Mat Twassel: The Snoozer

One beautiful Saturday morning in early summer Joe
and JoJo set out from their house on Bluebird Lane
for a little before-breakfast stroll about the
neighborhood. They had not gone far, just around
the corner and to the next block, Robin Drive, when
they noticed a garage sale.

“Oh, no,” Joe said, “we have way too much junk
already.”

“Aren’t these little dresses just darling?” JoJo
said, showing Joe a delicate pink gown. He smiled.
Amy, Joe and JoJo’s daughter, was just of college
age now, and JoJo had a collection of darling
dresses and pink gowns sheathed in plastic hanging
in the attic.

“How ’bout this?” Joe said, pointing to a slatted
circular tub of weathered gray wood.

JoJo laughed. “What is it?”

“Beats me,” Joe answered. “Maybe some kind of cider
press. See the hole down here. I bet that’s where
the juice would drip.”

JoJo studied the hole. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I guess we could make it into a planter.”

Now Joe laughed. JoJo could make just about
anything into a planter. “Forget it,” he said good-
naturedly.

Next was a table of knickknacks and odds and ends.
“Hey,” said JoJo, stopping. “Hey,” Joe echoed. They
stood in front of the knickknack table staring at
the alarm clock radio.

“A Snoozer,” JoJo whispered.

“I know,” Joe whispered back.

On their honeymoon twenty years ago, Joe and JoJo
had spent six nights in the city in a not-quite-
seedy hotel convenient to the theater district.
The idea was that the money saved on lodgings would
go towards shows and dinners. All Joe and JoJo
really needed was a clean mattress and each other.
And sometimes they didn’t even need the mattress.
The hotel offered a free continental breakfast,
served from six-thirty to ten each morning. On the
nightstand next to the double bed sat a little
alarm clock radio. Late the first night, JoJo told
Joe to set the alarm. “We don’t want to miss the
complimentary continental breakfast,” she said.

“We don’t? What is a continental breakfast?”

“Probably not Belgian waffles smothered with syrup
and ripe juicy baby strawberries,” JoJo speculated.

“Probably not three eggs any way with smoked
Canadian bacon and extra lean sausage and heaps of
hash-browns,” Joe said.

“Set the alarm for nine-thirty,” JoJo told him.
“That should give us plenty of time.”

“Look, the case is cracked. I don’t know if this
thing even works. I don’t know how it works.”

But Joe opened the drawer in the night table, and
there, underneath the Bible, he found a set of
instructions.

“My man!” said JoJo, hugging him as he studied the
slim booklet.

“Choice of music or alarm.”

“Music might be nice,” JoJo said.

“Yeah, but we might get static.”

“Or worse–news!”

“Right,” said Joe. “We’ll go for the alarm. And
see this button on top? That’s the ‘snoozer.’ You
press it and you get nine more minutes.”

JoJo fingered the button, and then she touched the
crack, which curved from the button on top to the
back end of the case and on down. “Poor little
radio,” JoJo said, patting it tenderly. “Looks like
somebody bashed it.”

Joe set the alarm.

As it turned out, Joe and JoJo were already awake
when the alarm went off the next morning. They were
awake but not out of bed. “Burr-rup, Burr-rup,”
blurted the alarm, soft at first, but then louder,
raspier.

“Oh no,” sighed JoJo. “Not yet.” She gripped Joe’s
back with her hands, his legs with her legs, his
middle with her middle, pulling him closer,
tighter. “Don’t leave me. Not yet.”

“I can do the snoozer,” Joe said. “That would give
us nine more minutes. Would that be enough?”

The alarm blatted louder.

“Okay, do the snoozer,” JoJo said. “Do it, but
don’t leave me. Not yet.” She relaxed her grip just
enough to let Joe reach the snoozer without
disconnecting them.

Nine minutes later the alarm went off again. “Too
soon,” JoJo snarled, her body tensing.

“It’s time, sweetie,” Joe told her. “Come on, now,
come. Come, my little snoozer button girl, come.”

“Burr-up, burr-up, burr-up,” went the alarm, louder
and louder. “Oh, oh, oh,” went JoJo. Her thighs
began to quiver. Her center began to contract. With
the alarm blurting, JoJo followed Joe’s
instruction.

“Oh, so good,” Joe said, pushing down the button,
quenching the raucous two-tone buzz.

“More,” JoJo moaned.

“Any more and we’ll miss the breakfast.”

“More,” JoJo implored, moving her middle,
languidly at first, then urgently.

Four snoozers later, Joe and JoJo finally got up,
too late for continental breakfast.

“It’s all your fault,” JoJo teased Joe as they
crowded in the bathroom to brush their teeth. “No
three eggs any way for you.”

“I didn’t know how to turn it off,” Joe pleaded.
“The instructions didn’t say. I just reset the
thing for same time tomorrow.”

“Good,” JoJo said.

The week went by, and Joe and JoJo never did make
it to a continental breakfast. It didn’t matter
what position they were in, or even whether Joe
was in her. They could simply be kissing. When
the snoozer went off, she went off. On the last
morning there were so many nine minute intervals,
they missed the eleven o’clock checkout.

JoJo rested against Joe’s shoulder as they began
the long drive home. “Shall we get one of those
radio snoozer things with the last of our wedding
money?” Joe asked her.

“No,” JoJo said sleepily. “It was fun, but I was
beginning to feel like a puppet. Or one of those
dogs. At the concert last night I started to drip
just thinking about that alarm going off.”

Now twenty years later an identical alarm clock
radio showed up at a garage sale in the next block.

“Do you think it’s the same one?” JoJo’s finger
traced the smooth crack. “It looks the same. It’s
got the same kind of crack across the top.”

“Probably a design flaw,” Joe said.

“But do you think it works?” JoJo whispered.

“If it doesn’t, you could make a planter out of
it,” Joe said.

JoJo smiled. “Ooh, let’s buy it. I’m so excited.”

“Me, too,” Joe admitted.

“I know,” JoJo said, pressing back so her bottom
brushed his front. “I can tell.”

They bought the radio. They hurried home.

“What should I set it for?” Joe asked as he plugged
it in.

“Set it for now,” JoJo said.

“One more,” JoJo sighed, some twenty-seven minutes
later. “Okay, honey? Just one more, then I’ll make
you a continental breakfast like you’ve never had
before.”

Joe pushed the snoozer and simultaneously replanted
himself in the sure grip of JoJo’s silky embrace.