Short Story preview: "The Pros and the Cons"

"...This is where she will do it. Screw the rest of the car ride. She will be able to weather it because she will have done the thing and will feel better about herself, freed. It is like she is nauseated. Vomiting will not be fun but it will solve the problem. Hopefully. Their conversations are already stilted, full of silences. There will simply be a different reason for them now.

He is handsome. Pro. But he disdains the New Yorker. Con. He is good at oral sex. Pro. But he snores and flails in his sleep. Con. She does not love him. Con con con con con.

She asked him to go to Italy with her once. He waffled. He had the money but didn't want to spend it. He knows now that this was a mistake (he is still angry at himself for missing such a large blunder), so now he throws money around, trying to prove he doesn't care. He spontaneously pays for her meals, though she has markedly more money than he does. But he still brags about getting clothes for cheap at the Goodwill. As if anyone is still impressed with that sort of thing.

Adrenaline rushes and expands the blood vessels in her muscles in anticipation. She has the sudden urge to jump off this rock and into the open, whipping air. She has always had these morbid fantasies. When she worked at a drug store in high school she would routinely picture herself slamming customers' heads in display cases as they knelt down to look at watches and perfumes. He has crazy-person eyes in pictures. Con.

This is it. They are as far out on the rock as they can safely go. A conversation is imminent. It might as well be the conversation. She is terrible at beating around the bush. Once she has made a decision she is incapable of putting it off. This is a terrible time to do it because it is always a terrible time to do it. She turns to him and says something awful like "we need to talk". She is much shorter than he, so her head is cocked back to look into his eyes. But something is wrong. He is not looking at her. He always looks at her, almost obsessively, con, but not at this moment..."