After the fifth night in the fifth hotel in the fifth city, he decided to invest in some real toiletries. Only people who weren’t going anywhere got their soap from a big bottle. Or, at least, only people who didn’t want to be moving anywhere. It was about the only thing that smacked of permanence that would fit into his tiny carry-on. Portable furniture, of sorts.
(Utter ridiculousness: bringing along a folding chair everywhere. Middle option: carrying a photo frame with some meaningful picture, like the photo of him and Debbie that he carried in his wallet because, well, she was easy on the eye and he needed to show something if and when people asked about whether he was involved.)
Which was how Tom Callahan (short for Tomas, a name bestowed upon him by a pair of pretentious parents in flagrant disregard for their Boston Irish roots) ended roaming the aisles of an all-night CVS looking for the largest bottle of Dove on sale. Dove was good soap, he reasoned – if he got the generic, it wouldn’t hurt as much when he had to throw it away. Maybe a loofah? But that would be stretching it to the point of ridiculousness.
For some reason he felt like calling his sister Anna. (Pronounced Ahn-na, according to their parents. She called herself Anne, or, in moments of particular disobedience towards parental aspirations to nobility in nomenclature, Annie. It never failed to rile Jim and Erin.)
“I’ve got one for you. Old man in Tucson calls up his son in New York, says ‘son, I can’t take it anymore. For 40 years your mom’s been on my nerves, and we’re divorcing tomorrow. Tell your sister.’ Shocked son replies ‘You’ll do no such thing! I’m calling Nancy in Boston and we’re both coming down and we’ll help you sort things out.” Conversation ends, old man grins and turns to his wife. ‘It worked! The kids are coming to visit, and they’re paying their own way!”
He’d heard it before, he knew, in some permutation– Phoenix for Tucson, DC for Boston, more of the small changes in details that accrete with each inaccurate retelling of the joke –