The Voting Machine

The One Percent

Whenever I thought about love, I could hear my parent's fights echoing in my head. Was I a fool to believe the two people could really be connected? Was the man who took a chance and listened to his heart the biggest fool or the biggest hero? There was no one who I could turn to for an answer. So I stumbled forward through the relationships of my young life, hurting myself and others in the process.

Suzy left me once before we got married. We were a month out from our appointment at City Hall when she decide to return to her home country. I returned from the call center one night to find her in the doorway, suitcases in both hands.

"I have to go back."

"It's your family isn't it," I said. "What did I do to make them hate me so much?"

"They don't hate you. They're worried about your background, the way things ended up between your parents."

"A child doesn't choose what family he's born into."

"They say a man makes his life from what he knows. How can a man go on to make a good marriage if he's never seen one?"

"People don't become their parents. You of all people should know that. You came to this country because you wanted something different."

She was crying but she wouldn't set down the suitcases to wipe her tears.

"How can I go against them when they gave me life?" She asked.

"That's the point. They gave life. It's not theirs anymore."

"You don't understand."

"I think I do. You do too. You just don't trust yourself to make the right choice."

She took a taxi to the airport and boarded a flight to Sao Paolo. I lay awake along that night, doing everything I could to shut her out of my mind but nothing worked. The next day at Passion I kept getting into arguments with the customers on the phone. I wanted to tell them how small and miserable they were, almost as small and miserable as me but not quite.

"What's the matter with you?" Gina wondered from the next cube over, though she seemed to know the answer. "How about I cover the rest of your calls today?"

After our shift was over we ended up at Oaxaca's for happy hour. Over shots of reposado we started telling stories about our earliest romantic experiences. Our first crush. Our first kiss. Our first heartbreak. 

By the time we got up off our bar stools, we were so drunk we could barely walk let alone drive our car out of the Del Amo mall parking lot during rush hour. We started kissing in the back seat of the taxi and by the time we entered my apartment we were unbuttoning each other's clothes, never speaking a word, never pausing to consider the motivations and the consequences. It was only when I woke up hours later that my head was clear enough to think. Gina was still sleeping, her body wrapped around mine.

"I need to leave," she said after she'd woken up and showered. "Sun will be up soon. He'll be home after playing around all night. And he'll expect me to be there."

"What does this mean?" I asked, getting up to make her a cup of instant coffee, which she politely refused.

"It means we're friends," she said, kissing me on the lips one last time. "Just like we've always been."

I didn't have a reply.

"Friendship is better, Temo," Gina explained. "Love will only hurt you. I know what you wanted with Suzy. Its better you let go of that. You can't be naive about our place in the world. We're born alone. We die alone. Every single one of us. Ain't no lover gonna change that."

My mother had always promised me that love was the salvation at the end of life's battles. My father believed love was the battle itself. Towards the very end, he seemed to regret his decision. I was never really sure what killed him, the decision or the regret. Maybe Gina was right. Maybe it was better to have no delusions about finding yourself in anyone else.

A week later, Suzy returned from Brazil and asked me to forgive her.

"Please give me another chance, Temo," she said. "I know how I must have hurt you." She was wearing the same clothes, holding the same suitcases. We were standing in the same entrance exactly as when she'd left. The only thing that had changed was out positions in the doorway. Now I was in the apartment and she was the one returning home.

"I thought I couldn't go against my parents," she continued. "But I had to listen to my heart. They told me that ninety nine percent of marriages to men like you turn out badly. But I told them Temo is different. We can be the one percent."