Annie CLXII: Controlled Substance

Annie CLXII: Controlled Substance

(Chronological index: A few months following Annie LXIX: Offices)

Ketchup was never a controlled substance in our house. Chocolate was, or more exactly, sugar was.

Human bodies are designed to operate with a certain amount of mass. Sylph bodies work the same way, but lack the mass. So they burn through a lot of calories just to avoid freezing.

Sugar is a quick way to deliver calories to allow them to maintain sufficient bodily function to be comfortable.

I never withheld sugar to the point of actually harming Annie. But she sometimes had a different threshold about ‘comfort’ than I did.

And rationing her chocolate supply was a quick and effective way to get her attention if she’d been naughty. Or uncooperative. Or had threatened my life. Or had gotten way, way ahead of me as far as pranks went.

Anyway, while I monitored her candy stash and tried to make my own resources sylph-proof, I never really cared about ketchup.

My second job after college was with a company that had computers, but didn’t really understand computers. Like most of them at that time…

They knew that having some IT people in-house was more efficient than calling the system vendor each and every time there was a problem, but they didn’t have a full department.

They had three of us and we were part of the Personnel Department. I guess the logic was that Personnel did EVERYTHING on computers, so we’d fit in nicely.

Three was not enough for that company, so I tended to put in overtime. Which meant fast-food for dinner.

I was just starting to appreciate cooking for ourselves, and on weekends and holidays I enjoyed grilling things. Annie enjoyed it, too.

But if I was coming home well after the established norm for dinner time, she enjoyed food on the table more than she enjoyed watching me marinate a steak or nestle a potato down in the coals.

Lucky for me, she didn’t complain about dinner being late, as long as there WAS a dinner.

I remember thanking her one night for that.

“It’s your job,” she shrugged, slicing open a steak fry to get to the soft part just under the skin.

“Well, other guys say their wife or their girlfriend bitches when they stay late, so I usually get the bag jobs.”

“No one thinks your relationship is equivalent,” she nodded. She made a point of glancing over to the freezer, where she knew a half-gallon of double Dutch chocolate waited for dessert. “Of course, no one in THOSE relationships ever brings home six times the wife’s body weight in ice cream… No wonder they bitch.”

We shared a smile and went back to eating.

After dinner, I was cleaning up the bag from the drive-through, which included a couple of tubes of butter for the dinner rolls.

Which reminded me, they usually threw in a few packets of ketchup.

And on further consideration, I hadn’t cleaned up a packet of soy sauce, duck sauce, mustard, relish, ketchup, hot sauce, mayonnaise, lemon juice, tartar sauce… Not in months.

And it wasn’t like they didn’t put condiments in the bag, I’d used some. But there were never extra.

Unless they were in a tub, like the butter. The packets were disappearing, but not the tubs.

I could almost imagine Annie squirreling away something like duck sauce. In a moment of dire desperation, cutting one corner and sucking the bag like a vampire with a fat victim…

But the soy sauce? Lemon juice? Mustard? No. No, she wouldn’t stash those against future need.

I didn’t confront her, not right away. For one thing, she’d certainly have a ready excuse or argument or something waiting.

And for another, I really really didn’t care. She was welcome to the stuff, if she had any sort of use for it.

But I was curious as to how she was getting the stuff out of sight.

So, the next few nights, I actually went into the stores, rather than drive-through. I grabbed a few extra packets and tubs, just to keep a precise inventory.

During the meal, when Annie thought I wasn’t looking, she’d grab one of the little bags spilled across the table and threw them over the side.

The side by the window. I never sat on that side, preferring to look out through it. And we seldom had company in those days, so whatever fell over there might sit there undisturbed for a bit.

That weekend, I made a comment about needing to vacuum, and she nodded. No panic about her stolen condiments being at risk…

Well, there was nothing under the table when I moved it.

So I ended up cleaning the living room and dining room floors. I suppose they needed it. Then I sat on the couch, satisfied that I’d done such an adult thing as to clean up before it was an actual health hazard.

Annie sat on the armrest, working her way through an M&M.

We sat in silence for a minute. Then she asked, “Should you have dusted before you vacuumed? So any dust you dislodged fell to the floor to be efficiently sucked up by the dust sucker upper?” “Dusting’s next week,” I said. “Don’t want to get overexcited.”

“Ah,” she nodded. Then she shifted her grip and dropped her candy. It rolled off the armrest and fell to the floor. “Poopies!” she snarled.

I leaned down to pick up the chocolate. “Do you want it?” I asked.

“Ten second rule applies,” she said. I dropped the M&M into her outstretched hands. “Unless it’s chocolate, of course, then it’s a thirty second rule.”

“Especially on freshly waxed floor,” I said with a nod to the carpet.

“Exactly, Master!” she said with a brilliant smile. I do love her smile.

So, about a week later I came home with dinner from a barbecue place. It was a popular place, but more than a little out of the way and there was no drive through, so I didn’t get it often.

Annie was on the counter that has the pass-through between the kitchen and the dining room. Or, that little extension off of the living room where we put the dining table, to avoid putting on airs about our first apartment.

I knew she liked The Pit and proudly place the bag where she could see the logo.

“Oy gevalt,” she shouted, hands to her face. “TELL me you got beef? Or chicken?”

“Pulled pork,” I said, a little confused.

“It’s not KOSHER!” she screamed, then turned and ran away from me… And jumped off the edge of the counter.

“ANNIE!” I screamed, running through the apartment to get to the far side of the pass through.

On the floor under the counter was a little wicker basket. I think I remember picking it up one Easter at a party with friends.

I knelt down beside it. It was full of condiments. Handful after handful of plastic packets of ketchup and soy sauce and so on. All the missing free accessories.

The only thing I could think of was those inflatable bags stuntmen use in movie falls. Annie had probably thought the packets would work as pillows to cushion her fall.

In her mind, she’d land, roll to the edge and climb down the basket side. She’d either hide while I desperately searched through the bags for her, or be healthy and whole when I tore around the corner, presenting herself with a ‘Tada!’ and a ‘Gotcha!’

But they probably slid over each other pretty easily. So I expect that she’d bounced once, then sank like a stone. Because the packets were moving. She was in there, somewhere.

I was tempted to leave her to it. Call it performance art? If she could find the edge of the basket, she could drag herself up the wicker like a ladder, to freedom.

After a moment, though, I reached over and tipped the basket over slowly. The packets slid out like tribbles from the grain silo. She came out headfirst, sliding across through the pile, coming to rest on the carpet.

“When did you start keeping Kosher?” I asked.

She crawled a bit away from the condilanche and stood. “When you brought home pork.”

“What if I’d brought home chicken?” I asked.

“Big Bird?” she wailed, running to throw herself on the condiments. She sank again, but now it was only a few inches deep.

I fished her out and held her, fingers wrapped around her waist. “And beef?”

“During HOLI!?!?!” she cried, making diving motions.

“Holi was in March,” I said.

“How the fuck do you know?” she asked.

“One of my coworkers always brags about spending a year in India, and copping feels during Holi.”

“Sounds like a Neanderthal,” she muttered.

“There’s a reason I haven’t introduced you,” I said with a nod.

I swept up the packets and righted the basket, then lifted Annie to the counter. “I will admit, you got me good, I thought you’d suicided.”

“Totally worth it, then,” she purred.

“What if I had fish?”

“FLOUNDER!?!” she screamed, turning to face the edge and assuming a starter’s crouch.

I blinked. “Flounder? Was he the side-kick in Little Mermaid?”

“NO, Master, he’s the Freshman in Animal House!”

“He’s not a fish!” I protested.

“Well, fuck, Master, it’s not Holi, either.” She jumped up to grab the edge of the paper sack, tearing a strip down the side, gaining access to the contents. “Oooh, dibs the hush puppy!” “You get one hush puppy anyway!” I pointed out.

“Yes, but I say ‘Dibs!’ so that I can get MY hush puppy before you do anything perverted with the malt vinegar.”

“Philistine,” I muttered.





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