Free Slick by Daniel Price

held her from behind, nodding, enjoying.
    “Conservatives keep freaking out about how more and more couples are getting divorced sooner. You know what I say? Good. That means more people are being honest with each other when it’s time to move on. I mean what’s the big deal? With one out of two couples getting divorced, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Fifty percent of companies fail within the first five years, even in a good economy. The bottom line is that things change. People grow apart. Why deny it? So we can justify all the flatware we got at our wedding? That’s bullshit. Don’t you think?”
    After a few seconds of silence, she laughed and checked my wrist for a pulse.
    “I’m still here,” I said. “Just listening.”
    “Am I even making sense?”
    “Yeah. Definitely. Your statistics are off, though.”
    “What, about the companies?”
    “Well, that too. But I was mostly referring to the divorce rate. Everyone throws that figure around all the time, but it’s just a media myth.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because I know the folks who started it. They’re an independent research group in Boston. Twelve years ago, they were hired by a Christian organization to get some hard numbers they could use. They said, ‘We don’t care how you get them, just get them.’ So the researchers spent six months raiding the public records of a hundred and fifty counties, tallying the number of approved marriage licenses and divorce papers signed in 1987. They discovered exactly half as many divorces.”
    “So? That’s one out of two.”
    “No it’s not. They were counting the divorces from all married couples, not just the ones who got married in 1987. Look, let’s say there are ten million married couples in those counties. One hundred thousand of them got married in 1987. Fifty thousand of them got divorced in 1987. Guess what? That’s fifty thousand out of ten million, not a hundred thousand. It was totally faulty reasoning, but the Christian group went all Chicken Little to the press anyway. Nobody ever stopped to question it.”
    Miranda rolled over and eyed me in full skeptical journalist mode. “Scott, are you trying to tell me that the divorce rate is actually one half of one percent?”
    “No. That’s just the same mistake reversed. My point is that you cant compare one year’s results to the whole pool. You have to take it year by year.”
    “But in 1987 it was fifty percent.”
    “In 1987 there were half as many divorces as there were weddings. In those counties.”
    “But if that statistic matches up every year, then the divorce rate will still be fifty percent!”
    “Yes, but that’s a very big if for such a small sample. Look at the stock market in 1987. One bad day turned it into a very abnormal year. Hell, if l only used this week as a sample, I could say that I have sex with a married woman at least once a week.”
    She stared at me, stunned, and then turned the other way. I looked over her shoulder.
    “Oh no. Did I upset you again?”
    “I’m not upset,” she said. “I’m just... I’ll put it this way, Scott. You know just what to say to make a girl feel numb. Is it okay if I check my messages?”
    She reached over me to use my phone, resting on top of my chest. I felt like apologizing, but I didn’t know why. I thought I was showing her respect by not subjecting her to any romantic clichés. I knew Miranda was strictly anti-sentiment. Then again, so was Gracie, until the day it suddenly occurred to her that if she stayed with me, she’d be numbed out of existence.
    Later in the morning, outside the hotel, Miranda and I sat in awkward silence. She kissed me goodbye from the passenger seat. Not an eternal goodbye, of course, but it told me what I wanted to hear. The show was over. Brigadoon officially went back to being a grass field.
    “You’re still an ass,” she said, getting out. “Get your car fixed.”
    “Have fun exploiting the carnage.”
    With a half-smile,