The Second Derivative of Irony

The Second Derivative of Irony

and Other Stories



Stories

by

Daniel Koehler

Amazon Books by Daniel Koehler

Flyover Country

The Sleeping Cab

Splitting Washington

Unbankerly Behavior

The Second Derivative of Irony

and Other Stories



Published by KSI/Noosphere Publishing

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

The Second Derivative of Irony and Other Stories

Copyright © 2010-2020 by Daniel Koehler

For my father, who published a few short stories in magazines.

He showed me the proper way to throw and hit a baseball, never gave me any bad advice, hated movies that lacked verisimilitude, introduced me to O. Henry, Hemingway, Harold Robbins, writing computer code, and the trick to working cryptoquotes, all of which have given me great pleasure over the years.

Verba enim mea sunt et æstimaverunt lusum.

Stories

Mister Barnes or Mister Noble?

Pulling a Kissinger

The Second Derivative of Irony

Misunderstanding Seems To Run In Our Family

Bounded in a Nutshell

Bird Nest on the Ground

Cinnamon Roll Men

Professional Strawman

The Thing About Ophelia

See How You Like Us Tomorrow

Any Damn Body You Can Drag Out

Important Vodka Research for the Palate-Challenged

The Edge of the World

Real Good Company

Standoff at Mama Lu’s

Extinguishing Undesirable Behavior

Closing the Arc

The Bear in the Mimosa Tree

About the Author

Mister Barnes or Mister Noble?

"Well, of course, my darling Katie is absolutely scared to death and probably thinks the pain just can’t get any worse and… "

I cringe as Natalie’s voice rises above the low din of the bookstore café. I feel like I am having a conversation with someone wearing headphones.

I mean, it’s her first baby, so she has no earthly idea what’s going on. At this point, I’m sitting in the waiting room on pins and needles with no clue about what’s going on in the birthing suite and…

As she prattles on, her excitement causes her volume to rise. I look up from my novel, cock my head towards the other tables, and shake my head. It’s the best I can do, short of putting my finger to my lips and saying, "Shhh!"

Natalie, however, does not notice my cue. You know what that darling child says next, Joanie?

I bury my nose in the book. "I just can’t imagine."

"You’re not listening!" Her voice keens with a child’s petulance.

Sighing, I lay down my historical romance. The curled lip of the long-haired, crinoline-clad cover hunk seems to taunt me for abandoning him. I raise my cheaters and squint at Natalie. "What?"

"Well, poor Katie starts screaming, ‘I want my Mother!’ Over and over. Can you believe that?"

"Screaming I can believe." I smile and take a sip of my caffe latte, inwardly pleased with my little dig.

"‘I want my Mother! I want my Mother!’" Natalie’s eyes are tearing up from laughing so hard at her own story.

I pick up Fabio again and furtively peer over the top of the book. People at the adjacent tables eye us with annoyance. I notice the man next to us clenching his jaw muscles. His eyes are locked on Natalie as if to signal a confrontation. A stare-down. Compared to a normal dirty look, his gaze is a mudslide.

"Then, this adorable little Asian nurse comes running up to me in the waiting room. Mind you, I’m in sweats and jogging shoes, and I don’t have on any makeup. Well, she starts jabbering away…." Natalie’s fingers pincer her thumbs rapidly. ‘Yap, yap, yap, yap.’"

Look, maybe you—

Natalie grabs my arm. "I mean, I can’t understand a word she’s saying. So I rush into the birthing suite and there’s my Katie, red as a beet and—"

I interrupt her, my voice stern. Natalie, can I ask you a question?

"Uh-oh, she says. I feel a lecture coming on here."

No lecture. I promise, I inhale deeply. You know, we’ve been coming here a long time and we’re surrounded by fabulous books. I purse my lips. I mean, how come you never pick up anything to read?

I’m a verbal and visual person. TV and movies are more my speed. She huffs, her bangs fluttering in the upward exhalation. Honestly, Joanie, you should know that about me by now. You’re my college roommate.

And sorority sister, and godmother to all your children—

Only so none of the triplets would feel slighted.

"Slighted? I say, incredulous. I feel like the slighted one. I have to buy three godmother gifts every year on their birthday."

"Well, you weren’t godmother to all my children. Not Erica."

That’s because you converted to Judaism when you married Sheldon.

I was rebelling when I married Sheldon. Natalie rolls her eyes. Look, books are great, okay? But not everything in the world comes from a book. You should get your nose out of a book sometime and try interacting more with people. That’s my thing—interacting. It’s my special gift.

I interact with you.

Yes, but that’s not the same thing. What I’m talking about is—you know? My ability to engage with other people.

Yeah, and I was a bridesmaid in three of those engagements.

Very funny. She stares me down until we both collapse into giggles.

I am certain Natalie has Attention Deficit Disorder because she is incapable of summarization. To her mind, the chronology of events is absolute and no detail dare be spared. In her liberal grammar, a sentence may only end when her breath does. The downside of this is each new story fact leads to a new association requiring further elaboration. Her mind works sort of like a cerebral pinball machine, with bumpers and flippers that keep her original point bouncing around inside her cranium while her eyes light up bonus points. Safe to say, talk fills all the time you are willing to allot her, and a mundane story can easily explode to epic proportions when Natalie tells it.

However, after thirty years together, after all our marriages, divorces, careers, and babies, our friendship has settled into comfortable role-playing. She is the headliner, and I am quite content to be the faithful continuity girl backstage who keeps her on cue—the Mertzes to her Ricardos, the Pips to her Gladys Knight, a mute dancing dervish just beyond the main spotlight echoing variations of her lyrics in impeccable harmony.

Second banana, that’s me. I’m okay with it.

As we sit in the bookstore café where we always gather on Sunday afternoons, I think about how much I enjoy our times here, both of us laughing and talking like we used to do in college after our Saturday night dates walked us back to the dorm. The café is our sanctuary from the tyranny of Sunday televised sports. Often friends fall by, joining us for lattes and book talk and invariably turning our afternoon into an impromptu homecoming, with Natalie holding court.

"Ahem!" The staring man next to us clears his throat with obvious intent.

However, Natalie is on a roll and does not hear him. "So... the Asian nurse drags me from the waiting room and the first thing I see is my darling Katie, beet-red and panting, and poor Joe is holding her hand and saying, ‘Now let’s take a deep cleansing breath, sweetheart’. I’m thinking, ‘What the heck am I supposed to do in here?’ I mean, after twelve hours of labor, poor Katie had only dilated three centimeters and the doctor had been inducing her for several hours..."

I watch the man’s pink hands, mottled with nascent liver spots, crease the orange-pink spine of his Financial Times so it stands at attention. He sets his jaw again, and I notice his ruddy complexion, Hawaiian shirt, and thinning orange hair—he wears it longish with unruly tendrils curling at his neck—give him the look of a retired career military officer gone, regrettably, mod in his dotage.

He finally erupts at us. You know, when I came to this bookstore, I didn’t realize I’d have to sit through a Lamaze lesson!

Natalie stops in mid-sentence, her jaw dropping like the trapdoor of a gallows. "Excuse me?"

I wait for the man to smile, wink, and then lay some good-natured punch line on us, but instead he throws both hands in the air with the vigor of a borderline berserker.

Every time I come in here, some poor cow is always jabbering away on her cell phone about soccer practice or her kid’s new orthodontist. He finger-combs a frond of orange hair behind his ear and then shakes his head. Or else a loud group of you go on endlessly about nothing and destroy my concentration. His face turns cochineal. I can’t believe the rudeness of you people these days.

Natalie’s eyes go postal. "Oh, really? Well, let me tell you something, sir. Her sharp inflection robs the politic word of all its civility. We have every right to sit here and visit. She rises slightly from her seat, incandescent rage bearing her aloft like a hot-air balloon filled to the lift-off point. This isn’t a library, you know?"

He smirks at Natalie and gives her a patronizing laugh. Then his eyes narrow to slits as though peering directly into the noonday sun.

And if our conversation disturbs you, Natalie sputters, then I suggest you stop eavesdropping on us!

Not bad honey. I rub her back like a trusty squire handing my liege a fresh lance with which to rejoin the joust.

"I only wish I could, he says, his hands akimbo. But it’s impossible with you running your mouth nonstop."

His hard agate eyes remind me of the Roman admiral’s in Ben-Hur as he orders, Ramming speed.

"Oh, but you can, sir, Natalie snipes back. You can take your old saggy butt and sit somewhere else!"

I sense the remark about his anatomy is a mistake. I am sure I know what is forthcoming.

"Hah! he says. You’re a fine one to talk about that, Pork Chop."

I hate being right sometimes.

Natalie’s eyes flutter and she swallows hard. Momentarily stunned, she turns to me, her mouth agape.

Time for a little comic relief from the Peanut Gallery, I decide. Poor baby, I purr, rising from my seat, arms extended. He just needs a hug!

In those rare instances when I step into the limelight, I usually try to lob a pithy one-liner into the fracas, hoping the unguent of humor will salve the combatants’ wounded pride. This time, however, no one laughs, and I feel like a stand-up comedian after the drummer’s rimshot fails to coax a chuckle from a surly audience.

Yeah, right. The man snorts like an angry bull at my matador’s veronica. His hands paw his newspaper like el Toro pawing the dirt before charging. "Sit down, honey, and mind your own damn business."

Maybe you should do the same, I retort. "‘Honey.’"

His grimace suggests that, in addition to being bereft of tact, he lacks a sense of humor as well. He turns and stares out the window, his teeth grinding as though they are the anvil on which he is forging his next steely retort.

I notice his facial tension only serves to exaggerate his weak chin.

"You’re the ones who need hugs, he says at last. And I suspect you’re not getting them from your husbands—if you even have ones. Just keep reading your romances, girls. That’s more your speed."

I watch him sink back in his chair, cackling at us like a noisy magpie. He attempts to organize his Financial Times, fumbling with it like a sprung accordion, as though a flimsy wall of newsprint could shield him from our burning eyes.

Besides, he mutters from behind the stock quote pages, you’re both well over my age-and-weight limits.

Abhorring a vacuum in all things conversational, Natalie jumps back into the fray. No one is more surprised than I, however, when she takes the high road.

I feel sorry for you, sir, she deadpans. I really do. Tight-lipped, she sighs and cuts her red-rimmed eyes toward me, a signal she is battle-fatigued and needs me to spell her at the front lines.

I-I’m Joan Winston, I stammer, having absolutely no idea what I will say next.

He drops his newspaper rampart and our eyes lock.

I feel paralyzed, a doe in his headlights. Looking away, I notice the entire café is staring at me. I immediately cast my eyes downward. My head pounds as I try to think of what to do next, but all I can focus on is the Barnes and Noble logo on my coffee cup.

Then, it hits me.

Perhaps this confrontation has set off a fight-or-flight adrenaline surge inside me, or maybe the caffeine already in my system from several double-expresso lattes has sharpened my wits to the sticking point. Whatever the reason, an absolute zinger of a put-down bursts into the chaotic blizzard of my mind like an achingly perfect snowflake.

Excuse me, I say, my voice bold, but I didn’t get your name. Which one are you actually? Mr. Barnes or Mr. Noble?

He stares hard at me, his eyes as scornful as those of a street corner three-card monte artist caught red-handed by a plain-clothes detective.

No, wait! I cry. I press on, no lioness on the African savannah more intent on the kill than I. "You have to be Barnes because you’ve already proven you certainly aren’t Noble."

Now Natalie is rubbing my back.

Tell me, is the Viagra wearing off? I see his eyes vacillate, and he seems now to notice the stares of the irate bibliophiles roused from their J.D. Robb or James Patterson.

The man licks his lips and clears his throat to speak, but I will be damned if I let him.

Tell me, I say. Do you have to pick fights with women to get your mojo working?

The man’s face blanches as though he realizes he has lost his stomach for the fight.

I feel the wind at my back. "I believe he’s speechless, Natalie, because all the blood has drained from his brain into his naughty bits at the prospect of a hug from a real woman."

Instead of the blow-up kind, Natalie hoots.

That’s the only kind of woman under his weight limit, I laugh.

His face burns red. I-I…

The café manager steps up to our table. A slight, bookish girl in her early twenties, she clasps her hands together as though in prayer. Ma’am, she whispers to me, you’re disturbing some of our customers. Could you please stop?

Then ask your boss to stop insulting the clientele, sweetheart, I say, cocking my head toward the man.

"He’s not my boss," the girl says, her eyes round.

I glance at her nameplate and seek to establish a personal bond. Chloe, dear, I say with mock concern, I’m shocked you don’t know the fellow whose name is on the shingle outside. Please meet the famous Mr. Barnes. He’s obviously making an example of us to put an end to all this annoying socializing the customers of the café refuse to curtail.

A ripple of laughter and a stray You go, girl filter through my adrenaline buzz and lodge in the pleasure centers of my brain. I turn and blow them a kiss.

Now, wait just a damn minute here, the man says, his voice cracking as he attempts to raise it to the level apropos indignation. You-you —

Quiet, sir, I say. You’re disturbing the customers.

Just then, I feel two large, strong hands grab me by my shoulders from behind. A frisson of fear shoots through me, and I know my face must be blanching kabuki-white. However, Mr. Barnes appears far more agitated than I, his Adam’s apple dancing a tarantella in his throat as his eyes turn upward to regard the one towering behind me.

Let me take care of this, sweetheart, an all-too-familiar male voice whispers in my ear.

No need, darling, I say, gazing up at my husband, an ex-college football player. Mr. Barnes was just leaving.

When I turn back around, the man has beaten a hasty retreat out of the bookstore. I receive a standing ovation from the café and surprise myself when I curtsy to them.

Natalie undoubtedly will tell this tale at couples’ bridge club this week, and for once I find myself actually looking forward to her stream-of-consciousness recount of my perfect put-down of boorish Mr. Barnes. Even though I still prefer the role of the sidekick in social matters, who knows? Maybe it is my turn to be the headliner? I must admit that my show-stopper scene at center stage in the bookstore gave me a thrill that still excites me. I can’t quite describe the sensation. I feel like I am standing inside the nave of a beautiful, sun-lit