TAMARA
On the way home that night she stopped at a Baskin-Robbins on Geary and bought the biggest damn ice cream cake they had. Gooey fudge, whipped cream, about twenty thousand calories’ worth. But when she got to the apartment she couldn’t eat it. Two bites at the kitchen table, and her throat closed up and she pushed it away. All the weeks spent living on Slim-Fast to rid herself of twenty pounds of flab so she’d feel good, look good… good as she’d ever look… she just couldn’t do it to herself, start eating her way back into Fat City. Not for any reason.
She put the cake away in the freezer, wandered into the bedroom. Still some of Horace’s clothes in the closet, stuff he hadn’t taken with him to Philadelphia. She yanked every piece off the hangers, threw them into a pile in the corner-all except his brown suede jacket, one of his favorites, overlooked or forgotten when he was packing. She found a pair of shears and cut off both sleeves at the elbow, snip snip, slash slash.
Didn’t make her feel any better. If anything, she felt worse.
She threw the mutilated jacket on top of the other stuff and sat down on the bed, then sprawled out on her back. Got up in less than a minute and went into the living room and turned on the TV and then turned it off again and shuffled through her CDs and picked one, nothing classical, especially nothing with cellos or violins, and plugged it in and then sat down on the couch. But she didn’t listen to the music. Couldn’t even hear it over the loop of Horace replays inside her head.
… hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is make this call…
Little quiver in his voice, real emotional.
… hate to have to hurt you, I’m so sorry…
You’re sorry, all right, sorry excuse for a man.
… there’s somebody else, somebody I’ve known for a while…
Lyrics out of a bad old song.
… she’s a second violinist with the philharmonic here…
Sure, that figures.
… her name’s Mary, she’s from Rochester, New York…
Do I give a shit who she is or where she’s from?
… we’re in love, crazy in love…
Like you and I never were, right?
… didn’t want it to happen, neither of us did…
More bad lyrics, a whole damn chorus.
… as serious as it gets, we’re going to be married in the fall
…
Only wedding gift you’ll get from me is a gallon of rat poison.
… wish to God it could have turned out differently for you and me…
Bullshit.
… never stop loving you, Tamara, even if you find that hard to believe now…
Hard to believe? Try impossible.
… want only the best for you, always…
Can’t say the same for you. So long, you big lying sweet-mouth son of a bitch, I hope Mary strangles you with one your cello strings someday.
She wished now that she been able to say something like that to him, something hard and wounding-gotten in the last word. Instead, her mind a blank, all she’d done was hang up. End of conversation, end of five-year relationship. End of love. With a click, not a bang, from three thousand miles away.
Not that the Dear Tamara call had come as any big surprise. No word from him in nearly three weeks, two messages she’d left on his answering machine that he hadn’t returned. Oh, yeah, she’d seen it coming even with her eyes wide shut. All those months apart, seven long months of no contact except by phone, too busy in her case, too hooked up with somebody else in his, to follow through on plans to spend a few days together in Philly or here.
Saw it coming, sure. But she didn’t expect it to come cold like that, him calling her at the agency instead of at the apartment-it had thrown her off balance. Thought he had more class, more courage, than that. Thought she knew him so well… how stupid was that? She didn’t know him at all. Consider herself lucky she wasn’t the one marrying him after all, Mary from Rochester could have him and good riddance. Didn’t want it to happen, neither of us did. What a load of crap. Back there screwing the second violinist for God knew how long, months probably, while she sat around pining away for him and being Ms. Faithful, putting her own needs on hold, keeping herself pure at heart for her big lovin’ man The hell with it.
The hell with him.
Fuck men!
… Well, now, there’s an idea.
More than seven months since she’d done the nasty New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day farewell marathon with Horace. Seven months of denying herself, keeping the faith, living the lie. Well, not anymore. Cruise the clubs tonight, pick up the first good-looking guy who showed an interest in her-black, white, Asian, Martian, didn’t make any difference-and go to his place or bring him back here and let him hump her brains out. Why not? Horny, wasn’t she? Sauce for the goose, right?
She showered, changed into the sexiest outfit she owned, put on her makeup, brushed her hair and dabbed on a little perfume, and went out to the car. Horace’s Toyota. Her Toyota now… Keep it, Tamara, I want you to have it.
She was two blocks from the apartment before she realized, dammit, dammit, that she was crying.