Hurry up and wait

I’m always early. She’s always late. Can this marriage be saved?

Actually, she’s always exactly on time. She enters a theater as the curtain rises. She finds her seat on a plane as the door closes. She boards a boat as the gangway goes up. But that’s still emotional lateness.

I speak today of my wife, Cinelli, who says to me, “Your idea of getting somewhere on time is to get there early.”

“One must allow time to anticipate problems,” I reply grandly. “Women don’t understand that. It’s a biological difference. You have slower glands.”

“Right. Women don’t understand the need to spend half their lives waiting because men get them everywhere early. What it boils down to, Martinez, is you have goofy glands.”

My mother always believed in allowing time. She used to say, “Suppose there’s an earthquake and the trolley is derailed? If you didn’t allow for that, you’d never get to where you’re going, and suppose it’s important?”

We laughed until one day, as she was heading for a doctor’s appointment, there was an earthquake and the trolley was derailed. She had to take a bus, but, thank God, because of allowing for such a possibility, she was on time.

It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten.

When we’re invited to someone’s house for dinner and they say 7 p.m., I insist on knocking on their door at 7. Not 6:59 or 7:02, but 7. Exactly.

“Do you realize how gauche that is?” Cinelli says. “People don’t expect you at 7. They expect you at maybe 7:12.”

“If they wanted us at 7:12, they would say, ‘Dinner will be at 7:12. Please don’t be late.’ ”

“Your mother ruined you for marriage,” she says.

I will admit that sometimes I get a little, well, funny about time. Driving around a neighborhood because I’m an hour early for a dinner party probably does seem a little peculiar to some people. Cinelli is pretty used to it.

“What a great neighborhood,” I say as we cruise slowly through it, killing time. “The lawns, the trees ... “

“If we were here to see the neighborhood, that would be fine,” she says in a state of exasperation. “But we’re here for dinner, about 32 minutes from now, not to look at lawns and trees.”

Once a police car stopped us.

“You folks lost?” the officer, a very nice young man, asked.

He suspected we might be casing houses for future burglaries. That’s what Michael the Cat, a well-known burglar, used to do, but on foot. He’d dress in a tux and walk his dog through Beverly Hills, casing the neighborhood. When he found a house to burglarize, the dog would stand watch. They quit the business when the dog confessed.

Before I can say a word to the cop, my wife says, “Oh, no, officer, my husband here is a little loony-tunes when it comes to getting places, and we’re early. So we’re killing time before knocking on the door.”

He laughs and says, “I understand. How early?”

“About half an hour,” Cinelli says.

“Oh,” the policeman says, “that’s not too early,” and drives off.

“There you have it,” I say. “Official word from a member of the LAPD that we’re not too early.”

“Good God,” she says.

Once we spent eight hours waiting at the airport due to an unusual set of circumstances. At my insistence, we were four hours early, and the plane was four hours late. There’s not a lot to do in an airport terminal for eight hours after you’ve eaten, read a magazine and used the bathroom. The configuration is such that there’s no place to watch planes take off and land. But, still, it’s, well, kind of relaxing.

“Isn’t this peaceful?” I say to Cinelli.

“I’m calling a divorce lawyer as soon as we return,” she says. “I get the house, the furniture, the cars, the computers and the dogs. You get nothing.”

She’s just kidding. She’s Italian and gets upset easily.

“I know you don’t mean that,” I say, smiling beatifically.

“The hell I don’t,” she says, pushing me away. “And get your wet nose out of my face.”

That’s what she usually says to our dog Barkley. He drinks water by putting his whole face into the bowl and then wants to nuzzle her. She loves him but will not tolerate his wet nose in her face.

I tried to explain to her once that I wasn’t early, I was simply punctual. In all my years, I have never been late for an appointment, never missed a flight and never kept a surgeon waiting when I was due for an operation.

“I don’t know,” Cinelli says. “I guess I’m stuck with you. It’s too late to change, and men are probably all the same.”

Sensing her attitude of reconciliation, I lean over to kiss her. “Not now,” she says, “I’m not ready yet.”

I guess I’m a little early.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.