by Mark Leidner
As the surgeon drives back to the city alone, he weeps tears of unexpected relief—finally freed from his self-imposed debt of guilt to her, and the cognitive burden of constant rationalization that is the price of living a lie, a price he didn’t realize the size of until he was no longer paying it. He’s so happy about all the beautiful possibilities of a wide-open future, he’s paying hardly any attention to the cars around him, and a school bus with no children in it broadsides him, and his car is spun into a concrete embankment where the force of the bus crumples it like a tin can. The bus hardly slows, glancing off the embankment, wobbling twice, and then smoothly reentering traffic. No one sees its plates or gets a description of the driver. The authorities use the jaws of life to free the surgeon from his vehicle, and, finding his I.D. from the hospital at which he used to work, they helicopter him there and call his ex, the ex-nun. She rents a speedboat and comes down the coast and arrives at the surgeon’s bedside just as he’s pronounced dead by the nurse who once loved him, who still works at the hospital, and whom the ex-nun watches try everything possible to save the surgeon before giving up. She looks at the nurse as he walks sadly away from the body—not unlike the soldier had once walked away from her and into the street. The nurse looks back at her, too, as he exits the O.R., and both of their puffy, tear-filled eyes bespeak a hundred shared and unshared sadnesses.
It’s one of those classic “ships that pass in the night” moments. Here’s the full metaphor in its original context, an 1874 Longfellow poem called “The Theologian’s Tale”:
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
15
AFTER THE NURSE WAS DUMPED by the surgeon, but before the surgeon moved to the coast with the ex-nun, the nurse was on a barstool in the dive where he met the blogger, and he happened to overhear a couple breaking up two barstools down, so he leaned over and eavesdropped as the couple catalogued everything they hated about one another. This was weeks after his fling with the blogger, but he was still so reeling from being dumped by the surgeon that he apologetically interrupted the two women, then told them that they should think twice before breaking up. Breaking up, he said, always seems like the right move when you’re feeling sad and happen to be in a relationship, but you always underestimate the sadness you’re going to experience on the other side. This argument was somewhat specious, of course, and partially motivated by wish-fulfillment, since the nurse was adopting the posture of someone who’d broken up with someone only to regret it, when, in reality, he had been broken up with by the surgeon, and he had no idea whether the surgeon had regretted it. The women to whom he was speaking didn’t know any of this, however, so his argument appeared sincere.
The nurse then went on and on—drunkenly, abstractly, the way the heartbroken do—about how being in a relationship is so much work that freedom will always seem more appealing, but that freedom itself is two-faced: seen from afar as heaven, but experienced from within as hell.
“What if we could be like glue?” he pleaded. “What if we could always just stick to who we were with? Wouldn’t that be much simpler than all this cancerous choice? This whole consumerist conception of intimacy?” Here he found himself channeling, unconsciously or not, the blogger’s article. “Then this whole anxiety would be nullified, and our souls could spread wings instead of shrivel!” He pounded the bar with his fist, and some of the tears shaking in his eyes fell out.
The women didn’t know him and were very much annoyed, not to mention unmoved, by his bellowing. They said something polite and turned back around, but the nurse got off his barstool and walked between them so that he was facing one of them at a time, turning from one to the other as he articulated ad absurdum his anti-breakup treatise. He blamed all the world’s calamities on the casualness with which people broke up and the gamesmanship with which they approached desire, consciously or not. The women looked at each other, silently communicating many things the way only people who have been together for a very long time can do. Then one of them told him to get the fuck out of their faces, they were trying to have a private conversation. The other one said with searing sarcasm, “But thanks for your opinion, Jack.” The nurse looked shocked, as if suddenly aware that it might be annoying to have someone you don’t know at all tell you everything they thought about love. The nurse apologized profusely, returning to his barstool, but his former audience just shook their heads at him and left the bar.
On the sidewalk, one of them lit a cigarette. The other one watched her light it. Then they both laughed at the ridiculousness of what had just happened. They had a little moment, then—almost bonding, smiling in each other’s eyes, both thinking the same thing—that although alone they made each other miserable, whenever it was them against some outside adversary, they felt like they fit into each other like perfect puzzle pieces. At this, they both got, or seemed to get, extremely sad again. The nurse was watching them through the window of the bar and seemed to be trying to read their lips. The women shook their heads, remembering. They’d had this conversation before. They knew they had to break up. It was just hard to do so on the heels of the solidarity they’d shared in the face of that heartbroken blowhard. Now it was going to be harder than it would have been if they had just done it angry like they’d been about to before he so clumsily interposed. They cursed the nurse, and then they broke up, quickly and bitterly, and both of them turned away from one another and walked in opposite directions.
After a few steps, the one who lit the cigarette turned back around and watched the non-smoker, who just kept walking. The smoker then shouted down the street, “Wait!” The non-smoker turned. “What if we just got married?” the smoker asked, flicking her cigarette away. Sparks burst as the butt struck the wing mirror of a parked school bus partially bathed in sinister lamplight. The smoker stepped through the shower of sparks, unblinking, staring at her almost-ex, awaiting her response. The proposed-to non-smoker finally replied, “Are you insane?” “Maybe!” the smoker blurted. “Ugh. I don’t know! I’m just saying, what if that crazy guy wasn’t actually crazy?” The non-smoker considered it, then looked back at the bar. She could see the nurse in the window, hands on the glass, transfixed like a child who wants to believe that Santa or the Tooth Fairy is real. She sighed and turned back to the smoker. “Well?” the smoker asked. The proposed-to non-smoker bit her lip, shook her head, twisted one hand in the other, and said she just didn’t know. Seeing the way she was playing with her hands, the smoker got an idea. “What about rock, paper, scissors?” “What?” “Rock, paper, scissors.” The smoker stepped forward striking her palm with her fist. “If I win, we get married. If you win, we break up.” The proposed-to compressed her lips for a moment in thought, then said, “I guess… it is a little easier to bear if we don’t decide ourselves.” “Exactly. It’s not up to us. It’s up to fate.” The proposed-to thought about it some more, then said, “Two out of three?” “Of course,” the smoker said. So they bounced their hands in their palms three times and then—the smoker picked scissors, and the proposed-to picked rock. Then they did it again. The proposed-to picked rock again, but the smoker picked paper. “Fuck,” said the proposed-to. “What?” said the smoker. “You won.” “I know,” said the proposed-to. “I was trying to lose, though.” “Now you want to get married?” “I don’t know! In that moment I did!” “This is stupid!” said the smoker, waving her hands in the air. “This isn’t the way to decide anything. This is a mockery of intimacy!” “Fuck intimacy,” said the proposed-to. “Where did intimacy ever get us? Talking about our relationship for the millionth time in some dive bar?” “God, you’re right. We’re pathetic.” “No! We’re not! Not if we follow through, just this once, on something.” The proposed-to held her fist above her palm. “It’s tied. Let
’s do this. Let’s finish it.” The smoker seemed afraid. “And,” the proposed-to added, “let’s up the stakes. If you win, we still get married.” The smoker nodded, listening. “But if I win,” the proposed-to said, “we kill ourselves.” “Whoa. Why?” “I know it’s extreme, but I’ve been thinking about what that total loser just said in the bar. If we break up we’ll just second-guess why we broke up, maybe forever, and whatever we feel about it will fuck up the dynamic of us and whoever we meet next, if we’re even lucky enough to meet anyone. I’m sick of it. I’m forty-six. You’re thirty-seven. What more could we possibly learn or get out of life that we haven’t already? What are we waiting for? Old age? Where there’s even more past to mourn? Sharper anxiety about dying? Marriage, ludicrous as it is, is the only stage we’ve never taken it to. State-sanctioned, public, permanent commitment. I’m not even that big of a fan of it, frankly, but that’s almost what makes it perversely alluring. To do the opposite! And not knowing what it would actually be like… that’s the only thing keeping me interested. Other than that, I’m basically ready to check out. The long goodbye. Six feet under. Now. How about you?” The smoker thought about it for a long moment, then nodded heartily. “Fuck it.” “Hell yeah. Are you sure?” “Yeah. Let’s do this.” “Awesome. Ready?” The smoker nodded. They pounded their fists in their palms three times and then shot. They tied twice again, both rocks and then both scissors, before the proposed-to finally won with her rock crushing the smoker’s scissors, sealing their suicide pact. There was a tearful moment of recognition that this was the end of their lives, but they decided to hurry up and carry it out before they changed their minds again, so the proposed-to ran back into the bar and came back with a steak knife from the kitchen, and they stabbed each other repeatedly, passing it back and forth, until they both fell over as the nurse in the window pounded on the glass in horror.
“Oh my God!” he shouted, turning around to see if anyone else had seen what he’d just seen, but all the other patrons were drinking and watching sports on the screens above the bar, cheering for their teams and talking shit about the opposing teams.
14
WATCHING THEIR BODIES DYE THE moonlit sidewalk the color of blood, the nurse gravely fathomed the macabre consequences of his boneheaded meddling. They were going to break up already, but, God, not like this. If only I hadn’t… oh God what unspeakable chain reaction did I initiate… His face withered and he bit his tongue and put his cheeks in his hands and wept. He pounded his forehead against the glass, rattling it, and causing a frat boy eating a buffalo wing to glare at him. He clawed the grimy wood of the window sill. Because he was a nurse, he knew it was too late for him to do anything, but out of posterity he dialed 911 anyway. Behind the dead bodies, the lamplit and now also moonlit school bus shined with double menace. While the phone rang, the nurse vaguely recalled that a bus of a similar description had hit the soldier who the surgeon he’d once been in love with had tried to save while breaking up with him, and later a similar bus had hit the surgeon. Interrupting this thought, the 911 operator inquired as to the nature of his emergency. The nurse replied breathlessly that he’d just watched two people stab themselves outside the… and he was about to name the bar when the smoker got up off the sidewalk. The nurse almost dropped the phone. The smoker was standing, wiping herself off. He watched then as she helped the proposed-to get up too. Both then looked at him through the window, then at each other, and then walked into the bar, squeezing blood out of the fronts of their shirts.
“Hello??” the 911 operator asked. “Where was the stabbing? Hello, sir?”
The couple stood before the dumbfounded nurse, and the proposed-to held up a tube of fake blood. The smoker held up the steak knife, and she pushed it into her hand. The blade vanished into the handle with a springing sound. It was a trick knife.
“Nevermind,” the nurse said quietly to the operator. “False alarm.”
The smoker raised an eyebrow, then stabbed the nurse in the crotch with the fake blade. He jumped back on instinct, but his jeans just pushed the retractable blade back up into the handle, and the two women laughed. Then the smoker explained that that whole scene was a piece of performance art designed to teach him not to meddle in the breakups of others. The proposed-to stepped forward, adding, “When you try to stop a breakup, you may end up making it worse. You may cause a thousand breakups, or a double suicide.” “We’re still breaking up,” the smoker added, “but hopefully you’ve gained a deeper appreciation of the danger of butting into total strangers’ dramas.” The nurse’s tears were dry by this point. He asked stutteringly how they’d planned the whole thing. They explained that back at the bar they’d passed notes on cocktail napkins while he waxed obnoxious about how everyone should stay together. “Any more questions?” the smoker asked. The nurse shook his head. “Good,” the proposed-to said. “Now watch this.”
She turned to the smoker and said, “I break up with you.” The smoker bowed and said, “And I with you.” Then after a perfunctory hug they walked out of the bar through different exits. The nurse stood there in stunned silence staring at his own empty hands. The bartender shouted at him, “Hey, pal! You want another?” The nurse nodded and went back to his original barstool.
He wished the women hadn’t left so he could buy them a drink to thank them for the lengths they’d gone to to help him understand something they’d had no responsibility to teach him, but which he otherwise might never have learned about love, and also to apologize for interposing himself into their private concerns. He vowed to show them his appreciation if he ever saw them again, but after a few more drinks, he forgot this vow. He spent the rest of the night wondering if he was truly over the surgeon, or, if he wasn’t, when he would be. The drunker he got, the more over the surgeon he believed he was. Then he got so drunk that he started watching the sports on the screens and getting really into it. It was actually quite beautiful, he thought. The athleticism, the drama, the pageantry! The blistering humanity. The mysticism of fandom. It all rather pleasantly overwhelmed him. He spent $80 that night on drinks and appetizers and didn’t even remember coming home.
13-10
TWO PEOPLE UNRELATED TO ANYONE in the preceding narratives think they’re in love, but they are also in relationships with other people, so in order to be together, they break up with their original partners. At first they experience bliss together, but then learn that being together is actually worse than being with who they used to be with, and they agree to try to get their exes back.
The exes, ironically, have started dating too, and they seem quite happy, so the new, unhappy couple who initiated the original breakups decides to remain together to antagonize their exes, going out as much as possible wherever their exes are likeliest to be, and at those places, faking like they’re having a blast, hoping to sew in their exes’ relationship seeds of envy and, ultimately, make the exes miss their former partners, too.
Unfortunately, they never see their exes at any of their old haunts. The scheming couple then realizes that their old partners are so content that they only spend time at home. So, with the apartment keys they each still have, they break into their respective exes’ apartments. The first one is empty, so they go to the other, where they burst in on their old partners having sex. The malcontent couple begs for their old relationships back. The seemingly happy couple doesn’t stop having sex, but does say that they would consider getting back together with their old partners, because although their sex lives have improved, their relationship is dissatisfying in other ways. In fact, what the couple still having sex misses about their respective ex-partners is everything but the sex. But, the sex-having couple adds, if the other couple wants their old relationships back, they’ll have to break up first, right there, right then, and they have only five seconds to do so. The more trusting member of the malcontent couple shrugs and says, “Okay, let’s break up.” The other one, however, looks skeptical. “What if we break up, and then they don’t? Then we’ll
be single and won’t have our old relationships back.” “We’ll just get back together,” the trusting one says.
“Oh no,” interjects a member of the couple still having sex. “Breaking up is a mind-fuck. We’re not going through that unless you guys are breaking up for real. If you can’t do it right now, you’re not committed to the breakup.” “Yeah,” says the other member of the couple having sex. “But how do we know you’ll honor your end of the bargain?” asks the skeptical member of the malcontent couple. “We don’t,” says the more trusting one in a hushed tone. “Exactly,” says one of the ones having sex. “Maybe you should have thought about this before breaking up with us.” “Fuck you!” says the skeptical member of the malcontent couple, “this is exactly the kind of hardball negotiating I broke up with you for.” “Well, then, why do you want me back?” answers the one who had been called a hardball negotiator. “Because… because…,” the skeptical one looks at the more trusting one for support, then at the hardball negotiator, “Because you’re a beautiful person? I don’t know. Other than hardball negotiating all the time, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, and we click. I didn’t know that before. When we’re together, yeah, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, but it works. It’s like a good car. It gets you from A to B. And yeah, sometimes you want a new car. Everybody does. I want a new car all the time. Especially when I was driving you. But actually, shopping for a new car sucks, and half the new cars today break down as soon as you drive them off the lot, but you never broke down, as long as I did basic maintenance. I just didn’t know how valuable that was until now.” The conclusion of the speech is met with silence. The skeptical person looks around, frightened, then shatters the awkwardness by adding, “I love you! Is that so stupid! Is it so crazy to love someone and not realize how much until you break up? Is that a fucking crime in this country?”
