What do you have that I might buy for my girl?
What do you have that I might buy for my sweetheart?
The Mary Kay lady who just rematerialized looked at him with skeletal cheekbones and said, for what seemed to him the ten thousandth time, I told you I told you I told you, I did: I’ve got nothing for you and your so-called sweetheart—just look at yourself how could someone who looks like you have a sweetheart, don’t be silly you’ve yellow teeth a greasy face bloodshot eyes and filthy coveralls—get out of my goose, let me go on. Let me go on right now!
He backed out of the goose and it continued on, and he felt insulted and empty. He then realized he shouldn’t be surprised by anything he saw or heard by now. He shouldn’t take anything personally. This side of the wall was not real life. But there were hundreds on hundreds of Mary Kay Geese here where nothing else was real. He looked down and gripped his forehead and pressed his temples, looked up, and all the pink geese were wiped away gone. There was even no road. There was nothing at all but him wondering somehow again: Have the Mary Kay geese just been in my head—but why are they driving through my head one time after time after another? Somehow, though, this time was different. It seemed this time again like every time, that there was nothing left to fear; or so he hoped. He went and stood on the curb with his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth, completely unafraid, and began to ponder how to get back to the other side of the wall, where the real world went on humming and whirring and pounding past loudly over the top of the extremely tall wall. How he got pulled over such a tall wall, was not important. How to get back—how to—get back, and get something for his sweetheart, because her birthday still sped toward him, faster and faster and faster and fast, and yes! There! There’s the way back over, still there like before. But, just as he moved to go over, the road came back and the sound of rubber on asphalt from all the speeding Mary Kay Lady geese back again, with heavily made up Mary Kay ladies at the wheels, as before, yes—so heavily made up that if lying in caskets, their mourners would comment about how they still almost looked alive. He bristled to run, but one spotted him, tentacled him over back into her goose, and began to ask through her icy lips, plump with bleached-out gloss all shiny, the same question as all the other times—but he beat her to it, thinking this: What the hell, why not, answer before she asks. Save her the effort. Go easy on her. Maybe then this time will be different, and I can at last get home yes home, so say quite quickly unconsciously again just this one last time, the words.
What do you have that I might buy for my girl?
What do you have that I might buy for my sweetheart?