The Nix(160)

“Humor me. Go with it. If this new person didn’t exist, you’d have no reason to end our affair.”

“Okay. Sure. That’s a fair assessment.”

“I want you to know I think this is a mistake,” he said.

She gave him that condescending look he couldn’t stand, that look communicating how she was the interesting and far-out one and he was the one stuck in a bourgeois middle-class hole from which there was no escape.

“What can this new person give you that I can’t?” he said.

“You don’t understand.”

“I can change. You want me to do something different? I can do that. We don’t have to meet so often. We could meet every other week. Or once a month. Or you want me to be rougher? I can be rougher.”

“This isn’t what I want anymore.”

“We’ll keep it, you know, loose. Informal. You can be with this new person and me, right?”

“That’s not going to work.”

“Why? You haven’t given me any good reasons.”

“I no longer want to be with you. Isn’t that a good reason?”

“No. Absolutely not nearly good enough. Because there’s no explanation. Why don’t you want to keep doing this? What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. You did nothing wrong.”

“Exactly. So you can’t punish me like this.”

“I’m not trying to punish you. I’m trying to be honest.”

“Which is having the effect of punishing me. Which is not fair. I did everything you asked. Even the weird stuff. I did everything, so you can’t just up and leave for no good reason.”

“Will you please stop whining?” she said, and she jumped off the car and walked a few paces away. Her sudden movement caught the dog’s attention; it tensed, evaluated her intentions, guarded his scraps. “Will you please be a man about this? We’re done.”

“All those things we did together, all those strange things. They made a promise. Even if you never said it out loud. And now you’re breaking that promise.”

“Go home to your wife.”

“I love you.”

“Oh, f*ck.”

“I do. I love you. This is me saying I love you.”

“You don’t love me. You’re just afraid of being alone and bored.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you. Please don’t leave. I don’t know what I’ll do. I said I love you. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Would you please please stop it?”

To Alice, he seemed on the verge of something substantial: crying or violence. You could never be sure with men. Across the alley the dog seemed satisfied that she did not have designs on its food. It resumed eating the thrown-out burgers and cold limp french fries and coleslaws and tuna melts at a velocity both ferocious and probably vomit-inducing.

“Listen,” she said, “you want a good reason? Here’s the reason. I want to try something new. It’s the same reason I started things with you. I want to try something I haven’t tried before.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Girls.”

“Oh, give me a break.”

“I want to try girls. I feel very motivated to do this.”

“Oh my god,” he said. “Please tell me you don’t think you’re all of a sudden a dyke now. Please tell me I haven’t been screwing a dyke.”

“Thanks very much for the good times. And I wish you all the best.”

“It’s not the neighbor girl, is it? What’s her name. Faye, right?”

She stared at him, confused, and he laughed. “Don’t tell me it’s her,” he said.

“How do you know about Faye?”

“She’s the one you spent the night with. Monday night? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with her.”

Everything about Alice now seemed to steel and harden at this moment. Whatever softness she had, whatever openness she ever felt with him, all at once disappeared. Her jaw clenched, her fists balled.

“How the f*ck do you know about that?” she said.

“Please tell me you’re not leaving me for Faye Andresen,” he said. “That’s rich.”

“You’ve been watching me, haven’t you? You’re a goddamn psychopath.”

“You’re no dyke. I can tell you that for sure. I’d know.”

“We are done. I am never speaking to you again.”

“That is not going to happen,” he said.

“Watch me.”

“You leave and I’ll arrest you. I’ll arrest Faye too. I’ll make your lives hell. Both of you. That’s a promise. You’re stuck with me. This is over when I say it’s over.”

“I’ll tell all your cop buddies how much you liked screwing me. I’ll tell your wife.”

“I could have you f*cking killed. Easy.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“Goodbye.”

She walked away from the squad car. Her back tingled in expectation of something—a chase, a nightstick, a bullet. She ignored the alarms inside her to turn around and see what he was doing. She heard her own heartbeat in her ears. Her hands were stuck in tight fists. She couldn’t unclench them if she wanted to. The road was another twenty paces away when she heard it: the sharp pop of his pistol.