\n
Louise<\/em><\/p>\n I\u00a0don\u2019t know what came over me. The morning after Louise said we were through, I got up early and drove to her place. It was still dark. I walked around the back of her building, to her patio. I had scissors with me and I cut all the blossoms off her rose bushes. Louise worked on those bushes all the time, pruning, fertilizing, and dusting them for bugs. Because of the darkness I might have missed a few of them, but I cut all the roses I could find. I walked over to the driveway and I piled the roses on the hood of her Toyota.<\/p>\n I went home and crawled back into bed. I had all my clothes on, but I had forgotten the scissors in my pocket and when I rolled over on my side they jammed into my leg. I hopped out of bed and took the scissors out of my pocket and slid them under the pillow. Then I went into the bathroom and turned on the light to look at where the scissors had poked my thigh. There was just a little drop of blood there, a perfect droplet of bright red liquid. I tore off a piece of toilet paper and wiped away the blood, threw the paper in the toilet bowl and went back to bed. By then the sun had started to come up and I could hear some birds chirping and fluttering in the elm tree outside. I pressed the fingers of both hands up against my nose and the smell of roses was strong and sweet. <\/p>\n Karen<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYou did what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI drank infected monkey blood.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSure you did.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, really, I did. I stole it from Karen\u2019s lab.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause she left you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t thinking too clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJesus, I guess not. How do you feel? \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m okay. I just have some itching, a\u00a0personal<\/em>\u00a0kind of itching.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Carla<\/em><\/p>\n Carla, when you packed up all your stuff and left me, I walked around in a daze. I wore the same shirt for a week and never noticed. I burned toast, I burned my fingers. I had long conversations with my dog. I asked him if he thought you\u2019d come back. He looked at me like I had lost my mind.<\/p>\n \u201cLook who\u2019s back,\u201d I said to the dog the afternoon your car pulled into the driveway. The gravel crunched and we stepped out to the porch, the dog and I, and in a moment you appeared at the corner of the house. The dog looked from me to you and back at me.<\/p>\n You said, \u201cI\u2019m here for the plants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m afraid I don\u2019t have much of a green thumb,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n I thought you\u2019d go wild when you saw your plants rotted black from too much water or shriveled from none at all. I\u2019d put a lot of effort into their care; some of them were stubborn and had to be doused with paint thinner or oven cleaner before I had them looking the way I wanted them. I was expecting quite a scene, but you only sighed and shook your head. \u201cI should have come to get them sooner,\u201d you said. Then you patted the dog and drove away.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Laurel<\/em><\/p>\n Laurel graduated from Wellesley. She\u2019s very proud of it. She graduated twelve years ago, and now she\u2019s a high-powered investment broker and makes tons of dough, but when she\u2019s not at the office she wears a WELLESLEY sweatshirt or T-shirt all the time. She has a WELLESLEY decal on the rear window of her car and she always has a pile of WELLESLEY alumni magazines on her coffee table.<\/p>\n When Laurel gave me the old heave-ho I wrote to the alumni magazine and said I wanted to keep them updated on my activities. I told them I was working as a massage therapist and selling my macram\u00e9 wall hangings at craft fairs, but that my real satisfaction came through the volunteer counseling I did with the Right To Life movement. I signed it, \u201cLaurel Weinstein, Class of 1998.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jane<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHi, Janey? Look, I know you said don\u2019t ever call, but…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI meant it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI respect that, I really do, but this is important.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll bet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not an easy call to make, Janey. The doctor told me I should notify you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNotify<\/em>\u00a0me? About what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got a sexually transmitted disease.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re kidding me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wish I was, Janey. Guess which one.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Willa<\/em><\/p>\n Willa used to complain that I never made an effort to bond with her cat. \u201cOf course not,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s good,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n After Willa announced that she never wanted to see me again, I got the idea that I should find a way to kill Cuggles. Logistically, it wasn\u2019t so easy. Willa never let her outside, so I couldn’t run her over, drown her, or strangle her, either. And because of the restraining order Willa took out on me, I couldn\u2019t go near her place at all without big trouble, the kind I don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n Eventually, I came to my senses and dropped the whole idea. Despite what Willa thinks, deep down inside I\u2019m a gentle person. I could never kill a cat. I\u2019m not even allergic to cats. I just can\u2019t stand them. I went out and bought some notepaper that had, down at the bottom, a picture of a cute kitten playing with a ball of yarn. I wrote Willa a note on a piece of that paper.<\/p>\n Dear Willa, it said, I know you never want to see me or hear from me again, but I just wanted to tell you something that was bothering me the whole time we were together. I lied to you about being allergic to cats. I\u2019m not. I adore cats. In fact, they are my very favorite animals. I just couldn\u2019t stand your cat. And that name! Anybody over the age of twelve who would name their cat Cuggles has mental problems the size and scope of which are hard to imagine.<\/p>\n I know, I know. Very juvenile. But it did make me feel better. Briefly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Susan<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cJerry, you\u2019re my friend, right?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course. What\u2019s up?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf I asked you for a favor and it was really important, you\u2019d do it, right?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf it was legal, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is legal. I just want you to call Susan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat am I supposed to tell her?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust have a regular conversation. You know\u2014How are you? How\u2019s work? Seen\u00a0any movies? That kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMostly, but I want you to work something else into the conversation. Real naturally, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust mention that I\u2019ve got liver cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Claire<\/em><\/p>\n Claire always complained that I couldn\u2019t make a commitment.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, brother,\u201d I\u2019d say, \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with the way things are?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not enough,\u201d she\u2019d say, and her dark eyes would fill with tears.<\/p>\n A couple of months after Claire told me to get lost, I found a pair of her panties jammed down between the mattress and the headboard of my bed. Something inspired me to pull out my camera. I stuffed the panties into a manila envelope and before I mailed it off to Claire, I slipped in a photo of me wearing her panties on my head, like a hat, with my eyes crossed and my tongue sticking out. On the back I wrote, \u201cI\u2019m ready for that commitment now. Hope it\u2019s not too late.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Danette<\/em><\/p>\n After Danette said going out with me was the dumbest thing she ever did and how she never wanted to see me again, ever, I found myself spending a lot of time in bars. Sometimes I\u2019d go with a couple of friends, but I would drink so much at these bars that soon my friends wouldn\u2019t go with me and then I found myself alone. I didn\u2019t realize I had a problem until one afternoon when I was home by myself watching TV and drinking vodka straight out of the bottle. I was so drunk the TV looked blurry and I thought there was something wrong with the picture. I went over to the set and smacked it with my hand. It didn\u2019t help, only hurt like hell. I looked down at my arm, trying to bring it into focus. What I saw scared me.<\/p>\n I\u2019d written DANETTE = DEVIL from my shoulder to my wrist with a ballpoint pen. It was a blue pen but the skin was bright red around the letters; I had really gouged it in there. I couldn\u2019t even remember doing it. I went straight to the kitchen and poured the rest of the vodka into the sink, then tried to wash the words off my arm with dish detergent and a scouring pad. It was dimmer, and dimmer still after a week of frequent showers and gentle scrubbing. I wore long sleeves and slowly the letters faded from blue to light blue, to gray, to gone. I haven\u2019t had a drink since, not a real drink. I\u2019m not counting beers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “I burned toast, I burned my fingers. I had long conversations with my dog. I asked him if he thought you\u2019d come back<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-insanity","writer-todd-mckie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17585,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/17585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen I woke up it was eleven o\u2019clock. I felt refreshed. I took a shower and dried myself off and before I got dressed I put a band-aid over the tiny red mark on my thigh. It wasn\u2019t much bigger than a pinprick, but I didn\u2019t want to take any chances with infection. It never got infected, though, and each day the red spot was a little smaller, but I put a fresh band-aid over the area twice a day, morning and night, for several days, until there was no longer even the faintest evidence of my wound.<\/p>\n
\nI said, \u201cDon\u2019t be ridiculous, I\u2019m crazy about Cuggles, but I\u2019m allergic to cats.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you take something for it?\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re over here all the time. You don\u2019t expect me to get rid of Cuggles, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n