The Dictionary of Failed Relationships

by Meredith Broussard

  When the movers left, she gathered the last of her things into her Churchill Downs tote bag. She wouldn’t let me drive her to the airport, which was fine. I liked the idea of saying good-bye to her in the very spot where I’d first seen her.

  We stood holding each other.

  I had my hand at the small of her back, just where the scar was.

  She pulled away from me. She was very pale. She smiled slightly, put the tote bag on her shoulder, and walked out.

  I sat in my shop for several hours, trying to work, blasting Bach without any regard for the Spanish kids from the bike shop next door.

  By early afternoon, when it was clear I wasn’t getting any work done, I closed the shop, got in the car, and drove to Manhattan, to Ladder 3.

  A big guy whose name I couldn’t remember, but who I recognized as one of John’s close friends, was hanging in front of the station. Wearing those firefighter boots and that dark slicker with the yellow stripe across the back.

  He was staring off into space, even though he didn’t seem the type who’d be prone to daydreaming.

  “Hey,” I said, walking up to him, “I’m Albert, the guy John Black bought his piano from.”

  “Oh, yeah? How ya doin’?” the big guy said. I was embarrassed to have forgotten his name. At John’s memorial at St. Patrick’s, after the priests and government officials had said their bit, several of John’s fellow firefighters had gotten up and told stories. This particular fellow had lurked up to the podium, stared out at the crowd, and said, “Those suicide bombers were promised a flying carpet to Allah and forty virgins. Imagine their surprise when they got to the other side and all they found was one very pissed-off John Black.”

  “I sold John’s piano,” I told the big guy now.

  “Oh, yeah?” He didn’t seem that interested.

  “His family wanted the proceeds to go to you guys. Here,” I said, handing him Lucinda’s envelope.

  He took the envelope, held it for a moment, then looked inside.

  “Holy shit.” His eyes grew huge. “What, was that thing made outta gold?”

  “Steinways are valuable,” I shrugged.

  The big guy stood there, looking baffled.

  “I gotta hand this over to the captain,” he said.

  “You do that,” I told him.

  I went home to my shop.

  Lucinda was still gone.

  But I now noticed that she’d put John’s holy card back on the blistered green wall.

  I stared at it. John’s close-set blue eyes laughed at me.

  THREE SOME

  By Dana Johnson

  three·some ’thr-sm noun [origin unknown] (14th century) 1: a group of three persons or things: TRIO. 2: a bad idea.

  For their anniversaries, other women get, what? Like a box of chocolate and roses if they got a boring boyfriend, or dinner at the Olive Garden or someplace like that if the guy’s half-trying. A stuffed animal? Or even jewelry if he’s for real. Not no cheap bastard. Something. Me, I get something else not even close. I get Bobby coming home from work a few weeks before, telling me somebody there at the gym has a crush on me. He was all excited, grinning like he had new teeth and wanted to show them off.

  I didn’t get what he was up to. Not because I wasn’t hella smart. I was. Bobby admitted that one time after we did it for an hour in the desert, in Palmdale somewhere, in the middle of nowhere. I’d taken this astronomy class at L.A. City College because I had a lot of time on my hands, and I was learning a lot about stars and stuff. I told Bobby about how all the stars were just distant suns and that the sun we saw in the daytime is just the largest of all the suns, of all 100 billion suns—at least. The largest object in our whole big crazy solar system. He squeezed me really hard. “Damn, you’re smart,” he said. Bobby waited till I gave him a big sunshine smile, and then he said, “But everybody ain’t perfect.”

  Ha, I’d said.

  But, lately I was hardly smart enough to know what he was up to anymore, because since his brother had died, Bobby treated everything like a big hurry. He didn’t take time for anything—or when he did, it was like he forgot why he was taking the time in the first place. He was treating his life like something he wanted to get over with, to do, but not to see.

  He was still grinning at me about this crush, so I asked him, “What? You glad some man at your work’s wanting me? That don’t sound like you, Bobby.” What sounded like Bobby was jealousy. He made me quit stripping because of it. I put my hand on his forehead, and he slapped it back down.

  “Quit playing with the smart-ass comments.” He ran his hand through his wavy black hair and stared at me. He was dyeing it because he was only thirty-six and going gray.

  I stared back. “So? Who’s this guy?” All this time, Bobby was standing in front of me in his favorite gray sweat suit. He unzipped his jacket, tossed it on the futon, and started making his way to the kitchen to cook.

  “You thaw that chicken like I told you?”

  “It’s in the sink. Is it that Furio guy? That actor guy?” He worked out at the gym, and he was always giving me the eye. “Please,” Bobby said. “Where the fuck’s the olives? I was going to make cacciatore.”

  “Ate ’em.”

  “OK, Big Ass,” Bobby said. “That’s the last thing you should be eating. A whole goddamn can?” He shook his head. “I’m just going to broil this, then. What else you eat up in here?”

  Bobby Cantadopolous was militant about cooking, his kitchen, food, and me involved with any of these things. I’d moved in with him in his apartment, and it always felt that way—like his.

  “Who’s got the crush on me, Bobby? I’m tired of waiting for you to tell me.” I just knew it was some nasty dude. Otherwise, Bobby wouldn’t think it was so damn funny. “What’s his name?”

  Bobby was washing the chicken and was seasoning it. He looked up at me, mouth serious, eyes cracking up. “Amber.”

  “Amber? Amber,” I repeated. Bobby got me to thinking. “Is it that transsexual dude? The one who just came back with all the changes?”

  “Uh-uh,” Bobby said.

  “Amber,” I said again. I watched Bobby chop onion and crush garlic. “Is this dude, like, Irish or something? Got one of them names that sounds like a lady? Like Carol or Adrian? Like that?”

  “Nope,” Bobby said. “And whoever heard of a guy named Amber?”

  I couldn’t figure it out. Bobby poured olive oil in the pan and stirred in the onion and garlic. I was hungry. “We eating rice with that?”

  “No, we ain’t,” Bobby said. He was policing my weight more since I quit stripping. I wasn’t doing a lot of exercising no more. “Broccoli for you, rice for me.”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “Watch it, tough guy. Keep that filth out your mouth.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So who, Bobby? I practically don’t give a shit anymore.”

  He gave me the eyebrows and then swatted me on the ass. “What I tell you?”

  I leaned against the counter with my arms crossed, pouting. Bobby tap-danced on my nerves sometimes. He concentrated on browning the chicken, stirring it around and staring at it like it was his life’s work. Finally, he said, “Remember that thing I did down in Mexico last year? With the four girls?”

  “Yeah,” I said slow. That was before me and Bobby were together, when he was just starting to do porn. It don’t matter to me, the porn on the side of training folks at the gym. I’m just saying, Mexico was a long time ago, at least a year. Telling me about it when we first met, Bobby bragged that he made eight hundred dollars just to go down to Mexico and be with a bunch of women. I thought eight hundred dollars was a bit cheap to have your life out there, floating around forever and ever, but he said he would’ve been with all those women for free.

  “I guess,” I’d said, and Bobby’d said that was the trouble with me. I never opened my eyes to see the bigger picture.

  But now I was trying. “What’s Mexico got to do with all that?” Before Bo
bby could answer, I got a picture in my head of this blond woman he was always talking about like something he missed, like his mother’s goddamn home-baked cookies, waiting for him after school on a rainy day. “ Amber,” I said. I sucked my teeth and rolled my eyes at Bobby. She had blown him in this other video he did.

  “Yeah, right? The blond? With the tiny waist and the lips?” He tore his eyes away from the chicken long enough to bite down hard on his fist. “Fuckin’- A,” he said.

  “If you want to call those lips,” I said. “They look like life rafts. A little collagen goes a long way. You should tell her that.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Bobby said. He motioned a finger and then tapped his lips, so I could come to him and kiss him.

  I stood where I was. “On me, it looks normal. You ever see a black girl with thin lips? No. You ain’t,” I said.

  “Eh, what’re ya gonna do,” he said and shrugged, like some things you just can’t help. He finally stopped babying his chicken, mixed everything together, and put it in the broiler. When he straightened up, he stretched out his arms and wiggled his fingers. “What I tell you? Get over here and give me a kiss.”

  I was getting worked up. “No, and what’s so great about her ass?”

  “Nice and big.”

  “But you keep telling me that mine’s getting too big. What’s up with that?”

  “Since when did big mean gigantic? Huh? Answer me that, Whole-Can-a-Olives.”

  Because I was hugging myself and wouldn’t come to him, Bobby came to me and put his arms around my waist. “I’m just breaking your balls, you know that, right?” He kissed me and held me so close and tight that I felt wrapped up, completely. His hands traveled down my waist and under my ass. “I’m just giving you a hard time. I might even let you eat some rice—if you go to the gym tomorrow. Get on that treadmill.”

  I laughed, waiting for Bobby to say, “Just kidding.” But he didn’t.

  Late in the night, when I was trying to fall asleep, Bobby wouldn’t shut up about Amber. What if she hit on me, would I do her? Didn’t I think she was sorta cute? Would I do it, just for him even? Just for fun? What was the big deal? It wasn’t like he was asking me to be with another man. What’d I think?

  I told him that I thought he was a sex fiend, but if he was nice to me, I just might. And he finally shut up, which was all I wanted. In bed with Bobby, when it was quiet, was the only time I could talk to him about serious things. So I asked him how his mother was doing with Louie being gone. It had only been three months.

  “How you think she’s doing?” he said, and then I didn’t hear anything else from him. We just lay there in the dark.

  Before long he was snoring, holding on to me tight, his left arm lying across my body like a weight. This threesome thing seemed to come out of nowhere, but Bobby did seem restless, a little more wild since his brother died. Bobby says I’m full of shit when I say he changed after his brother got killed. But how could he not? Louie was his heart, a younger version of Bobby, a nice kid with a big mouth. Louie took to calling me Sunshine, just like Bobby. Some asshole shot him at the ATM and only got forty bucks off him. I was there when Bobby got the phone call from his father. Bobby’d just gotten off me. We were happy, wiped out. When the phone rang, he got up, went to the phone, and stood there naked. We had two candles burning, and the moon was so bright that we didn’t even need the candles. And Bobby, Bobby was so beautiful to me, the curves of his muscles, hard and rocky with smooth, shiny skin from the sweat on his body. I don’t remember what Bobby said, if he said anything into the phone. He just fell to his knees and dropped the phone. His daddy was hollering, “Bobby! Bobby!” in a tiny cartoon voice, coming from the phone, but Bobby was curled up in a ball with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth wide open. Nothing coming out. When I went to him, Bobby grabbed me and held on to me so hard that I thought he was going to crush something inside me. I knew his kid brother was dead. Nobody had to tell me nothing.

  When I tried to get out of going to the funeral with Bobby— because his family was always asking if he was still dating me, the black kargiola, and did he think he was the fucking Greek Robert De Niro, with the black chicks every time they turned around—Bobby told me, “La Donna, fuck them. I need you there.” I asked him what kargiola meant, and he told me, “Never mind. It ain’t nice.” At the funeral, Bobby held my hand tight and leaned forward in his chair while they dropped dirt onto the casket. Then they lowered the casket into the grave. Bobby didn’t really cry until then, and later he told me it was because his brother was deep in the dirt, covered with dirt, and was going to turn into dirt. I told Bobby that Louie wasn’t in the casket. Louie’s body was there, covered in dirt, but the Louie that Bobby loved— his spirit—was with us and the whole world. Bobby told me to shut up and kissed me on the forehead, so I knew I made him feel better, some kind of way.

  “That’s why I love you, Donna,” he said. He took my hand. “You know how to take care of me, Sunshine.”

  Now, Bobby was snoring even louder, his mouth open just a little bit. I turned my head to kiss him on the lips. They felt soft, and I wanted him to wake up and make love to me. I kissed him again and played with the black waves of his hair. But he didn’t feel a thing. He just kept right on sleeping.

  Bobby worked out and trained at Gold’s Gym off Santa Monica Boulevard. All the stars and a lot of famous people worked out there. Like I care. One time, though? Bobby almost broke his neck in three places trying to get a look at some skinny model bitch, and that pissed me off. Kind of wished he’d broken something.

  Getting to the gym was the same routine every time. It took us a thousand stoplights to get down Santa Monica, park the car, give the homeless guy in the parking lot a couple of bucks for wiping down Bobby’s Mustang, Bobby “how ya doin’” everybody, me wishing I was at Zankou Chicken eating a drumstick. When we walked in, Bobby gave me the regimen.

  “Cardio . . . You gotta hit the ab machine, no doubt. And after that, some lunges.” He raised his voice over the techno crap they were playing, and he looked around the gym, scanning the joint like he was looking for someone.

  “This really, really sucks,” I said.

  “What?” Bobby wasn’t paying attention. He was looking around the gym.

  “If you hadn’t made me quit dancing, I would still be lean.” I made sure I said it right in his ear so he could hear me over the bass and noise from all the clinking weights and machines.

  “Lean,” Bobby said. “You a lot of things, baby, but better cross lean off the list.” He laughed. He was cracking himself up. “I gotta appointment,” he said. “See you about an hour.”

  When Bobby walked away, I couldn’t help but notice that he did look good in his wife-beater T-shirt against his tan skin. From the tanning salon, but still. That’s why I put up with him, I thought. That, and he always looked out for me, was always on my side. I told myself that he had me at the gym for my health, for my own good. Plus, once—and only once—he told me that I was so fine, he didn’t need to do nothing to make himself look good. I did it for him.

  I found a StairMaster and stepped on it, bored off my ass after two steps. I pushed the button that made the machine go faster— but not too fast. I daydreamed I was at the club I used to dance at, the Eight Ball, where I met Bobby. Those were good days. I missed the girls, and I missed the money. I worked where I wanted to work, doing what I wanted to do. I didn’t have to do any of that gym shit.

  Somebody was talking to me. Amber.

  “It’s better to lower the resistance. If you’re just wanting definition. You don’t want to cover your body with a lot of muscle,” she said in a soft, clear voice. She sounded like a therapist.

  “Yeah,” I said. I gave her a half-smile. A polite, now-you-can-go smile. She didn’t seem to catch what I was doing, though. She stretched some, and then she got on the StairMaster next to mine. She was wearing one of those I’m-at-the-Gym-to-Be-Looked-At outfits. Cute and strappy. Whenever I
tried to wear something like that, Bobby told me to put some clothes on. She worked out on the machine next to me, taking cute little baby steps and swinging her white-blond ponytail around. Everything about her was light and golden tanned. If somebody was looking for the opposite of me, they would have pointed out Amber in a heartbeat. What was the matter with Bobby?

  The whole time I was working out, she kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye, making me nervous. I never knew no woman who had a crush on me before. I didn’t know how I felt about it. I ignored Amber until Bobby came up behind me and told me to stop leaning. That was cheating, he said. It wasn’t good to cheat. Made the whole workout easier.

  “Just pretend you’re on the stairway to heaven, baby,” he said. “And I’m up there waiting for you.” I swear, Bobby thought he was a regular actor, a porn actor, a trainer, and a comedian.

  “La Donna can cheat,” Amber said. My name sounded funny coming out of her mouth. She stopped stepping and looked me up and down. “She doesn’t even need to work out.”

  “Rii . . . ight,” Bobby said slowly. “Uh-huh.”

  “La Donna has the most beautiful body in the world. And face, too,” Amber said. She winked at me.

  “Tiny fuckin’ world, eh?” Bobby said. “Yeah? Right?” He looked at Amber for a laugh, but she didn’t give it to him. “I’m just kiddin’, baby,” he said. He popped me on the ass.

  “Then why’d you say it?” Amber asked him.

  “C’mon,” Bobby said. “Donna knows I’m joking, right, baby?”

  I gave Bobby my fuck-you eyes. I was kind of pissed at both of them for talking like I wasn’t there.

  “Anyway, it’s not a tiny world. It’s a big, big world, Bobby,” Amber said. She stared at me. “A whole universe.”

  Bobby looked at Amber and then at me. “You want we should get some lunch? Maybe I could make us something at the house. I got a bottle of wine, too.” He put on the sweet and innocent face. I got loose with wine, Bobby knew. He looked back and forth at me and Amber.