Cheapskate in Love

Chapter 1

The Thursday evening in June had begun well enough, Bill thought, but now it seemed to deteriorate.

“Get out,” Linda yelled at him.

They were standing inside her large, three-story house. Immediately, she rudely cleared the way for his passage by yanking open the front door, which was painted a fire-truck red, a shocking contrast to the house’s white exterior, and pointed sharply and peremptorily in the direction he was to go. There was no doubt about what she wanted him to do. After a few microseconds in which he still had not moved—he was pondering his options, staring at her, perplexed at what was happening—she lost the rest of her small store of patience, grabbed his overnight bag, ran with it a few fiery steps outside, and hurled it toward his car parked on the street. Although she looked remarkably like a child’s doll, with a form-fitting silk dress that was brightly patterned with yellow, pink, and blue twining flowers, and had soft, gentle features that made her appear much younger than forty, Chinese-born Linda had enough yang to balance her yin and maintained an aggressive exercise routine. She could throw like a professional softball pitcher. Bill’s bag flew through the air.

It was the same worn nylon bag that he would take to the gym on the rare occasions he actually went there. It didn’t contain much. When it landed thirty feet from Linda near the sidewalk, the shapeless, sagging form was clearly visible to anyone looking, since there were nearly two hours of daylight left. The bag looked distinctly out of place on the perfectly green lawn, which was cut short and intensely tended to. Not a single weed, not even a small one, could be seen amid the grass. The lawn almost seemed to bristle with indignation at having an object such as Bill’s bag thrown on it.

“But why?” Bill asked, coming outside to where she stood. “What’s wrong this time?”

“Everything,” Linda spat. Like a bull, which sees red, she was determined to be displeased with anyone and anything in her way, particularly if they had some connection to Bill.

“You don’t mean that. We had a lovely dinner. I paid. We were talking and laughing,” he replied.

To call the dinner lovely was a stretch. Bill knew that to some degree. There had been more silence and arguing than talking and laughing. But as a fifty-six-year-old divorced man with aging looks, rounded shoulders, and a visible gut, who had been married for only five years decades ago, he had developed the habit, through years of dating many women, of putting things in a positive light. He tried to create an imaginary, flattering semblance of reality that might convince her-of-the-moment to continue together with him, for as long as the mirage could be made to last, despite obvious, unbridgeable differences. There were always going to be some differences, he reasoned. In his experience, there always had been. His habit of inventing romantic fantasies had become so engrained from frequent practice that now he mostly ignored—sometimes he didn’t even try to perceive—the actual differences. He thought that whatever he said or imagined about his relationships and the objects of his affections was true—no matter how fictitious—at least for a while.

Linda, however, was not in the mood to be pacified by any lover’s rubbish, especially any from Bill. “Get out,” she yelled even louder than before, shaking her beautiful, shiny, black, shoulder-length hair and flinging her right arm and thumb into the air like an umpire, the prettiest umpire ever, calling a man out who had failed to reach home base before the ball.

A young, conventional-looking couple, who were walking on the sidewalk in front of her house with a baby stroller, looked at Bill and Linda, dumb-founded with wide-open eyes, and slowed their pace unconsciously in an attempt to hear more. Their baby in the stroller had better manners and minded her own business, sucking on a pacifier and gurgling contentedly, perfectly oblivious to the hubbub nearby.

“We can go to a Chinese restaurant next time,” Bill suggested as a fair compromise, although he had no idea what the problem was that had stirred her passions. He didn’t have much insight into her thoughts, emotions, or behavior on any occasion; his understanding of women was quite limited. “We always eat Chinese food. You said you wanted to try something different. Didn’t you like the risotto? That had rice in it. My grandmother made better risotto, but it wasn’t that bad.”

Linda was too upset to answer. She re-entered her house and slammed the door shut. The sound could be heard two blocks away. It was a noise louder than the volume of her yelling at Bill, but only by a little.

The young couple on the sidewalk slowly passed from sight, continuously staring behind them, captivated by the conflict unfolding in public. They weren’t the only ones looking at Bill. Neighbors on either side of Linda’s house and across the street had begun to appear outside or open windows to see what the ruckus was about. In this well-to-do, family-oriented neighborhood inside New York City, houses were separate, yet still close together, so many people could usually hear any disturbance outside at once. A dispute out of doors was generally rare in the area—houses were large with at least three floors and had plenty of space inside for private screaming—but Linda was not the typical homeowner. Due to numerous incidents, she had developed a reputation for putting on a good show, with lots of melodrama and a fast moving action plot, which her neighbors found preferable to any program on television. They wanted to catch the latest episode. As discreetly as they could, women and men from the surrounding houses settled into locations where they could observe the scene unfold, without drawing attention to themselves. Children, of course, felt no such restriction. They were running across lawns, pulling playmates to come look, jumping up and down in prime viewing spots, smiling, giggling, talking, pointing at Bill, unable to control their excitement. To them, Linda’s shenanigans were more entertaining than anything else they could watch or play.

Bill was not looking at any of them. “That risotto was pretty bad,” he said to himself.

While he debated internally whether he should ring the bell and apologize for the quality of the risotto or go pick up his bag and diplomatically cease further negotiations for the moment, the door flew open and Linda stomped out.

“You give me no mental or spiritual stimulation,” she yelled. At the moment, she was not offering those qualities either, but that fact didn’t bother her.

“Tell me what you want. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it,” Bill responded, opening his arms wide in a grand dramatic gesture that would indicate powerful heart-felt feeling in most contexts. Lovers sometimes plead with their beloved to be more loving, he knew from the little poetry he had read, so he thought this tactic might work.

“You waste my time,” Linda retorted, before turning around and slamming the door in his face again.

“Women!” Bill exclaimed to himself, unlike any pastoral poet.

A big black dog, which was being walked by a middle-aged woman in a sweatsuit, appeared to hear and understand him. The dog began to bark angrily at Bill and strain at the leash, which the petite owner had to hold tightly with both hands and pull in the opposite direction, lest the dog drag her toward Bill. The woman exerted herself with an exaggerated smile, as if to say she didn’t know what had come over the dog. With much difficulty, she led her dog away barking and growling. “Good girl, be a good girl,” she encouraged the dog. “That man doesn’t mean any harm.” The dog didn’t seem so sure.

Thinking the date had finally come to an end, Bill went to pick up his bag on the grass. He had only gone several steps in that direction, when Linda opened the red door once more and marched out. She held a medium-sized box of low-quality, mass-produced American chocolates, which had been purchased from a drugstore, and a small, inexpensive bouquet of red roses from a corner deli, which had passed their peak of freshness. The roses were wrapped in paper and held together with a rubber band.

“Take your flowers and your candy,” she shrieked.

“They’re for you,” Bill replied, turning around and walking toward her, imploring her with both hands. “I bought them for you. You can keep them. They’re for you.”

Linda, however, preferred to return the gifts. She threw the bouquet then the chocolates at Bill’s head. He ducked, raising his arms to shield his head, but still he was partially hit by the projectiles. Linda could throw with the accuracy of a satellite-controlled missile-launcher, one that actually worked properly. During its flight, the box of chocolates opened, and some pieces fell out.

“Take them, you cheapskate!” she screamed.

“Aww, you didn’t need to do that,” Bill moaned, standing up straight again. “Those are good chocolates. They aren’t cheap. I paid almost fifteen dollars.” To Bill, that was a significant amount.

“I don’t eat them. Ever. You know that,” she roared. With that expression of gratitude, she stormed back into her house and slammed the door a third and final time. She had retired for the evening.

“I could have eaten them with you,” Bill said loudly to the red door, more grieved to see bought and paid-for chocolates lying in the grass, than to have had his gifts spurned; having his money wasted was more painful to him than any personal insult. “No need to throw them away,” he lamented.

Bill picked up the box of chocolates and began to replace the pieces that had fallen out. He stuck one in his mouth, then another.

“These are good chocolates,” he proclaimed, as loudly as his chewing allowed, in case Linda was secretly listening on the other side of the front door. “Anyone would be happy to have them.” Sticking another in his mouth, he announced, “They’re weally goo,” before he had to swallow or choke.

No one responded, as he coughed and gasped for air.

Linda had already gone to give herself an acupuncture treatment to discharge all of the negative chi Bill had induced in her body. In one of the rooms of her house where she saw patients for acupuncture and dispensed herbal remedies—she was a popular practitioner of both alternative medicines and had become wealthy through them—she lay down on a massage table that her patients would lie on. With the help of a mirror, she stuck needles into the proper places on her face and head, after covering her lower body. A recording of instrumental Chinese music played, which sounded sharp and twangy to Western ears, like a piano being tuned, but to Linda it was relaxing and soothing. She breathed deeply, in complete confidence that all the toxic energy of the evening would disappear, along with Bill. “That rice was terrible,” she muttered, before lapsing into silence.

The neighbors had begun to drift back to their previous occupations, sharing a laugh or commenting to a friend or spouse about what they had seen. Some shook their heads in disbelief and wondered what would happen next time. Children were much faster at forgetting. As soon as it was apparent that Bill would not choke and Linda was not returning to hurl more objects at him, the children lost all interest in them and talked about other things, going off to new adventures. No one paid any more attention to Bill.

Holding the rejected box of chocolates and the discarded bouquet, with the strap of the overnight bag over his shoulder, Bill walked like a player on the defeated team in an important match to the curb, where his ten-year-old dented and dilapidated car was parked. He wore brown slacks, an off-white dress shirt, striped tie, and a grey blazer. Nothing was fancy, nothing new.

Gene, the sixty-plus-year-old neighbor who lived with his wife directly across from Linda’s house, was watering the tidy flower border in his yard near the street, when Bill reached his car. In the year and a half that Bill had been seeing Linda off and on, Gene and Bill had become familiar and often spoke. Gene had a genuine sympathy for Bill and his romantic trials, although he couldn’t quite grasp his persistence with Linda.

“Another early night for you, Bill?” Gene asked in a friendly voice.

“Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong,” Bill replied.

“Better luck next time,” Gene said.

“Thanks, Gene. I need it.”

With that, Bill tossed everything into his car and drove away, meditating on his presumed bad luck.