An online novel by Gillette Edmunds

“He dresses like a banker. Doesn’t he own any sports clothes? Hasn’t he ever been on vacation before? And he is always pacing around by himself. He doesn’t seem to know how to make conversation with anyone. How could he have ever satisfied you?” Charlie asked Sonya Clarke about her husband Michael.

On this trip, Michael wore brown suit pants and a white dress shirt and he had stacks of the same in his bags. He also brought shorts and blue jeans but wore only his suits, though often he took off the tie and jacket on the hot afternoons. Working in Manhattan the previous sixteen years, he had adopted the practical habit of wearing suits for all occasions. He had no interest in fashion. But thinking he was going to have an exciting adventure like the camping outings of his youth, he purchased the jeans and shorts just before the trip and then forgot to wear them.

Naked, Michael Clarke looked like a skeleton draped with skin, except for the bulge at his stomach, the only result of his ravenous appetite. Clothed, he could be mistaken for a fashionably thin man of medium height, though his wife, expert at examining the fit of clothes, never was fooled. He had a thin, bony face with a long thin nose and oversized, designer, brown plastic glasses that Sonya picked out for him.

His glowing blue eyes could only be clearly seen when the glasses were removed just before bed. Until his marriage, he kept his yellow hair short so he never had to comb it. Then Sonya convinced him to grow it longer. When several cowlicks appeared and his hair would not lie down on his forehead, Michael reluctantly agreed to a permanent from Sonya’s hairdresser. The bouncy, yellow curls fell over his ears and forehead and looked like a cheap wig dropped from a height onto Michael’s skinny head. Hardly looking in a mirror except to shave when he often missed entire patches of beard, Michael was indifferent to his new curls. But one day Michael noticed a photo on the cover of a magazine in the waiting room of his firm.

The male model had curly hair and a mustache. After two months, Michael’s mustache remained hopelessly blond, and Sonya, whom he was trying to please, demanded he shave it off, which he did.

Now age 36, Michael has not taken a moment of exercise since high school. Yet his quick mind, quick movements, and thin appearance often lead people to think of him as physically fit.