The Opera

-The most intense horror lies solidly within the mundane- Steve.

Tired and angry, the push through traffic tore at us. We’d been snapping at each other’s throats for the last five minutes. Karen’s panicked incompetent directions around the jam, had finally wore my patience thin. “Shut up for a second and let me fucking think!” I snapped.

“Yeah right! If you’d listened to me and left when I told you, we’d have had plenty of time. I don’t know why you’re telling me to shut up, when it’s ‘you’ that be should listening, but you never do. Why should this time be any different?”

Silently counting to ten, I finally gave up at eight. “God damn it, like I could foretell the future and seen the road closure coming? Get real! If you had picked up the fucking tickets when you were suppose to we wouldn’t be making this mad dash.”

“Sure, go ahead, blame it on me,” she said fuming. "If it were up to me, we’d have just of stayed home. But no, you had to go to the bloody Opera. The last thing I wanted to do on my Saturday night was to go hear a stage full of overweight singers, howling and bellowing full on in Italian.”

The rain that had been pouring down buckets had lightened to the point where the rubber from the wipers started to complain. Sun, which normally have been a welcome sight, only intensified the muggy stagnation within the car. My temples throbbed. It had been a long day and the evening was proving an intense nightmare.

“You’re the one who likes Opera, and the only reason I said yes to the tickets to begin with. It’s what you said you wanted tickets to “La Traviata” for an anniversary present, but if you want me to turn the fuck around and head home, I’m more than willing to do it. Why you ever agreed to go, when you knew you’d be pressed for time, I have no idea. What the hell were you thinking anyway? Running Jenny to Kim and Bob’s, stopping at the dry cleaners and jewelers wasn’t enough. No, you had to offer Rudy a lift to the train station and insist on seeing him aboard.”

“Damn it Ken, knock it off. Who did you think was going to look after Jenny? Did you think your suit would clean itself? And you said you liked the watch!”

“Sure I do Karen. It’s ticking away right now, reminding me how late we are for this Goddamned thing.”

“Hey, Rudy is your friend, not mine remember; were you going to be the one to tell him ‘no’ when he asked? We were heading down here anyway and he jolly well knew it. So next time he wants to spend the week and ends up staying drunk on the couch for three, why don’t you say the hell something instead of letting me get like this?”

“They were our friends!”

“Yeah, maybe so, but I’m your wife!”

“And that gives you the right to tell him he’s a lazy butt and to get the hell out? You know he’s not been the same since Tracy left!”

“Yes it does, and offer him a lift to the train if that’s what it takes to get his sorry ass off my couch and back to reality. She was smart for leaving him, she should have done it sooner.”

“You can’t mean that Karen. She bled him dry and took him for everything. That bitch is saying he is an unfit father, and shouldn’t even be allowed to see the kids!”

“Go ahead, tell me about it. If he weren't such a lush, maybe she wouldn’t have left.

“You know damned as well as I do that he didn’t start drinking heavy until after she started running around”.

“Yeah, and why do you suppose she went looking to begin with?”

Wondering if Karen thought I was a lush too, I fumed thinking about the ticking watch, the Opera and dinner reservations; were they as much a charade as our marriage? Why celebrate? A hole opened in the pit of my stomach and acid rushed in, my forehead warmed feverishly.

“Look Karen, just tell me if you don’t want to do this. I can call and cancel the reservations at Andre’s so we can just go home.”

“Shit, we’re already almost there. You know we’ll be hungry later on, and if you think for one minute I’m going home to cook tonight, you’re nuts.”

Cracking the window, the sound tires tracking on the wet asphalt joined the cacophony. My headache intensified. Sirens loomed large on a side street. The fumes from a car burning oil in front of us was starting to make me nauseous. Trying to silence some part of the noise level, I turned the wipers off only to be blinded by the continuing drizzle. Turning them on again, I hunched lower in the seat trying to push my self away from the pain.

“Turn left here!” she barked.

Impatient horns sounded behind us as I stopped and waited for an opening in the oncoming lane. Rolling my window down all the way, I yelled at the guy behind me. “What the fuck do you think the signal is for asshole?”

Shouldering to the right, the guy shouted, “Fuck you butt hair!” and sailed through the intersection just missing a car turning left in front of us. Grumbling about him being a stupid idiot, I was able to turn on eighth when the light finally changed. I say turned, but in actuality, I’d peeled. Screeching tires from the turn were rapidly followed by their squeal as I shoved hard on the brakes. My knuckles clenched the wheel and Karen made a grab for the dash, though her seatbelt held fast.

Ahead, a large industrial truck was stopped, double-parked in the middle of the street. I started to pummel the horn, when a white smock-clad worker lifted the rolling rear door. Loaded in back were hundreds of slaughtered pigs, piled one atop the next, deep as the eye could see; their stiff tongues lolling and eyes vacantly staring at us. Stunned by the bleached off pink paled images, one at a time being lifted and hauled away, Karen and I went silent, stunned. We had no words left, our breaths taken hastily away by the end of the Opera. All that remained were a renewed curtain of rain, and the blaring applause of horns behind us.