Brother by Rick Bailey

In the shower one morning, against his will, the husband finds himself humming “I’ve Had the Time of My Life.” Through most of his marriage, he’s thought the guy singer was Michael Bolton, but when he heard it in the car the other day, when he really heard the song, he knew it had to be a Righteous Brother, the tall one. Now he’s stuck with that song.

He squirts a glob of shampoo into his hand, trying to sing Bill Medley low, and begins to suds up his head. In the seventh grade, long before Michael Bolton, when both Righteous Brothers sang “You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling,” he slow-danced with Susan Scheiswahl to that song at lunch time. Since then, there’s been a lot of lovin’ feeling lost and gained.

Later, when he comes downstairs, he asks his wife which Righteous Brother she liked best, the big one or the little one.

She’s reading Umberto Eco at the breakfast table. After all these years of marriage, she’s learned to ignore such questions.

“He’s talking about the casting of Perseus,” she says without looking up. “It’s Cellini, isn’t it?”

He fills a coffee cup for himself. “Is there a Donatello Perseus?”

She shakes her head. “You’re thinking of Judith and Holofernes,” she says. “A different beheading altogether.”

Actually, he’s still thinking about the Righteous Brothers.

She reads, he fixes himself cereal, sits across the table from her, opens his notebook and Googles western civilization. Donatello, Perseus. She’s right, of course.

“So which one?” he asks her again. He stares across the table at her until she has to stop reading and has look up. He’s having the time of his life.

“Cellini’s the Perseus,” she says. “Eco says so right here. But I knew it.”

“Big or little?”

She closes the book, takes a drink of coffee, and looks at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The Righteous Brothers,” he says.

“Neither,” she says. “You knew that.”

“One of them died,” he says.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. And that settles it.

She returns to her book, turns a page. Says quietly that she loves Eco. Just loves him. When she asks, the husband pours her another cup of coffee. Later he’ll make her breakfast, thinking about a Righteous Brother lost.

Rick Bailey’s work has been published in Bartleby Snopes, Toasted Cheese, and The Writer’s Workshop Review.