Cackle(47)

It didn’t.

Finally, he says, “Tell me more about what you’ve been up to.”

“Um . . . ,” I say. “I’ve been hanging out a lot with my friend Sophie. She’s . . . she’s a really interesting person.”

“Cool, cool,” he says. He sounds distracted.

“Samantha.”

“Andy.”

These are the names we use when one of us is testing to see if the other person is actually listening.

“What’s going on?” I ask him. “What’s going on with you?”

“I’ve got a new archnemesis,” he says. “I call him the Middleman. He goes around eating all the cream out of the middles of Oreos. Then he reseals the packages and puts them back on the shelves.”

“What a monster.”

“The worst this city has ever seen.”

I could go on, indulge in the back-and-forth, but I really don’t feel like it. I’m too sad.

“I meant, what’s been going on with you? Alter ego. Otherwise known as Sam.”

“Oh, oh,” he says. “Right. Sam.”

“Yep.”

He takes another long pause. He exhales. It’s the kind of exhale that precedes bad news. You know it when you hear it. The sound echoes in your bones.

“Annie,” he says, “the reason I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, and why I thought you might be ignoring me, is I posted some pictures.”

“Okay. On what. Myspace?”

Sam and I were never particularly active on what we jokingly called “the Internets.” We both have dormant Facebook pages we use for occasional stalking of former classmates and tracking birthdays, but we were never the type to post updates about what was going on in our lives or to seek out new platforms.

“No,” he says. “Actually, I didn’t post. I got tagged.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a picture of me with a girl.”

“Okay.”

“We’re together in the picture. It’s a picture of us together. I thought maybe you saw it.”

“I didn’t,” I say. But . . . I’ve got my laptop now. So . . . in a matter of seconds, that will change.

“I thought maybe it upset you. I wouldn’t have put it up myself.”

“Yeah,” I say.

It’s on his Facebook. Tagged from Instagram? A picture of him looking at the petite redhead who is sitting on his lap, looking back at him. Her hand is on his face. His hand is on her ass. Their noses are almost touching. Their foreheads are touching.

There’s nothing to interpret.

The photo is a bomb I’ve just swallowed. I’m listening to the faint tick, awaiting the inevitable explosion.

Pretty soon, any second, I’ll be blown to smithereens. It’ll hurt so bad I won’t know what to do.

“I would rather have told you about it first,” he says.

“You are telling me about it,” I say. “I didn’t see it. You’re telling me. Now I know. I’m hearing it from you. There’s a picture.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I wanted to tell you about Shannon.”

Shannon.

“Okay, well, I mean, how long has this been up? Like, I’m sure there were still some people who didn’t know we weren’t together anymore. And this is how they found out probably,” I say. “I mean, it’s a little disrespectful. You’re friends with my dad on Facebook.”

“Does your dad not know we broke up?”

“That’s not your business,” I say. The explosion is budding. A heat rises within my chest.

“So no?”

“Yes, he knows. I told him I was moving and gave him my new address,” I say. “Is that a satisfactory answer? Is that sufficient?”

I don’t think I’ve ever raised my voice to him before. I don’t like the way it feels. I’m out of control. I’m burning.

“Annie,” he says. His voice is calm, and somehow that’s worse. “There are going to be pictures.”

“We broke up five minutes ago.”

“We broke up five months ago! Six, actually.”

“After almost ten years!”

“No,” he says. “It was eight years, and the last two barely counted. We were together, but we weren’t really. You know what I’m saying. It wasn’t how it used to be between us. It wasn’t the same.”

I smell the smoke. I can taste it.

“This was your decision,” I say. “And you made me leave.”

“It was our decision,” he says. “Don’t pin this on me. It wasn’t working and you know that.”

“I thought we were going to get married! You blindsided me. You just gave up!” I’m yelling now. Crying and yelling.

“Annie. Come on. That’s not true.”

“It is true. You gave up, and I was the one who had to suffer for it. Pick up my whole life and start over. And you’re just there. Doing the same thing. In our apartment. At bars with random girls.”

“Shannon isn’t some random girl,” he says. “She’s my girlfriend. We’re together.”

I look down, expecting to see my skin blistering. Fat translucent bubbles. Visual proof of the sensation I feel, of the pain. I touch my face, and there are no lesions, no gaping wounds, no sticky recessions of skin. I’m on fire. I’m on fire, but I have nothing to show for it.