Miserable Love Stories

by Alex Bernstein

  Traveling alone with me, however, would be unbearable for Elle. So, Chloe would come along as our chaperone. I would drive the two of them across the country, then shortly after arriving in LA, they’d catch a flight back to New York.

  That was the new plan.

  So, I said “fine.” A quick trip west and then a clean break. What could go wrong?

  The first day was tense and dull but straightforward. We had quickly reviewed the map and stops along the way and I asked if there was anywhere in particular that they wanted to go.

  “We’ll let you know,” said Chloe, tersely.

  They had made it clear to me: this was not a social trip. I was their driver and my job was to keep to myself and safely get them across the country. Period. I sat alone up front, driving, while they sat together in the back. They read books and magazines, listened to their Walkmans, stared out the windows. Initially, they hardly even spoke to each other, much less to me. I knew better than to engage them and listened to the radio—tuned to play only in the front of the car—and kept my eyes on the road.

  On the first afternoon, we stopped briefly at a rest area for gas and lunch. When I got my food and came over to sit with them, they both quickly got up and moved to a different table.

  By the end of our long first day, we finally arrived at a motel.

  “Rooms?” said the manager.

  “Two,” said Chloe.

  “Hold on a sec,” I said, taking them aside. “We don’t have enough money for two rooms every night.”

  We had almost no money. At best maybe $600 between the three of us for gas, food, and motel rooms for the week and that was it. We all had had shit jobs back in New York. Chloe worked at a non-profit and made even less than I did at my data entry jobs. For myself, I had saved up exactly enough money just to get to LA and Ozzie’s.

  “That’s not our problem,” said Chloe.

  “Do the rooms have two beds?” I asked the manager.

  “Sure.”

  “What kind?”

  “Queens.”

  “Perfect.”

  So, we got a single room with two queens. We brought our luggage inside and settled in.

  After about an hour, Chloe said to me, “could you get us some ice?”

  I went to get ice. When I got back, the door was locked. And in front of it was a blanket, pillow, and my car keys.

  “Elle! Chloe!” I banged on the door. “This isn’t funny! Elle!”

  They ignored me. Other guests peered out of their windows at me—who the hell is doing all this yelling?

  I went back to the manager’s office, but it was locked, with a sign reading: “Hours of operation—8a–10p. Have a nice day!”

  So, I slept in the backseat of my car for the first night of our trip.

  And the second night.

  And the third night.

  By night three, I had become resigned to sleeping in the car. On night three, no one pulled any tricks on me or locked me out, I simply walked into the motel room, grabbed a blanket and pillow, and got into my car. It was sad and uncomfortable, but I had come to appreciate the silence and alone-time. When rumbling, honking trucks weren’t pulling in and out—I dozed fractiously.

  By day four, intensely sleep-deprived, I started falling asleep at the wheel, and weaved in and out of traffic. Had I been with true loved ones, I would’ve asked for help. But exhaustion, depression, and disassociation had given me tunnel vision, and I kind of just didn’t care anymore.

  “Milo! Milo!” came the super loud screaming from the back seat. “Jesus Christ! Pull the fuck over!”

  Half brain-dead, I pulled onto the shoulder and slumped over. I faintly heard them get out of the back of the car, open my door, haul me out of the front seat, dump me into the backseat, and then drive off. The bumps and the rattling weren’t great on my stomach, but the heat and vibrations of the moving car lulled me.

  Several hours later.

  “Milo? We’re here,” said someone.

  “Where’s here?” I rasped, shielding my eyes from the brilliant, hot sun. I heard them get out of the car. We were in some giant, empty field, shaded by a massive billboard with a cartoon picture of an immense redneck trucker on it with a gigantic Rambo-like rifle in his hands. Deep in the distance was the sound of explosions.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “We’re here to shoot guns,” said Elle.

  They left and I stayed in the car for another hour or so, falling in and out of sleep.

  CRACK! CRACK CRACK! went the abrupt discharge of gunfire.

  I found myself dreaming that I was accompanying Martin Sheen in his quest for Captain Kurtz in Apocalypse Now—which, in a way, seemed more relaxing than this trip.

  CRACK! CRACK!

  and then

  AKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAK!

  as if someone had discovered automatic weapons.

  Suddenly I urgently had to go to the bathroom. I got the back car door open, stumbled out of the car and immediately threw up. After collecting myself, I staggered over to a large, dirt-colored concrete warehouse with a gigantic sign BIG ED’S AMMO SHACK!

  Inside were more guns, knives, rifles, hanging canoes, stuffed bears, elk, bison, and every-everything camouflage than I’d ever seen in my life. Four or five huge, stocky guys with immense beards and flannel shirts with the sleeves poorly ripped off wandered around helping customers. One impressively tough-looking guy with a mullet and half a dozen earrings in his left ear presented a large handgun to Chloe and Elle. Elle looked bored, but Chloe was in seventh heaven. The guy, who looked like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be a farmer or a pirate, flirted energetically with Chloe and showed her how to aim the gun.

  “Are we almost done here?” I asked as passive-aggressively as I could muster.

  “I may buy a gun,” said Chloe, enthusiastically.

  “Don’t you need a license for that?”

  “Do it all right here,” said the Farmer-Pirate.

  I looked at the price-tag stickered to the gun. It was in the thousands.

  “I think you need the dollar-store version, Chloe,” I said.

  “Do total financing right here,” said the Pirate-Farmer.

  I leaned towards Elle.

  “Can we please just get out of here?” I asked.

  “Not till after the party,” said Chloe, smugly.

  “Heathcliff’s brother is having a party, a couple miles down the road,” said Elle.

  “Heathcliff?” I said, looking at the Farmer-Pirate.

  Elle nodded.

  “Big Ed’s his brother.”

  I noticed a giant sign hanging from the ceiling that said, BIG ED’S AMMO SHACK—BIGGEST AND BEST OUTDOOR SUPPLY OUTLET IN ABILENE!

  Abilene?

  “Where exactly are we?” I asked Elle.

  “We’re in Hawley, just outside of Abilene,” said Elle.

  “We’re still in Texas,” Chloe grinned at me, evilly.

  “We’re supposed to be in New Mexico,” I said. “We needed to be in New Mexico today. That was the program.”

  “New Mexico don’t have no place like Big Ed’s,” said Heathcliff.

  “We don’t need an ammo shack,” I said. “We need to be in Albuquerque.”

  I headed towards the exit, a man with a goal, but heard a familiar jangling sound. I turned and saw Chloe dangling my car keys.

  “After the party,” she said.

  Big Ed’s party was a blowout, crowded with bikers, hellraisers, and a mob of folks who looked like extras from Roadhouse. Both Chloe and Elle danced with hirsute, oversized locals, and I imagined some scenario where I was expected to bravely go up against one of these guys and then get my ass kicked all over the lawn. But hell, if they wanted to dance or anything with anyone there, what business was it of mine? Besides, I’d gotten a glimpse of Elle and she looked miserable. Eventually, I just went back to the car and recuperated.

  By 10 p.m., hungry, I made my way into the house’s kitchen and fou
nd a broad-shouldered woman basting a large roast chicken. She smiled at me with perhaps the most normal, friendliest smile I’d seen in a week.

  “Could I—could I use your phone, please?” I asked.

  “‘Course,” she said.

  “It’s a call to Los Angeles. So, I don’t know if—”

  I reached into my pocket for some loose cash to offer her.

  “Please,” she said. “It’s fine.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks so much.”

  A minute later, I had Ozzie on the phone.

  “We’re going to be a day or so late,” I said. “No—we took a—it’s a long story. I’m in Hawley, Texas. We’re fine. Chloe and Elle are both here. It’s—yeah. Elle and I—we broke up, Ozzie. Yeah. They just came for the trip. Then they’re flying back east after a couple days. Yeah. Thanks. I’ll call when I get in. Thanks. I appreciate it, Oz. Thank you. Talk to you.”

  I hung up.

  “Broke up with the one out there with Heath?” asked the woman, as she basted the chicken.

  “No, no—I—the other one.”

  “Oh,” said the woman. “Other one seems sweet.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She is.”

  “Want some chicken?” asked the woman.

  “Yes, please. Thanks.”

  She cut off a few pieces and put them on a plate in front of me. At that moment, I ate the best chicken I’d ever tasted in my life. She sat with me and watched me eat.

  “They makin’ your life hell on this trip?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I probably deserve it.”

  “Probably,” she said. “Sounds temporary at any rate.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I’m Milo, by the way.”

  “Nancy,” she said, wiping her hand off with a towel and then shaking mine.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “So, you’re—”

  “Heathcliff’s wife,” said Nancy.

  “Ah,” I said.

  Then Elle came into the kitchen.

  “Is there any more food?” she asked.

  Nancy set her up with a plate and then left the room. Elle ate, and then looked at me, wide-eyed.

  “This is really good,” she said.

  “It’s like the best chicken I’ve ever had in my life,” I said.

  “I’m sorry about Chloe,” said Elle. “This whole trip was a mistake.”

  “No, no, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I put you in this position. I just—I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It’s okay,” said Elle, annoyed, picking at her food.

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “I know I fucked up your whole life, Elle. I didn’t mean to. I just . . . I realized that I have no idea what’s going to happen out there—I don’t know anybody but Ozzie. And you know how unreliable he is. I don’t know what this job’s going to be, but it’s probably going to be pretty shitty and pay terribly.”

  “I know,” said Elle.

  “It’s hard enough that I decided to make my own life super shitty. And I realized I was about to make your life super-shitty, too.”

  “So, you dumped me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t thinking of it like that—I was thinking that I was freeing you.”

  “I didn’t asked to be freed,” she said. “I chose to go with you. My eyes were wide open.”

  “Well, anyway, I’m sorry.”

  “You should be.”

  “It’s probably going to suck in LA, Elle.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, Milo. And anyway—it is going to suck in LA. More than you think.”

  I looked at her, strangely.

  “Ozzie doesn’t have a job waiting for you,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He doesn’t have a job for you. He told me that the morning we left. He told me when he first heard that we’d broken up.”

  “I didn’t know you talked to him.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a fucking asshole.”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re not bullshitting me?”

  I stared at her, stunned.

  “Son-of-a-bitch. I just got off the phone with him. I told him we were running late, and he said don’t worry about it. What an unbelievable asshole.”

  “Yeah. We’re running late to nothing.”

  “Fuck. And—Chloe knows all this, too.”

  “Sure. She loves that you didn’t know. That you thought you were heading to a big job. It was supposed to be a huge joke on you.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. She wanted me not to tell you.”

  She stared at her stripped off chicken bones.

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  She sighed, and I knew she was thinking, it doesn’t even matter anymore.

  After that night, the trip became . . . less eventful. Less stressful. Chloe was less hostile to me and the two of them began speaking to me, occasionally. They still stayed in the back of the car, but now they were open to playing road trip games—Twenty Questions, naming countries that started and ended with consecutive letters, travel bingo, and so on. On the fifth night, when I grabbed my blanket and pillow from the motel room and got in the car, I soon heard the two of them tapping on the glass, waking me to come inside and sleep in the unoccupied bed. I slept ten hours that night—the longest, deepest sleep I’d had in weeks.

  We had short, tolerable visits to the Grand Canyon and Vegas. Eventually, we got to Los Angeles. We met up with Ozzie for an awkward half hour at a diner. And by the time we met him, he knew I knew he was full of shit about all of our plans together.

  So.

  After all of this, I ended up staying in LA for three years. I only saw Ozzie twice after that first day, both times by accident. After that first awkward half hour, our friendship was essentially over.

  It was worse than that, actually. About seven months later, I heard an uglier truth—that Ozzie had initially hoped to coerce both Elle and I to stay in LA in hopes that she would dump me, whereupon he would “swoop in on her.” Ozzie had always had a thing for Elle.

  I had cobbled this story about Ozzie’s intentions from reports from three different friends, and, in retrospect, it didn’t seem so unbelievable.

  I lived on various people’s couches in Los Angeles for about two-and-a-half months total before I found steady production assistant work and a place I could afford. Generally, life there was about as spirit-crushing as I’d imagined it would be. But I grit my teeth and got the production and crew experience that I had so desperately wanted, and by the time I made my way back to New York, I had a fairly usable resume.

  Surprisingly, Chloe, Elle, and I remained together for the rest of their few days in Los Angeles. We decamped at Chloe’s dementia-ridden grandfather Nestor’s apartment in San Marino. He was in his late eighties and had people who came in to assist him twice a day. He didn’t quite recognize Chloe, but he seemed to enjoy having the company. Chloe and Elle stayed in his extra room, while I curled up on an open area of the carpet in the living room near his old piano. (The couch was a possibility, but it was inch deep in cat hair. Did I mention he had cats? He had six cats.)

  For those last few days, the three of us were very touristy. We went to the Hollywood sign and Venice Beach and Disneyland. Disneyland was our big final destination and the one time on that trip that we all actually laughed together.

  By the time we got to the entrance of the happiest place on earth, we had all lost tremendous weight, and were emotionally and physically drained. We each looked like if someone just slightly grazed us, we would collapse into ourselves.

  As we stood tiredly looking at the giant, happy Mickey Mouse topiary clock carved into the front entranceway, Chloe started laughing manically, uncontrollably.

  “We fuckin’ made it to Disneyland!” she said.

  “We fuckin’ made it to Disneyland,” said Elle.

  “We fuckin’ made it
to Disneyland,” I agreed.

  Exactly then, the tiniest, most inoffensively dressed, most touristy woman I’d ever seen, in tiny pink pastel shorts, and with deep blue varicose veins, came over and said, sweetly, “would you like me to take y’all’s picture?”

  And the three of us burst out laughing.

  “That would be fuckin’ brilliant,” said Chloe, handing her camera to the woman.

  The woman generously took our picture.

  I finally saw that picture some ten years later at a college reunion. Elle’s husband was there, as was Chloe’s partner. We drank and didn’t hate each other. Chloe pulled out that picture and now, you almost wouldn’t recognize us. There we were, the three of us at Disneyland—thin, dirty, ratty—and laughing hysterically, like we were truly enjoying each other’s company and having the time of our lives.

  Sexpo 2041

  THE YEAR 2041. A FUTURISTIC SUBURBAN LIVING ROOM, very space-agey, but domestic. DON, looking approximately mid-fifties, rushes around packing things into compact, futuristic suitcases. He swipes through images on a tablet.

  DON: Peg?! Peggy! The shuttle’s gonna be here any minute, hon’!

  He feels a buzzing in his pocket, checks a miniature phone device.

  DON: (into the phone) Hello? Yes? They’ll be waiting at the hotel? Great! Thank you so much! (calling offstage) Honey! Come on!

  He examines himself in the phone, preens.

  DON: Don-baby, you’re lookin’ very very good for a man your age!

  He makes several swipes on his tablet and taps a schedule. PEG—looking approximately mid-fifties—enters. She sits on the couch.

  DON: Hey, hon—the shuttle’s gonna be here any minute. Y’know, when you asked me to plan our events, I thought I was going to hate it. But I gotta tell you, I am surprisingly great at this! I just got us into Synchronized Sex, the Antigrav Orgy on Thursday, and—and!—I actually got us into the Sexual Congress! With six other states! Not bad!