Now that she was gone, he felt utterly alone.
He couldn't believe it hadn't been a month yet. He added up the days and saw it was only 23 since she'd told him and only 11 since he'd emailed her and told her how he felt aka that he never wanted to talk to her again.
He was shocked that she hadn't come crawling back. He'd felt sure they still had a charge left. That they had at least two more break-ups in them. That she wouldn't want to go on without him. That she'd feel empty without him and wouldn't want to go on. He was irreplacable.
Now he saw that she was irreplacable.
He felt utterly alone.
He could no longer lose himself in her body, in her soul, in dreams of the two of them growing old together.
He had to face his low social status, how few girls wanted him, how, precisely, no hot chicks in Los Angeles wanted him.
He had to walk down Pico Blvd and receive not one sincere "Shabbat shalom."
He had to force himself to shul and then to battle his claustrophobia until he'd put in at least half an hour before walking home. Alone.
He told himself that it was better that they ended now. She wasn't religious. She hated Orthodox Judaism. How could he have been so foolish as to expect fidelity from a pagan?
They'd never discussed if they were monogamous. He had taken it for granted, but all along he'd felt like he was punching above his weight class, that she was out of his league, and that the only reason she felt OK hooking up with him was that she had things going on the side.
She never called him her boyfriend. She'd only once said, "I love you!", and that was when he'd given her every one of his five inches (a week later, she claimed not to remember saying this, that she'd gotten together with him for the sex but had grown fond of him and didn't know what to do, he remembered now that was their last night together).
Upon her asking him July 9 how he felt about her "fooling around" with her ex-girlfriend the night of July 3, Shabbat!, he'd felt sick for days and now he saw everything they'd shared together in a new light, the blinding light of a horror film. Those few days after they first had sex, when she said she'd gone alone to a hotel in Santa Monica to spend the weekend, he'd felt sick.
Alone? Right. Who goes alone to spend the weekend in a hotel? That made no sense.
When she said she had to do her routine on Friday nights of boxing and going to a movie alone, well, he realized now she probably wasn't alone.
He drowned his worries in movies. And then he tossed and turned and tried to sleep.
Shortly after 4 a.m. Sunday he finally drifted off and dreamed they were talking things out.
"How many people have you been with since we started?" he asked.
"Four," she said.
He woke up.
It was 4:42 a.m.
He put on the fourth CD of Julia Cameron's "Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity."
He realized he needed to get rid of her stuff. Sunday morning would be the best time. He'd be least likely to run into her or her lovers. He'd wait until light to return her stuff, but for now he would gather it all up and put it in a bag.
He went to his upper left drawer and wedged it open. He saw her pink undies and grey bra. He gathered them to his face and breathed in.
He wanted to cry. He wanted to take them to bed and put them on his pillow and then lay his face on them and cry some more. Then he wanted to lay them out geometrically and remember how she was when she was with him.
But they had no smell. She had not left her mark. There was nothing special here. Run along little white boy.
He started grabbing plastic bags from beside the frig. The first three were wet inside. The fourth was dry and he put her underwear in there along with her book by A. Scott Berg, "Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius."
He wanted to add something to the bag, some eloquent way to say goodbye.
He brought his attention to his bowels and realized they were empty, so he went back to bed and listened to the path of the artist.
At 5:40 a.m., he rose for his ritual cold shower. The tub was dirty. If he ever got a woman again in the hovel, he'd definitely have to clean up.
He brushed his teeth and his tongue until he retched.
He said "Moden Ani" and put on his tzitzit and said the right bracha.
He ate two FRS lemon lime energy chews -- no hashgacha -- without a bracha.
He put on his white Apple t-shirt (it was wet and cold, the dryer at the ghetto cleaner late Friday afternoon didn't work) and his blue jeans and his black yarmulke.
He walked through the early morning mist. It felt wet on his face. I'll write "He walked through the early morning mist," he thought.
He looked both ways on Pico Blvd and then ran across to his ex-girlfriend's apartment where he kept his car in her garage. He'd put more than that in her garage if she wasn't so fat.
After moving her little thing out of the way, he fired up his monster and to his surprise, it caught right away. He decided he'd do a writing exercise when he got home -- 50 Things I Like About Myself.
He thought about his therapist who first did that exercise with him last year. Their last session would be in eight days. She'd promised a "good, positive ending."
Hah!
All women leave.
No endings of anything good were positive.
Arriving at his PO Box, he turned the key, moved the LA Times inside, and saw the same black woman sitting at her same seat by the phone.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"About 6:30," he said and got his magazines and his cell-phone bill.
He drove north on La Cienega to Santa Monica. Then he turned right for a mile and then right again and parked beside a fire hydrant.
His adrenalin pumped. He felt like a stalker. He figured the odds were about 1 in 20 of running into her or one of her lovers. Perhaps she'd be walking the dog and he'd hand off her stuff without a word.
He couldn't see her car and imagined she spent the night somewhere else.
He walked down the street looking for her yellow apartment building and then he saw her car and it looked clean and neat. Nothing in it said, "I'm a cheater!"
He stared at her car and remembered she was a responsible woman. Perhaps she had always told the truth? After all, he'd never caught her in a lie. She had told him she'd cheated.
He walked towards the third and final stairway. His blood rushed into his face. He imagined he'd hear shrieks of ecstasy as he climbed the stairs and they'd be answered by either a man or a woman. He hoped it would be a woman. He hoped she wasn't getting a lot of cock. He hoped she wasn't getting black cock.
Either way, he decided, it would be good for his writing. He'd sit on the stairs for a minute and listen to her getting porked and it would drive him to write.
She had always said she was intuitive. Perhaps she sensed that he was coming and she'd hear his step and she'd fling open the door and embrace him. He'd turn to leave and she'd say, "Luke, I wasn't with anyone but you," and then he turn back to her and go inside her and take possession of the Promised Land that God had given him.
He walked up the stairs and it wasn't what he expected. He could hear nothing. He put the bag against her door and paused for a second.
When it didn't fly open, he turned around and tripped down the stairs and on the bottom one, he finally fell.
He tumbled silently to the cement and skinned his left knee and right wrist.
Pushing himself up and walking away, he felt relieved that nothing was broken. How humiliating and yet how perfect that would be. He'd have to ring her doorbell and tell her to call an ambulance. And her door would be opened by the other woman and his downfall would be complete.
He drove to Melrose and turned right and had to wait for the light at Fairfax. He checked his cell phone. She hadn't called.
By the time he was a mile away, by the time he'd crossed Wilshire, he felt relieved.
As he walked home, through the squeaking of his new shoes, he felt lighter and taller. He was careful not to over-stride and he thought forward and up.
