“Jeanette?”
Somewhere in our small apartment, Suze beckoned to me softly. Her voice drifted off on the second syllable like the dissipating exhaust of a passing truck. I sniffed before opening my eyes, hoping for a caffeinated entente before facing the morning.
Orange light dripped into our bedroom from the kitchen window. A faint purple glow buzzed through the fuzzy-looking curtains in my peripheral, facing off against the waxing sunrise. My fingers bumbled around the mattress reaching for my glasses, or even just the mere suggestion of a living person or an animal. The purring lump of our cat, Angel, did not materialize under my wanting hand. The only indication of Suze’s existence was the memory of her calling my name a few seconds before.
“Euh,” I grunted in delayed response to her call, my face half-smushed into the bedding. If I rolled off, I’d give in to Suze. Not just the bodiless voice from the glowing kitchen. The corporeal Suze. The Suze who, the night before, screamed at me until her face was covered in burst blood vessels and tears dampened her freckled chest. She accused me of not listening to her and of abandoning my cat.
I rolled onto the empty space beside me. A loose tuft of orange fur wrapped around my ring finger.
“Jeanette.” Suze’s urgency kept me firmly in place. I did not want to be coaxed from my slumber.
I forgot to take the garbage out in the haste of our squall the night before. She mentioned the trash situation only once in the forty five minutes she lectured at my face: “You know that the can, if unaddressed, will overflow into next week and the hallway will stink of banana peels and leftover chili and litter and used tampons. Take the fucking bins out!”
My hips moved up and back on Suze’s pillow, performing an oddly shaped routine with the patch of light reflected onto my thigh. The fight wasn’t that bad—relatively speaking. My parents had yelled louder and with more precise language that made my chest concave and gave me a permanent hunch-back. Suze shouting about cats and expensive shoes and trash receptacles was trite.
“Mornings are an empty bin. Fortified for the shit of the day ahead,” I said, technically shoving in the last word, before tucking myself into bed. I recall her steadying on the back of one of the dining room chairs then slamming the door.
I kept moving my hips, thinking of Suze’s lips slick with salty tears, wishing I would’ve leaned over to her like an olive branch. Or to lick off the previous night from her memory.
I tasted only lavender and cardamom in the fabric of our sheets. Angel usually slept in the middle of us every night--waking up after me most days--but she seemed to have abandoned our morning cuddle to give into Suze’s incessant call.
“Jeanette,” Suze said again. Her voice cracked. Two years ago, I brought her to an emergency dentist when the clicking from her jaw prevented any range of motion of her mouth. Suze couldn’t eat for two days before the surgery, and she spoke very softly in the days following. She never yelled when I made tomato basil soup and pureed Japanese yams at her request every night. We watched the History channel exclusively from my bed in my Orange Street apartment for two weeks straight. We moved in together the week she finished her antibiotics.
I waited to get up from bed until the light streaming through the bedroom curtains matched the buttercup yellow from the kitchen. I turned to cuddle the pillow in Angel’s usual spot. The bed felt too warm beneath me to roll out of it.
Touching the sheets, I absorbed every good memory between us. Suze brushed my hair behind my ear on our first date, her fingers trailing at the back of my neck. I felt her kissing my shoulder before leaving for work on Thursdays and the loud groan she made coming back into the apartment after forgetting to drag the garbage to the curb. We cuddled with Angel and some nights we kicked her out and tangled in her spot in the middle of the mattress.
If I left the bed, I’d see Suze’s apoplectic face and remember the night before. Then I’d feel her hand loosen my jaw and overthink the tears in her eyes and her probable disappointment in me that I didn’t hit back. After I resigned to bed, she performed a monologue on my passivity and pulled a pair of shoes on. Not ones from her closet. Suze didn’t come into the bedroom at all.
“Fine!” I yelled, rolling myself off the mattress, more curious to see if Angel was with her than to hear an apology. The violet light streaming through the curtain subdued to a glowing shade of marigold which led to the kitchen.
Suze’s boots and the woman who filled them were still missing. Her voice must have guided me to the French press. I would drag the bin back from the curb and make a cappuccino for Suze and she would kiss my bruised face upon returning.
My face stung at the residual memory of her impacted fist on my cheek. Angel paced on the moldy tiles at the front door.
“Mrrrow.”
A request. To leave this apartment. By my cat. To follow my girlfriend out of my life. I kicked the door with the presumption it would open. The impact of my foot jolted the hinge loose. Angel pried the crack open wide with a fluffy paw and a disgruntled mew. The stench of rotten chili and bloody tampons penetrated the cool air. Angel ran out of the breezeway, yipping louder and louder as she bounded down the porch steps. Suze’s voice had long faded away. Angel seemed to chase the tendrils of her lasting breaths, wherever she went. I tiptoed behind the cat to the street. Garbage men shouting and a stalled truck engine sounded from beyond the bushes of the complex. I expected to see our tipped over garbage bin on the sidewalk like I heard Suze kick down the previous night.
In her pedantic screaming, she told me she was seeing someone else. It was very matter-of-fact. Not poetic enough for my taste. I was waiting for the reveal for weeks, and all she said was: “I’m seeing someone else.”
The month before, she was typing some reports at her desk. I bent down to put my lips on her neck. I caught the citrusy musk of bergamot as she recoiled. A nice scent, but a curio to my understanding of her nonexistent perfume collection. She said I distracted her and I wasn’t a very practical person (reconciling her own choice to find someone with different fragrance preferences). Maybe it was my one and only moment of direct action, but I bought her a pair of rust-colored boots from the outdoors-y clothing store by our apartment. An outstretched hand. A suede, waterproof love letter.
Another object of discontent she mentioned, along with Angel: “She fucking follows me everywhere. Do you ever feed her? Or wake up before eleven?”
The boots were “too expensive and not appropriate” for her office. She kept them by the front door for this one laced-up getaway.
$120 now lay in the street, fabric ripped down in the shape of diamonds, rust turned crimson. A thin, dark stream pooled around the soles.
Blood dripped from the tire of the garbage truck half-parked in the lot. Suze’s boots rested beside a back tire. Mangled and torn up. Probably attached to the rest of her body. Hidden from my view beyond the violet hydrangeas.
I backed up, staring at the dog-roses, catching my breath. Blush-colored flowers wept off thorny green stems. My chest heaved at their acrid smell, or the other one. A pile of pink petals settled on the dewy grass atop of a patch of dandelions, eclipsing the lucid weeds below.
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