Nettled Glare

Okay, I went commercial. Blame the recession.
Now we will have a short vignette to offset the commercials. Sigh.


Nettled Glare
“I don’t suppose I can talk you out of it.” Janna paced the floor, her long slim legs scissoring long strides, causing her to pivot after a few steps. It was like watching a ball bounce off walls, a ball that never slowed. Or a heated ping pong game with evenly matched professionals whaling away. It made one slightly dizzy.
“My mind is made up. I have to. You know I have to. If I don’t, I may as well pack it in and give it all up, quit breathing and die.”
“Oh come on!” Janna eyed Richard with a nettled glare. Richard was so obtusely stubborn. His outlook and desires were the only ones that existed as far as he was concerned. She was tired of it. “Why is it all about you? You think everything has to be about you and what you think must be. Your reality sucks, Richard.”
“My! Look Janna, if it weren’t for me, the refrigerator doesn’t get stocked. You wouldn’t be dressed and certainly wouldn’t be pacing that lovely Aubusson rug you insisted on having. What you so point out as my concerns keeps us going, dear heart.”
”Richard, you are whining again. Let me go get a job and we’ll see about your reality.”
“You don’t have to work. You know that. You don’t want to work. Your life style doesn’t factor that in, Janna. So don’t tell me I’m whining when you’re just unfurling empty threats in hot breath.”
“Your ego doesn’t want your wifey working,” muttered Janna.
“What was that?”
“This. It’s hardly working,” she said louder. “You go out and risk your neck for big bucks and public attention. I worry that someday your neck will not survive the next stunt.”
. “I’ve jumped 16 cars before.”
“Lightning doesn’t always strike twice.”
“What does that mean?” Richard said, waspishly. “Honestly Janna, you are in a mood this morning. I wonder – ”
“Don’t even go there!” warned Janna. “Don’t pin this whole thing on me. We were discussing what you had to do this weekend and I say ‘don’t’.”
“The bid is a half-million.”
“Richard!”
“Pony that up, and I won’t.”
“Do it then. Do what you have to. Break your neck and everything else in your body. I don’t care. Maybe your reality wants you in a chair with a C5 fracture. Don’t expect me to wait on you, though Richard, That is not one of my talents.”
Richard smiled. “Your talents lies in creatively distributing the half million over my reality.”
“Whatever,” sighed Janna. She wasn’t getting anywhere with Richard. Whenever she tried to divert Richard into the possibility of another venue for a living, he would counter with attack. The painful truth was sharp enough. If money was all she cared about, he was insured for far more that the half million he would earn by his stunt driving. That was even more expensive, and possible only because enough gamblers were betting that Richard would emerge unscathed from these extreme adventures. He always did, with an uncanny regularity that defied all sense. Even the Knevils, father and son, had accidents. Richard didn’t. He earned the name “Superman”, and unlike the predecessors who just took the name and the illusion on film, he really flew. Must have. Otherwise some of the stunts he survived were impossible to walk away from, with equipment intact. No one before ever had such balance and grace with such uncanny accuracy.
Uncanny. Odd, Weird and Eerie. That’s what attracted Janna to him in the first place. How he made her feel when he was performing. That sensation she got watching him was totally unlike anything she felt before. It brought her to a quivering, tearing ecstasy. Better than sex, much better but of course she would never tell him that. Not that he wasn’t good in the sack but come on, let’s be real here. The only unreal thing about Richard was his ability to perform wild, fast aerial feats and come out whole, bike, car, whatever. It didn’t matter. He could take a pogo stick across a rope strung across the Grand Canyon. Better not ever mention that either. Some promoter would catch ahold of that and he’d have to do it. It’s your problem, Janna, she thought. You’re the one who married him, and that because his best friend dared him to do it. Only way, and many say it was the only time Richard ever crashed.
“So my people skills are a bit skewed!” Janna muttered, smothering the thought with a bite into an apple. She glanced over at Richard. He was into the paper, drinking his coffee. Good. Didn’t hear her, or if he did, let it go. He probably agreed with her anyway.