Seething
I only come here to drink.
Will you fiddle that handle, buddy. Why can’t people fix these toilets?
Why do we need to talk in here?
You need to talk. You need to know why I need someone like you to do what I can’t do for myself.
Fiddle that handle, please, fiddle that handle.
It’s Teresa. No, she calls herself Teri now.
She doesn’t like the old ways any more.
She even calls me Tony even when she knows I hate it.
Everything has to be American for her.
No more old country things.
She calls the old ways old fashioned.
She even wants to see other men when she knows she’s been promised to me.
Other men! Can you believe that?
Fiddle that handle will you before I go nuts.
I tell her I don’t like America so much as to want to give up the ways of my father.
She only laughs.
She thinks I’m funny all the time these days.
When we were young and I did my father’s business, she took me more seriously.
Now she’s an American and insists I become American, too.
When I ask if that means we won’t marry as our families planed, she says she wants to marry another man.
Fiddle that handle, damn it. Just fiddle that handle so I can have some piece.
Another man?
How does that make me feel?
I’m so angry I could strangle her with my own hands.
But I still love her.
It’s these new ways I hate.
So I begin to seethe inside.
I’m angry at the world but I don’t know who to take it out on.
If a man hits me in the face, I know who to hit and I hit him back.
But this?
Who do I blame?
The other man? Her? America?
PLEASE! Fiddle that God damn handle. I can’t think.
So I talk with my family and they tell me I should forget about her.
I can’t forget about her.
Or the other man.
Or the fact that she is promised to me.
I only seethe, and seethe, and come here to get drunk.
I hope I can drink enough to stop seething.
But if I can’t forget and can’t stop seething, then I must do something.
And that’s why I’m buying this gun from you.
I only need three bullets.
One for him, one for me, and the last – well, you know.
Fiddle that handle will you.
Now get the hell out of here I’ve got something to do.