I was out late one night smoking a cigarette because I was lying in bed tossing. My girlfriend had left earlier, because she said I was a selfish jerk, that I didn’t care enough about her because I never did special things for her. I thought that I had done plenty of special things to that point in our relationship. I thought it was nice the way I gave her my pizza crusts on dates. I love Pizza Hut but I don’t like crust ‘cause there’s no cheese on it, but my girl loves it and I always remember to offer it to her. The first time she almost cried, “Aww,” she said, “It’s almost like we’re finishing each other sentences.” I didn’t get it, but she was happy so I kept doing it. I guess over time the “awww” factor wore off ‘cause on our last weekly date to Pizza Hut, when I offered her my crust, she just looked at me like she was waiting for me to say it was all a joke. And I looked around myself to see if I had missed a joke, but I hadn’t.
Things hadn’t been going well since then and the night I was out late smoking a cigarette, I had been hoping to get lucky. She was withholding, which I can stand for a while ‘cause God gave me my right hand, but I was getting desperate. I remember, I picked her up from work that day. She usually takes the bus to save on gas and I was there in the parking lot waiting for her. “Is everything ok?” she asked and I was lost again, she always jumps to conclusions that take me millions of baby steps to reach. “Of course, I just wanted to surprise you, get in.” I waved her over and she approached cautiously. “What did you do?” she asked. “I drove here to pick you up,” I answered as she closed the door and I started the engine. “I see that, but why.” She had ruined it before it even started. “Because I missed you, because I love you, because you’re special.” I was exasperated so it sounded more sarcastic than sincere and, once again, I didn’t realize until it was too late that her brow was becoming more severe and that she was looking at me less and less. I drove her to my place in silence.
“Why are we here?”
I didn’t want to argue, I just wanted to make her like me enough to have sex with me and then the next day we could talk and solve all of our problems; her problems really ‘cause I thought everything was going fine.
“I just thought you’d come over and we’d spend some time together is all, I’m not kidnapping you.”
She hates jokes when she’s angry, she hates jokes, not likes, hates. When I feel tension I want to cut it, to rid myself of it, but she just lets it build.
She slowly followed me to my apartment. “I have to work tomorrow morning so either you’re driving me home tonight or early in the morning because I don’t have clothes here.” I hadn’t even thought about her tomorrow, or her tomorrow that did not include me. “Whatever you need baby.”
She sat in my living room watching TV and I was in the kitchen pretending to look for food to cook for her. I knew there was nothing there and the plan was to order take-out. When I walked into the room where she was, she was stewing on the couch and before I could form my mouth to say words she said, “Just don’t order Pizza Hut.” and I suggested Chinese which was fine. We sat in silence until it was delivered.
I loved her, I really did. And I thought she loved me but her expectations changed and she forgot to let me know. At the beginning it was all about fun, we spent time together because we enjoyed it. By that point, when we were bitterly filling time waiting for our Chinese food, she had drawn plans for the type of man I should be and hadn’t shown me those plans, not once, but expected me to magically change to fit her design.
When the food arrived, she mostly looked at it, complained about it. “Where I come from, even the cheapest Chinese food is better than this. I can get better Chinese food from a Chinese guy on the streets of Manhattan, who doesn’t even own a wok, than I can from the “best” Chinese restaurant in the entire state of North Carolina.” And I couldn’t help but ask, “Why you move down here then?”
So she was gone shortly after. I wondered if it was a good idea for her to leave by herself ‘cause it was dark out, but I think I was mostly just happy she was gone. Charlotte isn’t really a dangerous place, but you never know who’s lurking, waiting to take advantage of the dark.
I turned off the tv when she left and went to my room. I put on music and lay face down on my bed and the next time I opened my eyes it was about an hour later. I changed and tried to sleep but couldn’t. I got out of bed and went outside. It was June so it was still hot out, but at least there was no sun complicating things.
And when I turned the corner on the sidewalk in front of my building, there it was, a big black shadow of a man, pistol whipping some figure that was too hard to make out from the distance and the angle. I crouched back behind the wall of my building as fast as I could and peeked out, trying to decide what to do. I watched for longer than I thought I would, the big shadow swinging over and over again, and the poor figure that I still couldn’t make out. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman and I’m pretty sure that’s why I watched for so long. Maybe it was my girl. Maybe after she left my place, she was dragged to a discreet place until the coast was clear and then the big shadow figure tried to move her but found it difficult. I understood the shadow figure’s pain, my girl can be pretty annoying. I imagined that in the time when the shadow figure was holding the gun to her head, probably tucked behind any of the big bushes next to my building, she was probably criticising him for not holding the gun close enough because at too far a distance a captive might get bold and break free. Or maybe she was telling him about a nightmare she’d had where she was robbed that was a much scarier experience than this one. “That robber had balls, he just pistol whipped the shit out of me, until blood was running all down my clothes and I felt heavy trying to pick myself up.”
After about fifteen minutes of watching, the shadow figure shot his victim five times and I jumped at each shot. And then I walked away smiling. I went to bed and slept like a baby.
The next morning when I turned on the news, I couldn’t help but feel guilty that I had watched the brutal beating and shooting of an old man from my building while secretly hoping that it was my girl and that I wouldn’t have to experience the long, agonizing breakup speech that she’d probably written on the bus ride home.
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