Something to Lose

This tall guy, Charlie something, was on his way to the park to abandon his pet rat. His girlfriend had left him. She was the one who had given him the rat, an albino, as a gift—I don’t know. He stopped by Darling’s house while I was sitting in her yard sketching a picture of some beer cans in the street. I wasn’t too stoked about Charlie being there. He was no friend of mine. He was a life-drawing model for the art department and the knowledge that Darling had seen this man naked three times already this semester made me a little jealous. I knew I didn’t have to be jealous, but I was. And as much as you tell yourself there’s nothing to worry about, your mind can wander.

Anyway, Charlie was standing there at the edge of the yard holding a small, wire rodent cage. He looked like a wreck. Pure defeat. A pathetic sight.

This was senior year of college and Darling and I lived off campus. Darling was living alone in an ancient house that had been split up into a few separate units, each one populated by students. I had my own apartment, a duplex situation with my friend Bob, but I spent most of my time in and around Darling’s house in the Third Ward. Darling and I had met in an art history class and had been dating for nearly two years.

When she came outside holding two glasses of Gordon’s and ice, she handed me one without looking at me. Her shoulders were low and sloped like she was carrying something heavy. She said, “Hey, Charlie, what’s happening?”

Charlie lifted the rodent cage, saying, “I’m letting her go.” Then he lowered the cage and pointed to our drinks. “Could I have one of those?”

Darling patted my arm. I took a long sip, got up from the grass and handed him my drink. 

I hated to give up my gin to a guy I didn’t like, but I could tell he was really going through it.

 Darling said, “What do you mean by letting her go?”

Charlie drained my glass and gave it back to me, leaving me nothing. I wanted to throw it in the yard. He said, “I can’t stand the sight of her. She only reminds me of Mina.”

“So, you’re going to dump the rat where?” Darling said. “In the woods?” Charlie stared at his feet. He said, “The park?”

“Why don’t you give it up for adoption?” I said.

Charlie peered into the cage like the idea had never crossed his mind. “I don’t know,” he said. “Isn’t there a lot of paperwork involved with that?”

I shrugged at him. “Probably,” I said. I actually didn’t fault him for this line of thinking. Charlie said, “Would you take care of her, Pal?”

“I’d rather not be responsible for anything,” I told him. Darling cleared her throat.

Charlie was looking down on me. “Well, would one of you at least come and see her off with me?” he said. “Darling?”

“Sure,” Darling said, “I don’t have anything going. Let me just put these glasses away.” 

I wasn’t too keen on the idea of Charlie and Darling going off alone, so I said, “I’ll come, too.”

“Oh,” Charlie said, “You sure?”

“Why not?” I told him. “I’ve got nothing but time.”

On the way to the park, Charlie filled me in with more detail than I cared to know. Pieces of a story I didn’t know what to do with.

Charlie and his ex, Mina, had been together since high school. She’d gotten him the rat sometime in the past year as a present—his twenty-first birthday. Who would want such a gift? Certainly not me. It wasn’t his first choice of pet, he’d told me, a dog or a cat, sure, but it grew on him. He had learned to love it. But after the breakup, he couldn’t bear to look at the thing. He had to cover the cage with a bath towel during the day, and at night he stuck the cage in another room so he couldn’t hear the little gnawing and scratching sounds. The little tapping feet. It only made him think of Mina. About what he’d lost. Hearing this made me feel a little sorry for him. The tall model with the albino rat. And I found myself invested, wondering what went wrong. I’d always assumed the best way to repair a crumbling relationship was by adopting a pet. You know, get something else to care about. Sex only gets you so far.

So, when we strolled up to the park, Charlie whimpered and set the cage down in a patch of thick cordgrass. He opened the latch and I finally saw the animal, white fur with two pinpricks of blood for eyeballs. It inched forward and sniffed the air. Charlie’s cheeks were wet, but he made no effort to dry them. It was a strange sight. This tiny beast, brain the size of a peanut, had caused this man so much pain.

Darling stepped forward and was taking a few pictures of the trees on her phone. No doubt as reference for future paintings she planned to make.

“Why’d you and Mina break up?” I said to Charlie. “Well,” he said. “I cheated. Once.”

“Well,” I said. “You cheated.”

“I couldn’t keep it a secret from Mina. The guilt was too much. She deserved to know.” “Why wouldn’t you just break up first?” I said.

“It doesn’t make me a bad person,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“I wouldn’t know about any of that,” I told him.

 The rat took off bouncing into the grass. Charlie and I watched in silence, catching every so often the flash of white fur, smaller and smaller until it vanished entirely.

Charlie had stayed behind at the park, which was a relief. And when we got back to the Third Ward, Darling put on a movie about two people who meet on a train and stay up all night just talking and falling in love. I wanted to change the channel, put on something pulpier, but instead I sat down next to her, saying, “Why can’t these two just move on?”

“It wouldn’t kill you to learn something,” Darling said, “about life and love and people.” “Let me get you a drink,” I said and went to the kitchen to find the bottle of Gordon’s.

When we first started going out together, Darling had showed me a poem she wrote. In the poem, she talked about how her family didn’t love her very much. She talked about what wen through her head the first time she ran away. I remember I didn’t think very highly of the poem. I was a bit cold about it. Why don’t you just ask them? I had said to Darling. If they love you, I mean.

She was mad for a while, but we stuck it out.

Anyway, I found the bottle and poured Darling a drink. I brought it back to the coffee table and said, “Did you know Charlie cheated on Mina?”

Darling didn’t look away from her movie. “Oh,” was all she said. “He told you that?” I was surprised she didn’t know. I said, “He says he doesn’t know why he did it.” “I’m sure,” Darling said.

“You don’t believe him?”

“Would you ever cheat on me?” she asked. “Jesus! No, never,” I said. “Would you?”

“God,” she said. “And have two boyfriends? One is exhausting enough.”

I picked up Darling’s drink and sipped it. “If I ever decide to be unfaithful,” I told her, “you’ll be the first to hear about it.”

Darling finally took her eyes off the television and looked at me. Stared, really. I got the feeling she didn’t like what she saw. I handed over the glass and settled back into the sofa, trying not to meet her gaze.

When the movie was finished, Darling covered her mouth and yawned. She said, “We never have conversations like they do.”

“The people in the movie?” I said. “Why would you want to?” “They talk about life and art and interesting things.”

“We talk about art,” I said. “We’re doing it now, aren’t we?”

“I just wish we had more meaningful conversations,” she said. “All we talk about is other people and what we’re going to eat next.”

“Speaking of which,” I said, “I was thinking we could order Mediterranean. Falafel or gyros or something like that.”

“Are you even happy?” Darling asked me.

“Sure,” I said. “I’d be happier with a gyro, though.” “I just want to know if you’re happy.”

“I am,” I said. “I told you I am.”

Darling broke up with me a few days later, and in the evening, I ran into Charlie at The Joynt. I hadn’t seen him since that afternoon at the park. He was sitting there at the bar, an air of utter loss about him. At first glance, he looked as if he’d aged considerably. His blue jeans were splashed with beige paint.

I said to him, “Hey, Charlie.”

“Ah,” he said turning to face me. “Darling told me what happened. Sorry to hear it.” “What are you sorry about?”

“Isn’t it something?” Charlie said. “Both of us dumped in the same week. Back-to-back. Bam boom.”

“I wasn’t dumped,” I told him.

“No, of course not,” Charlie said. He set his beer down on the bar top. “So, Charlie,” I said, “ditch any more pets since I saw you last?”

He looked hurt. He looked at me with irritation. I was poking him with a short stick. “That’s not fair,” he said. “You know I couldn’t live with that rat any longer.”

“You brought it on yourself,” I said. “You cheated.”

“I cheated,” Charlie said. “And what about you? Do you even know why Darling left you?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “It was a mutual thing.” 

Charlie laughed. A huge and sudden belly laugh. He slapped his thigh and said, “You really gotta learn some things about yourself.”

“Like what?”

“Pal, she’s been on the fence about you for almost a year now.”

“She tell you that?” “Sure did.”

“Bull.”

“You didn’t even talk about it?” Charlie said. “You didn’t even think to ask? Christ, man, that’s the most you thing I’ve ever heard.” He sipped from his beer. I wanted to slap the bottle from his hand.

I was heading toward a boil. I sucked down a double gin and tonic. “When do you even talk to her about this stuff?” I said.

Charlie didn’t face me. He looked straight across the bar. “I don’t know,” he said. “We talk.”

I ordered another drink and said to him, “Do you volunteer for life-drawing because you’re insecure?”

“That’s mean,” Charlie said. “I think you’re a mean person.”

I finished my drink and went for the door, but before I left, I raised my arms in sermon and shouted so the whole bar could hear me. “Charlie, everybody! Newly single! Responsible pet owner! He’ll love you until he doesn’t!”

We didn’t say anything for some time. She was leaning forward on the sofa with her head turned toward me. I stood in the doorway. I had no idea what she was thinking. I guess I never did.

Darling said, “This isn’t going to be a regular thing, right?” “What is?”

“My drunk ex-boyfriend showing up in my living room.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No, I don’t think it will.” “That’s good.”

“I just want to know what I did wrong,” I said. “I thought things were going well.” “You don’t care about anything,” Darling said. “You act like nothing is precious.” I started to say something about her, but she stopped me.

“No, no,” she said. “You especially don’t care about me.” As she said this, she ran her hands over her head, pulling it tight at the hair along her scalp. I could tell she thought she wasn’t getting through to me.

“I care about my art,” I told her.

“You’re good at drawing,” she said. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean you care about it.” “What, then?” I said. “What can I do to prove that I care?”

“You’re too content to watch your life from the sidelines,” she said. “You need to risk something. You need something to lose. Something that you’re afraid of losing.”

Darling leaned back into the sofa and crossed her legs at the ankles. She sat very still with her head down. An idea came to me that Charlie had something to do with this. Yes, she was thinking about him now. The way he was so distraught after giving up his rat. And another more painful idea came along with this one—that Charlie and Darling were lovers. That Darling wasn’t thinking about the rat at all, but how gently Charlie had tugged at the waistband of her underwear. How his stubble felt like sandpaper against her thigh.

“Oh, hell,” I said leaning hard into the doorframe. “Oh, wonderful.”

She looked up at me, expecting. “I’m not sure what else to say,” she said. And could I really blame them? They didn’t know what they were doing.

There was a cold breeze. I zipped up my windbreaker to my neck. I could hear the Chippewa River gurgling over stones. Or maybe it was just the wind. In any case, there was noise there and I heard it. I walked down the block and stopped under the streetlamp on Darling’s corner. It was a sodium arc lamp and it cast a gold-orange circle of light onto the pavement.

Then behind me I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet. An amazing sound. Truly. I knew exactly what it would be before I turned around. The rat had entered my circle of light, but I couldn’t tell if it was Charlie’s or not. It looked up and sniffed at me. It appeared white enough. Thinner, though. Probably malnourished from its few days since being abandoned.

When I reached down to touch it, the rat took off bouncing down the street. I went after it. I chased the rat for blocks and blocks. I chased it across people’s yards—tripping over things in their dark lawns—while inside the families ate dinner, the couples made love, lonely folks sat on the sofa and watched sad movies. I ran by all of them. I ran until my chest ached. I knew I’d catch it eventually. I’d corner it someplace and snatch it up. But I wasn’t sure if I was trying to save the poor animal or strangle it until its tiny brain exploded from its ears. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I never knew what was going to happen, but I was getting closer and closer. I wasn’t going to lose it. “Come here you sorry bastard,” I said reaching down. “You brought this on yourself.”

Alex Tronson is a writer living in New Orleans. His work has been published in Barstow & Grand, Misery Tourism, Expat Press and Hobart.