Why We Broke Up (11 page)

Ed, did you ever see—
no, of course you didn’t—
Like Night and Day
, this Portuguese vampire movie the Carnelian ran for a full week? Of course you didn’t see it. I saw it twice. A girl—I don’t know the actors, they’re all Portuguese—has a dull job as a clerk in some government thing and walks home through a graveyard dreaming. One day, she works late, and it’s night. The nighttime scenes are in black and white. She meets the boy vampire, slender and pale with his eyes glassy and angry, and for a while she’s with him every night and spends her days squinting and exhausted and pale and almost getting fired. Her blind mother senses something
wrong,
spiritual unrest
is what the subtitle says she says. This music plays, and the girl dreams what he also dreams, crying in his grave, a gauzy dance of Catholicism and spinning skulls that I don’t really get. Then
she’s
a vampire, and he’s a young man with amnesia in a hospital who finally gets discharged and finds work as a clerk, and the affair begins again until one day, announced at the government office as dreamed by the blind mother, there’s an eclipse and it ends in tragedy and ashes. When I dragged Al along so I could see it a second time, he finally said, when I told him there was no way someone could see
Like Night and Day
and not have an opinion, he said his opinion was that it should have been called
We Fuck at Dusk
. And it’s true the love scenes are in a strange light, an in-between space as the characters bump and adjust to their haze of a dream of a life. It was like that then, the same lighting when you picked me up at seven at Steam Rising, my third-favorite coffee place but the best one near my house. The Portuguese lovers part dazed and bitten, not knowing what would happen next, I didn’t know either, what the encounter would be in the weird dawn. The streets were graveyard quiet and we’d fooled around in Steve’s car and maybe I’d messed it all up, I thought, missed my cues, unaware at the bonfire the way you slapped my friends with a jukebox choice. Or maybe I was just tired. I was hoping it would work, that it was still working, but maybe it had changed since you’d dropped me off at one in
the morning. Just tired, I thought, waiting worried under the awning, the raging rain not helping a bit, and then hurried to your sister’s car when you pulled up, the umbrella tucked under my arm because I couldn’t hold it up and both our coffees too.

“Hey,” you said, “I mean, good morning.”

“Hey,” I said. I made a motion with my wet face, like
let’s just pretend we kissed
.

“I can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“
What?
How early it is. What did you think?”

“Well, this is the thing with Tip Top Goods. It’s magical, but the hours are like, undead. Saturdays only, seven thirty to nine
AM
.”

“So you’ve been there before?”

“Just once.”

“With Al.”

“Yeah, why?”

“Nothing. It’s just—”

“What?”

“You gave me a hard time last night, with Jillian.”

“Yelling at me all drunk, yeah.”

“But you talk about Al all the time and I’m not supposed to get jealous, I’m just saying.”

“Jealous? I never went out with Al. He’s a friend, just friends. It’s different.”

“OK, not jealous, but not even feel weird about it, I guess is what I mean.”

“Because he’s
not
, he wasn’t a boyfriend.”

“If he’s not gay and he hung out with you the whole time, he wanted to be. It’s boyfriend or want to be boyfriend or I guess gay. Those are the choices.”

“What? Where did you learn that?”

You gave me a cranky smile. I stopped gripping the coffees so hard, let the umbrella clatter into my lap. “Hellman High School,” you said.

“Well, those aren’t the choices,” I said. “There’s friends.”

“OK.”

“OK, so—”

“What?”

“What—why—”

“Why am I acting like this?”

I braced myself, almost closed my eyes. “Yeah.”

You gave me a sighing smile. “Tired, I guess. It’s early.”

“OK, that’s why I brought you coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

I had to stare at you a sec.
“What?”

You shrugged and spun the wheel. “Never got into it.”

“
Into
it? Have you ever
had
coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

You stopped at the yellow light, peered out at the world
between swipes of the wipers. I took a sip of mine. It was early for me too. I’d just had time to shower and scrawl a
going out
to my mom, luckily I’d thought to choose my clothes when we finally said good night and I paced around my room thinking about us. “No,” you said finally. “I mean, not really. Yes, sips, of course I’ve had it. But I always, I mean I never liked it, so when everyone’s having it, I—” You sighed with your teeth showing.

“What?”

“I throw it out.”

I smiled at you.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You do that with beer.”

“I know.”

“And anyway, Coach says coffee’s bad for you.”

“Unlike drinking every weekend.”

“It stunts your growth.”

“You’re on the
basketball team
.”

“And you can get addicted to caffeine.”

“Yeah,” I said with another sip, “you see them living under the overpass, caffeine addicts.”

“Come
on
! And it tastes gross.”

“How do you know? You pour it out. Listen, don’t you feel awful tired?”

“Yes, I said already.”

“Then try this. Extra cream, three sugars, the way I do it.”

“What? No.
Black
.”

“You don’t drink coffee, you just said.”

“I still know that. Black, any other way is for girls and fags.”

“Ed,” I said. “Look at me.”

You looked at me, your chin unshaven, hair only sort-of combed, the morning gray and speckled behind you, also beautiful. I tried to sort you out. “You. Must. Stop. With the fag stuff.”

“Min—”

“Join the twenty-first century.”

“OK, OK, joining.”

“Particularly with Al, OK?”

“OK.”

“Because he’s not.”

“OK, I said.”

“And people have said that forever about him.”

“Then he should stop putting cream in his coffee.”

“Ed.”

“OK, OK, OK, sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“This is complicated enough without you insulting my friend over and over.”

“Min—”

“And don’t, don’t, don’t say
no offense
.”

“What I was going to say was—what’s complicated?”

“You know.”

“No. I don’t.”

“
This
. Me with you, and all the different things. Going to a bonfire, out of place, and now you doing something you don’t really want to, just for me. It’s like a Portuguese vampire movie.”

“What?”

“We’re
different
, Ed.”

“That’s what I keep saying. And I keep saying I like it. I
want
to go here, Min. Just, you know, ten thirty would be fine. I’m tired, is all.”

“Really?”

“Yes,
really
. Really,
really
tired. You kept me up late.”

With a
shish
, your tires, Joan’s tires you were driving, rolled through a puddle. I smiled at you, loved you then, bit my lip to keep from saying it. “But it was worth it,” you said.

I kissed you.

“Was that our first fight?”

I kissed you again.

“You taste good.”

I laughed. “Well, that’s coffee with extra cream and three sugars.”

“OK, give me it, if it tastes like it.”

I handed it over. You took it and sipped, and then sipped and blinked. Then, a big, big sip.

“I told you.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Right?”

“This is—”

“Life-giving brew, is what Al and I call it.”

“Fucking delish, I don’t care it’s a faggy word, oops, sorry, no offense, sorry again.
Delish! Criminy!
This is like a cookie, it tastes like a cookie having sex with a doughnut.”

“Wait till the caffeine hits.”

“I’m going to have this every morning of my life, and I’m going to shout
Min was right and I was wrong!
when I do.”

You actually shouted it. I wonder if you say that every morning now, Ed. I mean I don’t wonder, I know you don’t, but I hope you think it as you don’t. Do you? Don’t you?

“So,” you said, nodding as I pointed the turn, “did you buy Al life-breathing brew when you took him to this crazy place?”

“Life-
giving
. Probably. We’d been up all night, the only way to get Al up at this hour.”

“The only way to get
anyone
up. What did you do all night?”

“Actually, he took me to an orgy.”

Your turn signal:
blinka blinka blinka
.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I mostly slept with girls there. A large pile of naked girls all having sex at an orgy. Of course, I know you don’t like to think about that, because you’re homophobic.”

“OK, you’re kidding.”

“And Al slept with all your girlfriends, and they all said they liked him better.”

You swatted me, and I shrieked at the small splash of coffee that landed on my collar. It never came out.

“You know,” you said, “I’m not always sure if you’re kidding or if you’re mad at me or anything.”

“I know, Ed.”

“I didn’t know girls, or anyone, talked this way. Is that why—is that what you meant, complicated?”

I ruffled your hair. The coffee was warm, soaking through to my neck. But I didn’t worry on it. You liked how it tasted. “I didn’t mean anything,” I said. “I was just tired, too.”

“Not now, though.”

“No,” I said, with another sip.

“Me neither.”

“That’s the caffeine.”

You put the car in park and shook your head. “No,” you said, “or not just that.”

“No?”

Your head kept shaking. “I think it’s something else.”

It was, Ed. We dashed across the street to Tip Top Goods, the umbrella tucked under my arm because I couldn’t hold it up and my coffee cup and your hand too. It was open, the nine stained-glass lamps in a row on the shiny red Chinese
bench, lined up in the window, were blazing their colored fringy light to us for once, the usual sign of
TIP TOP GOODS OPEN SATURDAYS
7:30–9
AM ONLY NO EXCEPTIONS
gone and
OPEN BELIEVE IT OR NOT
instead. Inside it was a palace, Ed, all the parasols and taxidermy on the ceiling, the mannequins dressed like gypsies sitting on the opium bed writing antique postcards with pricey fountain pens, the rugs on the walls, the wallpaper on the floors, the owner spacing out with his hookah and his black beret, grinning at nothing, and right when we walked in, still laughing, this tome on a stack of silver trays,
Real Recipes from Tinseltown
. Like fate, was the feeling I had as I stood beaming breathless in the shop with this in my hands. Now, of course I see it differently, that it was not fate but
fatal
, fatal and wrong that we read the recipe and got excited and I shared with you all my dreamy plans. Outside it cleared up, as sudden and magic as a vampiric Portuguese sunrise with plumed birds and harps on the sound track. It didn’t last, it wasn’t clear for much longer, and that’s why we broke up, but when I close this book to give it to you, I don’t think about that, just us holding the book in our hands to buy it and take it here with us, because damn it Ed, that’s not why we broke up. I love it, I miss it, I hate to give it back to you, this complicated thing, it’s why we stayed together.

The sun blinked at us
and we blinked back. Outside smelled like perfect leaves, the air clean and breathy, so we crossed to Boris Vian Park and looked at what we had. It was a magical thing, early enough for the park to hold a hush, the mood still and strange like
With My Own Two Eyes
, the scene where Peter Klay flees the identical twin inspectors who have been questioning him and hides behind the statue of some military victory, a winged woman on a horse, and a rustle comes from the bushes and slowly, slowly, carefully, a unicorn emerges and walks in a hushed calm across the misty lawn, and the story of the movie moves to some
stranger place. I had that feeling in Boris Vian Park, that anything might happen.