It’s like this game we play, but it isn’t a game, and both of us know it. It’s a thing, a thing like Russian Roulette, not a game, but worded so that it sounds like a game. We don’t have a pistol, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating. What we have is a bottle of cheap Scotch and about a billion hurtful words and a relationship that makes a leper colony look healthy. Sick and falling apart, that’s what we got going on.

We’re both too stubborn to work in a relationship, but neither one of us is strong enough to admit that we get lonely. What you end up with is a couple of pathetic idiots who should have nothing to do with each other hanging out because the rest of the world wants nothing to do with them.

Not to say that people don’t like us. We both have loads of friends. But you wouldn’t want to date us.

When open hearts get involved, and raw feelings get thrown into the mix, that’s where we come up empty. That’s the abandoned waiting room, the deserted subway station, the tumbleweed blowing through the ghost town. That’s when we’re left with each other. Because everyone else in our lives is smart enough to stay clear of our love.

“I don’t love you, you know that, right?” That’s what she says as she grinds her cigarette to death in the bottom of the dirty ashtray. “And you don’t love me, either. You know that, too.”

“Is this the way we’re playing it tonight?” I make sure I sound bored when I ask the question, because this whole thing, this entire whatever-it-is, it really is starting to bore me. Not because it isn’t important, but because it shreds me up so bad that my body has finally shut down. It’s like when you get tired after coming down from an adrenaline rush. It’s like when you laugh so hard at something that the rest of the day, you’ll start crying at just about anything.

“Oh fuck you, you think you’re so cool.”

She does this sometimes, just tells me what I think or how I feel. Tells me I don’t love her. Tells me I think I’m so cool. “Did I say I think I’m cool? No. I just asked what kind of bullshit script we were going to go by tonight.”

“It’s all funny to you, it’s all a big joke!” She’s still grinding out the cigarette, it’s tearing itself apart on the nicotine-stained plastic, and you can tell she wants to stop, but she can’t. Because then she has to do something else, something like put some thought into what happens next. As long as she grinds her cigarette, as long as she mutters random shit about how I feel or what I think or what everything in life is to me, as long as she does that, she doesn’t have to look me in the eye.

Because she’s tired of this, too.

You can’t live like this.

Okay, that’s a lie.

You can.

You can live like this, if you really have to. If you’re too scared to try life without her, if you’re too scared to even look around again, because last time was so fucking rough. If the idea of sleeping without hearing her voice makes you feel like puking, if the thought of coming across one of her nightshirts three weeks after you’ve last seen her freaks your shit out so bad that your eye twitches. If you have nightmares about catching her screwing some other guy, even though she probably is. If you’ve convinced yourself that she’s the only one who will ever love you, even though she says she doesn’t, you can live like this.

But I don’t recommend it.

“It isn’t funny,” I tell her. “It’s the exact opposite of that. Quit with that cigarette and look at me.”

She drops the butt and grabs the bottle and knocks back a couple swallows, and still isn’t looking at me. Her blood-shot eyes dart around the room as she gulps, and her weakness is so transparent, no matter how much liquor she can hold. I would trust her to have my back in a fist-fight against drunken sailors, that’s how tough she is, but she can’t look me in the eye right now.

“We’re so pathetic,” I tell her. “We’re both so weak and stupid and pathetic. That’s what I think. And it isn’t funny—it’s frightening and it’s awful.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Of course I am. Of course you are, too. Of course we always are, because we’re miserable together.”

“You know where the door’s at.”

“Of course I do—it’s my apartment.”

She glances around, still not meeting my eyes. Smiles a tiny smile while she picks up the pack of cigarettes. “So it is, mi amigo. So it is.”

That smile, and a million other things like it, that’s another reason we’re stuck with each other. Because she can talk all night about how she doesn’t love me and I don’t love her, but that’s bullshit, and we both know it. That smile, that cute little hint of a smile, that makes my heart skip just a bit, and it makes me warm a degree or two on the inside, and it makes me love her a little more, every time I see it.

“I don’t want it to be like this,” I tell her. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting with you. I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”

She laughs, and a tear slips out of her eye. Never a good sign. She uses the back of her hand to wipe it away, the hand holding the cigarette. It’s a quick move, well-practiced due to repetition.

“Quit being stupid,” she says. “You know you, and you know me.”

I can’t argue, although I kind of want to. But she’s right—I’m being stupid. As much as I think I’d like to make her happy, I’d get sick of it after a day or two. I have gotten sick of it after a day or two. And then I get resentful, like it’s a job or something, like she owes me something in return. That’s the thing about making someone happy—you should never do it with the expectation of getting something out of it.

You do, it’ll backfire on you, and you find yourself fighting about something stupid like how she peels a banana the wrong way.

Or you find yourself sitting on this damn dirty rug at four in the morning, chain-smoking and taking turns with the Scotch bottle while you berate each other. Again.

“What are we going to do, then?” I ask her. “How do we make this work?”

She takes a drag of her cigarette, and she smiles another smile. A different smile, but one that I easily recognize.

“No,” I tell her, but I don’t mean it. “We’re talking right now. We’re working things out.”

“There’s always time to talk to tomorrow,” she tells me, and it doesn’t sound like she means it, either.

Tomorrow, there will be silent cups of coffee and quick, clipped sentences, and then she’ll leave and maybe we’ll have dinner or maybe we won’t talk for a few days, and it really doesn’t matter because right now, she’s crunching out her cigarette and cat-crawling towards me, and I’m knocking back a final mouthful of Scotch to convince myself that this is the right thing to do.

And then her mouth is on mine, her hand is on the crotch of my jeans, my hand is yanking her shirt up and her bra down.

This is the part we’ve always been good at. This is the part that can erase a thousand arguments and a million irritations. This is the part that destroys good sense and self preservation.

This is the part where there is no heartbreak, no hurt feelings, no thoughts of tomorrow. Only the lust and the passion and the parts of us that work so very well together.

_______________

I wake up alone. Of course I do.

The mystery to be solved is how alone. Is she in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee? Down the street, picking up bagels? At her apartment? Will she be back in a few minutes or stay gone for days?

This is what I hate. Starting days like this, the confusion, the frustration. I’m on the floor, halfway under the bed, which isn’t all that uncommon, sadly. I reach up to the nightstand and grope around until I find a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. I smoke my cigarette and stare at the ceiling and try not to think about my life. About my life with her.

I climb to my feet and hunt down the ashtray. I snub out my cigarette and make my way down the hall to the bathroom. There’s a note stuck to the door.

“Goodbye,” it reads.

I don’t feel like contemplating that on a full bladder, so I push open the door.

The corpse surprises me.

I’ve never seen one before.

She’s in the tub, surrounded by a puddle of pinkish water. The bathtub drain never plugs right, so if you want to take a bath, you have to keep adding water. Otherwise, all the water drains out. She bitches about it all the time, but I never really paid much attention, because I’m not the take-a-bath kind of guy.

I stare at her dead body, and I wish I had fixed the drain, so that she didn’t have to worry about it as she sliced the hell out of her wrists. I wonder if she had to fill the tub up while her wrists pumped out blood. I wonder if that was the last thing she did, was add a little hot, because my tub was always cold, and with the water draining out like that, you always had to add hot.

She told me that all the time, “I always have to add hot.”

I didn’t care, really. It’s one of those things, you know? You go, “Oh, yeah?” You act like you’re paying attention, but you don’t give a shit, because how boring. And then you find her dead in the tub, and it turns out that you really were paying attention.

I sit down on the toilet, and I put my hand on my chin, the cliché thinking-man pose, just like they do in the movies. And then I throw up in the sink, which isn’t really what they do in the movies. I turn on the faucet and I wash out my mouth and then I sit back on the toilet.

I should call the police, probably. Instead, I just sit there and stare at her, and I force myself to think about all the things I loved doing with her, things that I’ll never get to do again. Things like grabbing brunch on Sunday, both of us too hung over to function. Things like watching crap reality TV on Wednesdays and talking about how each contestant was a whiny bitch. Things like seeing her smile.

I cough out sobs, and it feels like I’m going to puke again, but instead, it’s just crying. I cry for a long time, until I have to shit.

I go back into my bedroom and search around until I find her pants, until I find the keys in her pocket.

The walk is even more surreal than usual. Drunk, still, filled with memories so strong that they seem fake, and hounded by the knowledge that I’ll never make this specific walk again: ten blocks down, four over, and then the third building. Up the stairs, clomp clomp clomp.

How many times have I made this journey?

I don’t even know. Four years’ worth, off and on.

I unlock the door, and her cat tries to escape, just like he has every time anyone has opened the door for the last two years. I don’t try to stop him, and he dashes out into the hall and down the steps.

I close the door behind me and walk to the bathroom.

It seems stupid to have to take a dump while your girlfriend is dead in your bathtub, but that’s the way life goes, I guess. After a while, nothing seems real, and I have the feeling that I’m still passed out, crapping all in my bed.

I finish up, and wash my hands. I read everything I can, because in my dreams, I’m never able to read.

Softsoap on the sink, Vanilla Breeze, 7.5 Fl. Oz. I read the ingredients while I scrub, and although I don’t understand them, I can certainly read them. Chances are, I’m not still drunk and passed out. It’s a desperate time when you find yourself wishing you were passed out, shitting yourself.

I open the door and her cat’s there, looking all confused. Stupid cat, I’ve always hated him. Now’s my chance to kick him without getting in trouble, but I don’t even feel like it. Instead, I feel sorry for him, and as he rushes into the apartment, I rush down the stairs, wiping away new tears.

Blocks back, how many? Four over and then ten up, and I’m back to my apartment, and there’s still a dead girl in my bathroom. I fill up the tub, because she looks cold.

I don’t know how it happens, really, but I decide to crawl in with her, to keep her warm or whatever, I don’t know. I’m murmuring things to her, little words that I don’t even understand, telling her I’m sorry, sorry about always having to add hot, sorry for leaving her while I went to her place to use the toilet, sorry for not loving her right, sorry for everything.

Sorry for everything. That’s what I’m saying over and over again. That, and that I love her.

I love you, I’m sorry, sorry for everything.

It’s like a mantra.

I pet her hair, but it’s soggy and cold and it isn’t her, so I stop.

It’s there on the side of the tub, the razor is. Where you keep the soap and shampoo and all that. Next to a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, because she always smoked when she took a bath.

Always seemed counter-productive to me, you know? You take a bath to get clean, to smell good and all that. Smoking while you do that defeats the purpose. She always said that it was about feeling good, washing away the shit, the regrets.

I light a cigarette and I add more hot, and I think about how this bathtub really does suck.

Where did she even get a razor blade? You have to go look for them special these days, don’t you? It isn’t like the old days, where you use them all the time. You want to slice your wrists all open, you have to have some foresight.

It’s that that gets me. She had the foresight to buy a razor. She knew what she was going to do. She knew she was leaving me.

I look at her, and she barely looks like her—she looks fake, like if someone carved her out of skin without knowing her passion for life. But there’s a smile, that smile she got when she knew she had won, when she had gotten one over on me.

And because whatever, I drag the razor down my arm, elbow to wrist, along the vein. She went sideways, I notice, doing it wrong. I make a few more cuts and then do the other arm. Light another cigarette and add more hot, because this bathtub really is ridiculous.

I put my arm around her and I kiss her on the cheek, and I wait.

****

This story is published in a book of short stories called “Degenerates,” which can be purchased here.