She caught him in the dining room, peering out the window with his binoculars, all of the lights in the room off.

“GREGORY WILSON WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” She shouted at him, causing him to jump.

He swore at her and told her to shush.

“I will not be shushed! Are you looking at that Richards girl again?” She’d once found him ogling the teenage daughter of their neighbor. Then threatened to leave him. That’s how she’d gotten her first fur coat.

“Dammit, Martha, no! ” He motioned for her to come over to him. “This is something much more important.”

He pointed to the house across the street, there was a moving truck in front of it. She peered through the binoculars. “The movers?”

“Look in the dining room.”

“So? They’re Indian or something.”

“They could be terrorists!” He hissed.

“Gregory, honestly.”

“We have don’t know anything about these people or where they loyalty is! They could be building a dirty bomb!”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Come to bed, Gregory.”

“In a minute!” He was already back to spying on them.

She signed and walked out, wondering how she could turn this into another fur in her closet.

Memphis Note
I won’t name names, but there are places in the suburbs of Memphis where you feel like you’ve traveled to another planet. Where all common sense has fled, seemingly replaced by consumerism and Fox News.

Reginald looked at the tumbler full of thick, green smoothie before him and sighed deeply.

Sherice called it green super-food. She said it was full of things that were good for him. Things like blended vegetables and hemp seed powder and blue-green algae.

He thought it looked like she’d skimmed it out of a drainage ditch.

She caught him hesitating and flicked his ear with a well manicured nail. “Drink up, now. Tastes better before it settles.”

Obediently he took a glug, winced and swallowed. “Why’re you doing this to me?”

“Because if your backside gets any bigger, the only place in the city you’ll be able to find pants that fit is off the wall at Schwabs.” Sherice gave him one of her sweet but deadly looks. “And that just won’t do.”

Another glug, wince and swallow. “We could just work out you know. Go for a walk. Maybe ride a bike?”

She glared at him. “But, darling, that’s like admitting you’re fat. And I won’t let those harpies at the gym see me in a leotard. Now don’t dawdle, we’ve got to lace you into that man-corset before you leave for work.”

Glug, wince, swallow.

Memphis Note:
Memphis has the lovely distinction of being both the fattest city in the nation, and the most sedentary. Which I think is nothing more than a sign our food is so good no one wants to get up from the table. Schwab’s is an old-style general store on Beale Street that’s full of kitschy things – and the biggest pants you can buy in the state.