9/21/11

The Paramour
By Melanie Browne


I took the empty bottle of Korbel Champagne and begged him to play spin the bottle with me.
I tried shedding a few tears. I posed suggestively with the cat, I licked my lips.  I pulled my shirt down low around my shoulders.

Nothing was working. I knew what he worshiped, and it wasn't me. It was another woman, and her name was death. She was a seductress and kept pulling him away from me. She had long eyelashes, thick and black. Every time he moved close to me she would move closer.

There was nothing I could do. He worshiped her. I had to get rid of the bitch. I went to a spiritual adviser. I gave her my last one-hundred dollars, a couple of ones, and seventy-five cents. In other words, she took what was left of my wallet. I was prepared. I had brought a baggie full of his fingernail clippings, a picture of his elderly aunt, and I played her a couple of the voice messages he had left on my phone. She didn't seem too impressed, so I figured she must be an amateur.

She quickly proved me wrong when she wrote his phone number and address with a ball point pen on the back of my hand.

“Wow, you must be psychic, I told her."

“No", she said," I'm really good with Google."

She called his house a few times, and let me listen with rapt attention. He wasn't home. She said I would need to come back the next day with more money, and to bring some of my friends.

I eventually realized that I would have to be the one to tear death away from my beloved. I made a wish on a wish-bone with my cousin. I lost, and took this to be a bad sign.

I started listening to Albert King. That didn’t help either.

He called me to tell me he was watching Faces of Death Part Three. I tried to be enthusiastic.
“I heard that was the best of the series, " I said, but didn't mean it.

I was full of life. To me, life was one big party. Life was The Love Boat. Life was Love, American Style. My favorite scene in any movie was in Reality Bites, when they dance inside the Food Mart to My Sharona.  Still, I knew that if I wanted him back I would need to come up with my A Game and so I suggested we watch inspirational Christmas movies such as It’s a wonderful Life and Hallmark movies about lonely women who have one night stands after they do a lot of Christmas shopping at Macy’s.  It was all to no avail.  He told me after the final scene of It’s a Wonderful Life that he liked the scene where no one recognizes George.

“That would be a  relief,” he tells me.

“what are you talking about?” I scream. “George was lonesome, and he realized that having  problems was better than being alone.”

He just stared at me. “Nah”,  he said “I think that’s the way the director should have ended  it.”
I looked at him with a mixture of pity and disgust.

We didn’t see each other much after that night. Our relationship slowly trickled to nothing. The last I heard he was filling out organ donation cards and dating gore models. On a side note, when Christmas finally rolls around this year, I plan to shop at Macy’s and have lots of one-night stands.


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I live in Texas.
I write poetry and flash fiction.
I get hungry and eat a lot of tator tots.