Me and My Manny by M.A. MacAfee Read Free Book Online Page A

cheeks. As the day wore on, he seemed to slump as if weary, and by nightfall, his eyelids drooped and his puckered lips appeared to lose their pucker.
    Now that Wolf and I were alone and giving Harry the benefit of the doubt that something sneaky had been going on, I pressed my ear against Wolf’s chest in search of a heartbeat. Nothing. I then held a mirror to his lips to pick up a breath. Again nothing. Then I thumbed through some old encyclopedias I still had on hand.
    Soon after, I looked up from my reading. “Okay,” I said, sitting on the arm of the Laz-E-Boy where Wolf lay stretched out with his feet up. “You ever hear of Carlo Collodi, who wrote Pinocchio ?” I waited a moment. “I guess eighteen-eighty was before your time. How about Walt Disney?” Again I waited. “Yeah, the nineteen-forty movie was before your time too.”
    I took in a deep breath and looked straight into the flecked brown glass of Wolf’s half-opened eyes. “I’d like to see you wriggle out of this one. You ever have any dealings with a certain Emilio Greco? Around nineteen fifty-six, the Italian sculptor completed a semi-abstract monument of—you guessed it—Pinocchio.”
    Silence, still.

     
    Convinced that Harry’s demise was not imminent, I dismissed his spiel about his doppelganger and went back to my daily routine. Sometime later that week, it became clear that Harry remained firm in his abhorrence of Wolf.
    Having returned from shopping for a stick of beeswax to lubricate Wolf’s joints, I stepped into the kitchen and nearly dropped my bag. Wolfgang sat at the kitchen table, dressed in a silky yellow kimono with a red dragon on the back. A lit stogie with a long white ash poked from his circular lips, and a curly blond wig topped with a rhinestone tiara was on his head. His spindly bare legs were crossed and fuzzy pink bedroom slippers dangled from his stubby feet.
    “Harry, how could you?”
    “Easy,” he said, standing in the doorway. “I found that stuff in your closet.”
    “I know where you found it.” The kimono was a gift Harry had picked up in a port off the Asian seas. “But why put it on Wolf?”
    I snatched the cigar from Wolf’s lips and crushed it in the sink.
    “I just wanted to see if I could change his appearance.”
    “Well, I hope you’re satisfied. How humiliating for him—the possible psychological damage.”
    Harry gestured toward himself. “I’ll tell you who’s got psychological damage around here.”
    “That’s no reason to take it out on him.”
    As Harry screwed up his eyes as if to puzzle out the remark, I examined Wolf’s anatomy to make sure that Harry had not engaged in any other assaults. Relieved, I stepped back, thinking that under those golden locks with that pencil-line mustache Wolf resembled a thinly built member of the gay culture.
    “Why don’t we get a dog?” Harry watched me remove the clothes from Wolf’s frame. “We can talk to it; take it places, and even play dress-up just like we do with the manny.”
    I envisioned Spike, growling and snapping in pink ballet shoes and a matching tutu. “It just doesn’t work for me, Harry. If something bites me, I might bite it back. That’s how things were done in my family.”
    “You don’t have to repeat old mistakes.”
    “It’s encoded in my genes.”
    I dropped the matter of Wolf’s feminine attire. I knew what was going on. Wolf had stolen the spotlight from Harry—both in and out of our marital relationship— and Harry was determined to get it back.

The Gigolo
     
    I had just tidied the apartment, a monthly chore I always finished in a single day, and as I’d found in the past when cleaning, mice had invaded the pantry. They must have tired of the Pop Tarts because this time they ate the Velveeta and Goldfish. Both unopened packages had holes bored in one side and out the other.
    Twice I had reported such raids to management. On both occasions, I was given sticky traps. The small plastic flat, lined with