The Dictionary of Failed Relationships

by Meredith Broussard

  There were photographs of motion in this museum. A man jumping over a wheelbarrow. A horse jumping over a dog.

  I need a beer, Tim said.

  We ordered beer and churros in the garden behind the brick museum. What do you think this place used to be? he asked, dipping his churro into his beer. A factory?

  It was a motion factory, I said. This is where quickness was isolated. When quickness was first developed, no one thought it would catch on. The brains behind the operation, Señor Somebody, became a miserable pauper. His wife left him post-haste, using his own invention. His children changed their surnames to Nafta, which is Spanish slang for “inertia.”

  That’s a sad story, Tim said, burping. Wanna fuck?

  We fucked and then we went to the mountains. But Tim being Tim, he wasn’t much of one for roads.

  This isn’t such a good idea, I said. We will be stranded and we’ll hear nothing but wind. We’ll be stalked by wolverines, or worse, I’ll learn that you’re a coward when it comes to confronting the more feral animals.

  Tim didn’t hear me. Besides, it’s a rental, he said. The dirt roads had canyons in them. Our little white car was called a Malabar, but Tim renamed it the Malcontent because it had no-wheel drive and three pissy cylinders. The little tires dropped into the canyons. The axles made shivery, snapping noises. We were stuck.

  I took the wheel while Tim rocked against the Malcontent’s dusty white bottom, his aviator sunglasses slipping down over his goatee.

  Tim dislodged us and the road improved. We were making good time now, two or three kilometers an hour. We crept through a tiny town. Chickens butt-waggled away from us, chagrined. A woman stood on her porch in a dress and apron, circa 1863. Her husband leaned on a hoe, dumbfounded. They’re so Mexican Gothic, I said. Tim got mad. He got mad when people made references to things they’d only encountered through crappy third-hand culture. Like Proust’s fucking madeleine, he’d gripe. People are always talking about Proust’s madeleine, but how many of them have actually read Proust? A reference to a reference to a reference to a reference. So, he said, who painted American Gothic, do you even know?

  It wasn’t Samuel D. Clemens, I said. It wasn’t Alice B. Toklas.

  Samuel P. Clemens, he said. He flipped down his sunglasses and decided to forgive me, because the Mexican Goths were watching us fight and he didn’t want to give good-looking Americans a bad name. Imagine waking up and seeing us, said Tim. Imagine seeing two blond people in a white car in the middle of the mountains. He honked and waved at the Goths. We’re a dream, he said, patting my jeans. We’re a first-world hallucination brought to you by Malcontent.

  Soon it was time for lunch.

  We had cheese, we had tomatoes, we had bread, we had meat. I insisted that it was very, very taboo to make a sandwich. We sat on the dusty hood with our parts spread out on plastic bags. It was acceptable, I said, to put two kinds of food in your mouth at once, but never three. Two foods was a combination, three was a sandwich.

  Huh, said Tim, piling up his bread.

  So what’s the difference between a pederast and a pedophile? I asked. I was eating, at that moment, tomato and cheese.

  I think I love you, he said.

  You’re just saying that because you don’t know the answer. You’ll say anything to keep appearing smart. Even in the wilderness.

  He put a piece of bread and meat in his mouth. We’re sitting on the hood of Malcontent in the Whatever Mountains and I said I think I love you, said Tim. And don’t say zapata or I’ll leave you here without a peso.

  That would be very rude, I said. He kissed me and we were four foods now, we were in serious violation of something. This will come back to haunt us, I said. At the Superstition campground, we will be haunted by this.

  But back to your original question, Tim said, stroking his goatee for effect. One only thinks about doing, while the other does.

  All in all, we spent four days in Mexico. We rode donkeys at one point, up and down gravel slides. Neither of us had health insurance. We slept in somebody’s front yard and ate some very inspiring pork tacos. I’m making it sound like our business trip was all such fun, but really there was so much loneliness at work. There was so much anxiety at work, all those seventies songs in my system, driving me to ruinous thoughts. I told Tim: I am anxious in the mountains, I am anxious out of the sight of humanity. I longed for a monolith, a room seething with roaches. I didn’t want to blame him, because we were in love apparently, so I blamed it on the mountains. I cursed them out, Zapata, Zapata, Zapata. Yet, somewhere in these mountains, I took the best photograph of my adult life. It was a picture of Tim’s arm. We found an abandoned house, all decrepit white plaster and gray porch boards. Decrepit white is an oxymoron, Tim said, a not-uninteresting one. He sat in front of the decrepit white wall and raised his arm over his face. I knew without ever needing to develop the film that this was the best photograph of my adult life, because if I am attuned to pretend ruin, I am also attuned to my modest moments of honest clairvoyance. This photo would prove that there was something desperately hopeful being expressed through my disaster narratives. It would prove that I was not an adult who could tour the world in a white Malcontent, with a man who raised his arm to protect himself from the imaginary menaces I might toss his way.

  We drove back over the border.

  I started to feel better, instantly, even though Nuevo Laredo and plain old Laredo proved to be big bright splashes of humanity that burned up quickly as we drove north. We were listening to Border Oldies, or maybe we were discussing the oxymoronic possibilities of white malcontent, but either way, we somehow forgot that we’d planned to get gas in plain old Laredo, and it was now almost midnight, and we were far away from humanity.

  We passed a sign that said NEXT GAS—15 DAYS, 47 NIGHTS.

  This confused me. We do not measure distances in days and nights, not in America, I said. Those are miles, dumbass, Tim said testily, but somehow I couldn’t see it. We were forty-seven nights away from gas.

  This was not good. We did not have forty-seven nights’ worth of gas. Tim’s sunglasses were still pushed up into his hair, he still wore the same secondhand guayabera, and it didn’t even smell, because he was superior in that way, a self-cleaning mammal. He was not bothered by the sign. For a man who’d barely had a break in life, he was unhealthily optimistic, especially when the odds were worse than terrible.

  What’s the plan? I asked. If I’d been a smoker, I would have shakily lit one up. Cliché, cliché, cliché. We cannot even be anxious in an original way.

  A plan, why must you always have a plan? Tim looked at me, fake smoking like a little old lady. Think of the worst thing that can happen, and then you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by the outcome. That’s the plan.

  This was mean. This was just downright mean.

  I’m coincidentally an expert on worst-case scenarios, I told him, puffing away.

  Great, he said. Go for it.

  Okay, I said. We’ve run out of gas.

  Obviously.

  We have to pitch our tent. I don’t want to go into the woods because of the scorpion nests, so we pitch our tent on the shoulder. Fortunately, nobody’s driving at this time of night. But then we see headlights. A semi. Bringing Einstein air fresheners over the border, tinged with PCP that will kill many adults in America and children in Mexico. We see the lights for miles before they reach us. We hold on to each other as it passes. It’s like a tornado. Our car keys and eyeglasses and money are blown away. We are nobody now; we are without a vision for the immediate future.

  Tim held up a finger. But why don’t you jump out and flag the truck down? he asked.

  Good question. Because my mother was raped by a trucker. There’s no love lost between my family and truckers.

  Your mother was not raped by a trucker. Your mother gives voice lessons in Pacific Palisades.

  This is a worst-case scenario, I reminded him. The back story is fair game.

 
Tim grumbled. He disagreed about the back story, but let me continue.

  So. We move our tent into the woods. We sleep fitfully until the scorpions start oozing through the seams like some kind of creepy jelly. You have to cut the roof of the tent with your knife to get us out. We escape farther into the woods. I am—it goes without saying—apoplectic with fear. My brother, I’ve never told you this, was killed in an Alabama backwoods fry-up by a band of white-trash cannibals. Soon we find a hunting cabin. The door’s locked, but I convince you to break a window. There’s a decent bed and even a few cans of warm beer. We drink the beer and sleep pretty decently until we hear the ominous strumming of . . .

  Not banjos.

  I paused. Do I detect a slight prejudice against banjos?

  It would just be a little . . .

  I held my “cigarette” high; I wanted to drive it into his sunburned forearm. Don’t say clichéd, I said.

  Well?

  Basic human foreboding toward stringed instruments is not clichéd! It is basic!

  Tim ignored me.

  Is the human condition clichéd to you? I asked. Is plain old terror and despondency and strife just a stupid . . . hey, there’s an exit.

  Tim took the exit without comment. At first, the exit seemed deeply unpromising. Thickety, overgrown porches and black storefronts. I heard banjos—oh Christ I did. Then we saw a sign. I could not believe it. We were in a town called Zapata.

  Zapata, I said, with a kind of fearful wonder.

  There wasn’t a single sign of humanity until we turned a corner. Then we saw all the humanity Zapata had to offer, or rather humanity’s trucks, parked in the lot of the most shackity shack imaginable, with neon and beer signs and . . . banjo noises.

  I did not say Ha! but I thought it. Ha! Ha! Take that, you swashbuckling crusader against cliché! Sometimes a cliché is a cliché because it is goddamned, goddamned true!

  Tim parked the car. He didn’t comment on the banjos. He said, Somebody in there’s bound to have a gas tank. The door opened and shut behind him. Louder music, then quieter music. The sign over the door said JETHRO’S, and I did not think, huh, or wow, or anything. I thought, I am trapped here, I am trapped in this recursive shitty joke of a life.

  I waited outside, leaning against the Malcontent. It stank of gas, like out-of-gas cars do. Tim emerged five minutes later behind a man. Honey, Tim said. He had a Texas drawl, all of a sudden. Honey, this here’s Bobcat.

  I shook Bobcat’s hand. Give it to Bobcat and me. I said, We sure done do appreciate your doing this, Mr. Bobcat. Tim glared at me, but Bobcat didn’t blink a whisker. He nabbed his gas can and handed it to Tim. Five gallons in there, he said, go ahead and take it all. If I wasn’t mistaken, Mr. Bobcat spoke with something like a lockjaw. Rabies, maybe. Or just another stranger to true American wildness, slumming in the outback like us.

  Bobcat went back inside (I love this song, he said), leaving us to fill our tank. Tim unscrewed the gas cap and sank the nozzle in deep. He looked up at the stars and wondered to me, How far to the next gas station?

  Forty-seven nights, I said.

  Probably more like thirty. We are in Zapata, after all.

  I watched as he weighed the gas can carefully. He held it up to the light from the neon signs to see how much gas was left.

  I figure half will do us, he said, replacing the can in Bobcat’s truck.

  Don’t be an ass, I said. Take all five gallons. Bobcat said you could.

  Naw, he said. I figure we can make it on two and a half. He actually said figger.

  Tim, I said. Please. Just take all five gallons. I’ll pay for it.

  Tim put his sunglasses on. The light from the bar reflected off them. He looked like an insect to me, like some kind of shiny insect. What’s the matter, honey, Tim said, don’t you trust your daddy?

  I . . . that’s not the point, I said.

  What is the point then, little flapjack? he asked. What is the plan? The plan? The point?

  I stared at him. And stared. I would not take responsibility for this meanness. He’d poked it out of me.

  The point is that you’re no cowboy, I said. The point is that you’re just an all-but-dissertation grad student who spent most of last Tuesday looking for a wad of cheesecloth for an herb sachet.

  That hurts, he said. Get in the car.

  But . . .

  Get in the car, he said.

  I stared at my hands. They were very white and parsnippylooking in Jethro’s floodlights, flexing and unflexing. One only thinks about doing while the other does.

  Not until you put the rest of Bobcat’s gas in our tank, I said.

  What are you so worried about?

  It’s not about worry, I lied. It’s about exhaustion.

  Why are you so tired, Scheherazade?

  I’m tired of being scared in order to be fetching, I said.

  Tim smiled. This was all a big joke to him.

  Lucky for you, there’s only forty-seven nights’ worth of talking you have to do, he said.

  We faced off silently over the hood of the car as the banjos inside Jethro’s achieved a conveniently tense peak. I wanted to impose on him my notions of pure affection, but this was not a language he could understand. He wasn’t a bad man. He was just ungenerous in a very small, hardly noticeable way.

  I got in the car. Soon we were far away from Zapata, we were on the highway again, and Tim whistled the banjo tune while eyeing the gas gauge like he’d put money on it. I sat shotgun and fake chain-smoked, taking periodic glimpses of his profile. It begged for disaster. Driving in the dark, I thought, our front left tire would hit a long metal pipe that had fallen off a semi driving north from Laredo. The pipe would kick up over the hood of the car, numchuck fast, straighten itself out, and harpoon through the windshield, aiming straight for Tim’s left eye. I heard the screech of metal, the crack of glass. I could see the pipe’s end, hovering right before Tim’s face, twanging like a tuning fork. It hung there. It hung there. But I could not drive the pipe through his skull, the pipe noodled up, it dissipated into the air like a gray coil of smoke. I summoned the pipe again and again. I started to panic until something bleaker and more terrifying occurred to me, it was so terrifying that it cauterized every fear-firing synapse and made me deathly calm, as the gas needle fibrillated below empty and we still had more than twelve nights to go. The moment you cannot kill a person, what does that say about love?

  BERNICED

  By Eliza Minot

  Ber·niced br-’nsd adverb [origin unknown]: When something gets trampled, it gets Berniced. See also: RAILROADED, OVERWHELMED, UNDERTIPPED, FREAK MAGNET.

  Sometimes, I just, like, look out the window? And watch the cars going by? It’s so totally boring when it’s slow at the restaurant, but it can also be a relief when you’re just not in the mood. Some of the other waitresses? They do crossword puzzles and stuff? Or read the paper or magazines? The managers don’t like that, though, because then it looks like we’re just hanging around. So when customers come in, they’re like, excuse me, are we, like, bothering you guys? When it’s slow, I usually stand by the salad bar and just look out the big, long windows. I end up watching people pass on the sidewalk. I end up looking out at them and wondering things like, could I like that man? Could I like that woman? Am I like these people? What does he do? Where is she going? Mostly, everyone seems really busy and hurrying someplace. Me, after work I usually don’t hurry anywhere. I go to the mall, to, like, Strawberries, and check out the clothes or buy some earrings, or maybe go to Coconuts and listen to CDs on the headphones.

  Some brunches, though, are so busy. Like on Sundays. There’s, like, no time to pee it’s so so busy. It’s not, like, families, really, because this part of the city’s not, like, family? It’s couples mostly, groups of friends, that kind of thing. I end up waiting on a lot of couples because usually my station’s station number three? Which is mostly t
he two-tops? So it ends up being couples. I walk right up to their tables and say, you guys ready? Some of them are really nice! Some of them are really funny! Sometimes, while they have their eggs and stuff, they don’t say anything to each other? But it’s not like they’re not talking because they don’t have anything to say. They just look like, well, there’s no hurry. Like they’ve got all day to talk, or maybe, for all I know, a whole lifetime, if they’re married.

  Which brings me to Tad. Yeah, right, like we’re married! But still it’s, like, weird? I don’t know what happened? I mean it’s weird! He just— poof!—disappeared! Which is totally fine and everything because he was basically a big jerk. But still it’s, like, so crazy, right? Okay? But. So. We were down in the park? We went down there? It was way too cold to be out there, but pretty sort of because the sky was this total blue and there was snow everywhere from the storm, so it was totally bright. It was too cold, though. I wasn’t dressed warmly enough. My boots totally suck! But anyhow, we were going to see if we could walk across the river to the other side? That’s how cold it was? Like the river should be frozen? Like everything was frozen? People on the street were, like, running to where they had to go. They were all bundled up except for, like, the top of their nose and their eyes! My nostrils did that thing where they clog together. Where they squinch up and stick? Anyway, when we got down to the park, the river wasn’t that frozen. It was actually not frozen at all out in the middle. It was, like . . . regular water. Like a big, flat, dark spot out there in the middle. The sides of it were all icy, though. With, like, slushy stuff around the water part?

  We were sitting on a bench? We were sitting there for a while, and there was nobody anywhere. A big dog came around, though, and was jumping in the snow. Dogs, they, like, attack snow! They’re so funny! They, like, pounce like big tigers or something and then snuffle up their noses in it and go nuts wagging their tails! Crazy dogs!

  There’s this dog at the restaurant? It belongs to this guy who’s a regular? A pretty new regular, like I guess he just moved in around the corner or something. I don’t know. But he’s allowed to bring him in? The dog? Since he comes in so much, and plus the dog’s kind of small? His name’s Boob. The dog’s. Can you believe that? He’s this little dog. Not too little. He’s kind of scruffy and dirty but cute still since he’s just old and has those cute eyebrow things that poke out over some dogs’ eyes. Like Muppet hair? Those hairs that float around wavy, like tiny feathers? They’re so cute!