Sure, Sarah. We’ll see.
I started up my car (not a Jeep, thank you very much) and followed her from a distance. It was probably the only time I was thankful for Bay Area traffic, as it’s great coverage when stalking your lying-piece-of-shit partner. She drove through Lake Merritt to those ranchero-style homes near Piedmont. Oh, so you got yourself a fancy bitch now, huh? I could see through her rear window that Sarah was on the phone with someone. Her gestures were exaggerated, almost comical, like how she gets all flustered when we’re arguing. Or how she gets sometimes when we’re fucking. I could feel my ears burning as the blood pulsated in my head and my belly dropped.
Sure enough, she turned into a fancy brick home in Piedmont, complete with an obnoxious yellow fence around a blossoming garden, and no... a wishing well in the yard? How tacky. I drove past the house as Sarah turned into their half-circle driveway. She was so preoccupied on the phone that she didn’t pay any attention to me. A part of me wishes I had kept driving, just so I could maintain a snippet of blissful doubt. But instead, I turned around.
The typical cheating signs began a few weeks ago: she’d become more secretive, almost defensive, with her phone calls and texts, spending unexplainably longer hours in the office. But what finally made me follow her were the texts I’d read the night before last. I had never looked through Sarah’s phone before. I really don’t condone this type of behavior, but she’d been acting so strange lately and was in the shower when it buzzed, so I picked it up. I told myself I was only checking quickly to see if it was important, if it was an emergency that I needed to notify her about.
Three unread texts from a number not yet added as a contact, a number without a name. How convenient.
536-7856: You cannot do this to me Sarah. [Sent 6:58 p.m.]
536-7856: I will convince you to change your mind. [Sent 6:58 p.m.]
536-7856: Meet me tomorrow evening. I will make it worth your while. [Sent 6:59 p.m.]
Which brings me to now — sipping on too-strong rum drinks decorated with tiny umbrellas in the Kona Club after she didn’t come home last night. The bar smells a bit like wet towels, but the room is dark, and I need some alone time. That lying, sniveling piece of shit.
I flag down the bartender. I’m making it a goal to try every tiki drink in the joint before sundown.
“This one,” I point to the menu, “the... Macadamia Nut... Chi-Chi? The fuck is a Chi-Chi?”
The bartender is one big man-bun in an aloha shirt; a beach bum surfer who probably hasn’t been to the ocean in twenty years. He nods at me while he wipes down a glass. “Sure,” he smiles. “But maybe you should take it easy after this one.”
“That’s not what I asked you, Endless Summer.”
“I love that movie, but that doesn’t even make sense. Are you calling me Endless Summer? My name is Big Mike.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Maggie. Now Chi-Chi! With extra umbrellas!”
He serves me my drink, albeit reluctantly, and I replay once again the events of last night. Seeing Sarah’s face in the window and the hulking silhouette of whoever was in the room with her. What a beast. I always knew she liked them more butch, the lying dyke... I watched from the window of my car for a few minutes, contemplating whether or not to confront them. Whether or not to knock on the front door and spit in Sarah’s stupid face when she and her new lover answered.
I could have said something clever, like in the movies when couples break up. Something like, Ha! You can have her! Psssh... good luck! Or even better, Good riddance! Or maybe I would joke about how she dresses terribly, or is lazy in bed, or always lies about being a gold star... I should have told them I hoped they would be happy together and then told Sarah to pick up all her shit from the house. I should have told her I never even loved her... Fuck.
But the truth is that seeing them together made me feel like something was breaking inside me. The truth is that I sat in disbelief in my car for several minutes, as I watched them through the window. The truth is that when I saw the other woman embrace Sarah, pushing her up against the wall like that, I had to turn away because I thought I was going to be sick.
Aloha Shirt hands me my Macadamia Nut Chi-Chi, a cheerful little drink to offset my sour mood.
I can’t take it any longer. I pull out my phone and text her: I saw you last night. Why did you do it? [Sent 7:22 p.m.]
I put the phone down on the bar and close my eyes. The syrupy sweetness of the drinks is starting to give me a headache without a buzz. Okay, maybe a little buzz, but it’s the warm, sugary, tipsy precursor-to-a-hangover — not worth the high. I keep thinking of all the fun Sarah and I used to have, all the good times: the late-night cuddles and movies; the uncontrollable laughing at the stupidest shit; or when she would squeeze my hand sometimes suddenly, as if to make sure I was still there and still real; or, oh God, the sex...
I snap out of it and look at my phone. A note appears under my sent text: Message Read 7:24 p.m. It is now 7:49 p.m. with no response. I rationalize this in several ways: Maybe she can’t text because she is hurriedly driving home, eager to apologize in person. Maybe her phone died as she was texting back — she was always forgetting to charge it overnight. Fuck. She stayed out overnight.
My throat tightens as I begin to accept that: Sarah read my text and chose not to respond. She has not contacted me in nearly twenty-four hours. On purpose. I gulp down the rest of my sickeningly decadent drink.
I cannot believe she didn’t come home, that she didn’t call or send a message. I had to remove the battery from my own phone to prevent myself from contacting her first. I don’t even remember driving home. I was just suddenly there, chainsmoking cigarettes despite having quit over a year ago, sipping the cognac we kept in the cupboard for special occasions. This was a “special occasion” all right, over four and a half years of a relationship abandoned. I didn’t even cry. I just sat there dumbfounded until the night melted away into dawn and I woke up sweating in an empty bed a few hours later.
My phone starts buzzing before I can start to tear up again. One new unread text message.
Sarah: Where are you? [Sent 8:36 p.m.]
Where am I? That’s all she has to say for herself? She wants to know where I am? Where are you, bitch?
Me: I’m at the Kona Club getting wasted. What the fuck do you care? [Sent 8:42 p.m.]
I sit there stewing for a moment before I realize that the sneaky bitch is asking where I am so she can sneak in the house when I’m not there. I pay my tab and leave in a rush to confront her. I walk briskly down the road toward our home. We (or soon to be just I) live in one of those little duplexes off of Piedmont Avenue. To be clear, not Piedmont — the ritzy-town-inside-a-town where that whore lives — but just the street in North Oakland. It’s a deceiving area: in the daytime it can be almost bourgie, with little shops selling useless — but organic! — items lining the street, but nighttime is when it gets interesting. Yoga moms and young radicals teach their children about gentrification by giving them books on the subject, while making sure to shield them from the unsightly homeless living in the alleys.