The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club by Jessica Morrison Page A

crowd the narrow sidewalk. What was a light and playful wind a few hundred feet to the west is now a gritty gale kicking every loose bit of dirt and pollen into my eyes. Car horns, music blasting from storefronts, and scraps of Spanish conversation flood my ears.
    The cacophony of sights and sounds is so overwhelming, I forget for a moment why I’ve left my safe two-block square. I needed something, didn’t I? Something important? As hard as I rack my brain, I can’t remember. And while we’re at it, why am I here? In this place. What propelled me here? Did I hope for a new home? A new fiancé? A new job? A new life? The questions are harder to bear than the jackhammer that’s begun work on the curb to my right.
    I wish Jeff were here, his long arms wrapped around me, my face finding that warm, musky nook at the base of his neck. I don’t know if I’d say Jeff made me feel safe, exactly—look to men for that, and you’re sure to be disappointed, as my mother drilled into me from a young age—but there was the sense of comfort when he was around, a sort of safety in numbers. When I was still living in my apartment near the university but spending most of my time at Jeff’s, I came home one Sunday evening to a wasps’ nest under construction in my living room. There were no wasps that I could see, but that only meant they were coming back, didn’t it? When I called him, hysterical, he didn’t hesitate for a second—he came right over and took that horrid thing off my ceiling armed with nothing but an old margarine container and my oven gloves. I stood outside the whole time, certain a hurricane of angry, homeless wasps would return at any moment. With the hive locked up tight in the plastic container and tossed down the garbage shoot, and all the windows in my apartment sealed tight, Jeff whisked me off to my favorite bistro for a pitcher of sangria to celebrate my courage. Later, as we lay spent under his Egyptian cotton sheets, he whispered into my ear, “I like it when you need me.” I drew his arm across my chest and curled into him. For the moment I liked needing him.
    And now it’s just me. No arm, no nook. Those are Lauren’s now.
    I have to get off this street, away from these thoughts. A block away is a wall of trees that looks promising. I glance at the map, trying desperately to avoid looking any more like an outsider than I already do. There it is, a square of green shining out like a beacon to this weary urban traveler.
    The park looks as weary as I feel, but as I enter it, relief washes over me in waves of calm, lush green. Wrought-iron and wood benches bend and buckle from age. Modest statues and fountains have given in to decades of poor weather. And the most amazing thing: cats.
    They’re everywhere. Black, calico, tabby, orange, spotted, striped, tailless, scarred. They lounge like kings and queens on any still surface that will hold their weight. Around the park’s perimeter, people have left piles of cat food, cans of tuna, and other edible offerings. I walk slowly, careful not to scare these tiny citizens, but they clearly have no fear of me. Only a few lift their heads to watch me pass. I am simply one more visitor to their feline haven. My flip-flops beginning to pinch between my toes, I look for a cat-free bench, but such a thing doesn’t seem to exist. I ask a Morris look-alike if he minds company, but his only response is a lazy tail flick. I suppose he doesn’t speak English. I sit.
    It’s nice—the cats, the relative quiet, the bit of green. Jeff would like this, I think. Except for the cats. He hates cats. Not big on dogs, either. I love animals. Would we have ended up with birds or fish? I wonder. Not that it matters now. None of it does. All those plans for the future. Didn’t they mean anything to him? Didn’t I? It wasn’t all in my head, was it? There was something real and special there. That week we spent with his whole family at his grandparents’ house in Oregon