Death Rattle - Part III
In Part II, we learn about the narrator’s job with Wheel of Bestsellers. Her girlfriend wants to sleep together, but the narrator asks if they can another time. The narrator suggests her girlfriend sleep with somebody else.
A week after my girlfriend had sex with Marta, she suggested I download a cognitive behavioral therapy app to combat my “mood-killing” depression. She said “mood-killing” with the flair of a voluptuous cartooned cow. I told her I wasn’t depressed. If I was depressed, I had my girlfriend to thank, but I couldn’t say that. She was just doing what I’d asked of her.
Later that evening, my phone lit up with a message asking me to Check in with myself! My girlfriend was generous enough to have downloaded the app for me.
This is a blatant invasion of privacy, I told her.
You gave me your password like the first week I met you.
On the leather sofa, she was crocheting a pair of assless chaps, baby pink. I wondered if they were for Marta.
The cognitive behavioral therapy app asked me to click the smiley faces that best reflected my emotions. It asked me why I’d chosen these smiley faces. It asked me to challenge the emotions these smiley faces reflected.
I chose the annoyed face because I am annoyed with this app, I typed. I can challenge this emotion by deleting the app that annoys me.
The app congratulated me on my first journal entry. It rewarded me with a jingle and purple confetti.
My girlfriend asked, What’s the verdict?
I should seek psychiatric help or I’m likely to commit mariticide.
She jumped up and glared at me. The baby pink chaps dangled from her fist.
I don’t find that funny at all, she said.
She huffed into the bathroom. Her body was enviable, especially from behind, those long limbs carved around smooth muscle. I rarely found the need to remind her how good she looked because she was always quick to agree.
I closed my eyes and listened to her piss, and then I waited for the sound of the shower. Instead, she shouted, I don’t feel well. Can you please go sit in the yard?
Like a dog?
I can’t hear you. If you love me, then please leave.
I thought about the condition: if, then. I wanted to be sure, before standing, that I was honest, out of respect for us both. Though I frequently told her I loved her, I rarely asked myself if it was true. Perhaps the issue was more with my definition than my feeling. Love was agony, not always but often. Whoever said love was only ecstasy hadn’t loved very hard at all. How could you stitch your heart to another person’s without wounding them both in the process? We’d entwined our hopes, fears, sorrows into the growing mess of our history, the emotional lacework tightening with each year that passed. That didn’t sound like ecstasy at all. What could I do? I stood and headed to the back door.
*****
The next morning, my boss sent me a Slack message asking if I was free to meet in five minutes. I knew last minute one-on-ones were rarely a good sign. I hoped a member of our team had quit or died, and then I felt disgusting for hoping for that.
Whenever we spoke, my boss spent most of his time disciplining his dogs, three suffering pugs who heaved and coughed at me through the screen. I liked to imagine reporting his shortcomings to the CEO and snatching the job for myself. I would be generous. I would allow him to work beneath me, on WOB.
He asked, Can you hear me?
I didn’t know whether he was speaking to me or the dogs. He often interrupted himself to address them, his eyes still on her camera.
Yes, I said.
Ominous music drifted in from the bedroom. My girlfriend was a room away, crocheting on the bed beside a YouTube compilation of horrible fates she’d made me watch the start of—cave diving catastrophes, mountaineering accidents, cults of feral children. She liked to see people die for hours at a time. She was so numb to tragedy that I doubted my own demise would phase her.
Wonderful, my boss said. Unfortunately, we’re going to have a conversation that I don’t love having. We’ve endured a difficult quarter, as you know, and I appreciate how you’ve restructured our content SKUS so thoughtfully. That was good of you, and don’t think I won’t be using them going forward. Don’t touch that. Don’t touch that. That’s Daddy’s scarf. That’s Daddy’s scarf.
He muted himself and contorted his torso over his black armrest. His floral button-up tugged loose from his khakis to reveal a pink, fleshy paunch. He was unhappy, and this made him unattractive, even down to his skin, which flaked red. I wondered if my body reflected the same. I rarely looked at myself in the mirror anymore. It was easier to look at my girlfriend, the stunner, and assume she wouldn’t associate with an ogre.
I asked, What’s the conversation?
He unmuted himself and half-smiled, exasperated.
I think I’ll have to come out and say it, he said. It makes me sad to do this, please know that. You have no idea how difficult this is for me. But we’re having to let you go.
He paused and sighed, like he was the one receiving the news.
I’m so jealous of you, he said. Can I tell you that? You have such freedom. It’s an enviable position, believe me.
I glanced around the kitchen. For some reason, I felt no prick of surprise. I smiled at my boss to see if kindness would startle him.
What’s going to happen with WOB? I asked.
The bedroom door opened, and my girlfriend stepped out into the kitchen. Her nose scrunched with resentment, or else maybe she was finally admitting to the sewage smell.
She mouthed, Are you getting fired?
I nodded. My boss said something about the importance of transferring my 401k. His pugs yipped like they’d stepped in hot oil. My girlfriend strode towards me urgently and ducked her face in front of mine, inches from the little camera.
You are a fool, she told the screen. There is absolutely no one in the world like this woman.
My boss said, Oh, hello, and my girlfriend promptly shut my laptop. She wrapped the cool wands of her arms around my neck and pressed my face into her bony chest. My lips were too close to the necklace, the ashes, but in her grip, I couldn’t shift them. I knew she wanted me to cry—not for malicious reasons but rather because she understood how to comfort tears. She was an ideal solace for children or emotional drunks. Stoicism, on the other hand, terrified her, and that fear led to frustration. I knew the path well. So much of our trouble was fear sprouting into cruelty.
I made myself sniffle, and she squeezed the back of my neck.
It’ll be okay, she whispered. Screw him. You’re leagues better than everyone who works there. Seriously, you’re the absolute smartest person I know.
Her hands slipped to my forearms, and she pushed so she could smile at my face. I smiled back and meant it. She kissed my cheeks and then my nose and then my lips and then my neck, a thousand little pecks that sent me giggling into her. This kind of touch was bliss.
I love you, I said.
Every day, she said.
*****
That weekend, Marta invited us to a sandstorm party. The desert was entering its dry season. My girlfriend said people in El Paso stayed inside to watch the dust collect while they drank Blanco tequila. I didn’t think this could be universally true.
Marta stays in and drinks tequila, I corrected her.
Exactly. She’s kind of adorable.
I guess I don’t see the connection.
My girlfriend rolled her eyes. Now that her initial pity had dissipated, my unemployment had begun to irritate her. We were keeping our distance. In the mornings, I sat at the kitchen table and pretended to apply for remote positions at ad agencies. In the evenings, I strolled the grocery store. Meanwhile, my girlfriend sought reasons to discipline me. I undercooked her eggs, and they reminded her of vaginal discharge. I wore an old fleece to bed—rough and scorched from the dryer—and my sleeves scraped her sensitive skin. I woke each morning immediately ready to sleep again. I wondered if I was nearing rock bottom and if that would make her pity me again. It was a comforting thought.
For the sandstorm party, she dressed in comically distressed denim shorts better suiting a sexually frustrated teenager.
She asked, Does it look okay?
Sure.
She frowned.
I asked, What?
She disappeared into the bedroom to put on her makeup. While I waited, I googled the meaning of Marta’s name.
Marta means mistress of the house, I shouted.
I thought it meant joy, she shouted. I hope you’re not planning to be sour.
She reemerged with harsh contour, wobbling winged liner. She was one of the only people I knew who looked more beautiful with a bare face. I told her this, and she frowned.
Gee, thanks, she said.
I’m not saying the makeup looks bad.
You kind of are.
Well, it’s not what I meant.
It doesn’t matter what you meant, it’s how you made me feel.
Why don’t you download the cognitive behavioral therapy app?
Her face softened and fell—not the reaction I’d expected, considering my snark usually incensed her.
I’ve been using it for like a year, she said.
To be continued..
Savannah Horton was the 2021-2022 St. Albans School Writer-in-Residence. Heidi Pitlor selected her story from The Cincinnati Review as a Distinguished Story for the Best American Short Stories 2020 collection. She has published in The Raleigh Review, Subtropics, and The Drift. Her novel opening has been longlisted for the First Pages Prize and the CRAFT First Chapters Contest. She is a graduate of the University of Florida’s fiction MFA program, where she received the Porter Fellowship.
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