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Impaired
- Wayne State University Press
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Impaired If it wasn’t for the fact that I get turned on seeing Libby in her fancy clothes, I wouldn’t have so readily agreed to attend her boss’s affair. Left up to me, we would have RSVP’d Sorry and stayed home. For one thing, occasions that require sports jackets and etiquette are not, as they say, my cup of tea. I’d rather order pizza from Dominos and veg out in sweats on the couch, even if that means watching one of Libby’s lame chick-flick comedies, like You’ve Got Mail or What’s Up, Doc? I mean, I don’t really mind what we watch when we don’t have to go out, because I want to please her, now that we’re married. Not to mention that it never ceases to amaze me how horny a woman can get after watching those kinds of movies, even for the umpteenth time. For another thing, I don’t much care for Libby’s boss, a supreme piece of corporate work, right down to her name: Harlequin Drummer—“Harly,” for both the long and the short of it. “Never call her Harlequin,” Libby huffed, the first time I’d repeated the name out loud. “Never ever. She’s hyper about it.” Granted, before the specialty printed invitation arrived in In Which Brief Stories Are Told 80 ) our mailbox, I’d only encountered Harly a couple of times—times when I’d stopped by North Bank Components to take Libby to lunch. I wasn’t impressed. Something about the woman puts me off. She is too tall, for one thing, Amazonian tall, and she has a way of looking at people, even people my height—six-feet two—that makes them feel small. She has big hands and a firm handshake, an imposing voice. More than once, I’ll bet, she’s been mistaken as transgendered. Yet she is all woman otherwise —attractive in the way confident, unnaturally dark-haired women are, her eyes the sea green of Mediterranean travel brochures —glitteringly clear and enticing, likely deeper than they appear. Perhaps that’s what initially turned me off about her, that incongruity, like one finds with those Alaskan sled dogs— the ones with powerful, wolf-like bodies but eyes like unworldly gems. Or maybe it’s because of how much Libby admires her. Not only because she’s Libby’s first female CEO—someone to emulate —but also because Harly took a liking to Libby early on, hiring her as first-shift supervisor even before the factory was completely up and running, which has allowed Libby in turn to handpick her own cadre of assemblers, although she has yet to actually finish her management degree, Personnel being one of the three courses she has left. Still, in what I’ve come to think of as a domestic concession, I’ve had to accept the fact that I would at times be party to some uppity, North Bank Components get-together, seeing that I was, as the embossed invitation stipulated, Libby’s “husband, partner , or significant other.” “Try to be charming,” Libby repeated, as we jostled in front of the bedroom mirror on the evening of the big event. She had taken over the reknotting of my tie after my third or fourth attempt . “Yes, dear,” I replied. I modulated my voice in imitation of the proper husband, like one of the milquetoasts in Father Knows [54.235.6.60] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 11:32 GMT) Impaired ( 81 Best or Leave It to Beaver, TV shows that have become my model for husbandry. “And you will behave,” she said, tapping my nose lightly with the nail of her index finger, a gesture that always drives my desire to ravish her on the spot. She no doubt orchestrated her perfume to swill my libido as well. If you do that during the dinner, I was about to say, there’d be no guarantee. But I could tell that she was in no mood for my kidding around, so I gave her the answer I knew she’d want to hear. “Of course I’ll behave,” I said. “I’ll be the gentleman you thought you married.” And I kissed her reassuringly on the forehead . We arrived at Harly’s brick-skirted split-level a well-timed fifteen minutes after we were expected—my best guess at what would be acceptable tardiness in formal circumstances...