You Must Meet My Wife

FREDRIK:
She lightens my sadness,
She livens my days,
She bursts with a kind of madness
My well-ordered ways.
My happiest mistake, the ache of my life:
You must meet my wife.
She bubbles with pleasure,
She glows with surprise,
Disrupts my accustomed leisure
And ruffles my ties.
I don't know even now quite how it began.
You must meet my wife, my Anne.
One thousand whims to which I give in,
Since her smallest tear turns me ashen.
I never dreamed that I could live in
So completely demented, contented a fashion.
So sunlike, so winning,
So unlike a wife.
I do think that I'm beginning
To show signs of life.
Don't ask me how at my age one still can grow--
If you met my wife, you'd know.

DESIREE [speaking]: Dear Fredrik, I'm just longing to meet her. Sometime.

FREDRIK:
She sparkles...

DESIREE:
How pleasant.

FREDRIK:
She twinkles...

DESIREE:
How nice.

FREDRIK:
Her youth is a sort of present--

DESIREE:
Whatever the price.

FREDRIK:
The incandescent--what?--the--

DESIREE [offering a cigarette]:
Light?

FREDRIK:
--of my life.
You must meet my wife.

DESIREE:
Yes, I must. I really must. Now--

FREDRIK:
She flutters.

DESIREE:
How charming.

FREDRIK:
She twitters.

DESIREE:
My word!

FREDRIK:
She floats.

DESIREE:
Isn't that alarming?
What is she, a bird?

FREDRIK:
She makes me feel I'm--what?--

DESIREE:
A very old man.

FREDRIK:
Yes--no!

DESIREE:
No?

FREDRIK:
But--

DESIREE:
I must meet your Gertrude.

FREDRIK:
My Anne.

DESIREE:
Sorry--Anne.

FREDRIK:
She loves my voice, my walk, my mustache,
The cigar, in fact, that I'm smoking.
She'll watch me puff until it's just ash,
Then she'll save the cigar butt.

DESIREE:
Bizarre, but
You're joking.

FREDRIK:
She dotes on--

DESIREE:
Your dimple.

FREDRIK:
My snoring.

DESIREE:
How dear.

FREDRIK:
The point is, she's really simple.

DESIREE:
Yes, that much seems clear.

FREDRIK:
She gives me funny names--

DESIREE:
Like?

FREDRIK:
"Old Dry-as-Dust."

DESIREE:
Wouldn't she just?

FREDRIK:
You must meet my wife.

DESIREE:
Yes, I must, yes, I must.

FREDRIK:
A sea of whims that I submerge in,
Yet so loveable in repentance.
Unfortunately still a virgin,
But you can't force a flower--

DESIREE:
Don't finish that sentence!
She's monstrous!

FREDRIK:
She's frightened.

DESIREE:
Unfeeling!

FREDRIK:
Unversed.
She'd strike you as unenlightened--

DESIREE:
No, I'd strike her first.

FREDRIK:
Her reticence, her apprehension--

DESIREE:
Her crust!

FREDRIK:
No!

DESIREE:
Yes!

FREDRIK:
No!

DESIREE:
Fredrik!

FREDRIK:
You must meet my wife.

DESIREE:
Let me get my hat and my knife!

FREDRIK:
What was that?

DESIREE:
I must meet your wife.

FREDRIK: DESIREE:
Yes, you must. Yes, I must.