The Kitchen Drawer
By
Matt Arnold

“Can we talk?” she asked, delivering the loaded message with sniper-like coldness.

No phrase strikes more primordial fear into the heart of any man than these three words. Not even “I’m sorry, you have terminal cancer,” nor “that was incredible honey, but I think that was my husband coming in the front door.” All the way back to prehistoric times, the rush of death impending terror created by the roar of the saber tooth tiger was eclipsed for the caveman upon returning to his hole in the mountain, finding a freshly painted cave drawing depicting his wife talking to a seated cave man figure.

He felt as if he had a loaded gun pointed at his head, the trigger pulled back just enough to make that cocking sound. “Pull the damn trigger and get it over with, woman,” he thought to himself as his heart pounded somewhere in the neighborhood of the transition between the aerobic and the anaerobic rates.

“Can we talk?” Perhaps it was a rhetorical question. He could escape his fate with silence. Or perhaps humor would avoid the impending mess. “I don’t know, CAN we?” he could answer in a mocking Pee Wee Herman voice.

Simplicity was his strategic choice. “Sure babe,” he responded meekly. “What’s up?”

“This just isn’t going to work,” she replied matter-of-factly. There it was, out in the open. The trigger had been pulled, the payload delivered, never to be brought back into the barrel. “We just have different agendas,” she added, putting frosty icing on top of the rejection flavored cake.

This seemed sort of funny because he had never embraced anything even remotely resembling an agenda, at any point in his life. He believed that this was one of his strongest selling points.

“This just isn’t going to work,” she repeated again as if he hadn’t heard it the first time.

By “this”, she meant the friendship that had developed between the two co-workers, which had led later into passion filled nights once or twice a week, kind of a mid-life, casual sex-filled relationship. It seemed to be working out fine for him.

“Well, I don’t see it that way,” he said, wondering if he sounded sincere or angry. “What do you mean different agendas?”

“Just differences. Things about you that are just making it hard for me. You Know?”

“No I don’t know.” Oh, here it comes, he thought. Bring it on. “Like what?” he asked, placing his head on the chopping block for her to lop off.

“Do you really want me to tell you? I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“I promise I won’t get mad. Scout’s honor.” Technically he had left himself an out as he had never been a boy scout. Not even a cub scout.

She paused for a long time. He knew this was not a good sign. It probably meant there were so many issues involved and she was lining up the order of salvos to deliver in the oncoming emotional killing spree she was preparing to unleash upon him.

“Why do you keep the knives in the drawer to the left of your stove instead of the drawer to the right, by the sink? Where they should be.”

He was stunned. He had figured that she would bring up that he wouldn’t let anyone at work know they were going out. Or that he was always checking out other women when he was with her, his incessant flatulence and obsessive nose picking, the massive mood swings, the drinking binges, his obsession with Star Trek and constant references to various episodes, the fact he had no earlobes and an extra pinky toe.

“Oh come on. There must be more to it than that,” he said pleadingly.

“No, that is the only problem I see. But it’s a big one. It really is a relationship breaker. Don’t you agree?”

“No,” he replied coldly. “Can’t I just swap the drawers? I’d be willing to do that, for the sake of the relationship.”

“Look, we’re just both too far along in life. Maybe if we were younger, it’d be different. You just need to be who you are. I don’t think you can really change at this point in your life. Anyway, the drawers are different sizes. You can’t just swap them. I figured you’d know that. It is your house,” she said condescendingly.

“No, never noticed,” he replied, beginning to get a little irritated.

“Don’t you remember, last month on your birthday, when I told you that they were different sizes? Weren’t you listening?” There was growing anger in her voice.

“I thought you were talking about the drawers in the fridge,” he said defensively, suddenly realizing that his refrigerator didn’t even have drawers.

This was met with a cold glare. “Don’t treat me like a fool,” she said bitterly.

“Can I just take all the contents out of one drawer, and switch it with what is in the other drawer?”

“That’d just be way too complicated. Where would you put the things from the first drawer while you were moving the other stuff over?”

Damn, he hadn’t thought the whole thing out. Think fast, he thought to himself.

He continued slowly. “Maybe I could unload what is in the first drawer onto the counter, while I move the stuff over from the other drawer. Then move what is on the counter into the second drawer.” He could picture the entire process in his mind, but he was having difficulty putting it into words.

“Now you’re being silly,” she said. “That’d just get too messy. Something would wind up in the wrong place. Like it always does.”

“Would you be willing to compromise? Maybe put it all in that real large drawer on the other side of the sink. Where the Tupperware is.”

She looked down at the ground and shook her head sadly. A lone tear trickled down her cheek. “Good bye,” she said, turning and walking forever out of his life.

Life moved on for him. He spent one rainy Sunday afternoon rearranging the contents of his kitchen drawers. It went well; he put all the knives in the drawer to the right of the sink, where they belonged. For the first time, his life truly made sense. With the increased confidence that this brought, he began a new relationship with a remarkably stunning blond he met one morning at a Starbucks. The relationship blossomed, and she moved in on the last day of summer.

All was well until Christmas Eve. For the umpteenth time, she opened the drawer to the left of the stove looking for a knife, where they had once been kept. She always felt that this is where they belonged and was beginning to get incredibly irritated with his backwards sense of cooking utensil organizational scheme. It was all wrong. She had had enough.

“Damn it!” she shouted in anger. “I can’t take this anymore,” she screamed as she fled their apartment, never to return. The last thing he heard her say on her way out was “Learn where things belong.”

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