Write me a Letter

fate, having women throwing themselves at you every time you go out of the house; no, thank you.
    That had been well over an hour ago and since then, out of her—zilch. Hence my new line of approach to attempt to rouse her even briefly from her bed of woe. How hard could it be to write a poem, anyway? Noodlehead did it all the time. Now let’s see... what rhymes with moose?
    We were somewhere over Nevada when I handed her the finished product. Perhaps it could have used a touch more polish, maybe the meter was slightly flawed here and there, mayhap there was the occasional loose rhyme and a couple of words still to be filled in, but it was still better than her junk, and it had only taken me five-and-a-half hours to write.
    ”What’s this shit?” she wanted to know when I handed it over.
    ”Naught but a little poetical pick-me-up,” I said carelessly. ”But please do not think I am trying to butt in to your professional territory, I’m strictly an amateur.”
    ”You can say that again,” she said. Actually, I had composed one other poem in my life, for a Valentine’s card, when I was about ten. I can’t remember all of it but I remember rhyming pink with stink. Here follows my second (and last) endeavor in verse form. Please note the use of capital letters and proper punctuation:

    There was a day
    There were no rules on what to say.
    The whole world was a comic’s oyster.
    From his something something cloister
    A gagster could let rip at Frogs,
    Yids, and mooses, Litvaks, Wogs,
    Chevies containing just one Mex
    And them of indeterminate sex.

    And when the last laff had been sought
    From Limey, Paddy, and the Scot,
    When the final giggle got
    From Polish Pope and Hottentot,
    There was always ah, the ladies,
    The one who had so many babies...
    The one who liked her mustard hot...
    Who made it with the astronaut....

    No more male jokes re Adam’s rib,
    Not since the rise of Woman’s Lib.
    To the subject of the fairer sex we’ve put paid
    As male chauvinism today can (a) get you in serious trouble
    And (b) seriously unlaid.

    What’s left for the fool to make fun of:
    Mooses, and himself, except that’s already been done
    By the King o’ Comedy up above.

    Hey, take a look at me.
    I’m a scream. Kiddies wee
    Their panties when I amble by.
    ”Where’s your hoop and net?” they cry.
    ”Do noses like that really run In your family?”
    The fun’s been done;
    There is no more to make.
    So I think I’ll take
    Up tragedy, like Zeus.
    Long live the moose!

    Sara read it all the way through in total silence and without once changing her expression. Then she handed it back to me, then she burst into tears.
    ”That bad, eh,” I said. ”I know I’m no Dorothy Parker, but still.”
    ”It’s not that,” she said. ”It’s just, oh, like everything.” I put my arm around her and she had a good cry into my shoulder. The stewardess came by and arched her eyebrows at me as if to ask, is she all right? I nodded back reassuringly and tried to look like it wasn’t my fault. I remember thinking the last time anyone had cried on that shoulder it had been her too, after she found out that her real mother was dead; the people who’d raised her, the Silvetti’s, were her adoptive parents. Lucky she had me around from time to time is all I can say.
    The plane landed, finally. I ungritted my teeth and we alit, me and weepy Sara, into hazy warmth. I retrieved my car from the hotel parking lot without problem and without handing over any money and northward we went. A quiet drive later I dropped the poetess off at her apartment building and drove east to Windsor Castle Terrace, where I lived and Mom used to until last year. It was a little late to call her at the retirement home she was in, so I put it off until tomorrow. I did call Evonne, but she was out. I unpacked, puttered around for a bit, turned the TV on and then switched it off again, then said to myself, oh, the deuce with it! and popped around the corner to Jim’s bar, the Two-Two-Two, for a couple of large brandies and ginger ale. I needed something to rinse the taste of the airline’s Bloody Marys out of my mouth and unfortunately I was fresh out of mouthwash at home.
    I had a quiet think, too, in Jim’s, about what to say to Fatty the next day. If he was still in circulation, that is, and not already encased in solid cement twenty feet under some new freeway extension. Maybe tomorrow, Friday, I wouldn’t even open up the office, just do