Love May Fail Read Online Free PDF Page B

mom had died the year before.
    I don’t even remember what she had, but I remember he missed a lot of school, and then when he started attending every day again, everyone knew it was over, and he seemed like a ghost.
    I just wanted to bring him back from the dead.
    Resuscitate him.
    I remember he used to be funny in junior high. We had been in a play together, a comedy that he had written called Charles Barkley Goes to the Dentist .
    The funniest part was that Charles Barkley never even makes an appearance in the play, maybe because we had no black classmates to play the role. But I remember it was set in a dentist’s office. Jason played the dentist. I played the woman who worked the office, answering phones and greeting patients, and Jason had me wear these huge red Sally Jessy Raphael glasses. And a few other classmates played the people in the waiting room, reading magazines and newspapers, looking up curiously every time the phone rang. Reporters kept calling andasking when “The Round Mound of Rebound” was coming in to get his teeth cleaned—Jason had our science teacher, Mr. Roorbach, play the reporters, speaking into a microphone offstage, almost making the calls sound like the voice of some absurd Samuel Beckett version of God, even though none of us knew who the hell Samuel Beckett was back then. I had to keep saying I couldn’t “give out Mr. Barkley’s information,” and when the people in the waiting room overheard, they kept saying, “Charles Barkley? The Round Mound of Rebound is a patient here?” and, being a bad secret keeper or an unethical dental assistant, my character kept winking and whispering, “Well, everyone has to take care of their teeth—even professional athletes!”
    It seemed funnier when we were in eighth grade, but our parents laughed—well, Jason’s and other people’s parents laughed. My mom didn’t attend the performance, of course.
    Jason tried to send Charles Barkley—who was a rookie playing for the 76ers at the time—free tickets to our play, but the organization never returned his call.
    Jason Malta’s mom got sick shortly after that, and he stopped writing comedies. He became transparent as a window. You could see right through him for years. And when he made love to me for the first time, I swear to God, he became flesh and bone once again, if only for a few seconds, which was when I first realized that sex and womanhood were powerful.
    He used to buy me roses from the Acme, a dozen at a time. Cheap flowers that wilted and turned brown within hours. I thought I loved him, and maybe I did. He wasn’t very good-looking—red hair, pale skin, and a concave chest. But he was kind. Even when he stopped being funny, he was still kind.
    The smell of trash from the alley behind my childhood homemakes me feel nauseous again, but I manage to avoid the dry heaves.
    She’s inside, my mother; I know it. I can feel her heavy presence. But I’ll need strength to face her, more than I have right now.
    The finality of what has happened—it sinks in.
    It cuts.
    It mutilates.
    I try to shiver myself to sleep.
    In the cushions, I think I smell the Drakkar Noir cologne I once gave Jason Malta for Christmas, and which he wore dutifully for the rest of our high school tenure. I hope Jason Malta’s happily married with kids and is wildly successful. Maybe he’s even writing comedies again. Maybe.
    It’s a nice thought.
    “Portia Kane,” I say to myself, thinking about the vibrations of those syllables floating away into the night. “Portia Kane. Portia Kane. What has become of you, Portia Kane?”
    I close my eyes and try to erase the world.
    In my mind, I keep seeing a fish riding a bicycle.
    The fish is singing a song about how she loves to pedal her bike, and I can’t figure out how she can move both pedals with a single tail, which is when I realize I’m still drunk.
    I’m spinning.
    Bile runs halfway up my throat like some horrible acidic tongue and burns as it licks