Two months, three days, and thirteen hours ago He had left her. At dinner of all places. Shrimp scampi poised on the end of His fork, like it had slipped His mind up until just that exact moment in time that He wanted to break up. He had “met someone else”. Whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Don’t we all meet other people aside from our spouses every day? The coffee shop cashier, the cab driver, the man waving a laminated sheet about Manhattan bus tours in your face, the old woman in an ancient and exorbitantly expensive mink coat you bump shoulders with on the subway when you both try to back away from the rat scuttering across the floor? But Annabelle wasn’t thinking about that, no. She had been determined since that night to fill her life with nights out, expensive jewelry, Chinese takeout, and tarot card readings from the old Hungarian woman downstairs whose apartment always smelled like cat piss and incense (which are more distinct scents than people might at first assume, Annabelle had come to realize). Annabelle was bent to both know “what was in the cards for her” (literally) and yet simultaneously ignore all signs present in her life pointing her towards anything other than what she wanted in that moment. If “a tall, handsome young man shall appear before her” (an almost nightly line from the Hungarian woman) then that meant Annabelle was off the hook that night, ordering from The Golden Pot again, pork belly baos, spicy beef ramen, and a mango bubble tea. Maybe the man would be the delivery boy. Or maybe he’d fall straight through the ceiling in the middle of her ninth rewatch of the week of A Knight’s Tale. One was about as unlikely as the other.
But tonight, Annabelle was going out. Stacey and Kiki had called the day before, insisting she meet them out to “get out of the boy blues.” Without a second’s hesitation, Annabelle had agreed, and now here she stood at the kitchen counter, hair and makeup done, adorned in a suit jacket, a dress she had uncovered in the back of her closet like a lost artifact, and heels that her terminally sweaty feet had begun slipping and sliding inside of already. There was just one more thing: the bracelet. Under the sole light over the counter she was bent over, staring down the silver strip like a suspect in custody, desperate to make it talk. Or just clip onto her fucking wrist already, so she could leave. With each turn of her arm, an attempt at a previously unattempted angle on the matter, the leather jacket restricted her movements so much she felt like a Barbie doll.
The bracelet had been a Christmas gift from Him, though Annabelle had always suspected it had been chosen by his mother, who had much better taste than he would have. Also, it hadn’t come from Macy’s this time. It was a simple silver bracelet with small emerald green crystal embellishments throughout. The problem was, it was meant to be clipped on, and He had always done it for her. It had never occurred to Annabelle, not really, that she might be forced to attach the thing herself. In passing, oh, sure, it was funny enough when he would chide her for her incompetence when it came to the bracelet, but it had always been in a cute way. Or so she thought. Right? Or rather, had it been a sign all along? Was that why he had been so frustrated when he had had to help her all those times? Or was it a secret sadness that he had known their love was doomed, and all he could think of was how sad he would be to have to leave her to clip the bracelet on by herself when they broke up? In that case, it was really sweet of him, actually. In a way.
Sweat covering more than just her feet now, Annabelle tore off the leather jacket and tossed it to the floor with a thick thump. Last week, she had read an article, some kind of op-ed, about a woman who had choked on a tuna salad sandwich alone in her apartment and had had to give herself CPR to save her own life. Nobody had come to the door, nobody had been there to check on her. Even the dachshund that the woman claimed to own, (“the best wittle hot dog boy in da world!” she had written, somehow using real English language characters and the actual American dollars The New Yorker had paid her) hadn’t bothered to come to her rescue. The article had been stuck in Annabelle’s mind ever since. Not, of course, that a bracelet was really as big of a deal as choking to death alone and having your corpse rot away to mush on the floor afterward for God only knows how long. But Annabelle’s situation in that moment was more of a spiritual battle between herself and herself. One self wanted to wear the bracelet as a sign of power over Him (maybe? She thought?). If she could just clip this stupid fucking thing onto her wrist, then maybe that would trigger an avalanche of new life experiences for her, experiences which had been waiting for her just on the other side of this small but mighty moment of catharsis. The other self, however, the one who always snuck up on Annabelle when she was least expecting it, was the one who simply wanted to wear the bracelet because she missed Him. Two years together wasn’t nothing. A few vacations, talks of an apartment or even a house together. Even that age-old relationship-ender, the unspoken word, “kids”, had somehow seemed to go over without a bump. But He had still left. After all of that. Annabelle’s face flushed red, suddenly feeling foolish again, even here, alone in her apartment, with nobody to see her or for her to see, aside from her own reflection.
Having now pulled her heels off too, Annabelle sat herself on the couch, under the drooping leaf of her enormous monstera plant. Her lips wanted a cigarette but her mouth wanted a slice of pepperoni pizza. Annabelle checked her watch. She should have met with Stacey and Kiki almost thirty minutes ago. In a desperate final act, Annabelle poised the bracelet between her teeth in her mouth, and began to make an attempt at clipping it closed from this angle, dangling it over her wrist and hoping to position the clip part at just the right angle with her two free hands that she could then simply drop the other end from her mouth and clip it with no struggle at all. She felt her head begin to throb, the tension in her muscles having spread to every inch of her body now. Her heartbeat was quick and steady. It was on her fifth attempt at it that Annabelle, in a frustrated rage, clenched her fist around the free end of the bracelet and tore it out of her mouth. As she yanked, however, the clip became wedged between her two front teeth, and subsequently dislodged one of them, not only sending the tooth flying across the floor, but each individual bead of the bracelet as well, the whole thing coming apart in her hands in less than a second. She screamed and clutched at her mouth, blood flowing freely from the empty gum. Then, she leaned back, sinking comfortably into the cushions of the couch, and tried not to cry. When the tears inevitably began to fall, she thought of each one being for something different; being lonely, being frustrated, being tired, being hungry, being hopeful, being excited, being relieved, and finally being accepting of whatever it was that might come next.
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