Eustathia (yoos-tay’-thi-a): Promising constancy in purpose and affection.
Dear Babe,
Promise me anything. I don’t care if you make it in the heat of the night, or during a thunderstorm, or at the Shooting Moon Casino out on Highway 69. Remember? That’s where we first met—side by side at slot machines, holding our paper cups filled pennies. You told me you liked how I “did” the buttons. When I hit the $20.00 jackpot I stood up, and you did too. You hugged me and tried fish my wallet out of my back pocket. I considered having you arrested for trying to pick my pocket, but you told me you were feeling a little dizzy and put your hand in my back pocket to steady yourself. I didn’t believe you, but I didn’t care. We were two sixty-something gamblers and I figured we were risk takers. After what you’d done, the odds were against us. So, I asked you if you wanted to have a drink in the casino’s Boom Boom Room. You said “Sure baby” and off we went.
We drank vodka martinis and talked about ourselves. I told you how I had spent my life working in a tomato soup canning factory in Indiana, how my pension was pretty good, and my Social Security was really good. I told you how my wife had died when she had hit a tree bobsledding in Montana one year ago, tomorrow. I told you everything. You told me how you had run away from home when you were fourteen, got hooked up with a bad boyfriend, stole cars, worked as a hooker and sold Mary Kay Cosmetics, earned a pink Cadillac and retired two weeks ago. You were going on a cruise next week to Cancun with your 30 year-old daughter Scarletta. You told me she was born out of wedlock to you and a migrant apple picker in Washington State.
We were pretty drunk and I invited you to my room. You said “Yes baby” and off we went. We were both too old to have sex—I’d given out five years before. It was embarrassing, but I survived. I tried every supplement in the universe to get it going again—from powdered goat testicles to ground gorilla armpit ointment. Nothing worked. That was it. So, we told dirty jokes nearly all night long. You were like a dirty joke machine—l lagged way behind you, mostly with knock knock jokes.
Then, out of nowhere, you told me you had fallen in love with me when I didn’t have you arrested. I was shocked and skeptical. I made you promise to love me “until death do we part.” you did. You cried and said this was the best thing that ever happened to you in your dismal unlucky life. I made the same promise to you. Now I’m sitting in the motel room in my underpants. Everything is gone: my cellphone, my wallet & my credit cards, my clothes, my watch, and my car. But I’m not as big a sucker as you think I am.
It’s 10:30 now, so the car should’ve blown up 25 minutes ago. I could’ve easily defused the bomb, but you left the motel before I had a chance. Ha! Ha! Even though I’m 99% sure you’re dead, I’m writing this letter to ease my conscience. I’m going to book a ticket on the Cancun cruise. I doubt Scarletta will spend any time mourning you. We’ll meet, and if she’s anything like you, I’ll be giving the gorilla armpit ointment another try.
I’ll “love” you forever.
Just kidding,
Norm
POSTSCRIPT
Norm was all set. The car he had blown up was stolen, so it could not be traced back to him. His friend Rollo had hacked into the cruise line’s manifests and found Scarletta’s itinerary. She was leaving for Cancun in two months. So, Norm booked onto the same cruise—on “The Octopus.”
As Norm boarded the Octopus, he was checking the photo of Scarletta that Rollo had taken from her Facebook page. Then, he saw her! She was pushing a woman in a wheelchair whose head was bandaged. Norm struck up a conversation. He introduced himself as Waylon, and asked who the woman in the wheelchair was. “My mother,” Scarletta said. “She was injured in a car explosion. She lost her vision and hearing.” Norm felt like God was watching over him as they headed to the bar, and along the way, dropped Babe off at the ship’s day care center.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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