Free Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie Jr.

absence. She saw a space next to me and tried to convince herself that she belonged there by rights. And when I thought about her at all, which was rare, I came to feel as though she deserved my indifference, because if she’d paid any attention to the few words I offered, or had even just given me a good long look, it would have been obvious to her that the space beside me was already occupied, and that if she placed herself next to the rightful occupant of that space, Charlotte herself was the one who disappeared.

F rom the outside it probably appeared to Charlotte, and maybe others, that I was in a foul mood, but really I’d come to occupy a place of apparent imperviousness—I was as comfortable as I’d been since the day before Emma and I had gotten together again all those months ago.
    Or so I’d convinced myself. But of course my longing for her still ran in the background, buzzing like an air conditioner in high summer, easy to ignore and forget but nonetheless powered on.
    Even so, I stopped waiting on tenterhooks for contact from Emma, and stopped sending messages and calling her myself. The ironic if predictable result of this was that she started reaching out with more frequency, wondering where I was, what I was doing, if I was alright.
    â€˜I know I’ll always bear the responsibility of having sent you down there,’ one message read, apropos of seemingly nothing. She intuited that I was in trouble, and this made me glad. I didn’t respond.
    Emma called one night when Charlotte and I were having dinner at El Quenepo and ignoring one another. While I talked on the phone right there at the dinner table, Charlotte continued to read.
    You sound sort of . . . happy, Emma said, perplexed and a little worried at the combination of my sudden distance and concurrent high spirits, and I took some bitter, drunken pleasure in her discomfort, her confusion at being, for once, the person who got the slip, instead of the person who gave it.
    I’m embarrassed beyond words to recount this pettiness. She’d gotten the biggest slip of them all, for God’s sake: her husband had left.
    Anyway, I probably did sound happy. There was something brittle in me masquerading as good cheer. I was talking through clenched teeth, but smiling at the same time.
    So I told Emma as much: I’m smiling this very moment, I said.
    Charlotte flipped a page in her book, then used the same hand to tuck a lock of hair slowly behind one ear, feigning absolute absorption, pretending not to care who I was talking to, pretending not to eavesdrop. I wanted, suddenly, to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, force her to stop acting like she didn’t give a shit about anything.
    It would turn out that the only way to get her to do that was to tell her she had to leave. But more on that in a minute.
    Where are you? Emma asked. I hear music. I hear people laughing.
    On the
malecón
. Having dinner.
    By yourself?
    No. You just said you heard people, right?
    There was a pause. Listen, is there something wrong, Ron? Between us? There’s very little I can’t handle hearing—you know that. So if something’s up you should say so. Because I have to tell you, right now I don’t feel like we’re on the same team.
    Everything’s fine, I told her. You just got done saying I sounded happy.
    You can also just tell me you don’t want to talk about it right now. I’ll accept that, too. But I don’t like being made to feel like I’m imagining things. You barely get in touch anymore. You’ve stopped calling. And when I call, you tell me you’re smiling, and you talk in monosyllables. And you’re cold as hell. Icy, even.
    Listen, nothing’s wrong. I just sort of figured it out. How to be apart from you and be okay with it. I thought you’d be happy.
    You’ve got a strange idea, she said, of what makes me happy.
    I sighed, then hated myself for