Stupid Hot

It has been hot and sweaty here in Montreal. I’ve had to resort to the ugly but powerful Seabreeze 3200-0 Turbo-aire fan to restore me to my normal good humour. I keep one beside my bed, where I went early last night to elevate my feet and read the latest New Yorker.

My husband brought me a glass of Zinfandel fresh from the freezer. I used what little energy I had to wave the magazine at him. It flapped in the airstream, losing my page. I had wanted to show him the article that I’d been reading, but no matter. I would tell him about it instead, just as soon as I’d had a sip of my drink. The glass was filled to the rim. Was he trying to get me drunk? Was this a come-on?

“There’s an article in here,” I said, “By that Jewish guy.” I stopped there, hoping that this would suffice. Conversation had been difficult of late, and not only because of the heat. We had had a fight that morning at breakfast over the true nature of fruit salad: does it constitute a meal or not? (I’d said the answer was dependent on the age of the person eating, suggesting that it was usually older people who went for the all-fruit breakfast. My husband had been fervent in his disagreement.) We’d been unable to resolve this, choosing instead to never mention “fruit” or “salad” ever again, especially when the temperature was above a yet-to-be determined threshold.

But my husband was staring at me blankly, so I pressed on. “The Jewish guy,” I said. “I forget his name. The one who lives in New York.”

I meant the short-story writer and essayist Shalom Auslander, whose work frequently draws on his Orthodox background, usually to comedic effect.

“New York?” asked my husband.

“Not the city,” I said. “The state.”

And somehow, miraculously, this information—which I’ve since learned is erroneous—was enough.

“The guy who wrote the essay about hockey?” asked my husband.

And suddenly I didn’t care so much about fruit salad. Let him call it what he wanted—a square meal, a blowout, a brunch—just so long as he knew which Jewish guy in which New York, and when to put the Zinfandel in the freezer. That was more than enough.