When the handyman has a hangover

MY WIFE HAS A COLD. I have a hangover. Both of us have the throaty purrs of people who are sexier than we normally are. I consider having an affair with her, my wife, but I don’t think our suburb is ready for such a thing. Our little town could handle almost any scandal, except actual intimate relations between a married couple. The preachers would have a field day.

“Did you get the diapers?” my wife rasps in her Blythe Danner voice. It is the sound of linen ripping. My Size 9 heart jumps like a brook trout.

“Yes,” I say. “The diapers are in the car.”

One day, I want to do a piece for the New Yorker on a young woman with a cold who meets a man with a hangover, both of whom have developed these unusually throaty and appealing voices. They begin a torrid romance -- one of the great love affairs of all time -- where people cry, scream, gasp, hurl toasters, call their mothers and come back for more.

Before they know it, they have four kids, two dogs and are spending all their savings on orthodontics. I’d write the piece today, except I need a better, happier ending.

“I think one of my tires is low,” my wife purrs.

I am at the stage on a busy Saturday morning where, instead of fixing the bad tire, I consider just letting some air out of the other three to make them look even. I don’t, of course. But I consider it, seriously, for about 15 seconds. In our town, there’s always been a fine line between insanity and survival.

“Oh, and that toilet you fixed?” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Still broken,” she says.

Off we go to the hardware mega store. There are two grooves worn in the roadway between our house and the mega store, created by our thousand trips back and forth, back and forth. At this point, you barely need to steer.

Near the intersection of Art and Commerce, we pass a guy dressed like Elvis. He is trying to wave motorists in for a quickie oil change. Elvis is surrounded by U.S. flags, an icon among icons. “Oil changes $19.95,” a big banner says. “God bless America,” I say to myself. And the sooner the better.

“Who’s that?” asks the little girl.

“Elvis.”

“He’s fat,” she says excitedly.

“Don’t be so critical,” I say. “He’s a very talented man.”

At the hardware mega store, I pull into my reserved spot. There’s a plaque there with my name on it, encrusted in diamonds. “Our most-valued customer,” the plaque says. “Thanks for everything.” It is signed by the store manager and the CEO of the chain.

We used to have a real hardware store in our little town, an old-fashioned place where employees knew the merchandise and remembered your face no matter how handsome. There were no P.A. systems. No faux painting demos by men in aprons. On a hot day, they’d turn on the fan and prop open the front door.

“You need toggle bolts?” they’d say. “Right over here.”

Or: “Gopher traps? I think I have a couple left in the back.”

Two years ago, they turned this last refuge of the weekend handyman into a Curves, a workout studio exclusively for women. Goodbye, wing nuts. Hello, sweaty housewives. Eventually, all stores will be Curves.

“What are we getting?” the little girl asks as we turn down the plumbing aisle of the mega store.

“Frustrated,” I say.

“The toilets are over here,” she says.

We don’t need an entire toilet. We just need some toilet innards. Yesterday, I replaced the fill valve. Took me 20 minutes and five good cuss words. The toilet hissed all night anyway.

“I wanted to wake you,” my wife said in the morning. “But then I thought I’d wait.”

No problem. Turns out it wasn’t the fill valve at all. It was actually a defective flapper, which leaked and allowed water to trickle out of the tank, triggering the fill valve over and over, all night long. These days, it’s hard enough to sleep, without the toilet snoring.

This new flapper should take care of things. I think.

Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan.

Did you ever notice that the longer the checkout line, the worse the scanner device works? At 1 p.m. on a busy Saturday, it barely functions at all. Scan. Scan. Scan (insert clerk’s favorite four-letter word). Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan.

“$5.36,” the clerk finally says, a price I’m pretty sure he made up in his head.

“Out of 10,” he says, counting out my change.

This better work. My wife has a cold. I have a hangover. They won’t last forever. And we’re still looking for that happy ending.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.