This was originally written in response to a challenge by Madelaine Lucy Hanson.
A push notification on his phone interrupted her train of thought. “You couldn’t set that to silent, could you?” she muttered.
“What?” he shouted in reply. He pulled the headphones off his ears and set them back around his neck.
“You’ve got a message.”
He looked at his phone. “Back in a tick.”
He put his power drill down and turned it off at the mains. He pressed a button on the wall. The garage door rolled open with a clatter. A man in a courier uniform stood in the driveway holding a box.
“Is that my wine?” she called.
“Nope,” he replied while scribbling a vague rendition of his name on the courier’s tablet.
He took the box under one arm and carried it into the house via the mud room that adjoined the laundry.
Three days later, he was in the backyard cropping the calendula and tying tomatoes to wooden stakes.
“Darling—” she called, her voice uncertain. “Did you order—sorry, what is it?” She went quiet, then said, “Did you order a dozen Singaporean lady-boys?”
“Ah, great, yes. Send them through.”
“Okay, fine.”
A dozen immaculately dressed Singaporean lady-boys took dainty steps into the garden. They were dressed identically in silk robes. They each wore a blue orchid in their hair.
“Are you expecting anyone else?”
“No. Not today.”
She resumed making a cup of tea and watched her husband boss the lady-boys around. Stand here. Sit there. Hold this flower. Hold this stick.
After a few hours, he sent them away. Three large U-store-it vans collected them and their belongings. A cloying jasmine smell lingered.
Two days passed. She was sitting on the good couch reading a book of short stories about horses. The doorbell rang. Jingle Bells. At a dinner party a few years ago, a friend’s child had changed the ring sound and no one could change it back.
At the door, a man in baggy grey overalls, steel-capped boots, and a tweed flat cap bade her sign his tablet.
“What is it?”
“Elephant, ma’am.” He shrugged.
“Darling,” she called up the stairs, “did you order an elephant?”
“Is it African or Indian?” he called back. She could hear the whir of his electric toothbrush. She lifted her reading glasses by their chain and squinted at the tablet.
“Indian,” she confirmed.
“Yep, that’s for me. Ask him to put it around the back.”
A week after that, she woke up to the smell of bacon and eggs. She heard the familiar squeak of the fifth step as he ascended.
“Happy birthday, my darling,” he announced. He set the laden tray down on the side of the bed.
She sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes. She sipped from a tall glass of freshly squeezed blood orange juice. He stepped out of the room and returned with a gift-wrapped box.
“I told you I didn’t want anything for my birthday,” she protested weakly while unwrapping the gift.
“That’s not quite what you said. I asked, ‘What do you want?’ You said, ‘Nothing.’”
She looked in the box and gasped. She blushed for just a second. Then she smiled. “Thank you, darling,” she said.
“It’s nothing,” he replied, smiling. She reached up and kissed him. She left egg on his beard.
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