Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak

by Adi Alsaid

  It was a slow walk to work, since I had my notebook open, trying to write as I weaved around other pedestrians (or, if I’m being honest, as I let them weave around my annoying, slow-moving self). I did manage to write a paragraph on the fifteen-minute walk though:

  This is an introductory paragraph about a very interesting couple who I thought were breaking up but aren’t really. This is their story. Did you read that in a Law and Order: SVU kind of way? Because I wasn’t going for that at all. Tonally, it’s just not what I write. I write about love and stuff. You probably used to read my stuff, but then I stopped writing because love messes you up like that.

  Good, right?

  I pushed the door to the theater open, that familiar blast of AC hitting me, yet offering no relief. A second later, Pete came in behind me, a backpack slung over one shoulder. He brushed the hair away from his eyes. “What’s with you? Did you not hear me calling your name for the last block?”

  I blinked at him, then showed him the notebook. “I was working.”

  He read silently. For like six seconds because I hadn’t accomplished all that much. “Jesus, Lu, this is all you have? You can’t send that in to Hafsah.”

  “Oh really? I thought I might pitch a new relationship column written by a toddler.”

  He shook his head. “I dunno about that. Hell of a vocabulary for a toddler.” We crossed the lobby toward the employee room. “I don’t mean to pour salt on a clearly gaping wound, but what the hell have you been doing for the past week? I thought you had more than enough material.”

  “It got complicated.”

  “What, you’re in love with Cal?”

  I smacked him on the chest, harder than I would normally. “Shut your face, man. I’m not in love with anyone.”

  “Right.” Pete slipped his work shirt over his head and threw his backpack into a locker. “So where’s the complication? Write a few paragraphs about how they’re hanging on to love while they can and that you and Leo couldn’t and then move on.”

  “Wow, that’s really reductive. It’s harder than that to write something compelling. You just threw together a sentence about the main idea. Not even the right one. A main idea.”

  Pete rolled his eyes. “I apologize. So why haven’t you written more than one borderline toddleresque paragraph?”

  “Leo’s still in love with me.”

  Silence filled the employee room. I looked at Pete, begging him to just say the right thing again, like he always used to. Just tell me what to do, what to say, what to think, how to live. “Oh no,” he said. “Have we gone back in time? Are we still at the start of the summer? Has your obsession switched back?”

  “This isn’t wishful thinking or delusion. He told me.”

  “Your ex-boyfriend, Leo Juco, said those words.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m gonna need you to run those exact words by me.”

  We walked over to the computer system where we clocked in for the day. “Beginning quote from Leo Juco, in an email sent last Friday at eight thirty in the morning: ‘Do you know that I still, dot, dot, dot—’”

  “He said ‘dot dot dot’? Just wrote out the words like that?”

  “No, it was in the subject of the email, so the ellipsis naturally popped up.”

  “Ah, got it. ‘Do you know that I still, dot, dot, dot.’” He motioned for me to continue with his hand, and his eyebrows, and basically his entire body.

  “‘That I still love you.’”

  Pete raised his eyebrows the farthest they could go. “Those were the words he wrote?”

  “In their entirety. Oh wait, he also added, ‘I thought maybe you should know.’”

  He relaxed his facial muscles, and we walked over to the whiteboard to look at our shift assignments. “Who’s the ‘I’ in that email?”

  “Pete, focus.”

  “This happened last week? These were the developments you mentioned? How the hell did you keep this all from me for a freaking week, Lu?” I waved the notebook in front of his face. “Right, the lovebirds.” Pete rolled his eyes, then used his wiry index finger to trace his name along the clipboard that listed our duties. “Yay, box office.”

  I checked to make sure I was there too. “Oh thank God. I’ll be able to work on the column during the lulls.”

  “I take it this means we won’t be hanging out after work.”

  “We’ll get back to our routine soon enough,” I said, opening the door to the box office for him.

  “I’ve heard that one a few times this summer,” he muttered, plopping down into the farthest chair. The shutters were still down on the box office window, so I flicked on the lights, then powered on the register computer. “What’ll be the next obsession that keeps me from hanging out with my best friend before I move five hours away?”

  “Come on, that’s not fair.”

  “I agree. I tried to help you get over Leo, I tried to help you find topics to write about. Instead you jumped into this unhealthy obsession with the lovebirds and I’ve spent the summer twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to be available.” Pete was raising his voice a little, which he never did. He was also resolutely looking away from me, even though he’d already logged in and there was nothing to see on his computer. I was about to respond when Brad came in, jiggling his keys.

  “Hey, gang,” he said.

  “Gang?” Pete and I responded in unison. We shared a look then fell back into silence, a tension building that I wasn’t expecting.

  “Yeah, that felt weird to me too.” Brad whistled a little bit, searching through his comically large key ring, until he found the one needed to automatically raise the metal shutters. They were painfully slow, creaking with every inch they moved.

  “Why are these even automatic?” I said, tossing a pen at them. I was hoping Pete would laugh or smile or something, but he seemed to be stewing in his annoyance at me. By the time Brad finally left, Pete was exemplifying textbook restless leg syndrome and brushing the hair out of his eyes so regularly it was as if his movements were guided by a metronome.

  Obviously, he was upset, but I wasn’t really in the mood for a Pete diatribe. Tactless honesty would have to wait until after my column had been sent in. “Wouldn’t it be great if Brad started talking in really outdated slang? Which decade do you think he’d pick? I’m picturing him speaking like someone who was a little cool in the ’50s. Calling people ‘cats’ and saying ‘neat-o’ and stuff. That’d make this place a little more lively, huh?”

  No response from Pete. He even pulled out his phone, which is not something he usually did at work, or at least not to the same extent as most of our coworkers. I could see him scrolling through Twitter, then closing out of it, and immediately opening it back up.

  I scooted my chair closer to him, using the pen I’d tossed at the shutters to poke him in the ribs. He swatted at me. “Read the room, Lu.”

  “I did, and the mood didn’t appeal to me, so I’m trying to move it in another direction.” Pete sighed and set his phone facedown beside the computer mouse. “Come on, give me a decade of slang for Brad. Maybe ’60s grooviness? Early ’80s hip-hop?”

  Pete chewed his lip, which gave me hope that I’d successfully turned the room in my favor. But he just kept staring out the window at the intersection of Third Avenue and Eleventh Street. The stoplights went through a couple of cycles. A homeless man with a mess of dreads and dangerously low-riding pants shuffled by. No one approached our window.

  I leaned over and poked Pete again in the ribs. “Will you help me with my column?”

  Suddenly, Pete pushed away, smacking the pen out of my hand. “For fuck’s sake, Lu! Take a hint.”

  I froze, feeling my jaw succumb to cliché and gravity. The hurt kicked in a moment later. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever.” I faced forward like he was, grabbing another pen from the holder in fr
ont of me. I twirled it in my fingers, tapped it on the edge of my notebook, remembered that I had a deadline that afternoon and I was going to need every second that I could get to formulate something deliverable that wouldn’t cause my life to unravel.

  I looked around for any approaching customers, then opened my notebook to a fresh page and pressed the ballpoint tip to the first line. But now I had that goddamn restless leg thing going on, and the only thoughts in my mind were definitely not deliverable to Hafsah. I put the pen down and turned back to Pete. “I get that you’re upset, but that was messed up, Pete. All I’m doing is—”

  Pete swiveled his chair to face me. “Is what, Lu? Please, I’d love to know exactly what it is you’ve been doing all summer.”

  I scoffed, tears unexpectedly rushing to the brink. I had to look away to keep them from coming. Some guy carrying a closed umbrella was standing on the corner, looking up at our showtime display boards while texting. “Writing! At least trying to. It’s how I process the world, Pete. And it’s what I want my future to be, a fact that becomes infinitely less likely if I don’t get this column done. So I’m sorry if I haven’t been lavishing you with attention while I work on that.”

  “Oh bullshit. You’re not processing a thing. You’re using this column as an excuse to do the exact opposite.” Pete glanced outside, probably thinking like I was that the umbrella-toting guy better hold off on his desire to purchase a ticket until we were done. “You’ve spent all summer clinging to the notion that because Iris and Cal survived their precollege breakup, then so can you. You’ve been in denial about Leo, and instead of writing and processing your heartache, you’ve plunged yourself into this weird fantasy where they are the golden standard of love, and you’re hoping that their love will somehow rub off on you.” Pete took a long breath, then exhaled through his nose. I couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d been holding this in.

  “That’s not what I’m doing.” My voice came out as a whisper. Umbrella Guy chose that moment to walk up to my window. I went through the motions of getting him his ticket, and dropped his change onto the floor when I tried to slip it into that little slot beneath the window.

  “You haven’t written anything, Lu. You’re not processing the world around you. You’re trying to distract yourself from your pain. And I get that. Of course I get it.” Rather than brushing the bangs out of his eyes, Pete ran his hand through all of his hair, mussing it rather spectacularly. “I’ve been here just wanting to help you in whatever way I could. Instead, I get left sitting at home waiting for texts from you, while you feed an unhealthy crush on Cal.”

  “I don’t have a crush—”

  Pete waved his hand in the air. “That’s not the point.” He swiveled his chair from side to side, our eyes not meeting. His leg had stopped shaking. Outside, the clouds parted and a beam of light hit the building across the street. “You know I put in my two weeks here, right? And that a week after that I leave the city? You know that all I wanted for this summer was to hang out with you as much as I could, to enjoy your company while I had it? And you’ve acted like that doesn’t mean a thing to you. You could have listened to me. You could have written about anything else, like the heartbreak that’s causing all of this. But you’ve chosen not to. You brought this on yourself.”

  I couldn’t look at Pete anymore. My stomach started churning, like maybe I really had gotten food poisoning at some point. I stared out our window, begging everyone who entered my periphery not to approach. I waited for my retort to come, but all I could feel was the stinging threat of oncoming tears, and a queasiness in my gut.

  So I grabbed my notebook, rushed out to the lobby to find Brad, told him I was sick, and then fled the theater.

  BRIEF CHRONICLE OF ANOTHER STUPID HEART

  Indie Folk Album

  By Lu Charles

  April 17

  You ever have one of those days where you feel like you’re stuck in a particularly sad indie folk song? More like one of those weeks, maybe.

  I’ve discovered loneliness is still something you can feel in a relationship. I think we’re all taught to believe that love inoculates you from certain unpleasant feelings, but that’s either a lie or I’m still bad at this whole love thing.

  I guess that’s to be expected. I’m doing it for the first time, and it’s no longer just in my head, where everything can go swimmingly all the time. There’s someone else involved, and that always complicates things. As a writer I understand this discrepancy between what’s in your mind and what shows up in real life. It’s just a little more difficult to deal with when it’s, you know, not just writing.

  Like in writing, it’s hard to know whether the problems are real or just in my head. I’m critical of myself when I write, and so I guess the same could be true of my relationship. I don’t know if the silence I’ve felt this week has a reason behind it, or if its significance is imaginary.

  It’s not like anything tangible has changed between us. Our touches don’t feel lesser in any way, our silences aren’t heavier, none of the usual indie-movie indicators that something is astray are present. We’re still saying I love you and spending time together, and I couldn’t point at anything in our relationship that I would change. But I feel a weight somewhere, just off on the horizon, like a storm brewing, and I have no idea what it is.

  I’d ask him if he feels the same way, but calling attention to it might just reveal my insecurities. So I’m putting them here, where I can have strangers tell me whether I’m being silly. And if he’s reading, he can bring it up (Hi, babe).

  I’ve gone back and read my previous columns, searching for clues as to how to help myself. I’ve also gone through the vast resources of relationship advice columns, self-help blogs, that wonderful archive of human emotion that is Tumblr.

  Nothing’s helped. Maybe because this is a wave of emotion that will pass. It has no specific cause, and therefore no specific solution. Or maybe the problem is specific but I can’t put a name to it, and so, like an undiagnosed disease, it’s impossible to know what solution will work.

  Maybe it’s too much for us to expect an instruction manual for love. It’s a complicated thing, and even those who have loved before and loved well cannot promise us a step-by-step guide.

  I’m only a chronicler, in the end. Take in what I see, process it through my particular lens of experiences and insecurities, spit it back out at you to do with what you will. Just because the experiences are a little closer to home now doesn’t mean I’m suddenly an expert. This is my one relationship, and it looks like no others, can be treated like no others. The human heart is layered and complex, and it’d be foolish for even a love columnist to pretend she knows exactly what goes on within its thin walls. (Are heart walls thin? Probably not. All the cardiologists reading this feel free to go nuts in the comments.)

  All I can claim to do is see what happens to us teenagers in love and share it with the world. I’m content with that, at least.

  22

  A FLIGHT TO NAIROBI

  I found myself at Madison Square Park, eavesdropping on a woman’s phone conversation with what sounded like her grown son. She was wearing traditional Orthodox Jewish garb and picking at a blueberry muffin that she’d laid out on her lap, the crumbs attracting pigeons which she would intermittently shoo away with a lethargic wave of her hand.

  “Did you call your landlord about it?” she asked, brushing crumbs from her skirt.

  I wrote down her words out of habit, out of a desire to shut my brain up.

  “Mmm-hmm,” the woman continued. “Right. Yeah, no, I know. But what about asking him again? You have to bug him a little or he’ll never do anything about it.”

  Really compelling stuff, I know. I kept writing, filling almost two pages with lines from her conversation and the meaningless details of the park surrounding us. The scruffy brown pigeon that looked a little diseased and was unpertur
bed by the woman’s halfhearted attempts to make it go away. A dumpling food truck was parked behind us, and every now and then the girl working inside called out a name and an order.

  I tried to remember if I was on the same bench where I’d met Cal, but I hadn’t quite taken note of it at the time. I’d taken note of his attractiveness, and the way he talked, and of Leo’s absence.

  My pen stopped moving. I moved my notebook beside me on the bench, rested my elbows on my knees, rubbed my face a few times, tried sighing to get it all out. Then I buried my head in my hands and begged the tears not to come.

  Thankfully, at that moment, my phone buzzed. God bless these little computers we carry around with us, and their ability to pull us far away from our thoughts and pains and public meltdowns.

  IRIS

  Hey! Doing anything tonight?

  My mind flashed forward to me on my bed weeping while Netflix played a cartoon for no one.

  LU

  No set plans. Why, what’s up?

  IRIS

  Cal and I are going to a party, wondered if you wanted to come.

  IRIS

  It’s in Washington Heights. 7 pm.

  I looked at my phone. It was barely ten in the morning.

  LU

  Sure! I’m in. You guys wanna get dinner or something first? Lunch? Coffee? Piggyback rides?

  LU’S CONSCIENCE

  Hey. Aren’t you forgetting something?

  LU

  Shut up, I’m not talking to you.

  IRIS

  Haha. Sure, let’s keep in touch. Either way, I’ll send you the address and let you know when we’re on our way?

  LU’S CONSCIENCE

  Dodged a bullet there. You need to gety our column done.

  LU

  WTF. How are you sending out typos?

  LU’S CONSCIENCE

  It’s been a weird day. Just write your column, will you?

  LU

  Sounds good! Thanks for the invite!