“Diva IV”

Alfred always surprised her. She seldom thought of him anymore, yet just as she realized it, he invariably came to mind, usually to tell her that it was over. That she deserved better. That the man she was with was not the man for her.

He was always right.

Sometimes she wondered if Alfred himself would have remained the man for her, then she banished the thought and scolded herself for doubting the dead. She had known at first sight that he was meant to be hers. She knew it still, though perhaps she had not been intended for him. The Japs might have bombed Pearl Harbor anyway, but Alfred would have survived. Instead, he had perished and her relief at a domestic posting had run the gamut from shock to denial to rage to grief to something that defied naming but felt uncomfortably like resentment.

“Ellie?”

She sipped her scotch and lit another cigarette.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Her lover spied the script lying open in front of her and made a disgruntled sound. “Oh.”

“The table read is tomorrow,” she told him.

“Haven’t you read it yourself yet?”

She blew a smoke ring before she answered in a dispassionate voice. “Funny.”

He circled to face her, tousled and handsome in his old man pajama bottoms. “Do you want me to read it through with you?”

“No,” she said, “I want you to get dressed and go home.”

He stared as if he hadn’t heard correctly. Ellie sat and smoked until he finally broke the silence with an astonished, “What?”

“I’ll have your things packed up and sent along later.”

“What? Ellie—ˮ

She met his baffled eyes with nothing in her own. “It’s over.”

He argued—they all did—but she stood firm until acceptance, however temporary, won out and he stormed from the room like a petulant child, swearing vengeful profanities as he went.

Ellie took a long, slow drag on her cigarette and waited for the door to slam. A few seconds later, the sportscar revved and roared into affronted obscurity. Ellie finished her scotch, stubbed out her smoke, and settled in with her script.

Right again, Alfred.