The Morning After

Warren woke with a muffled start, his face buried in a cheerful yellow-clad pillow. When it was decided that she would move in, Maya had declared his apartment too drab and dreary, a "geek’s hovel," in her words, and she went about purchasing things, or bringing them over from her old room at her parents, little knickknacks, to "give the place a woman’s touch." The bedroom was one of the first places she touched ("since we’ll be spending so much time in there," she giggled), draping the bed with blindingly yellow sheets and pillowcases.

"Maya," Warren spoke into the pillow, "honey, what time is it?"

There was no answer.

Warren untangled his right arm from the sheets trapped beneath his contorted body and patted the Maya-shaped vacuum beside him, his fingers outstretched as he grasped nothing but air and rumpled canary-colored fabric, cool to the touch. "Maya?"

He lifted his head and saw what his fingers had discovered, that he was alone. Warren rolled over and stretched with a groan, extending his arms and legs as far as they would go in every direction, from one side of the bed to the other, reclaiming territory that had once been only his.


After his morning piss, Warren shuffled out of the bathroom and headed toward his hovel’s small kitchen. He stopped midway through the living room and looked at the movie posters tacked to the wall with care. Maya had wanted him to get rid of them. She said they were "childish," that a grown man shouldn’t wallpaper his home with "fantasies." Warren had stood firm and the posters stayed. Shortly after that discussion, however, a small table appeared beneath the posters, adorned with wooden and crystal ponies and unicorns. More of that "woman’s touch" Maya mentioned.

Warren picked up one of the small, carved figurines and held it close to his face. "And she says I’m childish," he whispered, squinting at it as if trying to discern its secrets.

He replaced the wooden horsie and continued to the kitchen. If Maya were here she’d no doubt be concocting some experimental breakfast for him, Eggs Benedict or some kind of strange omelet or burrito stuffed with tofu or shrimp, some recipe she’d come across in one of the magazines that started appearing at his address about a week after she’d moved in.

Warren shuddered at the thought as he pulled a bowl down from a cabinet and filled it with Fruit Loops from the box on the counter. He yanked open the refrigerator and looked for the carton of milk, finding it behind Maya’s diet soda and iced tea.


Warren settled down in his favorite chair and flicked the television on with the remote. The familiar Sportscenter theme song blared from the speakers as he contentedly crunched his cereal-shaped sugar and watched last night’s highlights.

That’s where Maya found him when she came home later that afternoon.

"Hi, honey, you’re home," Warren sing-songed from the chair. "Where’ve you been all day?" he asked without diverting his eyes from the television.

Maya grimaced as she gingerly shucked her coat and hung it by the door. She was grasping a small, white prescription bag from the local pharmacy.

"Out," she said, clutching a hand to her barren stomach. "Just out."