Great. Another stain. Another smudge of lipstick.

I gently rub my thumb over the dark, incriminating red lips on the left shoulder of my husband’s blue pinstriped shirt left in the hamper from days ago. I really ought to confront him about it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s not that simple. The marriage is my security.

Most nights he comes home, he seems so dazed. Completely out of it. Is what he does really that mesmerizing?

I’ve been trying different ways to get the lipstick off his clothes. Regular washing just doesn’t work. I search online for a solution. People seem to agree that blotting the smudge with alcohol and carefully massaging in dishwashing detergent with a finger before washing should really work.

I’m doing this right now.

On the radio is some old American classic, “Guilty.” On the television is the news, France 2, the national station. Over the clarinet interlude, I hear the reporter discussing the recent flux in organized crime. Over the first muffled old verse, I hear the reporter discussing the political unrest in French Guiana.

Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong,
Loving you, dear, like I do,
If it’s a crime then I’m guilty,
Guilty of loving you.
I put the clothes in the wash. Now I’ve got nothing to do for the 50 minute cycle but watch television.

That’s what you do when you haven’t got a job and your husband is out doing whatever he does to make money. This week is a business trip to Algeria. Your only option is to clean the apartment. Rearrange the sock drawer. Wash the lipstick stains out of your husband’s shirts and ties. You do all this with a television blaring in the background. At least you’re keeping up with news at the same time. You hear reporters talk about mafia crime lords, cocaine rings in lower Paris, mysterious strings of murders. You hear the newsman talk about a coup in French Guiana, parties like the Union for a Popular Movement and the Walwari Committee, names like Jose Dorcy and Christine Taubira-Delanon. What this has to do with you, you don’t know. There’s got to be something more to this, you start to think.

But this political babble keeps a mind off of what’s really happening.

It’s when I take the blue pinstriped shirt out of the wash that I realize none of the little household tips I read about removing lipstick ever work. This is the third attempt at a solution. The red smudge is fading more and more. Blurring, still spreading. I can no longer tell if it was a pair of lips in the first place. Really, I don’t remember.

Hah, what if it wasn’t lipstick?

I think about how my husband has been acting rather odd lately. Coming home in silent delirium, he completes his set of default actions. Rather normally, too normally, hanging his overcoat in the foyer, gingerly climbing the stairs, shuffling down the hall, leaving his shoes in the corner by the chair with his watch set on the bureau, tie over the back cushion, on and on. He’s like a zombie, acting but not thinking, ripping into the throat of a victim because of an undying urge, but the mind is elsewhere. I wish I knew where his mind was each night.

Hah. What if it wasn’t lipstick?

Breaking News on France 2. The leader of the newly established and instated Union for a Popular Movement party, Jose Dorcy, was assassinated while on a yacht from an unknown location on shore in French Guiana. Investigators suspect political motives. Well, that usually seems to be the case with politicians.

Assassination. Mysterious string of murders. Political unrest. Flux in organized crime. Jose Dorcy is famous for his strong anti-cocaine exportation stance. A sound clip: “I will not tolerate the illegal drug trade to and from overseas.” The Walwari Party and its close ties to the Radical Left Party in France. All of these facts, just blurred in the background as the stain in the blue pinstriped shirt blurs with each wash.

Hah. What if it wasn’t lipstick?

What if my husband came home with blood on his shirt?

I do a quick search for household tips on removing blood from fabric. Dab the stain with hydrogen peroxide. Let it sit for a minute, then dab with a towel soaked with cool water. Then wash.

I’m doing this right now.

I’ve got a 30 minute quick-wash cycle. My love, my marriage, even my sanity could be jeopardized depending on the outcome of this half hour. While the machine fills with water, I hear the reporter discussing the possible link between drug trafficking and the assassination. While the agitator agitates away, I hear a crackly but famous French classic. And when this half hour is over, if it is indeed blood and not lipstick, the stain will be gone.

Si tu n'Ă©tais pas lĂ 
Comment pourrais-je vivre
Je ne connaîtrais pas
Ce bonheur qui m'enivre
And then I might have a bigger problem to deal with.

It’s all coming slowly together in my head. And I don’t want it to.

Say my husband comes home every night, almost always with a new bloodstain on his shirt. He’s gone the entire day, and when he comes home, he seems depressed. Unmotivated. Out of it. He is all too vague about his job. He votes liberally. He doesn’t like discussing the mafia. In fact he turns the television off when something is mentioned. The mafia, the blood, the politics.

The business trips. Algeria, Lebanon before it. Switzerland, the United States, Japan, and the list keeps going. I’ve never gotten a souvenir. I’ve never even been invited. “They’re business trips. If you want a job with the company, I suppose I could pull some strings,” he says sarcastically. His coming home and going out are as mysterious as the motives behind the assassination of Jose Dorcy. “Besides, you’re expecting. Why start working now?”

How convenient for him! I wouldn’t be able to do anything anymore. Keep the mother occupied at home with the child so the mob hits can continue.

It’s all come together. He’s a hitman. It’s all making sense. The unsettled territory in south French Guyana, that’s where they produce the cocaine that shipped to the Parisian drug rings. That’s how the mafia wins their income, and throws bribes to the political left to keep their supporters in power, keep the exportation laws unchecked.

That’s why my husband had to kill Jose Dorcy.

That’s why I’ll never get a souvenir from Algeria.

The laundry is almost done and I’m waiting anxiously for that buzzer to go off. Ah, there it is. I dig in. This is it. The moment of truth.

The red smudge is still there.

I toss the shirt back on the ironing board, and return to my computer. I need to find another tip on how to remove lipstick.

Everybody chases rainbows,
Looking for a bluebird blue,
Most of us in time find rainbows,
Funny, dear, what love can do.
If I don’t get this lipstick out of his shirt, my husband is going to figure it out. He’ll know I’ve been wearing his shirts. I need to get my mistress’ lipstick out before he notices it tomorrow morning.

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->Ich heiĂźe Flicker

slip swipe
flicker
juggle mash

->
->
->dot dot dot

->dispense. eject. vend. deposit.
shift, fuzz, static, crackle,
flash blink flicker crash

I give, I take lead into gold
Destroy, create, and make and make
fall [inhale] smash

->
->
->dot dot dot

->cash, receipt, I card
venial iniquity
->card card card card
juggle/shuffle, slip/shift

sweep SWEEP sweep SWEEP
scrrreech swing smash

->card card card card
flicker
->card card card card
flicker
->card card beeeeeeep

I shred lead

->
->
->dot dot dot etc.

->Ich heiĂźe Flicker

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People miswant and are not good at maximizing their utility.

Contentment is not a better life strategy than perpetual craving.

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Wicked and lovely, the Lady of Night descends upon the whispery Astronomer trapped in steely branches like a silky shaken cat. Her constellation lips and retrograde eyes moisten as she gathers her thoughts and readies her speech:

Drag your brittle chiton; past the peristyle go
Sow a row of sorrow seed; white narcissus grows
Travel to the zenith; let ecliptic angles fade
Flick'ring beauties slowly shift; join their soft parade
Taken aback, the wide-eyed Astronomer reaches to his side to find a twig of burning gold. He grabs and thrusts the hellish tool into the sky's folds and whimpers as the dust of his footsteps masks the Lady's solemn song:

Tamper not with Alchemy; gods sleep in discord
Drop your foolish golden spear; grasp my stellar sword
Ramble on, you balky cat; no longer be afraid
Swing your mystic knowledge: my cuspent Crescent Blade
And so the weary vagrant Astronomer shuffles through the peristyle rows and watches the Lady of Night fall into emerald blue and wooly clouds. He shuffles on, and fore the noon, the zenith is his and haloes the semi-sigmoid crest.

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Each part appears to me. Supersonic Quiet slithers to the window, and leaps up from the sill to the limitless breadth of carnal knowledge in our eyes. Sweep, Vista and comprehension, for I cannot view the misty mountain; I am interpenetration. Your masses decry this notion. But the treelines speak in lucid tones and, rattled with the old prayer's wisdom, fall swiftly from the clouds.

Vista, Vista; wherefore did you fade to black? Wherefore did mine and I creep deeply to your brimstone and raging Hells, if not to enhance ourselves in your venial iniquity? We rushed so fast and kissed so rashly, as a tear, swollen from those youthful fissures, slipped sullenly off our chin. Who is Satan to cry, and who is God to deny our sundry epitaphs as the only true light to our romance?

Vista, for whom I hold my tongue; Vista, for whom I oft had sung; realize, sweet baby, sparkling jewel, swirling shell, indefinite rows in your numbers, to forever become green, slippery, and slither to my window, no matter how far you must climb. Climb past the treeline, climb past the cloud, and in the reflection of every star you will see that brimstone again, trapped in time.

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Oftentimes it is difficult to obtain that which we would most enjoy. Perhaps it is more prudent, then, to enjoy those things which we already have near us. These are the thoughts that fill my head as I awake. And so, I enjoy the nearest thing to me at these moments: a bedsheet. So silky and malleable, so light and breathable. Bedsheets can be contrived as the most magnificent articles of cloth known to mankind, and I shall elucidate on the matter.

One of the greatest hindrances to my arisal in mornings was this looming truth: I have to open my eyes, stand up, and adorn my body with pants, socks, and a shirt. I have not the resolve at such early hours, and thus I am dissuaded to awake. I then fall into the degrading cycle: consciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness, and reconsciousness. However, I am able to circumvent this diabolical situation by embracing my bedsheet. All that is required to start my days is to clasp a hand onto the savior sheet and erect myself. Utterly convenient.

I am not alone in my opinion. Countless men of days past also wore sheets, such as Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato; their wisdom evidently enchanced by the fabric. Jesus H. Christ, messiah and son of the Creator of Existence and Organisms, wore sheets. If the C.E.O. (as I like to call him) approves of it, then so do I. And so should you. Even the man with a mind greater than God had something to say on the subject:

"Sometimes I fall asleep at night with my clothes on. I'm going to have all my clothes made out of blankets."
- Mitch Hedberg

"Blankets," of course, are the thicker cousins of bedsheets worn by those of more frigid climes. So you see, bedsheets are obviously superior to any other form of clothing currently available. I beseech you; Join me, brothers and sisters, and together we shall rise up and fall with great wrath upon those whose faith fails them.

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