Valentine

Leaning against the doorframe, cradling her coffee in one hand and a cigarette in another, she scowled at the two canvasses that had been hung up above her bed without her permission.


Her mind flashed back to last night, when she came home to him sitting with his legs crossed on her sofa. He looked up with the eyes of a puppy who had been critically mangled under a truck while nobody was around, and she imagined him whimpering for her all day in his baseball cap and Air Force Ones as he bled out onto his $12 recycled tuxedo. Nobody in their right mind would wear something like that to a job interview. He was unemployable in every sense, and she resolved to buy more mirrors so maybe he'd come to it on his own. She assured him that he would survive, and went to throw the groceries in the fridge because her arms were killing her.

It was after she had put everything away when she found her Magilligan '91 Limited Wood sitting on the counter, half empty, lid off. She looked at him and watched him swill the rest of his mixer, apparently Coke helped it go down better. He was drunk and flailed towards the stove where the pasta had simmered itself dry, the pan black and warped.

Serve yourself since I didn't know how much you felt like eating and I accidentally ate all of your salt and vinegar chips, he said. You have a great movie collection, he said. I wanna watch Predator and a couple of eps of 30 Rock first but can we fuck after that baybee pleeeease I wanna make a movie with you tonight but can you moan loud and talk dirty because I like that a lot and it's more believable because you're so hot baby and maybe you can lick my butt and pull on my balls a bit - maybe we can forget about 30 Rock cos I'm so hot just thinking about it and ooh can I smack your tits around a bit because that's what they do in all the pornos, he said.

Her heart swelled, and she felt rage flood the vein above her forehead that made her look like a furious cock, pulsing and purple. She's dating a peace rapist.


She looked at the grey behind the Verdana "Partners" on canvas one. At least he got the font right. She hoped that it was inspired by something deeper than a cliche but she didn't hold out any hope, since his life's work to date had been to buck so hard against the norm that he had come full-circle and was more than normal. After the gimmick, he was boring. He mentioned two days ago that he had watched American Psycho. Her stomach churned, and she felt her oesophagus pulsing, stirring the bile upwards. The second canvas, "Crime", was awful. The background was blood red, but there were stick figures drawn all over it in various stages of fighting. The Crime itself was the liquid paper outline and the excess red pain flicked over it in an amateur attempt to mimic blood spatter.

Partners in Crime. Where was the "in"?

Shaking her head as if to will away a terrible dream, she caught a smack of yellow on the grey that she was positive didn't belong. Was that phlegm?

The art was, like him, an appropriate argument for legalised abortion. She stubbed out her cigarette and dropped it in her coffee cup.

He lay peacefully and oblivious. His mouth was agape, his chin covered in dry spit. His boxer shorts had ridden up and his flaccid penis stared at her between his leg and the pillow he had draped it over. He had hairless sideboob, his milky cleavage more than passable for a thumbnail for a RedTube clip about some pert college girl getting sleepfucked.

Hey baby sorry about last night I'm a dick. I love you happyvalentinesday. I fell asleep because I was drunk and I'll buy you a bottle of Jack to make up for the one I drank, sorry. Can we have sex tonight and I can do all those things to you I said I would... come on, I lost my job yesterday and if anyone has a right to you it's me babe, stop playing hard to get.

You are a shitbag. Get the fuck out of my house and don't come back.