Rage From the Edge

The Worst Breakup In History

I am in New Mexico or Arizona I cannot remember which. The year is 1991 and I am a twenty-one year old young man. My car has broken down in a terrible little town and I am stuck there until the repairs can be completed. I have been waiting in this town for about a week…they are sending a part from Alamogordo and it has yet to arrive.

I get a hotel room and wait the week. While I am waiting, I can explain to you how I came to be here and a little bit about the whole scenario. When I turned twenty-one, I decided that I wanted to see the United States. The girl I was dating at the time was keen on the idea too, so we got into a car and just drove. We saw states in the east, west, north, and south. We didn’t stay anywhere long, we were trying to fit in as much as we could until the money ran out and we were forced to stop and work. Her name was Cynthia.

After we left Texas, we tried to drive across the southwestern states and someplace in that mess, before we hit the Grand Canyon, the alternator and the power steering unit on the car went out. The car wasn’t convenient and didn’t break down in the middle of a populated area…no, it broke down in the desert. We were forced to walk to a small down about eight miles down the road. There, we discovered what it is like to live in a “company town.”

This place had one hotel, one restaurant, one grocery store, one bar, one auto-wrecker service, and one car repair shop. And they were all owned by the same man. After we paid three hundred bucks to get the car towed into town, we had to rent a dingy hotel room for the night. We got lucky; our AAA card got us out of having to spend and arm and a leg to pay for the room. Our luck, as it was, was about to run out.

Once the mechanic and the repair shop manager got a look at the repairs needed, they got on the phone and our story was out…everybody knew that we were stranded and that we were going to be paying through the nose for everything. If we entered a store, the prices went up. If we went to the restaurant, the prices went up. If we went to the bar, the drinks were twice as expensive. And finally, if we needed our car to be repaired, it was going to be a while. The whole town worked in concert in an effort to drain what cash we had on hand.

So now that you know what kind of situation I was in, let me tell you about the girl who was traveling with me. Cynthia was much older than I was. She was pretty and she liked to drink. To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t remember much more about her and I cannot recall why I decided to have her on the trip with me. It just seemed to fall into place and stay that way. Cynthia also had a huge temper. Her glacier blue eyes would flash at you when she got mad and her mouth could twist into a…rictus.

Ha ha, rictus…where the hell did I come up with that word? Nevertheless, it fits…she could get so mad; a person would have to make up words to describe her state. This was not a bad thing because she wouldn’t often get angry unless she was drinking alcohol…oh wait, I also said she liked to drink, and by that I mean she liked to drink all the time.

So there we were in a hot hotel room in Arizona or New Mexico, I can’t remember which…and I am tired. The whole experience has worn me out to the point where I want to take a hot bath and then take a long nap with the cold fan blowing on me. I prepare myself to do just that.

Cynthia had other ideas. She wanted to go out and perhaps get drunk in the bar. I didn’t, but when she asked her if it was okay that she go out alone, I didn’t stop her. This was at about 8:00 p.m. So she made herself pretty and called a cab. The cab got there around fifteen minutes later and she left, telling me goodbye on the way out the door. I fell asleep.

Loud yells in the parking lot woke me up. I checked my watch on the nightstand and it was 4:45 a.m. People were out in the parking lot yelling at each other and some Mexican styled music was blaring from a car stereo. I got up and noticed that Cynthia was not in the room…oh crap.

I moved the dusty old shades aside and looked out the window. There, in the parking lot was a cherry 1967 Camaro SS parked diagonally in three parking spaces, the driver and passenger doors open. Nobody was around the car and its stereo was pouring music loudly into the dry night air. I put my clothes on and went to investigate.

The parking lot was empty of people, but I heard sounds coming from around the corner of my hotel building. I quietly walked over to the corner and gave a quick glance around it. There, on the ground was Cynthia, her dress up above her waist and her legs covered in bloody scratches. Standing over her was a young guy in a white tank top and some ripped up old jeans, he was attempting to get Cynthia on her feet. I approached slowly, not really knowing what to expect from this situation. As I came closer, the guy heard me and gave me a funny look. He muttered a few words under his breath and then drunkenly weaved his way back to his car. From what I gathered at this point, he had been elected to drive Cynthia home and was still not happy about it.

He sped off out of the parking lot with a roar of his nice engine and a squeal of his expensive tires. I was stuck with a very drunk Cynthia. I tried to get her up but she didn’t want my help. She was mad and for some reason her mind decided that she was mad at me.

“Fuggin gettin me drunk…fuggin” was what she said.

I managed to coax her back into the hotel room and got her into bed. She wasn’t done though. After I had put her in the bed, I had gone to the bathroom. After I was done in there, I opened the door and she was standing just outside the bathroom doorway…that rictus was plastered on her face.

She gave a short yell and tried to hit me with her right hand. I staggered backwards and caught her fist right before it slammed into my face. She gave another quick yell and swung at me with her left fist. I caught that one too, but now I was fully in the bathroom. We both stood that way for a moment, looking at each other like idiots. She was on one side of the doorway and I was on the other. I can still remember exactly the way she looked right at that moment. I can remember it so well because it was about to become an incredibly painful moment for me that I shall remember for the rest of my days. She gave me a queer look and then brought her face forward as if to head butt my chest…but she didn’t do that, she bit me.

Oh how I howled. She brought her head back in a quick jerk and there were pieces of my shirt in her mouth. Blood was just beginning to shower down my front as I let go of her hands and gave her a mighty push backwards. She righted herself and made ready to attack again, but it was out of her hands, I shut and locked the bathroom door on her wild and raging face.

She beat on the door for another fifteen minutes before she stumbled over to the bed and passed out. I got called quite a few choice names during that fifteen minutes, but I didn’t reply. I was trying to keep quiet because I was sure somebody had called the police.

Sure enough, a few minutes after she passed out, the door began to boom. The police were out there and they were asking us to open the door with thick accents. I decided I wanted no part of the fun that was about to begin, so I stayed in the bathroom. Also, I didn’t want her to go to jail for trying to kill me, so I figured I better not present any evidence that the police might find and use against her.

Cynthia groggily got up and opened the door. For the life of me I do not know what she said to the police, but whatever it was, it must have worked. Despite being covered in my blood and being as drunk as humanly possible without dying, she didn’t go to jail that night. I still am amazed at this fact. After a few more bits of conversation, I heard her apologize rather loudly, shut the door and then crash on the bed once again.

After the excitement was over, I turned to my wound to assess the damages a bite could do to a human chest. I took my shirt off and was presented with a large wound. She had taken a nice chunk of flesh out of me right next to my right nipple. God did it hurt! I wadded up some toilet paper and stuck it to my chest. The bleeding stopped after a while and so I sat down on the edge of the tub. I was not going to go back out there and further risk damages to myself or another visit by the local police. Better to just wait it out in here. Sometime while I was waiting, I fell asleep in the tub. I didn’t wake up until somebody began beating on the door.

I unlocked the lock and entered the room. There Cynthia was, eating a donut and drinking some coffee from the “continental breakfast” table that was set up in the hotel check-in office. She had some for me.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile. She had forgotten the previous night entirely.

I glanced at my watch, still there on the nightstand. It was just after noon. I gave her a dirty look and got a fresh shirt. It was then she noticed the damage that had been done to my chest and she asked me how it happened. I gave her an incredulous look and then launched into a tirade where I criticized her, her parents, her friends, and I think I even threw a few pokes at God during the speech. She still had absolutely no idea of what had happened and it only made me more mad when I had to keep telling her that yes, this really did occur.

We got the car back a few days later and decided that it was now time for the “talk” we had been putting off since the incident. We drove out of that little terrible town and found a tourist trap about sixty miles away. The place was a historical outcropping of rocks where some battle had been fought. We spent a few minutes climbing up the rocks and finally sat down on the flat surface of the mesa. I took a deep breath and looked at her, willing her to say something. She took her cue, and I swear, God as my witness, she said this:

“I guess this means we aren’t dating anymore?”