“Chapter & Verse” by Dan Grossman
Wikimedia Commons attribution: Momoneymoproblemz, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Chapter & Verse
Lot’s name blinked on in my Uber app; I picked him up in the South Street parking lot outside Eli Lilly headquarters. Smoke rose from the building as three fire engines arrived. The air was thick with the stench of burning Prozac.
“Sodom is burning and my wife has just been turned into a pillar of salt,” Lot said as he settled into the passenger seat. He didn’t exactly look like a biblical figure with his trim brown beard, his light blue shirt, and khakis.
“Please put on your seat belt,” I said, and he obliged.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to compose a letter to my wife Edith telling her how much I loved her. I feel it’s necessary for my mental well- being.”
“Knock yourself out,” I said. He turned off the radio, which had been tuned to Q94—to Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” his eternal ode to one- night stands. Lot then brought out his iPhone and began recording himself on Otter.ai.
“Edith,” he said, as we turned on Delaware St. “I loved what we did in the bedroom, that’s for sure, even if I couldn’t get it up because of the Prozac. But anyway, we had five kids. We Netflixed and chilled before Netflix. We were like Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky in that sordid Breathless remake.” He started to cry: “You certainly didn’t deserve your lot in life.”
I glanced at him wide-eyed, at the same time trying to suppress a laugh, because he had inadvertently turned his name into a punchline.
His brow furrowed. “You didn’t deserve what God gave you, Edith,” he whimpered.
We passed the bail bond storefronts on one side of Delaware St., City Market on the other.
“Can I ask you what year you were born?”
“Why does it matter?” he snapped.
“It’s just that you’re more BC than AD, if you know what I mean.”
He turned to face me: "What has been will be again,” he said. “What has been done will be done again. There’s nothing new under the sun.”
From the book Mindfucking Roundabouts of Carmel, Indiana: Poems and Short Prose by Dan Grossman
