The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories

by Simon Rich

  “I don’t get it, though,” he said. “Why’d you say she was right about everything?”

  The doctor let out a hoarse laugh.

  “To get her to leave the room!”

  Max laughed along with him.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Max asked. “Just break up with her?”

  “That’s what I would do,” Dr. Motley said. “But I’m not big into girlfriends. I’ve been a ‘whores’ guy since college. No fuss, no muss, you know?”

  Max finished his drink and sighed.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I don’t want to lose her. I mean, I know things have been hard lately… but I still love her.”

  Dr. Motley took a business card out of his pocket.

  “In that case,” he said, “there’s only one solution.”

  Max took the card and squinted at the text.

  Girlfriend Repair Shop

  35 W 45th Street

  Open Late

  “Ask for Han,” Dr. Motley said. “He knows his stuff.”

  Max stared into the doctor’s eyes.

  “Is this a joke?”

  The therapist laughed.

  “No, it’s not a joke.”

  He gestured grandly at his office.

  “This is.”

  “I’m so glad we met with him,” Karen said. “Now you can finally start working on your issues.”

  “Yeah,” Max said, squinting at a nearby street sign.

  46TH STREET. They were almost there.

  “Where are we going?” Karen asked.

  “I just have to run an errand.”

  “Right now?”

  “It’ll only take a second. There—there it is!”

  He pointed excitedly at a small dark shop adorned with a fluorescent sign.

  “What’s GRS?” Karen asked.

  “It’s, uh… General Radio Supplier. I need to get some new transistors for a project.”

  Karen rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll wait outside.”

  Max swallowed anxiously.

  “It might be a while,” he said. “Why don’t you come in with me? It’s so cold out.”

  Karen sighed and followed Max into the store.

  The interior was small and bare: just a table, two chairs, and a cash register.

  “What is this place?” Karen asked, folding her arms suspiciously. Max could feel his underarms prickling with perspiration. After a few tense seconds, a short Asian man walked out from behind a red curtain.

  “Ah,” he said. “You Max?”

  Max nodded and Han politely shook his hand, completely ignoring Karen.

  “I am Han Woo,” he said. “Repairman. Dr. Motley send you, right?”

  “What the hell is going on?” Karen asked. “What is this place?”

  With zero hesitation, Han jabbed his index finger into Karen’s left eyeball.

  “Oh my God!” Max screamed. “What the fuck?”

  “Is fine, is fine,” Han assured him. “See?”

  Max looked at Karen. She was frozen, as stiff as a mannequin.

  “What did you do?” he asked, his voice shrill with panic. “What did you do to my girlfriend?”

  “Just freeze her,” Han replied calmly. “See?”

  He waved his hand in front of Karen’s eyes. Max noticed that her pupils remained rigidly centered.

  “How did you…?”

  Han ignored him and took a screwdriver out of his pocket. Max watched with horror as Han gently pressed the tip to Karen’s forehead, applying pressure to a small mole near her hairline. There was a cranking noise, like when you shift gears on a bicycle, and then Karen’s scalp popped open.

  Max screamed, but his terror quickly turned to fascination. There was no blood, no brains, no gore—just a grid of wires and microchips. It reminded him of a standard PC motherboard.

  “Here is problem,” Han said, gesturing at a cluster of transistors. “Is loose, see?”

  Max peered anxiously into his girlfriend’s head. There did, indeed, appear to be some faulty wiring.

  “Has she been acting mean?” Han asked.

  Max nodded in amazement.

  “How did you know?”

  “She probably say, ‘I no feel loved,’ or something like that.”

  “Yes! She said that exact thing!”

  “Don’t worry,” Han said. “I fix.”

  Max watched in awe as the repairman went to work, replacing wires, flipping circuits, tightening bolts. At one point, he wrenched a screw clockwise—and Karen’s lips simultaneously curled into a smile. After about an hour, he was finished. He put away his tools, shut Karen’s scalp, and walked calmly to the cash register.

  “Forty thousand dollars,” he said.

  Max turned pale.

  “What?”

  “Forty thousand,” Han repeated. “Plus five thousand for Dr. Motley’s referral fee.”

  “I don’t know if I can afford that,” Max murmured.

  “Trust me,” Han said. “Worth it.”

  Max nodded glumly and handed over his MasterCard. As soon as it went through, Han handed Max his receipt and then jabbed his finger back into Karen’s eyeball.

  Max held his breath as his girlfriend’s pupils gradually refocused.

  “Sweetie?” he whispered. “Are you okay?”

  She kissed him warmly on the cheek.

  “I’m great, sugar,” she said. “Did you get what you were looking for?”

  “Yeah,” Max said. “I think so.”

  She took his hand and led him outside into the sunlight.

  “You know,” she said, “I don’t think that therapist knows what he’s talking about.”

  Max’s eyes widened.

  “You don’t?”

  “Nah. I’ve been so mean to you lately, for no reason. You don’t deserve it. Let’s just go back to the way things were.”

  Max started to respond and realized that he was crying.

  “I love you so much!” he said.

  She laughed and kissed him playfully on the nose.

  “I love you, too!” she said.

  From then on, things were perfect.

  The Adventure of the Spotted Tie

  IT WAS A COLD WINTRY EVENING when I last called upon my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I found the great detective in his usual pose, hunched over his writing desk, a smoldering pipe in hand. He glanced at me coolly.

  “I see you haven’t had much luck at the dog track,” he said.

  I gasped, for I had indeed just lost the sum of four pounds at the Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium.

  “How did you guess?” I asked incredulously.

  “I guessed nothing,” Holmes replied. “All my conclusions were drawn from simple inference.”

  He pointed to a bright-green stain on my pant leg.

  “That stain could only have been produced from pickled relish,” he said. “And that condiment is only served with frankfurters. It is obvious, therefore, that you recently partook of that particular dish.”

  “That follows logically,” I agreed. “But how did you know that I ate my frankfurters at a dog track, of all places?”

  “What other conclusion could I have drawn, given the location of the relish stain? It’s on your lower pant leg. You clearly ate your meal while in a standing position. It was stadium fare. And the only stadium open during this season is the dog track.”

  I shook my head with admiration. Even though I had spent decades chronicling the great man’s feats, I was still often awed by his deductive prowess.

  “But how,” I begged, “did you know that I had lost money at the races?”

  He rolled his eyes, as if the question was too simple to merit a response.

  “Your shoulders are covered in precipitation,” he said. “And I can tell by the scuffs on your loafers that you have been walking for some distance. Surely, had you any funds at your disposal, you would have hired a hansom cab to transport you back to London. It therefore stands to reason that th
e track has, as the expression goes, cleaned you out.”

  I laughed with delight.

  “It always seems so simple when you explain it to me!” I cried.

  “Everything is simple,” he said, “when you view it through the lens of rational deduction.”

  I glanced at his desk, which was piled high with papers.

  “May I ask why you have sent for me?”

  “I will require your assistance,” he said, “in solving a most unusual case.”

  I grinned.

  “Does it have anything to do with the prime minister’s recent kidnapping?”

  “Actually,” he said, “it’s a personal matter. Something with Alyssa.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Alyssa was Holmes’s girlfriend. They had been romantically involved for several months now. I, personally, had never particularly enjoyed the woman’s company. She was rather rude to Holmes, I felt. For instance, she only expressed interest in his cases when celebrities, such as the royal family, were involved. And she rarely exhibited any affection toward him unless she was asking him for money. Still, despite Holmes’s extraordinary powers of observation, he seemed unable to notice Alyssa’s shortcomings. He frequently referred to her as his “angel,” a term I thought uncharacteristically figurative for a man of his scientific bent.

  “I was looking through her overnight bag,” Holmes explained, “and I found this spotted tie in the bottom.”

  I examined the tie in the glare of Holmes’s gas lamp. It was stained with what appeared to be lipstick.

  “This tie is not mine,” Holmes said. “And yet, for reasons not yet understood, it appeared inside her bag.”

  I nodded awkwardly.

  “Huh,” I said. “What do you make of that?”

  “I haven’t yet solved the conundrum,” he confessed.

  “Maybe you should ask her?” I suggested. “Where is she now?”

  “With her personal trainer, Jeremy,” he said. “They meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. For her thumb.”

  “Her thumb?”

  “Yes, she strained her thumb knitting.”

  I squinted at him.

  “Wasn’t that, like, two years ago?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Isn’t that a lot of therapy for a thumb?”

  “Well, her thumb is very badly strained,” Holmes explained. “Jeremy says her rehabilitation could take years. And the exercises he puts her through are rather strenuous. When she comes home from her sessions, she’s always exhausted and dazed. She usually heads straight for the bath and then goes right to bed. Sometimes she sleeps for over twelve hours.”

  A long time passed in silence. I waited patiently for the detective to arrive at what appeared to me to be an obvious conclusion. But it was as if the gears of his deductive wheels were jammed.

  “Perhaps someone is trying to dodge the fabric tariff by smuggling garments into the British Empire,” he said. “And they are sneaking them into Alyssa’s bag.”

  “I’m not sure that follows,” I said.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve found male apparel in her bag,” he continued. “I’ve found socks, too. Big ones. Like the kind of socks a big man would wear. A big, athletic man.”

  “Like a trainer?”

  “I wonder if Moriarty is involved,” he said, ignoring me. “That dastardly criminal is just the man to perpetrate a smuggling scheme!”

  “I don’t think this has to do with Moriarty,” I said.

  “I should hope not,” he said. “I would hate to see him ensnare my sweet Alyssa in one of his evil plots. Her life is already hard enough. Why, just last night she found out she has to go away for nine days for a thumb therapy retreat.”

  “A what?”

  “You know,” he said. “One of those thumb retreats they have now, for when people have problems with their thumbs.”

  “I don’t think that’s a thing,” I said.

  “Of course it’s a thing,” he snapped. “Alyssa’s going on one.”

  “Is Jeremy going with her on this trip?”

  “Of course,” Holmes said. “He’s her trainer. It follows logically.”

  “Where’s the retreat?”

  “Aruba.”

  “Why there?”

  “It follows logically,” he said again.

  He reached for a syringe and injected himself with liquid cocaine.

  “Whoa,” I said. I could tell from the serum’s viscosity that it was stronger than his customary “7 percent solution.”

  “What percent was that?” I asked.

  The detective ignored me. He had begun to pace rapidly across his flat, his bony hands twitching at his sides.

  I was considering telling him some of my inferences about Alyssa when a light knock sounded on the door. It was she. Her brow, I noticed, was damp with perspiration and she had a serene smile on her face.

  “Darling!” Holmes cried. “How were your thumb exercises?”

  “My what?” she replied.

  “Your thumb exercises,” he repeated.

  “Oh,” she said. “Right. They were good. Listen, I need some money for that trip.”

  “Of course,” Holmes said. “It follows.”

  He reached into his wallet and produced a thick bundle of banknotes.

  “It follows,” he mumbled, more to himself than anyone else.

  I glanced out the window. A broad-shouldered man in athletic gear was standing on the corner of Baker Street, a sly grin on his face.

  Alyssa pocketed the money, blew Holmes a kiss, and then ran down the stairs. Through the window I saw her skip across the street and into the muscled arms of her lover.

  Holmes was back at his desk, the spotted tie in his hand.

  “Maybe it was Moriarty,” he said, again.

  I took a seat beside my friend and patted him gently on the back.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Celebrity Sexceptions

  MY FRIEND JENNY TAUGHT me a fun game,” Kim said. “It’s called Celebrity Sexceptions.”

  Chris rolled his eyes.

  “Come on,” Kim said, tugging his sleeve. “I promise, it’s a fun one.”

  “Okay, okay. How does it work?”

  “We each write down the names of three celebrities,” she said. “And if we ever run into them, we get to have an affair with them. They’re our sexceptions. Get it?”

  Chris chuckled.

  “Sounds like a trap.”

  “It’s not!”

  “Really?” Chris said. “You’re not going to get jealous? No matter which actresses I put down?”

  “I won’t get jealous,” Kim said. “I promise.”

  She playfully thrust out her palm and Chris reluctantly shook it.

  “Okay,” he said, forcing a smile. “Let’s play.”

  Kim squealed and ran off into the kitchen. She emerged seconds later, holding two pads of paper and an unopened box of ballpoints.

  “You really prepared for this,” Chris joked.

  She took off her watch and rested it on the coffee table.

  “You have five minutes,” she said in a stern voice. “And then your time is up.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  He stared down at his pad and sighed. Kim was obviously testing him. She was feeling self-conscious about some physical trait—her breasts or her ass or God knows what. If he put down women who bested her in any one physical category, she’d be furious at him for days. The only way out of the mess was to be as eclectic as possible in his picks. That way his answers would reveal nothing about his tastes.

  “Okay,” he said, after a couple of minutes of intense concentration. “I’m ready.”

  She leaned back on the couch and smiled expectantly.

  “Christina Hendricks,” he said, “Gwyneth Paltrow, and Tina Turner.”

  Kim raised her eyebrows.

  “Tina Turner?”

  Chris shrugged.

  “She’s always done
it for me,” he said.

  “Okay,” Kim said cheerfully. “I hereby grant you those sexceptions.”

  Chris sighed with relief. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d managed to pass her exam. He was about to flick on the television when Kim nudged him with her foot.

  “Don’t you wanna hear mine?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Brad Pitt,” she read, “Leonardo DiCaprio… and Sam Magdanz.”

  Chris squinted at her.

  “What?”

  “Sam Magdanz,” she repeated. “Your brother, Sam Magdanz.”

  “But… Sam’s not a celebrity.”

  “He was on Wheel of Fortune once.”

  “That was, like, eight years ago. And he didn’t even win. I think he came in third.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Chris,” she said. “We need to talk.”

  Wishes

  CLAIRE WAS WALKING UP the stairs to her apartment when she smelled smoke. She coughed a few times and anxiously quickened her pace. By the time she made it up to her floor, her eyes were burning. The hallway was clogged with purplish fog.

  She knocked on her door in a panic.

  “Gabe!”

  Her boyfriend didn’t respond. Claire rummaged through her purse, found her key, and swung the door open. Through the haze, she could make out Gabe’s scrawny shape. He was sitting on the couch, holding a strange bronze vessel in his hand.

  “Honey!” he called out. “Wow—you’re home early.”

  “Why is it so smoky in here?” she asked. “What’s that thing you’re holding?”

  Gabe hesitated.

  “It’s a genie lamp.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Look, I’ll show you.”

  He rubbed the lamp and smoke poured out of its spout. Claire watched as the purple plumes cohered into a giant, muscled creature. He had a bright-red turban, golden chains, and a long black beard.

  “State your wish!” the genie roared in a booming baritone. “And the Great Mumbafa shall grant it!”

  “Oh my God,” Claire said, sitting down beside her boyfriend. “Where’d you get this thing?”