L.A. Woman by Cathy Yardley Page A

honey! That’s wonderful!” This was it! Her shelter…no, her peace within the storm. This was the answer. He’d move down, and Martika would move out. No more noisy sex bouts to put up with, how ’bout that? And she would have the financial resources to rest with…she could look for a job she liked, since Benjamin made more than enough to pay the bills. And he’d said once they got married that she could stay home with the kids…rather insisted upon it, in fact, since he appreciated the upbringing his mother gave him as a stay-at-home mom. At any rate, she could use the break until then. “So when are you coming? I’ll need to give Martika notice.” She said it, almost crowing.
    There was a pause. “Um, Sarah…I’ve done a lot of thinking.”
    “So have I. I figure we don’t have to have both desks in the second bedroom, just yours would be fine. It’s a lot bigger than mine, anyway and…”
    “Sarah, I’m not living with you.”
    He might as well have been speaking Swahili. “What? What?” Her mind went numb.
    “I’m not going to live with you.” He sighed. “You’re just a little too much of a distraction, and frankly, I’ve gotten a lot done…I can’t afford to screw this up. I really need to focus.”
    The peace she envisioned shattered like a glass bottle dropped on a hard tile floor. “You need to focus,” she repeated carefully.
    “I figured I’d get my own place, and you could visit me every weekend, just like you used to do when you lived up here. Hell, we could probably see each other more than that. We practically lived together our final year of college, remember?”
    But never in actuality, she thought, again with that sheen of numbness. It reminded her of her state at five that morning. “So, you’re moving down here, but you’re not going to live with me, so you can focus on your job.”
    “That’s it,” he said encouragingly, since she wasn’t reacting with any emotion. He sounded relieved. “That’s it exactly.”
    “Martika was right,” she said, with a voice of growing wonder. “You are a dick.”
    “What?”
    “You…are…a…dick.” She said the words slowly, with exaggeration. “Which word don’t you understand?”
    “Thanks a lot, Sarah,” he said, his voice freezing cold. “Thanks a fucking lot. I tell you about my promotion, and this is the best you can do? Thanks for being happy for me, I mean, what else could I expect from my girlfriend?”
    “Oh, don’t play that shit with me,” she said, leaping up from the chair she’d sat down in. “Don’t even try to guilt me. I pulled a twenty-nine-hour straight day working for an idiot. I could have been killed. And your idea of boyfriend-type support is that I should grow up and pay my dues? And now, after being engaged for four fucking years, you’re going to move to the city that I moved to—” she took a deep breath “—JUST TO GET YOU A PLACE TO LIVE, AND NOW YOU’RE GOING TOLIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE? JUST BECAUSE I’M A FUCKING DISTRACTION? ”
    “Don’t yell at me. I mean it, Sarah,” he said, his voice full of dire threat. “I don’t have to put up with this shit.”
    “No, you don’t. Not ever again.” Her voice wavered, and she knuckled her tears out of her eyes, smearing the liquid down her cheeks with the back of her hands. “Go find someone else who knows how to be your girlfriend, dickhead. And fuck off! ”
    She hung up on him. Within a moment, the phone rang again. “What?”
    “We’re through, Sarah,” he said. “And don’t ever hang up on me again.” With that he promptly hung up on her.
    She sat, shaking, unable to believe what had just transpired. She was now unemployed, she thought, and now single again, a state she hadn’t been in…God, had it been five years? She’d been twenty. And she hadn’t been much good at dating, even then.
    She realized she was rocking back and forth, and stood up, walking around. She felt like screaming, or doing something