Her lover says that it’s over for good.
They met. They romanced. She took chances small town minds never take. He persuaded her to move in, promises of forever love leaking from his cozy lips. They went for long walks and had deep talks. They selected special candles for their home and bought groceries together every time the refrigerator was bare and the cupboards collected dust. The two lovers dedicated music to one another, capturing moments she thought would last eternal. He dedicated to her the song “I Only Have Eyes For You.”
She hears this dedicated song only half an hour after the breakup. She cries and mumbles and walks along the Mission, this street of streets offering both hope and despair. He was to be her new life. He was to be the man of her future, the nurturing man who would complete her and one day fertilize her womb. She never made time nor trusted any other man before she met him—being insanely occupied with UCSF academics and all. Yet, after graduating with two BA’s, she stumbled upon a man she felt was illuminating. Then today came.
Today, a bit past 11:30, she found him fondling another in the same bed he confessed words she believed to be true. She realized that he was nothing but insatiable vapor. He thought she would be at work, but she came home for lunch to surprise him—which she did. Nefariously, his eyes wandered onto someone new when they should have only been on her, as the song he dedicated to her states.
Now she walks along the Mission, swerving left and right, avoiding the vagrants and the filth and the normal and the hip, thinking only of the past three weeks spent with him, living in a City where life speeds and demands more and more of you each day.
She grew up in the quiet residential town of Belmont, where watching movies was the thrill of the weekend. Visions of how the two first met trickle into her mind as she passes bars along the Mission they’ve been in together, moments they’ve shared where he would consume seven rounds opposed to her average two. She never even really consumed alcohol until she met him. How she wants to flush his name from her mind, remove this malignant tumor from her heart. And how it hurts. It hurts insanely because she knows that people are staring at her as she passes Cha Cha Cha and Bruno’s and other restaurants they’ve dined in. It hurts because she knows what her parents are going to say when she tells them he’s cheated on her. Her legs move quickly when she reaches Mission and Nineteenth—the exact corner he asked her to move in with him.
What made her walk down this dauntless path with such memories?
Her arms shake when she passes a pole with their initials on it—Mission and Twenty-second—perfect print decorated illegally by the man who moved her heart and tore it out three weeks later. That brief life is now over. There was really no love to begin with, just feelings swept up into a thick blanket of dubious fog. He was never honest with her or himself. He’s a womanizer who gets his thrills from hurting innocence and ignorance.
Continuing along the Mission, she wipes her tears and thinks of her family. Her parents won’t take her back openly because she left without their consent—embarking on a fast-paced city-life they warned her about with arms crossed and faces stern. But she didn’t listen because she thought it was love.
Last Call is a bar she enters a little past twelve, weaving her way to the same corner booth her ex used to lead her to every time they drank here. The walls of Last Call are filled with thick, stringy brown carpet, where festoon framed movie posters of actors and actresses who drank too much during their prime. And she’s talking to herself in a low, distraught voice of defeat:
“Foul . . . WRETHCED . . . Crooked . . . LIAR . . .”
Her cheeks are pale and her lips quiver as she continues:
“Why would he? Did I do something? How does he know her? Who is she?”
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