Happy Days

Option Number Three passed me the salt. She was always awfully quiet at the dinner table, I wasn't sure why. I think it had something to do with the military etiquette her father had taught her. He was a rigid person, always talking about this rule or that. Whatever it was, whether him or someone else, whoever had instilled this habit into Three had done a mighty good job of it. No matter how many times I tried striking a conversation, she would be dead quiet. "Had a good day at work?" was the most she would say. I always answered in the same way. She ought to have memorised that answer by now. 

Three liked her soaps. You couldn't get her off the TV no matter how hard you tried. It was something that annoyed me but I had come to accept it. After all, she cooked and fed the kids, earned a paycheque at the end of the month and probably tolerated traits of mine she hated. I can tell my polka dancing annoys her. She keeps quiet about it. Least I can do is returning the favour. That's something that made her better than Option Two. I can't remember what Option One was like. I think she was worse. But I did write more songs about her. I think I got tired of shuffling through options at one point and just went with Three. My Facebook timeline says I fell in love. I don't recall. 

I'll have friends over tomorrow. It's Less Successful Friend Number Two and Bearable Co-Worker Five, along with a few others. Three is already upset about having to cook for them. But I woo her with promises of a few nights out all on our own later on in the month. We'd have dinners at that fancy place down the street so Three can tell her friends at the Yoga club, the one with the air conditioned waiting room.

When my friends arrive with their wives I can tell they hate me a bit more than they used to last week. When you turned the lights on real bright, my little house seemed like a luxurious studio apartment, better than where they lived. I shake their hands at the door and they greet me back, complimenting me on weight I never actually lost. 

My wife brings the tea and greets everyone. She sits next to me, closer than she usually does when we're home alone. She smiles and giggles and shines the imitation jewellery she has on to the best of her ability. The dimwit who is related to the boss, and so is above us in the food chain, cracks that sexist joke about his wife getting lost in Thailand. We laugh at the top of our lungs like we do every day at lunch break. We kind of have to. 

We eat dinner together, me and my wife doing our best impression of eager hosts. We ask them all to take the biggest piece of fish. Our smiles can probably keep the fish lively longer than the formalin leaking from its every crevice. Smiles can work that way.

 We discuss office politics, all agreeing on the best interests of the company. It's almost eleven when my wife starts to get fidgety. Everyone seems to pick up on it and we swiftly bring an end to evening.

"Did you check up on the kids?" she asks me as she gets into bed. "I have no idea what they'll do with their lives. I nod and tell her I did. "They'll be fine. They have good grades".

My wife and I discuss the day in bed. She's upset because she has to take the jewellery off. I don't know why she can't keep them on. They're fake, anyway. "Keep them on," I tell her. She ponders over that for a minute. "Even in sleep? I might as well," she replies. I hadn't noticed until that point how well imitation jewellery can shine. "None of this looks fake at all," I remember saying to myself as I fell asleep.