Copper Plumbing

By Ulf Wolf

This never happens to plumbers.

The plumber's world makes sense. It's all about water and gravity and slanting pipes. You channel the water in, you channel it back out. You slant the pipes earthward a little. Not much, just enough for the water to head in the right direction. Gravity does most of the work.

Mine is not a plumber's world and my world makes no sense. Marie is on the floor and my knuckles hurt.

The plumber has an easy life. Copper pipes bring water in, copper pipes bring water back out, and there's never any question about whether it works. When you flush, the bowl empties and the waste pipe devours. New water fills the bowl ready for the next guest. As the container refills the bulb rises to shut the flow.

Or not. Clean and clear. It either works, or it doesn't.

When it does you can feel pride and a sense of accomplishment and you render a bill. If it doesn't, you fix it until it does and then you can feel pride and a sense of accomplishment and you render a bill. Dad's a plumber. He doesn't render many bills these days though.

It started out plumbing enough. I loved her. Simple as that. Easy enough. No question. She was the most beautiful, wonderful, perfect girl in the world. If she had one shortcoming it was loving me, for who would? I mean, who was it that said he would never be a member of a club that would have him as a member? Shaw or Wilde or one of the Marx brothers, I think. Unless, of course, loving me made me perfect, too. So perfect you would be forgiven for loving me.

Loved to perfection, by perfection. Nice thought, that.

And I really did. Love her. So much I could not sleep. She did though. She worked the morning shift at 7-Eleven and had to sleep, she said. She slept a perfect sleep. She slept deep chestfulls of air with not a hint of snoring which raised her chest over and over and over. Her one arm slung across her breasts, the other out and just over the edge of the bed. That wrist so easily breakable.

So simple. So plumbing. Loving her. At times I sat on the bed, others I sat beside it, and now and then I watched her so hard that her sleep punctured and she would look at me, eyes not quite open, and say, "Hey, what are you doing?"

"Looking at you," I said.

"Go to sleep," she said. And did. I did not.

The alarm went off and she woke up. "You been up all night?"

"Yes," I said.

"Doing what?"

"Looking at you."

"You crazy."

"I know." ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ulf Wolf
• Release date: Aug 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370638246

Ulf Wolf

Ulf is a Swedish name that once meant Wolf. So, yes, Wolf Wolf, that's me. I was born Ulf Ronnquist one snowy night in late October, in one of those northern Swedish towns that are little more than a clearing in the forest. Fast forward through twenty Swedish years, ten or so English ones, and another twenty-four in the US and you'll find me in front of an immigrations officer conducting the final citizenship interview, at the end of which he asks me, "What name would you like on your passport?" And here I recall what a friend had told me, that you can pick just about any name you want at this point, and I heard me say "Ulf Wolf." That's how it happened. Scout's honor. Of course, I had been using Ulf Wolf as a pen name for some time before this interview, but I hadn't really planned to adopt that as my official U.S. name. But I did. I have written stories all my life. Initially in Swedish, but for the last twenty or so years in English. To date I have written six novels, four novellas and two scores of stories; along with many songs and poems. My writing focus these days is on life's important questions (in my view): Who are we? What are we doing here? And how do we break out of this prison?

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