Roger’s always telling me to make a list. Today, my list went well. Sort of. Just Sex with Roger and all my items will be checked off.

Workout

The workout goes fine except the health club is so crowded I don’t get on my favorite machines, and the stationary bike squeaks, and there is a wait for the showers. Then, just when I step into the spray, the hot water runs out. I screech and whirl and knock my towel off the peg into a puddle of slimy suds.

Roger’s beard rubs my nipples. I hold his head in my hands. “Easy, honey,” I tell him. “Gentle.”

√

Vote

The polling place is mercifully almost empty. No one votes in primaries. I guess that makes me no one. So nice to get a parking spot right in front of the school. Yippee! And only one person in line in front of me, a little old lady, who reminds me of Sister Elizabeth, my second-grade teacher. The election clerk is explaining to her how to use the new automatic voting machine. “Just slide the card in, dear. Make sure you slide it in all the way. If the screen doesn’t come up, you haven’t slid it in far enough. Or else you’ve put it in backwards. Or else upside down. Or something. Just hold it like this and stick it all the way in and I’m sure it’ll be fine. And then you just answer the first screen of questions and then push continue and then you get the next screen, and so on.”

The little old lady smiles sweetly. “But what if I make a mistake?”

“Well, then you go back and change it.”

“But how do I change it?”

“Just press the answer you want.”

“Oh. But what if I’m already on the next screen? Can I go back?”

“Yes. Wait. I think so. I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay.”

“If you can’t go back, stop, and call us before you go too far.”

“What’s too far?”

“Just call us if you have any problems.”

“Okay.”

“Just sit there until that gentleman is finished.” The clerk points to a chair. “Oh, and when you’re done, we need the card back. There’s a chip on it, so we reuse it again and again.”

The clerk turns to me. “Would you like to try the new voting machine, or would you like a paper ballot.”

“I’d like a paper ballot. It looks a lot quicker.”

“Well, it is, but not really.”

The old lady says, “I would have taken paper if I had known.”

The clerk says, “The automatic machine will be quicker in the long run. People will just fly right through it, after they get used to it.”

I take the paper ballot to the voting booth. The curtain is the heavy black of a priest’s robe. I slide it across. Both sides of the ballot are filled with circles to fill in, but I only vote for the offices being contested and for the tax referendums. Roger will be so mad. He says we pay too much taxes as it is. Those poor public school kids without their new gyms, their new chemistry labs. It takes less than a minute to mark my ballot. A quickie. That makes me wonder if anyone’s ever had sex in a voting booth. I slide my hand down my front, just to be naughty. When I come out, the old lady who looks like Sister Elizabeth is still waiting for the gentleman to finish voting at the automatic machine.

“That’s right, baby, stick it all the way in. Oh, yeah! You’re so deep!”

√

Pay for pear tree

At the Village Hall, a sad, scrawny man in paint-spattered pants is talking to the plump, lady cashier about transferring his village vehicle sticker from his old car to his new car. Some of the spatters are more than that—like he sat in a small puddle of off-white paint.

“You just bring in the old sticker and you can pay a five dollar transfer fee,” the plump lady cashier says.

“Oh,” the man says. “Well, the sticker is on the window of the old car.”

“Right,” the cashier says. “You just bring it in with the old sticker and the registration or bill of sale for the new car and we’ll transfer it for five dollars. Easy as pie. Otherwise you have to buy a new sticker.”

“Bring what in?” the man says.

“The old sticker,” the woman says.

“Oh. You just said bring it in with the old sticker.”

“I did?”

“Yes.”

“Well, okay. You just bring it in.”

“The sticker?”

“Yes.”

“How long do I have?”

“Ten days.”

The man leaves the window. I hand the cashier the paperwork for our new tree—it’s part of a special program in which the Village will share the cost. “Do you want the King Maple or the Ornamental Pear?” the cashier asks.

“The Ornamental Pear,” I say, even though on the web it says that the blossoms, though pretty, have the sickly-sweet aroma of semen. “This King Maple—is it the same as the Sunset Red Maple?”

“No, it’s a little different,” the cashier says. “But the Sunset Red Maple is sold out.”

“Because the note says we can’t have the Norwegian Maple because that’s what our neighbors have. Is that the King Maple?”

“Yes. It’s a little different. The Sunset Maple is sold out.”

“Luckily we want the pear,” I say.

“Luckily,” the cashier says.

I write the check. The cashier staples all my paperwork together.

“What if the tree dies?” I say. I have an image in my head of a dead pear tree, stark and bare. “Will they replace it for free?”

The cashier looks at me with a sad, kindly look, as if I’m an idiot. I should have asked her if the pear tree comes with a partridge.