Trade

By: RDV


Pain’s favorite company is misery. Laurie, twenty-one, knows this as she has just again been dumped by her boyfriend of two weeks. She has known so from experience. Story is, he has accused her of two-timing, feigning to be scandalized, which she didn’t reprove or demur. She just slumped there, speaker still on her ear, at a marvel how three days ago their arms linked, at the park, and no one would’ve denied how happy they looked. Her best friend has told her just the other day how they were so like a pair of notes swinging in perfect melody. Now, she seems just like the opposite, her claim to happiness wearing thin and broken. A more sensible person would have fought back, but not her. She was unrehearsed for the call, for his blares and his curses, too surprised that she didn’t even have time to think to cry and break down. She didn’t say anything, which the boyfriend, now rightful ex, probably took for indifference. He said fine, and slammed down the phone, causing the sound to echo inside Laurie’s ears. It was then when the magnitude of what happened crashed on her, at the last possible moment. And sadness crept up to her. Now the feeling resides inside her, knowing that their hearts no longer beat at the same time. A tacit understanding has been made; nothing more is to be said. Suddenly she becomes sensitive to the cold. She pulls up the bath towel to her thighs, welts caused by prolonged laying on the sheets smear her legs. Then, in a very subdued manner, she laughs. That break-up is the worst yet she’s ever come up against. No one has ever spoken to her this way. Usually when her past boyfriends cut the ties, they did it very reverently, with great regard to her dignity. This one, however, treated her like dirt, like she was a whore or something. Laurie weeps further, suffering from the shock of realization. Almost at once she feels something warm up from inside her. An acute sensation is settling down on her, something very similar to inebriation. She doffs the towel and lets it fall on her feet. It’s over. The cold has passed. Laughing still, she begins understanding what all those tears mean to her: Love isn’t a reliable feeling, never was. In her case, it is a mere optical illusion to which she’s unalterably drawn.


And there in the light, the male species abandons her.