Pictures of Houses with Water Damage: Stories by Michael Hemmingson Page B

and coming near me. It’s a ship.
    And Helen gets out.
    “Hello, old friend,” she says, all dressed up in a silver suit.
    I finished the bottle.
    None of it ever happened, of course.
    I needed to get more in tune with reality.
    Walking back to my car, I passed a young couple heading for my tree. I smiled at them. The boy looked away, the girl smiled back—bashfully. I was just some old geek to them, I’m sure.
    I got into my car, and drove home.
    From the sky, a flying, glowing disk appeared, and hovered for a moment over my car, and flew away.
    I got out, and watched it.
    I went to the flower store. They were just about to close. I bought a bouquet of tulips and sunflowers. I hate roses. Ginny loved roses. I remember, once, seeing Helen walking to a class, holding a sunflower someone had given her.
    Anne was watching TV when I got home. Star Trek .
    “We’re in the wrong universe, David,” she said.
    “These are yours, please,” I said.
    She took the flowers, and she kissed me.

The Keepers
     
    T akayuki’s parents are studying the manual they brought to the States, trying to make sense of an old tradition fitting for the 21st century.
    They don’t speak much English and that doesn’t help; Takayuki and Akiko’s translations are spotty at best. Frank and I do our best to understand.
    We nod our heads a lot and Takayuki’s parents nod their heads and we all smile like everything is working out well.
    Frank and I look at each other and shrug.
    Frank is my husband of eleven years, by the way; we got married when we were both twenty-two and things have been up and down but overall a good marriage. We bought a house three years ago in Santa Barbara. Takayuki lived by himself in the house next to us. We became friends. Takayuki works in a biomedical lab and I’m not sure what he does but he seems to make good money.
    Frank my husband of eleven years teaches math at the high school and he makes decent money to keep a roof over our heads.
    I work part time at a bookstore and make minimum wage but Frank my husband of eleven years doesn’t mind. It’s supplemental income. My paychecks often pay for airline tickets when we want to travel.
    Someday we will go to Japan.
    Takayuki had often talked about his greatest love, a girl named Akiko that he left behind in Japan.
    One day, Akiko showed up and Takayuki informed us that he was going to marry the woman, finally, and he asked us to be Keepers of the Bride and Groom.
    Frank and I said sure, why not, what the hell.
    So here we all are, the six of us: me and Frank, Takayuki and Akiko, and Takayuki’s parents—I won’t even try to pronounce their names—sitting in Takayuki’s living room and preparing for a Japanese wedding, or something close to it, that will take place next week in Las Vegas.
     
     
    As Keepers, the job Frank and I are tasked with is to keep the bride and groom on the right and righteous path to the wedding altar. We are to make sure they do not stray or go astray, that things do not go awry or wrong. We are responsible for both of them arriving at the altar in one piece and smiling.
     
     
    I have mixed feelings about the wedding. I don’t think it should happen.
    “Anne, oh Anne,” Frank my husband of eleven years goes, “why, how can you think and say such a thing?”
    “Look at the way he treats her.”
    “Treats her how?”
    “You know how, ” I say, getting angry that Frank my husband of eleven years is acting dumb; “if there’s a bowl of rice ten feet away from him, he won’t get up off his sorry ass and get it. He waits for Akiko to serve it to him. When he wants a beer, he tells her to get one and she jumps up and does it. You saw it, that one night, you saw how he was.”
    Frank nods. “Yeah,” he says.
    “And he doesn’t allow her to eat in the same room with him!”
    “That’s their way, the Japanese way,” Frank my husband of eleven years says, “that’s their culture.”
    “Screw that,” I go, “this is