My thoughts immediately circled back to how pathetic I was to focus on originality rather than the fact that Johanna was completely justified in giving me this particular middle finger, no matter how it was phrased. Even more pathetic was how unaware she was at how uninspired the notion was. To me, the saddest part of her final words was not the appropriateness of the sentiment it was its unoriginality. “I give up trying to convince you not to give up.”

Her reaction was scripted and inorganic, precipitated by a year of lunchtime bitch fests with her well-coiffed colleagues, inordinately high-priced, coffee-clutching therapy sessions, martini fueled Sex-in-the-City girl-power nights out with her bedazzled gal pals, and isolated sweat-slicked thoughts during furious sprints on treadmills at Equinox: “How can you write in such a depressing environment?” She instead circumvented the command by focusing on the closed dusty, thick, red curtains. She was too surprised at my own crispness and efficiency to acknowledge it. “Johanna,” I paused until her averted eyes finally wandered back to mine.

“Your not remembering the reasons is one of them.” We did, but I shrugged my shoulders anyway and adopted my shell-shocked facial expression just to anger her, leaving her no choice but to retaliate. She wanted me to let her off the hook rather than force her into the shithole of specifics, but I remained silent and forced her to struggle. “I’m stopping this because.of so many reasons.” “Johanna, just recycle the shit and get it over with.” Ten seconds after I’d learned my brother had committed suicide, and I was actually analyzing inseam stitching. Nothing goes on the body of a fashion chick without a thorough subjugation of purpose-from the geographic source of the silk, the centimeter of heel height, the luster of gold on the bangle, the direction of the point of the collar, to the goddamn choice of stitch for the inseam. She revealed no cleavage, messaging with absolute crispness that on this morning she was goal-driven, pointed, clean, and efficient. She was wearing a dark blue suit more suitable to a law firm than the sales department of the luxury women’s clothing design company at which she spent sixty hours a week. She wanted to make this quick, so she chose a time where she would have an excuse to cut any belabored discussion short by the urgency of rushing off to work.

The Next by Rafe Haze