My character, Grenadine Scotch Wild, in “What I Remember Most,” is a collage artist and painter, but is working, currently, as a bartender in a central Oregon town as she is on the run.

This is a conversation she had with a dim witted, slimy husband. Some of you may know that type of husband.

The next complaint was a ringer, to which I showed a boatload of compassion: “My wife’s always complaining because she don’t get no free time cause of the kids.”

“How many kids do you two have?” I asked

“Five.”

I slammed a pitcher of beer down. My anger is always simmering. “You’re here every night and you’re complaining about your wife because she says she needs free time? You must be joking, Selfish One. What do you think you’re doing here? Working?”

“Uh. No.”

“You’re having free time. I dare you to let your wife come sit at this bar and you go home and take care of the kids.”

“I don’t want my wife here! There’s a whole bunch of men here.”
“Why don’t you go home and love your wife before she discovers there’s a whole bunch of men here and chooses one to live with who is not you?”

His face paled.

“You think she won’t do that? You think she won’t fall in love with some other man simply because she said ‘I do’ to you years ago when she was young and not thinking rationally? She said a vow and you think that will keep your wife from leaving some jackass husband who goes to a bar like a liquor leech and talks behind her back?”

“Uh.”

“Uh yourself. Ask yourself an easy question: What are you doing to keep your wife in love with you? What?”

“I’m her husband!”

“Big deal. I can assure you that part is not impressive. All you have to have to be a husband is a marriage license and a dick. Yours is probably small, but she signed the paper, poor woman. You should do what you can to prevent her from signing another piece of paper saying you are now her ex-husband because her life would be easier without you. Now, good-bye.” I took his beer. “Tip first, Selfish One.”

He gave me a five and scuttled on out.