Item Number Seven

Lazily bumming around on the couch with Spock by his feet, Hiromasa enjoyed the benefits of a work free Sunday. Not all the benefits, since his wife was working in her café and not making him lunch dressed in nothing but a frilly pink apron, but a great many of benefits nevertheless. There was a cold beer in his hand, some football on TV, his favourite song playing on the stereo, and a chubby dog warming his feet. All in all, it was perfect. But all perfection goes to waste when you can't share it. Beer bottles get empty. Football games have only 90 minutes of playing time. More than a Feeling cannot be listened to more than three times in a row. Dogs fart. In the case of Spock, dogs even fart a lot.

"Damn, Spock! Get off the couch, you stinker!" Following his owner's command, Spock jumped off the couch and trotted over to this doggy basket. "God, that's disgusting," Hiromasa muttered in the general direction of his pet while craning his head to to check the time on the large grandfather clock in the corner. Still over five hours before Makoto got home and he was already bored.

Six minutes later, Hiro began to doodle on his sketch pad. Once he had finished the design for a new wardrobe, he played some golf on his Wii. But after another two rounds, it ceased to be fun and eventually, Hiromasa got so bored that he decided to tidy up their bedroom. While they were by no means as messy as Umino and Ando had been in their infamous Apartment of Filth, there was a good amount of chaos to be found behind the white painted door. Sheets kicked to the floor because it was too hot to sleep under them, dog hairs everywhere (which was miraculous since Spock wasn't even allowed in the bedroom), and Makoto - bless her heart - had the habit of hanging her dresses on the doorknobs of their wardrobe and not on the clothes rack inside. Add this morning's coffee mugs, a bit of dirty laundry and a filched through newspaper (featuring an article from new foreign correspondent Ando Tanaka), and the image was more or less complete.

Hiromasa decided to be a good husband and surprise his wife with a tidy home and his naked self draped on the fresh sheets. She'd like that. First, he folded the newspaper neatly back together and put it on his bedside table before grabbing the mugs and carrying them to the kitchen, where he loaded them in the already rather full dish washer.
Chugging some Bon Jovi in the CD player and turning it on full volume, he returned to the bedroom armed with the heavy vacuum cleaner. He set to work and eradicated almost all evidence of Spock's presence in the room, moving the vacuum in sync with the beats of It's my life while singing along on top of his lungs.
"It's my liiiiiiiiiife, it's now or never, no-one's gonna live foreeeeeeeeever!"

Not bothering to vacuum under the bed and behind the door because Makoto never looked there anyway, he was soon satisfied with this work. Three minutes and 45 seconds and the room was dust- and hairless. Smugly, he decided to tell Makoto about his new record and stored the vacuum cleaner in the closet. Moving onto the bed and the linens that wanted to be changed, he came to realise that just because Makoto always made changing the bed linens seem very effortless, it didn't mean it actually was. Twenty minutes later, the result was questionable: while the old linens had been deposited in the laundry basket with all the other articles of clothing that previously littered the floor, and the new linens had indeed been put on the bed, it still looked very rumpled and nowhere near as hotel-like as Hiromasa had planned. Oh well, he'd just have to distract her from this little detail with his penis and some chocolates on the pillows.

Nodding to himself, he noticed that Spock was slowly inching down the hallway and towards the open bedroom door again.
"SPOCK, get in your basket now!" Hiromasa bellowed and made a threatening step into his dog's direction. Tail tugged between his legs, Spock sped away. Biting down the hint of a guilty conscience, Hiromasa decided to sneak Spock an extra doggie biscuit before Makoto got home and began to put his wife's dresses on clothes hangers before storing them all in the wardrobe.

Trudging back to the living-room, he put some Aerosmith on, patted his dog and grudgingly admitted to himself that his work was not yet done. Returning to the bedroom, he looked around and tried to image what his wife would see. Dusty lamp shades. Damn. Not bothering to get a dust cloth, he simply took off his grey t-shirt and wiped the lamp shades with it. It was then that he noticed a folded sheet of paper tucked under the lamp on Makoto's night-stand. He picked it up and (briefly checking that his wife wasn't yet home) unfolded it. It was a to-do list written in Mako's curvy handwriting. Beaming, he decided that he could just finish the list for her: she would really like that after a long day in the café! Hopefully there was no more household stuff on it. His eyes scurried over to item number one:

1. Get Minako to take naked pictures of me BEFORE September.
"My birthday is in September," Hiromasa said to no-one in particular while breaking into a stupid grin. Two and a half months to go and he would get a fantastic birthday cake plus naked pictures of his hot wife. Sweet.

2. Train Spock to behave better. Enlist Takeshi to help.
Eyeing the dog that had once again snuck into the room, Hiromasa frowned. "You're a good dog, you're trained perfectly. You just like your humans." Spock - encouraged by Hiromasa's friendly tone - trotted over and rubbed his wet nose against Hiromasa's hairy legs in assent. Bending down to pet the dog, Hiromasa lifted one of Spock's ears and whispered into it.
"Nobody wants a goody-two-shoes dog like Attila, right, boy? Right? You've got character. You're a perfect dog." Spock broke this perfect moment by letting out a silent, but deathly fart.
"Oh, fuck that," Hiromasa grumbled and pinched his nose with his left hand.

3. Find bigger apartment. Possibly house with garden.
Now that sounded like an excellent idea. Hiromasa, a country boy at heart, always missed the sight of trees and grass in central Tokyo. Perhaps he could even convince Makoto to move to the suburbs. Granted, that meant that both of them would have to commute to work, but hey, a garden would be totally worth it. The dog would love it, and they could even plant stuff; strawberries, tomatoes, perhaps even an apple tree. That would be wicked. His grandmother had one in her garden, and Hiromasa still loved to climb up the heavy branches to get the apples from the very top. Quickly reaching for the newspaper, he flicked through it until he found the real estate pages. Plopping down on the bed, he read through the measly set of offers, and decided to hire a real estate agent. Or perhaps Takeshi could help him find the right place. Or they could build a house on his parent's land. Happy to have a set course of action, he dropped the newspaper on the floor and returned to Makoto's list.

4. Hire additional waiters in January. No more than two though, otherwise the profit margin will get too slim.
His wife. Such a great sense for business. The next year would mark the five-year anniversary of the café, and so far, Makoto had done all the work alone to save money. But now she would finally hire some help, which meant that there would be lots and lots of naked Sundays in their future. Hiromasa leaned back to rest against the bed's headboard while absent-mindedly scratching Spock behind the ears. The dog had jumped up on the bed on the first opportunity that presented itself, and now distributed some of his shedding fur on the fresh sheets. Hiromasa however didn't notice it; he was busy planning their new house and the large garden. The large garden in which they could have Naked Sundays. Perhaps they wouldn't move near his parents after all. Better to be a naked at a safe distance from his mum, he decided.

5. NOT get fat.
Pff, ridiculous. He'd have to talk to Makoto about odd body perceptions and models and the media and stuff. His wife was perfect.

6. Ask Takeshi to be GF. Decide who'll be GM. Ami? - responsible! Usagi? - always sweet. Rei- no. Minako- no no no.
Now, what on earth did GF mean? And Takeshi and Ami were an odd combination for anything anyway; Hiromasa hadn't ever seen the two of them hanging out. Odd. But then Hiromasa had learnt very early on in his marriage that women worked in mysterious ways. He wasn't supposed to understand everything - he was a man.

7. Tell Hiromasa.
Tell me what, Hiro thought. "Tell me what?" he asked Spock, but the dog closed his eyes drowsily and was, unlike Luna and Artemis, not able to speak anyway.

After her long and surprisingly tedious Sunday shift, Makoto returned home to find Hiromasa waiting for her in the living-room. He was still dressed in the faded blue boxers he had worn when she left him in the morning, but the grey t-shirt had been disposed of at some point. Once again, he was splayed out on the couch, a beer in his hand, Spock by his feet, and Boston in the CD player. He looked delectable.

Tossing her bag onto the armchair, she smiled. Coming home to him was still her favourite part of the day.

"Hi hun. You won't believe the sort of customers I had today. They ranged from rude to ruder, and I actually kicked someone out. I never had to kick someone out." Shaking her head, Makoto kicked off her ballet pumps and pulled the hairpins from her chignon.
"Bummer," Hiro offered, trying his hardest to sound appropriately serious and to suppress a grin, and failing miserably on both counts. He opted for taking a sip of his beer instead, but Makoto had already seen the grin.
"What, you think this is funny? It's not funny. Wait till they come to your shop, then we'll see. You won't be laughing then."
Abandoning all attempts of acting and subtlety, Hiromasa put the beer on the coffee table and reached over to his wife, swiftly pulling Makoto onto him. "Grumpy, aren't you?" he asked and tickled her a bit for a good measure.
"Hiro, there's no room here," Makoto giggled and writhed, accidentally kicking something fat and furry. Spock immediately jumped off the couch with an offended yelp and trotted over to the bedroom.
"There's plenty of room. Plus, I did something for you today." Tangling his large hands in her soft hair, he winked.
"Please say it's the laundry."
"No, but I made the bed. Anyway, that's not what I did."
Playing along, she planted a kiss on his mouth. "What did you do, hun?"
"Item number seven."
"Huh?"
He produced the to-do list out of thin air and waved it in front of her face.
"You don't have to tell me, I figured it out. Item number seven."
Makoto's eyes widened and she gulped. "What do you think?" From the bedroom, they could hear a creaking that meant that Spock had successfully claimed a place on the bed.
Breaking into a huge grin, Hiromasa pulled her closer. "Next Sunday when you're at work, I'll build a crib. And if you make the naked pictures really hot, I won't even mind if you get fat."

The End