Twice Is Always?

by LOYD ROSENFIELD

WHEN, for the second time in all our years of marriage (to the very best of my memory), I allowed cigar ashes to drop on the carpet one night last week, my wife asked, “Must you always drop ashes on the carpet?”

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. I have been accused of late of such other crimes as always letting the bathroom faucet drip, always forgetting my latchkey, and always allowing the car to run out of gas.

Understand, now, I am never accused of always bringing home a pay check, always taking my wife to the theater, and always doing odd jobs around the house.

Not long ago we drove out to one of those new subdivisions to see a friend who had moved there. Not only do the houses all look alike, but the streets all curve around to try to give the impression the houses don’t look alike. It’s very confusing. When, after only ten minutes’ circling, I hadn’t found the address, my wife commented, “It’s funny to me that you, who were born in this very city, always get lost.”

“When was the last time I got lost?" I asked quietly.

“Last summer looking for Ted’s Tennis Racket Restringing Shop,” she answered.

I sighed. “But it had gone out of business, dear, and another shop was there. That’s why I couldn’t find it.”

Last month the office force gave a surprise stag party for the boss’s fifty-fifth birthday, and I told my wife, regretfully, that it was necessary for me to attend.

She agreed, but pouted slightly. “ I understand, but I don’t like having you always go out and leave me alone at night,” she said.

I allowed my mouth to drop open in astonishment. “But darling,” I protested, “ the last time I left you alone at night was in the spring of '51 when I went down to help fight the Arkansas River floodwaters!”

Her only comment was “Oh you — always exaggerating.”

Two weeks ago Friday I brought home a jazz record called “After Midnight,”which I happened to be attracted to, so I naturally played it a couple of times that evening. The next evening friends dropped by, so I played it once for them.

When it was over, my wife shook her head and said, “Loyd is always playing that record. I hear it in my sleep.”

“Sarita, please!" I said. “I only bought it yesterday and played it just two times last night.”

“Twice last night, once tonight,” she said. “That comes out to over live hundred times a year.”

Well, I stood still for that, but I decided to make an issue of the cigarashes-on-the-carpet deal, because the thing seemed to be getting out of hand and I kept having to warn myself, “Temper, temper, temper.”

So when the two-ton truck had left I called her out to the back yard. Upon seeing the ten-foot-high mountain of ashes she screamed. Then she cried, “What in the world is that?”

This was the question I had been waiting for. “That, my love,” I answered her, “is 1439 pounds of ashes. After a great deal of precise calculation I arrived at that figure as being the amount of ashes that would be on our carpel if I had ‘always’ dropped them even time I smoked a cigar.”

She looked at the mountain for a moment, then said, ” It’s a good thing I cleaned them up, then, isn’t it?”

Last night when I sloshed into the house after walking the six blocks from the bus stop in what may have been Hurricane Zelda, she greeted me with “Must you always track mud into the living room?”