The Agoraphobic Cowboy| Jonathan Cardew
i.
At the conference dinner, I tell everybody that I’m Rick Moranis. The Rick Moranis. The actual one.
I have the same build and boxy glasses; it’s a cinch to pull off.
A dentist from Delaware sits next to me. “It’s truly an honor,” he says, shaking my hand. “You’re a goddamned comedic genius.”
I wink at Sylvia across the table.
My wink says: regional dentistry association attendees are wankers.
She doesn’t wink back.
ii.
At the motel, Sylvia is quick to wash her hands with an antibacterial soap.
“For just once…” she says, but doesn’t finish her sentence.
She dabs her eyes with one of the motel napkins. The napkins are strewn about the room.
She gave a talk on periodontal maintenance, and her sample toothpicks and floss packs are similarly scattered.
She didn’t make many sales.
People just aren’t concerned about gums anymore.
“They’re going to lose their fucking teeth,” she says in the mirror, not making eye contact with herself.
iii.
Rick Moranis is famed for such films as Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Spaceballs, Little Shop of Horrors, and other zany romps from the 80s and 90s.
He is from Canada.
He wrote an album of country songs called The Agoraphobic Cowboy.
I am not him, but I feel like him.
I have his sense of humor. Kind of wacky. Spacey. Like I’m always on the edge of hysteria.
Why did Rick Moranis disappear from our screens?
iv.
Sylvia sleeps.
I want to touch her with Rick’s hands, his fingers--reach across the divide.
He has the artistic digits of a failed inventor.
The hands of a sophist.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her ear, as she tosses in bed. “I am an idiot.”
“It’s okay,” she mumbles.
She stretches herself long and thin under the comforter.
Every part of her is long and thin.
Beautiful.
V.
I shrink to the size of a flea.
I am not Rick Moranis.
If I were really Rick, a miniaturized domestic voyage would be enough to repair a relationship.
If I were really Rick, a nervous laugh would come to our defenses.
Flea-sized, I hop onto Sylvia’s eardrum, tap dance across her teeth, fling myself at the mercy of her lips.
The hum of her blood is like the ocean.
Jonathan Cardew met Kyle MacLachlan once on the set of the Invisible Man. That is all. His stories appear in wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Passages North, 100 Word Story, and more.