THE FORTY-FOURTH PAGE

She didn’t need to leave a note to say it was over. I had long been aware of that condition.

I had been in Hong Kong, where the American dollar offered splendid value, especially in books. Usually books in other countries are no bargain, but at this time the exchange worked in my favor. So, I was heavily-laden with bags of books.

As I dropped the luggage on my reading chair, I saw her note on the stand nearby. I’ll bore no one with the contents because there is no point in humiliating her at this late date. It concerned our last night of “lovemaking” and her unhappiness in the fact that I had been silent during sex. I had nothing to say, and she knew it. Her adolescent whine was as puerile as her prose.

She seemed to have been tidy in making her departure. The toothbrush was gone from the bathroom, her own special little nightlight wrenched from the bedroom wall, and her “Cup of Joe” coffee cup was removed from the kitchen.

The note rested on the only object she had not taken away: my novel, which in a sentimental moment I had inscribed to her. I hurled the book, damaged and sullied by my own hand across the room toward the M section of the fiction collection. She took more than the toothbrush, the nightlight, and the cup.