Dos Equis

Featured in the Romance/Love Newsletter - 10/22/08

Jeffrey sat at the small round table on the patio and raised his bottle.  "See this label here?" he asked, turning the bottle toward me and pointing to the twin Xs of the Dos Equis beer label.  "That's just like my Genevieve and me," he smiled tenderly at his wife of fifty years, "side by side."

"Which one are you?" I inquired teasingly.

Jeffery turned the container and gazed at the label.  "The one on the right, naturally."

"Humph," Ginny responded.  "Of course, in all the years I've known him he's never been wrong!"

"Ah, you're just jealous," Jeffrey grinned as he pushed back from the table.  "I'm going to get another beer."

"One more is your limit!" Ginny called after him as he disappeared into the house.

I leaned toward Ginny and whispered, "With his heart condition, I didn't think he was allowed to drink."

"He's not," Ginny said with a chuckle.

I frowned.  "What do you mean?"

"It's the non-alcoholic stuff.  My nephew collects the empty bottles for me; I refill them with the fake brew and recap them.  He doesn't know the difference."

I laughed.  "Okay, your secret's safe with me!" 

Ginny stared at the door through which Jeffrey had disappeared.  "I remember the first time I ever met him.  I opened the front door of my parents' house and there was this gangly young man wearing plaid pants and argyle socks.  Even though they were both all the rage back then, the combination struck me as so funny I almost laughed in his face."

I glanced across the table and saw that her dark eyes had taken on a look of glazed softness as she remembered that first meeting.


When the doorbell rang, Genevieve ran down the stairs, anticipating a fun evening of music and dancing.  "Patrick!" she exclaimed, yanking open the door to find a lanky stranger grinning at her.  "Yes?" she asked hesitantly.

"Hi," the young man said, a blush coloring his cheeks.  "I'm Jeff.  Pat had to work late and he asked me to come by and take you to the dance.  He'll meet us there."

Suppressing a giggle, she stepped back.  "Hi, Jeff, come on in and I'll get my jacket." 

He stood awkwardly in the hallway as Genevieve closed the door and went to the closet. 

Her mother came in from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

"Mom, this is Jeff.  Patrick's meeting us at the dance."

He stepped forward with his hand extended.  "Hello, ma'am, I'm Jeffrey Pierce. Pat and I have been best friends practically all of our lives."

She took his hand and smiled.  "Yes, Jeffrey, I believe I remember Patrick's mother mentioning you.  You've been in the service, haven't you?"

"Yes, ma'am, I just got discharged from the Navy last week."

Genevieve stepped up with her jacket over her arm.  "We'd better go."

Jeffrey followed her down the walkway and opened the passenger's door of his Desoto.  Genevieve arranged her skirt and waited until he was behind the wheel and they were on their way.

"So, you were in the Navy?"

"Yeah, just got out."

Her gaze traveled over his body.  "No visible ‘war wounds', I see."

He laughed.  "No.  The Navy's a lot better than the Army on that score.  If you don't get blasted by a torpedo or have a bomb dropped on your ship, your chances of getting home in one piece are pretty good." 

Genevieve noted the twinkling blue eyes and the ready grin and smiled.

Jeffrey returned her smile and said, "I'm sure glad to be home though.  I'm really looking forward to this dance.  I've really missed those."

"You expect me to believe," she teased, "that you didn't enjoy all those ‘port calls' that sailors are infamous for  - ‘a girl in every port' and all that."  She laughed at the blush that flushed his face. 

"I neither admit nor deny!" he declared, pulling into the lot of the dance hall.  "Listen to that music!"

"They got a local band for tonight.  It ought to really be fun!"

Throughout the evening both Jeffrey and Patrick vied for Genevieve's attention, good-naturedly cutting in on each other time after time.


Genevieve's eyes twinkled with the memory and I couldn't help but smile at the scene she described.  "We started dating regularly after that and were married three years later.  That's when our troubles really started!"  She laughed.  "His parents always had a maid and she doted on those boys.  They never had to lift a finger.  Never picked up after themselves!  Dirty clothes dropped where they were taken off, wet towels littering the bathroom." She nodded her head firmly.  "I soon got him trained though!"  she said as Jeffrey returned to the patio with a fresh brew. 

"What kind of tales are you telling on me now, woman?" Jeffrey asked with an expression of mock horror.

"Just the ones you'd never tell on yourself," she quipped.

Jeffrey shot a mischievous grin at Ginny.  "You should have seen us walking down the street." He lifted his arm and patted it as if Ginny's hand was actually placed there.  "We made quite a handsome couple.  All the guys would turn and stare, as jealous as if I'd been out strolling with Miss Marilyn Mon-roe on my arm."

Ginny chuckled, leaned closer and slipped her hand through his extended arm.  "We still make a handsome couple!"

He clasped her hand and his sparkling gray eyes grew cloudy.  "I almost lost her once, though - when Jeanette was born."   

"And after months of ‘bed rest'!  Poor Jeffrey had to wait on me hand and foot."  She patted his arm and withdrew her hand.

Jeffrey finished off his beer and stood up.  "Well, I can't spend all day sitting around jawing with you women.  I've got to take the car down for an oil change."  He took his empty bottle into the house and soon returned jangling his car keys and whistling a tuneless song.  When he disappeared into the garage, Ginny pushed back her chair.

"We'd better get back to those accounts."

I followed her back into her home office where stacks of documents awaited posting.  "How long have you been doing this?  Keeping books for people, I mean."

"About twenty years now, I guess.  After Jeffrey had his open-heart surgery, he couldn't work any longer, so I had to quit my job and stay home with him.  But we still needed to have some kind of money coming in, so I contacted a few small businesses and started keeping their books for them.  It's worked out pretty well, just gets a little much around tax time."

We'd worked for nearly two hours when Jeffrey reappeared, lounging against the doorframe.  "Well, that's done!" he announced with a grin.

"It took you long enough!" Ginny said.

He shrugged.  "They must've had more customers than usual.  You know that cute little blonde who works as their cashier, what's her name?"

"Shelly . . . something . . . Sommers, I think.  Why?"

"I just wondered."  He pulled the bill from his pocket and frowned as he started to peruse it.  "What's all this stuff they're charging me for?  They didn't replace those things!"  His face flushed angrily.  "I'm going back down there and give them a piece of my mind!"

Ginny looked over his shoulder at the receipt, "But you signed it!  Why'd you sign it?  You were just so busy flirting with that young girl you weren't paying any attention to what you were doing.  You should've checked it before you signed it!"

"Well, I'm not going to let them get away with this!"  he shouted, his anger rising.

Ginny sighed.  "Why don't you go take a nap first?  You can talk to them later."

Still muttering, he moved toward the bedroom.

I leaned closer to Ginny and whispered, "He's getting worse, isn't he?"

She nodded.  "He'll fly off the handle, scream and yell, and then come back later and just apologize and apologize."

"Is it because of his physical problems?"

Again she nodded.  "His heart is only pumping at about thirty percent capacity.  He's not getting enough oxygen to his brain.  He can't remember things."  She heaved a deep sigh.  "He just isn't the man I married anymore.  Sometimes I tell him, ‘I still love you, Jeffrey Pierce, but sometimes I don't like you very much.' "

I shook my head slowly, trying to imagine the bond that binds this couple.  "And fifty years you've been married."

"Fifty years and counting.  It's too late to change my mind now."



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