Works
Hollywood’s Breakup
It was on our second date that I first lost a little respect for Cindi. I noticed that she ate her lip gloss. Granted, it wasn’t with a fork and knife or anything, but I still couldn’t help feeling a tad uncomfortable as the girl across from me hesitated every few moments to steal a lick from her shining pink lips. She was sly about it, of course, always pointing behind me to people she pretended to recognize or dropping her fork so that I’d have to climb under the table and pick it up. Looking back, it’s kind of sad to think of all the illusions she had to maintain, all the lies she was forced to weave before my eyes. And for what? Just to relish, for a scant few moments, in the delight of her enticing makeup.
It was watermelon flavor, in case you care, but I didn’t find that out until date three, by which time I had wasted a considerable amount of money at the box-office. Cindi and I saw a lot of movies. It was our niche, a necessity for any lasting relationship. Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks, and we watched them do it.
“Kris…”
Anyway, ever since I got a taste of that lip gloss, my relationship with Cindi strangely began to decline. Truthfully, I don’t understand it at all, but since that first kiss, for some bizarre reason, the girl really started to annoy me. Her eerie hunger for watermelon lip gloss, the way she spells her name with that stupid little ‘i’—nearly everything about her screamed of a hidden shallowness. It was almost too much for one boyfriend to bear! And to make matters worse, every time I tried to talk to her, every time I’d attempt to express the hardships I was enduring because of her irritating quirks, every time that I’d voice my legitimate complaints, Cindi wouldn’t even listen. She’d just sit there silently, biting her lip, completely oblivious to the aggravations she was causing me. To think of someone being that blind to the pains of others!
“Kris, is this the street?”
However, even with her many glaring faults and the fact that she never much paid attention when I pointed them out, I was willing to continue my trying relationship with Cindi, being the kind, patient, humble man that I was. But all that changed the night of date six.
“Kris…”
Having mutually determined that we had gone to the theater quite enough, Cindi and I decided to alter our usual date routine and rent a movie instead. I scoured the shelves, sifting through the titles like a connoisseur, carefully weighing each selection for its cinematic worth. Meanwhile, Cindi meandered about like a lost child. Finally, I found it…the perfect movie for us—Casablanca.
“Eww…isn’t that in black and white?”
“It’s a classic,” I replied, pretending that she hadn’t really said that.
Cindi frowned then held up her choice.
“What about Love Story instead?”
“Love Story?” I asked, biting at my fingernails, a nervous habit I had picked up from watching too many chick flicks. Cindi frowned again.
“Don’t do that, Kris,” she demanded, thrusting the horrid movie into my hands. “It’s disgusting.”
I sighed and returned Casablanca reverently to its shelf. I felt sorry for her really. After all, it wasn’t Cindi’s fault that she was so shallow. What could I truly expect from her? The poor girl had never even seen Casablanca.
“Kris!”
“Huh?”
I shook my head and refocused my eyes, peering out through the windshield upon the illuminated stripes of the road, fiery yellow bolts which whizzed by as Cindi swerved in and out of her lane, slowing to a hesitant lurch, causing the seatbelt to constrict tightly across my chest.
“Oh, sorry,” I muttered. “I guess I was drifting off there.”
Cindi sighed and rolled her eyes.
“This is the street, isn’t it?” She asked, flipping on her signal.
I nodded, mind firm with decision as my pulse beat in rhythm with the blinker’s ticking. I looked down at the copy of Love Story and knew what I had to do.
“Cindi…I think we should break up.”
The car swung violently across the road and I held my breath, palms sweaty and knuckles white, but Cindi only smiled and calmly turned the wheel back, realigning the car and drifting smoothly to a stop before my house.
“Me, too,” she said and unlocked the doors.
Caught off guard, I fumbled awkwardly with my seatbelt, scrambled out of the vehicle, and at length found my feet upon the hard, rough concrete of my driveway. I paused for a moment, breathing in the crisp night air, holding open the car door and for some reason unwilling to slam it closed. I wanted to say something…something romantic…something touching…something moving…something Humphrey Bogart would say…but nothing came to me. Cindi just kept on smiling, her watermelon lips spread smugly across her delicate face as she opened her mouth to speak.
“Here’s looking at you, kid.” |