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After endless delays, there was a break in the case. Georgette unearthed one of those obsolete statutes that usually make for nothing more than amusing trivia. The writers of the statute hadn't done it for the benefit of unkempt Setter-caretakers, but Georgette was sure that the law could be applied to my situation. I was off the hook.

It was a bittersweet finale: I was nearly clean and sober, but once again merely average as a conversationalist with the opposite sex. Still, I took a shot. In the aftermath of the good news, I bantered about my Setter. It felt like an appropriate way to transition from my case into different territory.

When I asked her out for a drink, Georgette said no. But there was hesitation. The hesitation seemed so fraught with meaning that that I seized on it as an opening — maybe I still had a little dazzle left after all.

Georgette admitted that she'd been curious about me since we first met. The problem was, she explained, that I "pushed her buttons."

I asked her how I pushed her buttons.
It was a bittersweet finale.
She hesitated again, and this time it was a very long hesitation. Then she told me that I pushed her buttons because I reminded her of her ex-husband. In her usual thorough manner she checked off the similarities between her ex and me, and how we pushed her buttons in exactly the same way. Actually, it wasn't unflattering: he didn't sound like all that bad a person. We did seem very much alike. She'd married him when she was only seventeen, they'd had a messy ending, and she just didn't want to go down that same route again — at least not so soon.

I didn't give up just yet, but I could tell that nothing was going to change her mind. She was watching out for herself. We still had most of our session left and we filled it with a friendly conversation not so far, after all, from chatting over drinks. I learned that she had a young daughter from her marriage. I learned that she was clinically depressed. I learned that she too had a pair of dogs, littermates. She described them as a kind of comedy team whose antics were practically the only thing that could make her happy lately. She opened up to me. If only my case hadn't dragged on, and I was still taking that unearthly dosage for which I now felt a deep nostalgia, I just might have talked her out of her qualms, buttons or no buttons.

After our friendly chat I went home and got myself cleaned up. I looked in the mirror and saw an exonerated, tidy, responsible member of society, nearly detoxed, prepared to be reinstated to the day shift. Then I celebrated the Hail Mary victory in my case by breaking my detox schedule for the first time ever. I took triple my allotted dosage, patted my Setter on the head, and anticipated an hour or two of celebratory fantasizing.

The only problem was that the chat I'd had with my PD had cast her in a new light. For the first time I'd seen her as someone who was not Georgette, who had her own life with its own share of sadness and disorder, a woman who'd been through a rough time with her ex, who had a daughter and quite possibly her own prescription to fill at Walgreen's. She'd become too much of an individualized person to take the part of Georgette in my eleventh-grade fantasies. I tried, but it just didn't happen. So instead I spent an hour or two of celebratory fantasizing about my not-Georgette PD. It was all completely chaste. I couldn't launch into mindless sex with the patient, compassionate woman who had worked a miracle on my behalf. We took our dogs to the dog park and the comedy team frolicked while my elderly Setter looked on, longing for the romps of her youth. Before the fantasy went much further, I felt myself growing woozy; it had been months since I'd taken such a large dose. The dogs played some more and my PD and I chatted. And then I slept.  n°



           


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Fortunato Salazar lives in Los Angeles. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Frigg, McSweeney's, Mississippi Review Online, Sleepingfish, Wigleaf and other journals.
 

13 Comments

Well this is SO much better than all those low-brow confessionals so many people complain about... /sarcasm

NDO commented on 08/06

This is actually a great piece of writing. I look forward to more from this author.

RD commented on 08/06

God, this is just like 95% of all American writing now days. When is this going to end?

TK commented on 08/06

I've read Fortunato Salazar's other work and one thing I can say for sure, it doesn't remotely resemble 95% of all American writing now days.

CJ commented on 08/06

Terrific writing...and funny. Can the person who says this resembles 95% of american writing actually back that up with some kind of explanation. Otherwise the comment is meaningless.

tern commented on 08/06

Hey I actually liked this one! Hooksexup management people, if you're reading this, bring us more writing from this guy! (and less from much of the other writers who've moved in since the big shake-up)

PI commented on 08/06

Yeah, this was great. First piece I've really dug the hell out of since the redesign.

TD commented on 08/07

more of this, please

mp commented on 08/07

this was useless and dull

jp commented on 08/07

Poor man. Good writer, though.

CJM commented on 08/08

Much better than the pap or plain old crap on display here in the year or two before the redesign.

TITS commented on 08/08

loved this

ja commented on 08/08

As my role model, Christopher Walken, might say "WOW!" This is one of the best short pieces I've read in a very long time. Fortunato Salzar can really, really write. I'm gonna check out his other stuff.

myth commented on 08/09
 

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