MELVIN'S DOWNFALL [PART TWO OF TWO]

Later that day he told a dirty joke in the elevator, surprising not only his comrades, but also himself. He left the elevator in a daze and couldn't help feeling a bit proud.
"Good one, Melve," said George from across the room.
Melve. Someone had called him Melve. The tears began to push against his eye-lids.

By the end of the day he was exhausted. All that had been occupying his mind were images of that bloated face-- sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning. It was too much. He was not accustomed to obsessive feelings. Everything was unbearable. His living room seemed lopsided and every object in it pointless. He threw himself on his sofa and lay there, groaning and trembling.
He was now drowning in passion, glorifying every detail of Daisy's physical and mental qualities. Sometimes he would stop in the middle of his thoughts and wonder in shock how he could possibly be so affected by this monster, whose intellect would not stand a chance against a badger's! He needed to talk to someone-- to explain this absurd story to. He needed someone else to tell him he was an unforgivable imbecile, or at least that he was insane.
Frantically he dialed his sister’s number.
"Laura? Hi. It's me, Melvin."
"Melvin?" she sounded a bit irritated. “Something wrong?"
"Laura, it's silly. I don't know why I called really-- it's basically just that-- I'm in love."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yes. But you see, it's not a 'normal process.’ It's insanity."
"For Christ's sake, Melvin."
"No, Laura-- you don't understand. Daisy is an embarrassment to this country! She’s like pudding that overflowed from its bowl and lies lifeless and deformed on the kitchen table. She is completely unacceptable in every way-- and I am mangled into a pure passionate pulp over her!"
"Oh. Well."
It was only through much strain that he was able to keep from crying.
"I'm a complete wreck! I got angry at the fridge just a minute ago. I'm going insane."
"It happens to the best of us, Melvin."
"Laura, help me. What should I do? How can I approach her? I'm repulsed at the thought of those fat bumps spilling over her pants, but at the same time I get horny just thinking about it."
"Melvin, honestly. Do we have to talk about this now? Melvin heard only himself. "It feels like someone else is thinking what I’m thinking and doing what I'm doing and feeling what I'm feeling, you know? You know what I mean? She's just so,.. ugly. I'm afraid this isn't normal."
"Look," Laura said, "I gotta go. Talk to you soon, all right?"
"Ok. Bye."
He hung up the phone and absent-mindedly called his sister a "goddamn bitch,” and stared at the wall in terror. Suddenly, he just couldn't stop swearing and throwing random objects of medium weight across the room. It was bizarre. Nothing like it had ever happened to him before. And that's when it hit him. He had to marry her. That was the solution to his torments! It swept over him and turned the madness in his head into a serene stream of joyful thoughts. Thoughts of ugly, fat children climbing over his knees and Daisy watching them with a proud smile from the doorway. He picked up the phone like a self-assured doctor picks up a scalpel.
"Hey, Daisy. It's Melvin. Melve."
There was a long pause in which only heavy breathing could be heard.
"Daisy, are you there? It's me, Melvin."
"Melve?"
"Yes!" He was overjoyed at her recognition of him.
"Daisy, I want to ask you a personal question. I realize it seems somewhat crude to ask you this over the telephone, but it has to be done. If the answer is yes, then I should know. Why let happiness be suspended in time when it's so close at hand? And if the answer is no, then it's better that I'm doomed without much fuss."
He waited for her to press him on-- for some word of reassurance or even something to discourage him. But there was dead silence on the other end.
"Daisy, we hardly know each other-- I know that. I fully realize the insanity of this phone call. Trust me when I say that I'm a well-meaning, sincere man. What I'm trying to say is, it's just an urgent situation here, and this urgency puts me in a somewhat strange light. But I'm a decent man. Trust me on that. I just think,.. hello?"
"Hello."
"Oh. I thought maybe I'd lost you there."
"No."
"Ah. Well, as I was saying: why should it take any specific amount of time to realize that one likes someone else more than one ever liked anything in his life? I mean, where is it written that we can't have these emotions for someone instantly? Sure, you could call it an obsession to an extent, but it's an honest obsession of just wanting to be close to that particular person."
She continued breathing hard into the receiver, causing Melvin's extraordinary confidence to shake. It dawned on him that her state of mind made all these eloquent preliminaries entirely useless. It would be best just to get to the point and hope that she would understand.
"Doris--"
Wrong name! He cringed and slammed the dining room door shut on his foot a few times to ease the pain of embarrassment.
"I'm sorry. Daisy--will you marry me?"
The pause that followed was the worst time in his life.
"OK," she said.
"So, that's all right with you then-- if we do that?"
"Yeah. I like you, Melve."
He looked at himself in the mirror, holding the receiver as the color drained out of his face. His lips quivered in ecstasy. He closed his eyes and swore to God that, for the rest of his life, he would be so good that good men would seem evil. Then he opened his eyes.
"Well, great, Daisy. That's fantastic-- that you feel the same way."

The sun speckled her face as she sat squinting out at the street. There was a smile on her face Melvin had never seen before and he allowed his vanity to believe that it was because of their impending unification. The smile broadened into a full grin as she watched him pull up in front of her and jump out of the car. He approached her with a little bouquet of flowers and awkwardly put his arms around her.
After they remained motionless in each other’s arms for a few seconds, her voice came muffled from his shoulder.
"Oh, Melve."
"Oh, Daisy."
"Melve, I feel so silly and stupid. I forgot all about Bert."
"Who's Bert?"
"My husband. I married Bert some years back. I remembered this morning, when he stood in the kitchen and I came in. I forgot all about him yesterday though, and the day before that."
"Daisy, this is obviously a mistake, right? I mean, how can you be sure that Bert-- is your husband?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, 'cause I married him."
Melvin took hold of her shoulders and bent down to look into her wide, wasted eyes, "Are you sure Bert isn't your brother or something? I mean, if you're stupid enough to forget that you're married, then there's a chance that you're stupid enough to mistake your brother for a husband."
"My brother? No," she replied with a deep frown. "Bert is just Bert. We married a while back. I think it's just because we don't have kids that I sometimes forget we're married."
She laughed. Her insurmountable stupidity only fueled his passion to new heights.
He became frantic.
"Divorce Bert!"
Daisy frowned, her lip jutting out in concentration.
"No."
"Who cares about Bert?" he cried. "We only care for each other! That's all that matters. If we have to be selfish for the sake of love-- then we must!"
"I have to go now. Bye, Melve."

Melvin sat on his front steps, drinking a glass of orange juice while contemplating the sunset. He had crumbled to pieces hours ago, and now sat there quiet, sober and calm in all his various parts. He had made sense of the situation long ago. He had proven to himself in half-a-million ways why he should fall down on his knees and thank the Lord for intervening. How close he had been to the abyss! He had looked down at it and felt the treacherous breeze against his neck-- but thank God for Bert!
"If it wasn't for him I'd be married to that monster now," he said to himself.
A sudden picture of Daisy and Bert came to his mind, strolling down the beach, the sun playing on their skin as they laugh and splash water on each other-- frolicking in the cool waves of Florida's shores just like in a commercial.
Melvin threw his glass to the ground.
"Fuck Bert, that-- miserable, fat, idiot bastard asshole!"
Without realizing it, he had folded himself into a ball and began rolling down the driveway.
Across the street, Mrs. Lessing and her husband were settling down to dinner.
"What's wrong with Melvin, do you think?" Mrs. Lessing asked her husband.
Her husband leaned closer and shielded his eyes from the sun.
"Hell, I don't know. He's sort of scrunched up and rolling down his driveway."
"Well if that isn't strange, I don't know what is!" she exclaimed. "Maybe it's yoga-- those people are always doing strange things like that. I saw a show on TV about it yesterday."
"Yoga my ass. That man's a lunatic."
She slapped a great serving of mashed potatoes on her plate and shook her head.
"Well, there goes the neighborhood, anyway."
"Yep. If they're not gay, they're straight lunatics."