I wiggle around M in the kitchen to the stove where the stock pot tries to simmer. It’s so big it takes honest to God minutes to fill.

M is skeptical. “This doesn’t seem safe.”

“What do you know about safe? I’m going to go take a hot bath. I’m going to listen to jazz!”

“OK. But why are you already naked?”

“I don’t mean Julian Lage or Lake Street Dive. I didn’t just give my sweetheart back her promise ring because I met someone at summer camp. I didn’t break up with my cat. I mean real bebop, honest to God JAZZ!”

She hands me the potholders. “Here. At least use these.”

But I’m too busy playing my imaginary saxophone. “Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Jazz!”

“Please stop saying that.”

I don’t stop. I throw my towel over my bare shoulder and hoist that absolute cauldron and turn on her and my ass cheeks might sag a little anymore but I go haughty up the stairs, too haughty, like Icarus, and I slip and down I go.

When she finds me, I’m trying not to howl and howling and wriggling on my back wailing on the imaginary saxophone. I have a rule that when I hurt myself, she cannot ask if I’m OK until I’m ready, so I really blow that thing because Friday only comes once a week and I’ve been looking forward to this.

She shakes her head and grinds her jaw and taps her foot and checks her watch and then it hits her, she tells me, “Blow, cat, blow,” and only then do I ask her, “Baby, call the hospital.”

I want to tell her I’m really cooking, but it hurts too bad by now to talk, and she’s got her own rule about puns.