Free Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine Page A

his own things there; the overhead pipes dripped incessantly. I stood in a parallelogram of light on the hardwood floor, looking him in the face, pluckily enough to all outward appearance, but inside, miserable.
    â€œWell,” I said, “did you put your heart into storage too?”
    He didn’t answer this directly.
    â€œI’ve got a key, but it would be better if you called the landlord.”
    â€œIs this it, Lars? Aren’t you going to tell me what went wrong? Where’s the big scene? Where’s the show-down?”
    â€œI don’t want a showdown. I have no interest in fighting.”
    What kind of sad sack has no interest in fighting, I asked him. For an instant I sat below deck with the squire and the doctor, a bottle of Spanish wine and some raisins before us, Captain Smollett issuing forth commands.
It would be pleasanter to come to blows. Now, sir, it’s got to come to blows. What I propose is to take time by the forelock and come to blows some fine day when they least expect it.
Lars wouldn’t fight because he was afraid a fight would make him confront the truth about himself. And so, out of love, I refused to move out.
    â€œThen what did he say?” said Rena when we met at the coffee shop.
    â€œâ€˜Today would be good,’ he said, but I’ve got several appointments I need to keep and no desire to disrupt my schedule because his royal Larsness asked me to. He can take the sofa, if my presence really bothers him.”
    â€œWow,” breathed Rena.
    â€œI’m pleased with myself for refusing to cave in to his request. You should come on over after this.”
    â€œOh no,” Rena said. “I couldn’t—”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œNot if it’s his place. You know. I think it would be awkward.”
    â€œRena, it’s
our
place! Don’t be ridiculous.”
    I was dying for Rena to see how I had begun to enjoy Lars’s apartment. My stuff was in banana boxes, but I made use of every thing of his in sight. I wore his favorite bathrobe un­cinched, the tie dragging across the dusty floor. I slathered myself with his sensitive skin moisturizer, heated his organic marinara in the microwave and splattered the sauce, used his electric razor and didn’t obsessively clean out my hairs.
    â€œLook, are you coming or not?”
    â€œI can’t,” Rena said. “Between The Pet Library and the pet-sitting, my schedule is crazy.”
    â€œI’m sorry to see you so distracted.” I pushed the check across the table.
    When I got back to the apartment, the phone was ringing. Naturally I pounced on it, thinking it might be Lars.
    â€œIs Lars there?” a woman trilled.
    I knew her voice: Chelsea, whose luckless experiences with boyfriends Lars had often, with too much sympathy, detailed.
    â€œYou have the wrong number,” I said.
    â€œDo I? Is this seven five three—”
    â€œDid you say Lars? Or Louse? Or Lies?”
    Then I unplugged the phone—and kept it unplugged, except for when I wanted to use it.
    Â 
    I’m not going to relate every detail of the siege. It was tiring, even with the advantages of the healing sessions, which increased my stamina, and made me think I could hold out forever, until the day when Bev Flowers stopped me in the outer room, by the serenity fountain, and asked me to pay off my balance. “Well, here’s the awkward thing,” I told Bev. “It’s Lars who’s been loaning me the money for healings, but now he went and changed his ATM number.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” Bev said, and that was my last alignment. In the end, Lars chose a cowardly route and called my mother, who could be trusted in a pinch with almost anything. She surmised that the affair between Lars and me was over and recommended that my lingering in the apartment be stopped. In her careful, experienced way, she took care of the peskiest details, even