That weekend Theodore rubbed his palms together and shut himself up in his crumbly apartment to rapidly create class materials. His roommate Venus was home the entire weekend too, locked away in her room with what she claimed was a “winter rash”; Theodore was dubious winter rashes existe. Venus was a career closet hypochondriac who haunted the bathroom and other common spaces in the apartment. Theodore got serious though, pushed back his glasses, and pecked away at his laptop to create sure-fire lessons to resuscitate this dead horse of a class. His work also helped him forget the worst breakup and emotional blasting of his adult life.
Monica LeFraque was a dark-haired rich girl from Boston with brown eyes whom Theodore had met at The New School, where they worked on the school’s lit mag together, a mag full of stories about women grinding axes with overbearing mothers and insecure men writing poems about Viagra. Monica was studying Latin American studies as a giant fuck you to her copyright attorney father, and her Marxist flowers really began blooming the spring of her sophomore year as she and Theodore began to throw midnight readings in Tompkins Square Park and Union Square. People who came to the readings thought Theodore and Monica were a couple even before the pair had shared their first cupcake at Sugar Sweet Sunshine or kissed while walking across the Williamsburg Bridge in a rainstorm. Soon the two wore each other like cherished handbags, and spent four years living together in a tiny studio apartment in the East Village while Theodore edited for Simon and Schuster and Monica worked at a coffee shop she didn’t hate. One day, though, Theodore came home to a tear-faced Monica declaring that their lives were a yuppie sham and that she was quickly heading off to Peru to eat ayahuasca and think, think for a long time. Theodore wasn’t invited. He was too complacent for her, too nice. It was stunning.
That was three months ago. Now Theodore is currently in Staples staring at the tiny spinach green LCD screen on a half-dead copier. The copier vibrated and smelled like roasted almonds. The sheets he commanded it to copy did not come out. He imagined Monica in Peruvian mountains, topless, quaking with spittle coming down her chin. A Peruvian man wearing cutoff jeans kisses her on the mouth and they both lay on the ground quaking. Theodore blinked and then saw a tiny crossing guard with a stop sign waving at him on the LCD. The screen is cracked though, and he can’t see the message. Typical of his shit luck.
