in commands. 

I walk Linda out to the edge of the lot to her white Ford SUV. She disarms the alarm system with a little remote on her key chain and unlocks it, and we stand there next to the vehicle a moment before I realize she is waiting for me to open the door for her. I do so, and Linda gets in and starts the engine and her window whirrs down. “It’s been fun,” she says. “I’m glad I bumped into you.” 

“Yeah,” I say. “Me, too.” 

“You take care of yourself, Norm,” Linda says, fastening her seatbelt. “’Bye, bye.” And she drives off. 

Walking home with a couple ears of sweet corn and a half dozen tomatoes, I stop at the liquor store. I buy a twelve-pack of beer and—hey, why not?—a quart of Jack Daniels. It's only a quarter past ten, so I'm thinking the beer will be good and cold by about four o’clock this afternoon, when I finish working on a new poem I started last night. I’ll probably have time to wash dishes and clean the apartment, too, I tell myself. 

When I get into my apartment, I set the carton of beer on the floor next to the fridge and start putting the cans inside, on a shelf. Well, maybe I'll put one in the freezer. Just one, you know, to whet the appetite. I'm startled just then by the sensation of someone biting my ear. I jump, looking behind me but no one is there. I put the empty carton next to the trash can. I pour the last of the cold, leftover coffee from breakfast into a cup and heat it in the microwave for a minute. One sip and I feel the caffeine from the morning pot and the two Americanos hit me all at once, and I realize there is no way I'll be able to sit at my desk and write anything.

Then—I don’t know how it happens—but suddenly I have a glass from the cabinet on the counter and I'm breaking the seal on the bottle of Jack Daniels, pouring about three fingers into the glass, raising it, my head going back, and drinking it off. 

Like that. Ah… 

And then, for a microsecond, Big Vermin is standing holding me with his wet muzzle against my face, grinning, trying to get his tongue in my mouth. I have another, then another. Somewhere toward the end of that morning it occurs to me that I hadn’t asked Linda about her attorney, the prick she hired to divorce me. I wonder if she is still seeing him. Actually, what I'm wondering is whether or not she's still fucking him. I don’t know why, but it's urgent that I know. Then I’m sitting at my desk with the phone in my hand, talking to her, sipping bourbon, trying to figure a way to work my question into the conversation. Linda says, “Norm, are you drinking?” 

“Iced tea,” I say. 

“What?” 

“What I’m drinking—iced tea. Cold tea, really. I’m out of ice.” 

Linda starts to say something about getting back out to her garden, but I cut her off. “Why I called, are you still seeing what’s-his-name, the attorney?” “Alex? God, Norm, that was twenty years ago. Well, eighteen, maybe, since I last had any contact with him. And I hope I never lay eyes on that son of a bitch again….” And off she goes, detailing what a creep he was to her and what a little sissy he really was, and so on. I pour another three fingers of Jack into my glass, half-listening to Linda’s tirade. The possibility of seeing her naked crosses my mind. I like that idea, and I begin to wonder what it will take to get me there. 

As Linda blathers on and on, I'm not really listening to her any longer, amusing myself by imagining what she and I could be doing with one another. My cock starts to get hard, so I unzip and pull it out. I begin stroking. Sitting there drinking, smoking and jacking off. It seems like an accomplishment. I am actually grinning. I know, because I almost knock one of my front teeth out trying to take a drink of bourbon. Then I drop my cigarette on the floor. Bending over to retrieve it, I lose my balance, the office chair rolls out from under me, and I flip, ass over end, landing on my back. Fortunately I don’t spill a drop of Jack Daniels, for which I feel proud. I look down, my cock is fully engorged. 

“What happened?” Linda asks. 

“Nothing. Box of papers fell off the desk,” I lie. I enunciate the words very carefully, the way drunks do when they’re trying not to slur their speech. I think about getting up from the floor, but I don’t. I lay there, continuing to stroke my cock. 

Then her attorney boyfriend squirms back to the front of my mind. I feel suddenly irritated for no particular reason. I say, “I knew he was a shit the minute I laid eyes on him.” 

“Who?” Linda says.

I find myself having to concentrate really hard to keep from slurring my words.

“Christ, Linda. Whaz-iz-name.” 

“Alex?” 

“Fat, hairy, greasy little bastard. Wha’d you ever see in him, anyway?”

“Well, Norm, he did have some good qualities, you know. I picked him, after all. He was intelligent. He took me nice places. The Bahamas, for instance. In February. He was generous with the kids. Do you really want me to go on?” 

“He was a shit,” I say. I'm starting to repeat myself. 

Maybe she really isn’t doing this to irritate me. Maybe she just gets lost in a reverie about the good old times, but she continues: “There were weekends in Chicago, New York…” The possibility of seeing Linda naked seems farther and farther away. I keep stroking, but my cock shrinks in my hand. I try to picture Linda naked in my mind’s eye, but Big Vermin laughs and reaches for the on/off switch in my brain—

and click: 

Lights Out!