Why We Broke Up (18 page)

“Do you always use that?”

“This? Yes. Let’s not start saying the other one is a nerd, because I will win that game.”

“I’m not. I like it.”

You rolled your eyes and didn’t believe me, but it was true, Ed, I loved the way your mathy brain powered you on across the napkin. “
There
,” you said, finishing a line. “Now, too far to walk, right?”

“From where?”

“Between them. I mean, we have to go to both, right?”

I leaned over our high school and kissed you.

“But we can’t walk,” you said, thinking so hard the kiss just got a brief smile. “So, bus. But the bus goes this way, down here someplace and then around.” You must have looked the same way when you were a kid, I thought, thinking I should ask Joan to see old pictures. You just trailed off where the bus went when we didn’t care, half this map in strict order and the other half just loose ink, like
how I knew you and how I thought I knew you. “That doesn’t look good either. The bus won’t work.”

“What about that other line, the something route, over here?”

“Oh yeah. The 6 it is, I think. Like here, and then
here
.”

We looked at it. “Will your sister,” I said—

“No way. She never lets me drive any night when anyone might be drinking. And let’s face it.”

“Yeah,” I said. The lines were straighter than anyone would be going that night. “Hey, the 6 ends up here, this end of Dexter, right?”

“Oh yeah. I remember from going out with Marjorie.”

“She lives out here?”

“No, she took ballet at the weird place around here.”

“So,” I said, taking your pen and dotting it out, “we start at your Bash, sneak out this way, probably where people will think we’re just going to fool around.”

“Which we will,” you said, taking it back, marking an X which I blushed at and ignored.

“And then we take the bus here and get off
here
and refortify at In the Cups. I can’t draw a cup. Then walk whatever it is, eight blocks,
dot dot dot
, and catch the 6 and stop here. And then we walk across and we’re at the Ball.
Voilà!
”

You blinked at me, didn’t
voilà!
back. My dotted lines all over your neatness. “Across the cemetery at night?”

“You’ll be safe,” I said. “You’ll be with the co-captain of the basketball team, oh wait, that’s me.”

“Not safety,” you said. “Oh, forget it,” and I remembered what’s famous about the cemetery, or
famous
isn’t the word, but why nobody hangs out there. Every place has them, I guess, a park or place where men go at night to do it to each other secret in the dark.

“We’ll keep our eyes closed,” I said, “so the gay won’t be catching.”

“If I can’t say
gay
you can’t.”

“You can say
gay
,” I said, “when you’re actually talking about gay. And how do you even know about the cemetery thing?”

“Tell me first how
you
know.”

“I drop Al off there most nights,” I said, the joke sticking in my throat.

You covered your face,
my girlfriend is so nuts
. “Well, yeah,” you tried bravely, “I see him there when I pit-stop to relieve the tension of
everything but
.”

“Shut up,” I said. “You love
everything but
.”

“I do,” you grinned. “Um, but speaking of. I wanted to—”

“Yeah?”

“My sister—”

“Ew. Speaking of
that
, your sister?”

“Stop it. She’s going away.”

“What?”

“For the weekend. Not next, not Halloween, but after that.”

“And?”

“And my mom’s not back,” you said, “so I’ll have the house. You could, you know—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“
Sleep over
is all I was going to say, Min.”

“You also said there wasn’t a schedule.
Just
said it.”

“There wasn’t.
Isn’t
. But I just—”

“I don’t want to lose my virginity in your bed,” I said.

You sighed at the napkin. “Do you mean that, like, not in my bed or not with me?”

“Just the actual bed,” I said. “Or your car or a
park
. Somewhere, you’ll laugh, somewhere extraordinary.”

You did, I’ll give you that Ed, not laugh. “Extraordinary.”

“Extraordinary,” I said.

“OK,” you said, and then smiled. “Tommy and Amber lost it in her dad’s warehouse.”

“Ed.”

“They did! Between two refrigerators!”

“Not that kind of—”

“I know, I know. Don’t worry, Min. It’s not the cuckoo thing you thought I said,
unavoidable
. I want you to be, I can’t find the word I mean.” You sighed again. “
Happy
. Which is why we’re going to take two buses and walk through a gay place Halloween night.”

I couldn’t decide about that
gay
, let it slide. “We’ll have fun,” I lied.

“Maybe the following weekend we will,” you said shyly, and right then I wanted to, an eager hunger in my mouth and my lap. I had such a feeling. Fill it with something else instead, I thought, but what I didn’t know.

“Maybe,” I said finally.

“This is complicated,” you said, back on the napkin, and then looked at me. You wanted to pry me open, I could see it, drag me across our boundaries so we could feast together in secret from the rest of the world. “But,” you said, “no, not
but
. I love you.”

Coffee, I thought, was what. “Let’s drink to it,” I said.

“Life-giving brew,” you agreed, all energy and spiky delight. You waved for the waitress, started to crumple our plan.

“Wait, wait.”

“What?”

“I want that. Don’t shred our plan.”

“We’ll remember it without it.”

“I still want it.”

“You’re not,” you said, “going to tell Al or somebody that I make these I-won’t-say-it charts.”

“I will not,” I said in a sad promise, “tell Al. It’s just for me.”

“Just for you?” you said. “OK.” You hunched over for
a sec while I ordered the coffee, ignoring the looks of the waitress looking at you. You handed it to me, but I’d already grabbed what I wanted, thefted again at Lopsided’s, distracted you with chatter until the coffee came and you forgot it was gone. But you put one over on me, too, the other side of the napkin I discovered too late, not when I got home, not when I dropped it into the box, only heartbroken and weepy when it wasn’t true anymore. Just like we discovered as the waitress plunked down coffee and the bill and stalked off that there wasn’t any sugar at our table: when it was too late, Ed, to do any good.

This is what I stole
. Here’s it back. I thought, my goddamn ex-love, that it was cute that you carried this around to help you map out your thinking. Cute in your pocket all the time. I’m not a cuckoo, either. I’m a fool is what.

And you never
saw this, either. I stood alone with it in my hands in Green Mountain Hardware, quiet and lonely and trying to conjure Al beside me so I could ask him things only he could know. Is this really a file, like a file they use in
We Break at Dawn
or
Fugitives by Moonlight
to run free with the dogs after them and the barbed wire silhouetted against the floodlights? Al and I had seen that double feature as part of the Carnelian’s Prison Week, which hilariously concluded with the Meyers documentary on boarding schools. The theater was almost empty that day, who in the world else could I ask? The Green Mountain staff in their vests and
headsets cannot be asked,
Is this metal file oven-safe?
Picturing us, you and me, in an accidental iron-poisoning suicide pact from the surprise I wanted us to share. I wanted so badly to call Al and say “I know we’re mad at each other forever maybe, but could you just tell me this one single thing about metal and cooking?” but of course not.
Joan
, I thought, I could ask Joan maybe, and then she came around the corner.

“Hey, Min.”

“Annette, hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Halloween shopping,” I said, holding up the file.

“Wow, me too,” she said. “I need chains. Come with?”

We walked toward where they were, a row of shiny wheels you could unwind and buy by the yard. Annette eyed through them like it was real jewelry, stopping to lay her whole bare arm against them. “What are you going to be?” I asked her.

“I’m trying to see how they feel,” she said. “I don’t know, it’s kind of a medieval thing I’m doing with someone. You know, but
slinky
.”

Slutty
, is what I thought. All the girls who date athletes are slutty in their costumes, slutty witch, slutty cat, slutty hooker.

“Can I wear these with no bra, do you think?”

“Really?”
I tried not to squeal.

“I mean, wrapped around like a tube top kind of. I’m not that big.”

“I think you’ll be bruised by the end of the night,” I said.

She turned to glare. “Are you threatening me?” she said.

“What?
No!
”

“Kidding, Min.
Kidding
. Ed told me
he’s
the one who doesn’t get
your
jokes. Criminy, as he would say.”

“Criminy,” I agreed dumbly.

“What’s that thing for?”

“I haven’t decided really,” I said. “I was thinking, you know how Ed’s a prisoner?”

“The chain gang, yeah.”

“Well, you know how in old prison movies they bake a file in a cake? You know, to saw away the bars or something. Like a loyal wife helping, keeping the car running outside the back entrance.”

She looked dubiously at the file. “You’re Ed’s
wife
for Halloween?”

She was smiling, but it was like she’d dumped a sack of stupid on my head. I felt slovenly with her glittered eyes on me, moronic in fat pants and shoes. “No,” I said. “I was just going to make him a cake to get him in the mood that day.”

“As I remember, he’s always in the mood,” Annette said, with a little smile.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. So what are you going to be really?”

“The warden,” I said.

“What?”

“Like, in charge of the prison?”

“Oh yeah. Cool.”

“It’s lame I know, but I have this coat of my dad’s to wear.”

“Cool,” she said again, unraveling her choice.

“I couldn’t, you know. I’m not the type for, like, the sexy costume.”

She paused and really looked me over, probably for the first time I thought. “You totally are, Min. It’s just—” and she bit her lip like
never mind
.

“What?”

“Well, you’re, I know you’re going to hate this.”

“What?”

“Um—”

“You’re going to say
arty
.”

“I’m saying what Ed is always saying. You’re different, you don’t need to do this kind of thing.” She held up the chain scornfully. “You have a body, you do, you’re beautiful and everything. But then you have everything else too. That’s why everyone’s jealous of you, Min.”

“They’re not jealous.”

“Yes,” she said almost angrily to the chains. “They are.”

“Well, if they’re jealous, it’s just because I’m with Ed Slaterton, it’s not because of me,” I said.