Dead and Gone by Kjerstin S. Johnson

You wake up naturally before your alarm goes off. This rarely happens. You try to remember your dream. You cannot, because you remember Ronald, your ex-boyfriend. Ronald, who, last week on his way home from the post office was struck by a plummeting piano. You do not get out of bed yet. You count the number of dead ex-boyfriends you have. You have six. Seven, including Ronald. You try to remember your dream again, you think it was something funny. You cannot.

You make coffee, like you do every morning. It’s important to keep up your normal routine in the wake of tragedy. You were told this when Jason, your first dead ex-boyfriend, died. You were unable to attend the funeral, you were still in York, where you were studying abroad, where, two months earlier you had called and said, That’s what people do in college, Jason, they experiment. Maybe, Jason, you could learn a thing or two from British men and tuck your shirt in for once.

You had no idea, there was no way you could have known, that Jason would be out rollerblading the day the jaguar escaped from the Lincoln Park Zoo. You could not have known that he would be ripped in two and eaten by a deranged, and you feel, very unhappy animal. He had such a promising future as a firefighter, too.

You look at the paper. You read the metro section, you read the zucchini recipes, you read Dear Heloise. You do not read your horoscope, which is, of course, a bunch of balderdash. You do not read the obituaries.

You think about your other lovers. Christian had been racing through the Mojave Desert and his white Datsun had exploded mid-air over a cliff. Both Devon and Kevin in plane crashes (Kevin was a sky writer, his odds were higher). And Herman, dear Herman, into a barrel and over a waterfall.

You think about their dogs. You wonder how they got fed. You can almost see their big hungry dumb dog eyes and it makes you feel very sad inside.

Ronald’s mother had called you. Ronald’s mother was terribly upset. She called you the daughter she always wanted. You consoled her soothingly, saying, Shh Miranda, it is the pills talking. It was obvious Ronald had not told her about the break up. You are not about to bring it up at this juncture but really Ronald, a move like that doesn’t exactly change your mind about the whole thing now does it.

You have called your mother. Your mother is terribly understanding. You have called Justin. He is so sweet, Justin. He is always a phone call away, Justin.

He has been your best friend since high school. He was there when Trevor changed his mind about taking you to the prom. Justin said he would l-l-l-love to take you and actually, it’s f-f-funny, he said, but ah-ah-ah-I always—but then Trevor came up to you in the hall and said Tina doesn’t actually put out and he needed a date again. It was around that time that Justin got his tapeworm, who has politely siphoned off his meals ever since, growing slowly but surely somewhere inside his body. He doesn’t seem to mind, he is such a trooper, Justin. He has even named it Pokey. Occasionally he winces when he is around you but he is so great, Justin.

You think of the last phone conversation you had with Ronald. You have finished the three-star Sudoku. You do not know what the big deal is.

You said something resembling, something along the lines of, something in the ballpark of, Ronald, I just don’t love you anymore.

Ronald was whimpering, whimpering But no, whimpering Baby, whimpering I know we can do this.

Ronald, you said.

Ronald was not wanting to hear you. Ronald was not respecting your decisions. Ronald was weeping.

Jambo, Ronald, you said.

And then Ronald was sputtering, sputtering I don’t, sputtering Sweetie but, sputtering Wait, what did you say?

Jambo means hello in Swahili, Ronald, and I must be speaking Swahili, because I don’t know why else you wouldn’t understand a single word I’m saying.

The next thing you know is the police bureau on 42^nd are calling you and saying that Ronald Bucknapple was found lodged under a piano a block from his complex. You begin to make a grocery list but the grocery list is very short, not only because you went just yesterday, but because the grocery list is “cigarettes.”

You brush your teeth. You really thought Ronald would be different. He had, after all, had a fling with a real Hollywood actress, who had appeared in not one, but two made-for-Lifetime movies. You had seen the second, and if she was even half as sexy, resourceful, and as good with kids in real life as she was in Crazy Stakes, Ronald could only have been devastated at her leaving him for that guy from Scrubs. Given that turnover, you thought he would handle your break up as a man who has been there, a man who knows.

He had not handled it as a man who knows though, he handled it like a man whose heart was sandwiched in a hot iron vice that tightened and then released over and over again at an obscene velocity. Particularly painful for hearts bruised and swollen he said. Says you, you said. You were crying.

You foam and spit. You rinse and you smile in the mirror. Those are quite the pearly whites if you do say so yourself.

###

You uncap your Blushing Mocha Tulip lip color, which you had purchased from your friend Jamie Lynn who works at the L’Oreal cosmetics counter in the Jones Store. It was just after David was fatally hit by a ton of bricks. Jamie Lynn offered her condolences, she offered you a rebate on your next purchase, she did not stop there. She offered, maybe you ended it a little harsh. Maybe two weeks was too soon to start seeing this Roland fellow.

Ronald, you said.

You weren’t so broken up about the whole bricks thing, is all she was saying. The word “cursory” was dropped. You thanked Jamie Lynn for the rebate.

You pout in the mirror with your Blushing Mocha Tulip lips. You do not need her advice on relationships. In fact, you are an expert on relationships. You are, in fact, an expert on:

1. Relationships
2. Making quiche
3. Taking the brown line to the Loop
4. Birth control
5. The life, times, and complete recordings of Maria Callas

You are almost ready for work. You pass through your living room to the front door. You glance, accidentally, regretfully, at the stack of DVDs that Ronald had left at your house. They are all Western European, they are all Criterion, the French ones not even attempting to market an English title: Jules et Jim, Belle de Jour, Hiroshima Mon Amour. You told Ronald they were pretentious, and by extension he was pretentious, as well as a French sympathizer. But you two had watched them side by side and you had watched them all. You had, at one point, quit reading the subtitles, and you read the rest of the screen, you read when people were in love by the way they laughed and you admired how striking it was to see the Mediterranean Sea filmed, said Ronald, in CinemaScope Vision.

You read the colors and lines that you felt had to be the same ones the moviemakers must have seen and then you turned toward Ronald and you read a light in his eyes because the son of a gun really did love those elitist self-gratifying films and at that instant you loved them too for the way they existed in a light in his eyes and Ronald oh my god Ronald what have I done and you are gasping because you know he will never return your phone calls now no matter how many times you try, and he will never call you baby girl again, and it’s not because you always tell him that you hate it, it’s demeaning, you will never hear those words again because he’s dead, because you killed him.

You take out your sunglasses, even though the morning light is diffused and friendly. You grab your coat even though the breeze outside can only be described as warm. You unfold your large, plastic sunglasses and you button your felt coat up though it is, by anyone’s standards, a pleasant day outside. Beneath your sunglasses your eyes, on occasion, well in ways they do not at the funerals of your exes. Under your coat you have shivered in broad sunlight.

No, you are keeping out a different light, you are keeping out a cold that does not come and go with the seasons. You are keeping out the knowledge that you may very well find yourself tied to the train tracks one day. You will be tied to the train tracks in the Mojave Desert and you may very well think twice about not reading your horoscope. You will be tied to the train tracks and there is freight train whistling in the not so distant distance.