Pickles & Dimes

Please, headache – go away.

I felt you lightly knocking on my temple three days ago and even though I didn’t let you in then, here you are, sitting on my recliner and eating my Cheetos. I’ve tried tempting you with Advil and generic Advil and whatever long-expired pain reliever that’s in the work first-aid kit, but you’re still here, twisting the cables and wires that connect my eyeballs to my brain, so every time I blink it takes a few seconds for my vision to properly adjust.

After freezing all day yesterday, today I feel uncomfortably overheated, to the point that barfing seems a realistic possibility, even though I am doing nothing more strenuous than sitting at my desk.

What will make you leave? I can’t leave work today, and tonight I have a work-related dinner I really want to attend so I can pet the host’s dogs instead of socializing. If I go home, Jason will just make fun of me for being weak and girly.

What if I offered you unsanctioned amounts of ibuprofen coupled with a massive caffeine intake?

Do you want chocolate? I usually don’t eat chocolate, but if that’s what it takes, I will. How about salt? Should I get some chips?

Wait – you’re just a headache, right? Not the precursor to the flu or mad cow disease or a brain tumor – right?

Right?

Hello?

My family has this prank where we pass along a realistic-looking fake hand to each other. You can read the backstory here.

Anyway, Jason & I received this hand from my brother a few weeks ago. He got us a shredder as a wedding gift, and I was so excited about it I didn’t notice the Sharpie-scrawled note on the box: “Open me for another surprise!” Nestled tightly alongside our new shredder was the hand, appearing like a grisly shredding victim.

The rule is that you have to pass the hand on to another family member within one month. Now that everyone knows we have it, that’s going to be tough. In the meantime, the hand has been sitting creepily on my quilt rack in the spare bedroom. Every time I walk down the hallway and spot it out of the corner of my eye, it gives me pause (pause = prolonged heart stoppage).

A few nights ago, I pulled back the bed covers and, courtesy of Jason, spotted the hand lying casually under my pillow, like an unwelcome seduction ploy.

Last night, after I got home from work, I grabbed the hand and ran downstairs to Jason’s bathroom. Laughing nervously to myself, I surveyed my options: Hang it from the showerhead? Somehow connect it to the toilet lid? Have it surreptitiously peeking from a ceiling tile?

I finally opened Jason’s linen closet and stuck the hand into his toiletry basket. Then I carefully tucked his comb into the hand’s non-bendy fingers. And then I guffawed out loud like a crazy person and sprinted upstairs, leaving breathless giggles in my wake.

This morning, after delaying my electric tooth brushing and blow drying, I was finally rewarded with this:

“DAMMIT!!!”

These remaining two weeks are going to be a blast.

Dear unknown person I curse daily,

My work number is not a fax. It is not one today and it was not one the previous 317 times. Call whomever you’re trying to reach and ask them for the correct fax number, dammit.

Dear generic Advil I found in the kitchen drawer at work,

Your stern message about not taking more than 6 pills in 24 hours? HAAAAAA. (That is the sound of my uterus laughing at you.)

Dear work computer,

That whole “greeting me with a blank screen and none of my documents when I logged on”? Did I look like I thought that was amusing? DID I???

Dear hair,

I know you’re acting stupid so that I’ll cut you, but I’m not falling for it. Yet. We’ll talk again later.

Dear closet and dresser,

You look empty now that I’ve donated some of your occupants. I’ll try to remedy that soon. And no more Grandma sweaters, I promise!

Dear internal body temperature,

KICK IT UP A NOTCH.

Dear bathtub,

You. Me. Tonight (or this weekend if madcap games of gin rummy interfere). Wear something hot, bubbly and scented like fruit.

On Sunday morning, I was jolted awake by the sound of gunshots. Crack!crack!crack!crack!crack! Rapid-fire. Distinct. Unmistakable.

With my heart pinballing in my chest, I shot upright and automatically checked the time: 5:43.

“That sounded like gunshots,” I whispered urgently to Jason.

“Mm-hm,” he murmured back, his breathing elongating until I realized he was sleeping again. I jostled him awake. “I’m going to check it out.”

“What? It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Those were gunshots.”

“I’ve already forgotten about it. Go to sleep.”

After staring at his rhythmically rising back, I blatantly ignored him and propped myself on one arm, straining to hear additional homicidal noises: a screeching getaway car, sirens, panicked screams, running footsteps, more gunfire. Instead, I heard nothing. I checked the clock again to note the time for the police interview that I was sure would take place later: 5:48.

I racked my memory: there were five gunshots, right in a row. I was sure of it. Whoever pulled the trigger was shooting at one target; there wasn’t enough time between shots for the gunman to aim at anything else.

The gun. It wasn’t an automatic and it wasn’t a shotgun. (I was now an expert on shotguns since I had previously [the day before] shot one for the first time ever at a piece of wood in the middle of nowhere under the tutelage of Jason’s brother and uncle.)

“Are you still awake?” Jason asked.

“Yes. I’m going to check things out.”

A long sigh. “I’ll do it. What am I looking for?”

I didn’t know. A dead body, for starters? A trail of blood leading to the killer? OJ’s glove? I settled for: “Anything out of the ordinary.”

He got up and like a person with a death wish, started to pull back the bedroom shades. Incredulous, I lunged across the bed and hissed, “Jesus! Be discreet!” Even though I theoretically saved his life, he rolled his eyes at me.

As he left the room to investigate, I sat hunched on the bed, weighing our options. (Call the police? Hide?) Jason came back and muttered a dismissive, “Everything’s fine.” I felt the urge to check things out for myself anyway.

There were no lights on; the neighborhood sat quietly in the misty gray dawn. I stood off to the side, cautiously peering out of our patio window, my breath fogging ghostlike patterns onto the glass. The normally inquisitive cats were nowhere to be seen. At 5:54, I begrudgingly went back to bed.

Sleep came, but not easily. Every time I’d close my eyes, I’d feel myself slowly sinking into slumber, but at the last second, it would skip away. I couldn’t explain how convinced I was about hearing those shots – even today, when Jason told me I must’ve been dreaming. (I wasn’t; I was dreaming about the girlfriend in “Chuck” and we were shopping.)

But I think I will stop reading my forensic casebooks and allowing Jason to stop the TV on a violent horror movie while he falls asleep tightly clutching the remote control.