Sounds like they deserve each other. 
Well, you know, I can understand the dynamics of that marriage.
The sparkling old dude is much older than his wife (eleven years); in fact, if the sparkling old dude were like the pie-and-jam grasswire primitive, who spawned (in her own words) five generations in sixty years, the sparkling old dude'd be old enough to be his wife's father.
The sparkling old dude comes from an honest workingman's background, while his wife springs from professorial academia, the ivy-covered Ivory Tower and all that.
The sparkling old dude had a rough, tumultuous growing up, on the mob-infested streets and alleys of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and his knuckles probably still have scars on them. Her hands, on the other hand, wouldn't know a callous from a polar bear.
The sparkling old dude is a
klutz when it comes to the fine arts; his wife is a
dilettante.
So I'm suspecting there's an, uh, element of insecurity here, on the part of the sparkling old dude; that there's a suspicion in his mind that he isn't good enough for her.
He's desperate to keep her, and will do anything to keep her, including folding up sheets of typing-paper into multiple folds to make hand-operated "fans" (such as what we did when toddlers) to wave across her face, to make it cooler for her when it's hot and the power's out.
Or to use the bathroom in the basement so the odor won't offend her genteel nostrils.
I dunno what it is that makes some men slavishly cater to women (or some women to men). There's an old saying, emanating from out in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, "don't expect someone in love to listen to reason." (Although it was said about tumescent mules, not people, working the silver mines there during the 1890s.)
I don't think one-sided catering to one's partner is "love," though. Love is give-and-take, not one partner doing all the giving, and the other doing all the getting.
I think the sparkling old dude could've done better, if he paid attention to his brains rather than something lower down, near the bottom of his torso.
For the record, franksolich has nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for the sparkling old dude, and one of my life's ambitions is to actually sit outside--in that gazebo or shed or whatever it is, in his backyard--with the sparkling old dude, spending an afternoon cordially shooting the breeze about the restaurant business.
I don't know anything about the restaurant business, but the sparkling old dude probably has a whole encyclopedia of stories, anecdotes, and characters he's met in it, and I'd like to hear about them.
