Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

sound that usually precedes a fault separation reverberated through their morning workout. Fears of an earthquake were soon allayed, however, as it was discovered that the only separation was a shoulder of mine, which I had mangled trying to tickle pink the almond-eyed fox who did push-ups on the adjoining mat. Eager to catch her eye, I had attempted to clean and jerk a barbell equal in weight to two Steinways when my spine suddenly assumed the shape of a Möbius strip, and the lion’s share of my cartilage parted audibly. Emitting the identical sound a man makes when he is thrown from the top of the Chrysler Building, I was carried out in a crouch and rendered housebound for all of July. Utilizing the enforced bed rest, I turned for solace to the great books, a mandatory list I had been meaning to get to for the past forty years or so. Arbitrarily eschewing Thucydides, the Karamazov boys, the dialogues of Plato, and the madeleines of Proust, I hunkered down with a paperback of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
, hoping to revel in tableaux of raven-tressed sinners looking like they’d come directly from the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue as they undulated, seminude, in sulfur and chains. Unfortunately, the author, a stickler for the big questions, quickly dislodged me from that gauzy dream of erotica, and I found myself gadding about the nether regions with no steamier a persona than Virgil to broadcast the local color. Somewhat of a poet myself, I marveled at how Dante had brilliantly structured this subterranean universe of just deserts for life’s mischief makers, rounding up various poltroons and miscreants, and doling to each his appropriate level of eternal agony. It was only when I finished the book that I noticed he had left out any special mention of contractors, and with a psyche still vibrating like a sock cymbal from having renovated a house some years prior, I could not but wax nostalgic.
    It all began with the purchase of a small brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Miss Wilpong, of Mengele Realtors, promised us it was the buy of a lifetime, priced modestly at a figure no higher than the cost of a stealth bomber. The dwelling was drumbeat as being in “move-in condition,” and perhaps it was, for the Jukes family or a caravan of Gypsies.
    “It’s a challenge,” my wife said, breaking the women’s indoor record for understatement. “This will be so fun to redo.” Sidestepping some loose floorboards, I tried to remain upbeat and likened its charm to that of Carfax Abbey.
    “Picture we lose this wall and make a big California kitchen,” the distaff ranted. “There’s space for a study, and each child can have her own room. With a little plumbing work we can have separate bathrooms, and I bet you could even have that game room you always wanted—to leaven your more philosophical moments with some pinball.”
    While fantasies of the beloved’s architectural megalomania raced unchecked, the wallet in my breast pocket began to flutter like a hooked flounder. Visions of squandering all I’d carefully husbanded over years of labor while punching up eulogies for the Schneerson Brothers Burial Home caused me to take issue in the upper register of the piccolo. “You really think we need this place?” I said, praying the urge to own would abate like a petit mal.
    “What I love about it is that it has no elevator,” the Better Half cooed. “Can’t you just picture what going up and down those five flights will do for your ticker?”
    Short of embezzlement, the means to pay for this new venture were beyond me, and it took a song-and-dance man’s personality to secure a mortgage from skeptical bankers, who at first waved me off but softened when they found a loophole in the usury laws. Selecting an appropriate contractor came next, and as the bids drifted in I couldn’t help noticing that most of the prices quoted seemed more appropriate for a renovation of the Taj Mahal. In the end I settled