“That is an excellent tie,” says Rosario Dawson, taking my excellent tie between her fingers to examine it more closely.
“Thank you,” I respond, taking the opportunity to place my hands upon her hipbones. Her face is close to mine, so I kiss her.*
She makes a small and heartwarming noise of appreciation and desire and kisses me back, which is pretty much the intended result of a kiss, so I consider this tie a very worthwhile purchase. After about ten minutes of hot lip-on-lip action I pick up my wife, my well-defined muscular arms beneath her knees and shoulderblades, and carry her to the window. A breeze which carries the faintest suggestion of lilacs or mint blows the curtains inward, bringing with it the faint sound of tinkling bells which always seems to haunt the air in Heaven. Over the rich fields which stretch toward the vineyards and the lake hundreds of fireflies dance and flicker, their crepuscular communications a neverending source of delight. We have an entire room in the adjacent wing whose sole source of illumination is jar upon jar of them, each one containing this really neat invention that looks like an average stick or small tree branch but is some sort of nutrient-rich oxygenating polymer which provides both sustenance and air (and a place to sit) to each jar’s inhabitants, so there isn’t even a need to poke airholes or clean out the depressing remains of expired bugs so instead you can just hang out in there listening to Coltrane while they do their bioluminescent blinking game in near perpetuity, and it’s great.
Roario (Dawson, my wife) is kissing my cheek over and over, a hundred times on or near the same spot, making these exaggerated smacking sounds like cartoon kisses, which prompts me to scrunch up my face (quite a bit of what we do causes face scrunching, now that I think of it) and squint my eyes and kind of pull my head to the side to escape her incessant osculation until after a minute or two I’m all like, “What are you doing, dork?” and she goes, “Looooooooooving you,” and continues smacking away on my cheek like a charming creep until I threaten to throw her out the window if she doesn’t stop.
“I’ll just float,” she says.
“Shit,” I reply.
Mwah, mwah, mwah goes Rosario Dawson, smooching on me like a retard, pausing only to sing “Looooooooving yoooooooou … is easy ‘cause you’re aprettygoodcookwithnicehairandIreallylikethattieyou’rewearingggggg …” and stuff like that and eventually I kind of hoist her up and around off my shoulder and chuck her out the window of our sprawling, architecturally progressive mansion and into the fragrant night air, where she does in fact just hover, smiling.
“Hey, watch this,” she says, and her belly glows with that fascinating yellow-green color, just like the fireflies for a few seconds, then grows dim.
“Are you glowing like a firefly?” I ask my wife, who is obviously glowing like a firefly.
“I am the prettiest firefly ever,” she responds and flies around for a few minutes, intermittently glowing.
“You are the prettiest retard ever, maybe,” I say with a smile, alighting through the window and chasing her through the warm Summer air, weightless and giggling and happy.
When I catch her, I do some prerequisite tickling and then we stop, hovering side by side and slowly rotate until we’re staring up at the smattering of stars, then close our eyes and with a practiced thought we materialize in the front seat of a 1953 Studebaker in the third row of the drive-in movie theatre down the road from our house just as the cartoon with the dancing popcorn and snacks is beginning, which precedes the previews which precede tonight’s movie, which is Thor, starring Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman and directed by Kenneth Branagh because it is cheesy action movie night and my wife is a major comic book geek. Beside us, in a ‘59 Lincoln Premier is my friend Dani and her boyfriend David Duchovny.
“Hey, Dani,” I say, rolling down the window, “Hey, David Duchovny.”
“Hey Justin. Hey Rosario Dawson,” says Dani, and David Duchovny smiles and waves as well. “We thought you weren’t going to make it. What have you guys been doing?”
“I was glowing like a firefly,” says Rosario, smiling, and Dani, even though she’s way smart and kind of highfaluting is nevertheless also a lot like an overgrown seven year old regarding certain things (one of those things, I now know, is fireflies) goes, “Oh my God that sounds sooooo fun!” and Rosario is all like, “Watch,” and she glows like a firefly and Dani squeals a little or at least makes some sort of indescribable noise of excitement and then she also glows like a firefly and Duchovny is looking at me, all ghostly greenish in the glow of Dani (which I must also be in the glow of Rosario) and I just roll my eyes and shrug my shoulders while the ladies discuss making a light language for when the phones are broken which I don’t even have the energy or desire to point out won’t happen because we live in Heaven and even if I did they’re both so happy and blinking and bioluminescent I just ask Dave if he wants to go get some concessions from the concession stand and he concedes and so we do.
“Long time no see,” says David Duchovny, clapping me on the shoulder.
“We took a vacation to the island district,” I say, shaking his hand and smiling. “It’s good to see you.”
I buy a bunch of Sour Patch Kids and some JuJuBees for Rosario, then get popcorn and soda for good measure. David buys two packs of cigarettes, a large popcorn, bottled waters and some coffee, which will still be hot even if they drink it after the movie ends. We both have a cooler full of beer in the trunk of our car, and a flask or two, because this isn’t our first drive-in rodeo.
And when we get back the previews have started and the gals are not glowing anymore and we settle into our respective cars with our respective candies and popcorn and regular (not diet) soda with the ice that never melts and the perpetual carbonation and a surprising zero calories and we watch Thor starring starring Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman (directed by Kenneth Branagh) in the dark and balmy evening while in the distance, near a thicket of trees just outside the gate, several hundred fireflies flicker and blink, a perfectly acceptable form of talking during a film.
* I don’t mean to imply that the only reason I kiss her is because she happens to bring her face into general proximity with my lips. I kiss her because she is my wife and I love her and I think she is beautiful and oftentimes the words I would use to tell her so would end up coming out all hackneyed and overwrought, some little torrent of purple prose that both overstates and underimpresses my feelings, and so in lieu of this embarrassment I instead gently kiss her, hoping that in the soft pressure of my lips and palms and the sound of my drawing breath all the poetry my speaking voice lacks my body will be able to convey.
