Single: Miss Tennessee b/w The Cryerer | Page 3

shower before we eat."
When I got out of the shower, she was sitting on the couch. Steve sat on the floor in front of her, staring up in worship.
"Why don't we eat in the living room," I shouted as I got dressed. "Fine!" she shouted back.
After I'd shaved and combed my hair, I loaded a few bowls with stew and lengths of French bread and knifefuls of butter. I carried them into the living room and sat down on the couch next to her.
"Oh honey," she said. "Everything smells so good."
We ate and watched Jeopardy, calling out the answers when we knew them. Steve kept his nose up in the air, sniffing, and he spent a lot of time wobbling on his back legs trying to see what we were eating.
"Look," Miss Tennessee said, nudging me. "He's going: Silly man. You smell like wood." Steve sniffed around my feet. "Just like wood. Like all silly old men." I looked to see if I'd dropped some bread on the carpet. "Not like Mommy's friend the astronaut. Not at all. Mommy's astronaut smells like TV."
"Silly?" I said in the way I had of talking when I was talking for Steve. "People smelling like TV. Now that's silly. I know that and my brain's no bigger than a walnut."
"Look," Miss Tennessee said, nudging me again. "He's going: He does. I've smelled him. He smells like shampoo and baby aspirins and electrical fire."
I turned to Miss Tennessee, who was still smiling at Steve. "There aren't any astronauts in this part of the country," I said.
"Look," she said, nudging. "He's going: That's what I thought, too, but I smelled him. I know."
I took our plates into the kitchen. I could still hear Miss Tennessee's voice from the other room. "Yeees. Yeees. The little man doesn't like wood does he? The little man likes astronauts."
I put the dishes in soapy water and told Miss Tennessee I was going home. "Alright," she said, shaking Steve like a puppet. He looked at me and squinted.
"Look. The little man's going to miss you," she said. "Say, I'm going to miss you," she told him. But Steve didn't say anything.
On my way home I stopped and bought beer. In my immaculate apartment, I sat in the chair in front of the television and propped the beer next to me. I flipped through channels and drank. I watched some sports wrap-ups and bits of a beauty pageant for teenagers, although this only made me restless.
An astronaut? Was he really an astronaut? Where had she met an astronaut? Are there still astronauts? The people in the shuttles, are they technically astronauts? I opened another beer and tried to decide whether I was upset because Miss Tennessee was seeing somebody else or because that somebody else was an astronaut or because he maybe wasn't an astronaut but had said he was and she believed him. Or maybe it was because he smelled like TV. I opened another beer and smelled my hand. Like skin and bones and beer. Like deer and French bread. Not at all like wood. I grabbed another beer and took it with me to the shower.
I didn't hear from Miss Tennessee for days. For more than a week. I began looking forward to school. I kept busy with errands and lesson plans and some new books I was expected to teach. Early Saturday I joined my brother near the lakes north of the city to shoot at ducks and deer. I tried not to think about Steve or astronauts or Miss Tennessee. At night I ordered pornographic movies on pay-for-view, which were edited for such purpose and shot at odd angles, and wondered what the PTA would think of me now. I imagined Miss Tennessee with the astronaut, drinking cocktails made with Tang and having multiple orgasms in weightless environments. Weightlessness outside of deep space, I knew, was impossible, but then I hadn't known we still had astronauts. I tried not to think about these things.
Miss Tennessee called while I sat in the driveway outside my apartment. I was considering the latticework on the porch of the big house where my landlord lived and thinking about all these things anyway. I didn't answer the portable phone I kept with me in case she called, but went inside to listen to the message. She sounded as sweet as could be.
"Where have you been silly man," she said. "When you get done sulking, give us a call." I was nervous about who us might include but I called back anyway.
"Hey," she said when she heard it was me.
"Hey," I said.
"The little man misses you," she said. I could hear her talking away from the phone. "Yeees. Isn't that right?" she was saying.
"And you?"
"Me?"
"What about you? Do you miss me?"
"Well of course,