Free Elegies for the Brokenhearted by Christie Hodgen

to remember the last time I had seen her so excited, the last time she had displayed an emotion besides contempt. Certainly it was before Bud, before my mother broke up with the married man and we moved out of the condo, which Malinda had loved more than anything else in her life. I watched the rings on Malinda’s fingers, watched them swirl from blue to green to black, mesmerized.
    Then, compelled by some instinct, I looked up, and that’s when I saw you and Bill walking toward us. You hadn’t noticed us yet, and in the few seconds before you saw us I sensed what would happen next. I sensed that Bill, who had long been in love with Malinda and who was always coming up with excuses to talk to her, offering her gum and cigarettes, who often pretended to need a light just so he could ask her for one, a tactic which eventually backfired (“Jesus Christ,” Malinda had said once, “I’m not like your personal fucking match supplier, you know”), would see her, and approach her, and she would brush him off with some swift cruelty. Which is exactly what happened. When Bill saw Malinda he cried out her name as though in ecstasy. “Malinda! Hey, Malinda!” he said. “Malinda, hey! Whatcha doing?” He was so excited to see her he actually punched her in the arm.
    â€œWhat’s it look like I’m doing?” she said.
    â€œYou looking at jewelry?”
    â€œNo,” she said, “bathing suits.”
    â€œOh,” Bill said. He was a nervous kid in the habit of shifting his weight back and forth between his legs, and he stood there fidgeting for a few seconds, trying to think of something to say. “There’s a party somewhere,” he said. “I think we’re gonna go.”
    â€œGood,” said Malinda. “Don’t let me keep you.”
    â€œYou wanna come?”
    â€œWith you?” she said. “No.”
    And then you spoke up, angry, your black eyebrows slanted together: Why do you have to be such a bitch?
    â€œI don’t know,” said Malinda, “why do you have to be such a retard?”
    Fuck you, you said, and walked off. Bill followed you. But behind your back he turned to us and gave Malinda a big smile, a sweeping wave. “Maybe we’ll see ya later!” he said.
    When the men emerged from the jewelry shop Malinda was poised there, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, rifling through her purse. Just at the right moment she turned to the men, as if looking for help from the first person who came along, and asked the man in the middle for a light.
    The man said nothing, but he stopped and reached in his pocket and pulled out a book of matches. He looked Malinda up and down, lit the match and held it out. Malinda bent her head toward him. Then she tilted her head back so he could see the full length of her neck—men were always commenting on her long neck—and released a little cloud of smoke out the side of her mouth.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” he said.
    â€œMarilyn.” This was a name, Malinda believed, that stirred within men certain deeply held longings. When she turned eighteen she planned to go to court to legally adopt it.
    â€œThat’s a awfully grown-up name,” said the middleman.
    She shrugged. “What’s yours?”
    â€œFlash.” And without looking at his friends he stated the names of the other two. “These are my brothers Matt and Mike.”
    â€œHi,” Malinda said. She didn’t bother to look at Matt and Mike either. She and the middleman had their eyes locked on each other, and it was all routine from there. Flash bought Malinda an ice cream cone, Malinda walked up and down the boardwalk licking it, twirling her cone against her tongue—she couldn’t just eat it like a normal person, it had to be some kind of display—and then, the ice cream gone, Flash offered Malinda a drink from a flask he produced from the inner pocket of his