This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz

    I'm not a bad guy.  I know how that sounds - defensive, unscrupulous - but it's true.  I'm like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.

OTRAVIDA, OTRAVEZ

    He's talking again  about the man who fell from the rafters.  What would you do if that was me?  he ask once more.
    I would find another man, I tell him.
    He smiles.  Would you?  Where would you find one?
    You have friends, don't you?
    What man would touch a dead man's novia?
    I don't know, I said.  I wouldn't have to tell anyone.  I could find a man the way I found you.
    They would be able to tell.  Even the most bruto would see the death in your eyes.
    A person doesn't mourn forever.
    Some do.  He kisses me.  I bet you would.  I am a hard man to replace.  They tell me so at work.
    How long did you mourn for your son?
    He stops kissing me.  Enriquillo.  I mourned him a long time.  I am still missing him.
    I couldn't tell that by looking at you.
    You don't look carefully enough.
    It doesn't show, I don't think.
    He puts his hand down at his side.  You are not a clever woman.
    I'm just saying it doesn't show.
    I can see that now, he says.  You are not a clever woman.
    While he sits by the window and smokes I pull the lastletter his wife wrote him out of my purse and open it in front of him.  He doesn't know how brazen I can be.  One sheet, smelling of violet water.  Please, Virta has written neatly in the center of the page.  That's all.  I smile at Ramon and place the letter back in the envelope.
    And Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they go out or not.  You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided.  This, I told her, is how I feel.

THE CHEATER'S GUIDE TO LOVE

    You try every trick in the book to keep her.  You write her letters.  You drive her to work.  You quote Neruda.  You compose a mass email disowning all your sucias.  You block their emails.  You change your phone number.  You stop drinking.  You stop smoking.  You claim you're a sex addict and start attending meetings.  You blame your father.  You blame your mother.  You blame the patriarchy.  You blame Santo Domingo.  You find a therapist.  You cancel your Facebook.  You give her the passwords to all your email accounts.  You start taking salsa classes like you always swore you would so that the two of you could dance together.  You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weak - It was the book!  It was the pressure! -  and every hour like clockwork you say that you're so so sorry.  You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, No more, and Ya, and you will have to move from the Harlem apartment that you two have shared.  You consider not going.  You consider a squat protest.  In fact, you say won't go.  But in the end you do.
    For a while you haunt the city, like a two-bit ballplayer dreaming of a call-up.  You phone her every day and leave messages which she doesn't answer.  You write her long sensitive letters, which she returns unopened.  You even show up at her apartment at odd hours and at her job downtown until finally her little sister calles you, the one who was always on your side, and she makes it plain: If you try to contact my sister again she's going to put a restraining order on you.
    For some Negroes that wouldn't mean shit.
    But you ain't that kind of Negro.
    You stop.  You move back to Boston.  You never see her again.

Year 5

    It takes a while.  You see the tall girl.  You go to more doctors.  You celebrate Arlenny's Ph.D. defense.  And then one June night you scribble the ex's name and : The half-life of love is forever.
    You bust out a couple more things.  Then you put your head down.
The next day you look at the new pages.  For once you don't want to burn them or give up writing forever.
    It's a start, you say to the room.
    That's about it.  In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace - and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.