Breakfasting

Anne didn't like breakfast. She didn't like being awake. It was all...unnecessary and tiresome.

Eric's breakfast spread was elaborate and beautifully laid out. There were a variety of juices in a variety of cups in a variety of colors. Fruit was mixed in a bowl. Muffins and breads of myriad flavors were sliced in halves and plated. Two forks. Two knives.

Anne slid the rice paper door to one side and surveyed the damage from a distance; Eric was still fumbling with the coffee in the kitchen. She waited for her stomach to turn at the sweetness of his gesture, but shockingly, all her organs remained intact and she didn't feel as ill as she often did when something nice was done for her.

"Sit down!" he urged as he perched cross-legged on a chair. He was smallish. He reminded her of someone else.

She curled her legginged legs underneath her on the futon opposite. The neck of her sweater gaped at her shoulder as she looked at the floor. Sunlight reflected off the roof of an East Harlem church and dappled her hair and her neck and that bare shoulder.

"You are unbelievably beautiful."

When could she pursue her escape?

She closed her eyes in profound sadness and let him move to her side. She let him hold her face in his hands and tell her again and again that she was beautiful.

"Any man who was lucky enough to get to run his fingers through your hair would return home the next day considering that the greatest conquest he has ever made."

Her insides grimaced and her eyes opened upon an unnecessary line.

Anne sighed at the incongruity and again packed up the suitcase of her particular mind, careful to click the lock securely back into place.

Phonies

Anne sighed and pushed in the door of a Lower East Side venue. Name on list. Hand stamp. She made her way down some stairs (sticky with stale beer) into a cavernous underworld of music and mingling. She had little hope of seeing Aaron before the show and instead focused on obtaining a Blue Moon. Orange slice chucked. Fruity finger licked.

"Hey, Babe..."

His eyes scanned the crowd; she ordered him a PBR.

"Both these on the tab, man."

His shirt sleeves flapped, unbuttoned, and his hair was matted on one side.

"Alright, I gotta go," he grimaced.

Anne crooked his neck with her arm and kissed him squarely on the lips. It wasn't enough.

The room was filled with the usual creeps, the Holden Caulfield phonies. Scraggly, makeup-less girls with tats of the New World splayed across their backs. Insufferable, jaundiced boys wearing cords from the girl GAP.

Anne was wearing black sequins and a tight-lipped-scowl. She overheard some Bandaid Cow making fun of her dress. She cackled in response.

Aaron ducked into the strap of his guitar, and Anne tried to look at him in the old way. Tried to take pleasure in the near-caress of his mouth on the microphone. The soft denim color of his pants and the perfect line of his thigh to his ankle. The way his sweat darkened the hair above his ears and his bangs and dripped off the tip of his nose.

But his songs were memories, killing her softly, and she couldn't listen to the words without crying. She looked away from his eyes and mumbled his lyrics at her knees.

"Let's 'dance' into her!"

New World and Bandaid Cow jostled Anne's elbow, sloshing beer into her lap. Anne lunged for a bar napkin while the culprits, snickering behind their stubby fingernails, vanished back into the crowd.

You want him?? FINE, take him!!! I don't want him anymore!

She looked palely at her own reflection in the purple light of the bathroom. She knew the songs had been played out.

Glass

He kept a damaged lamp on the floor by his bed. A light bulb encircled by broken, jagged glass. Anne was frightened of the lamp from the first moment she laid eyes on it. All she could see when she looked at it was her own white flesh, sliced and drowning in red blood. Why did he keep something so dangerous and broken?


They went to Camden and wandered through the stalls. She made her only purchase of the trip--a black velvet military jacket. The second the Indian vendor slid it onto her shoulders, she was sold. Byron bought a straw hat. With dexterity and tiny fingers, she un-wove the tag for him.


The violet hour began to creep and she suggested a pub by the river. She perched outside while he retrieved her chips and bottle of wine. He attentively showered her with packets of ketchup and mayonnaise and little salt and pepper sachets. Suddenly it began to rain, and they had to scramble for a leather couch inside.


They decided on another bottle of wine, and halfway through, she became almost inexplicably mad. The rain poured and poured outside, beating against the windows. She angrily got up for the bathroom and knocked over the empty bottle with her leg.


Embarrassed, hot, and red.


He was talking about love?


She returned to the table. He was evasive and full of lies and lines and meekness. Her heart turned to sickening stone. This was his rejection; the time had finally come. He was confused as to why she was suddenly crying, and he suggested they leave.


She jerked her body blindly from him and made a mad dash for the tube. He caught her arm and tried to understand. She urged useless words and victimized stories at him through her tears. He embraced her on the train as she shuddered with sobs.


"If you weren't so vulnerable... you could have me in the palm of your hand. I'm just so afraid of crushing you," he told her.


"I knew it. I never should have been myself. You don't see me, just like everyone else!"


Of course she was vulnerable. The whole trip had placed her on a jagged edge, teetering between reality and insanity. And there she was unmistakably and unbearably in love with someone who wasn't in love with her!


She seethed, brimmed with rage. Her breathing became rapid, and she flinched and pulled away at his touch.


Don't tell me what is wrong with me when I have just been being honest about who I am!


When they reached home, he prattled excuses about another girl. Insane, out of place delusions that best would have been revealed months and months ago.


Fool fool fool!


She thrust her anger and her rage into fixing their bed. She shoved him out of the way and drunkenly struggled to pull the corner of the sheet taught. As she lifted the mattress, her foot slipped. The sole grazed along the jagged edge of the broken lamp. A long, thin slice, like a paper cut that doesn't bleed. She didn't cry out or tell him. Of course she had been cut. Of course he had caused her pain and suffering and an injury like a stone in her shoe. The thing she had most feared had come to pass, and the supple white was flooded with crimson.


That night, she longed for his hand on her neck to crush her, strangle her, or snap her sternum in two.