“So, what, you don’t like my flip-flops?” He wouldn’t look at her just then, kept his eyes on his feet. But he sounded hurt.
“No, I mean, I like that you like them. I didn’t mean anything.”
They stood in what seemed like the only piece of shade for miles around. She had spent the whole drive sweating, and now the drying of her underwear was making her butt itch. Gross.
“What are you saying then, you like them or you don’t?” He brought his face up to hers. His face morphed like a toddler about to weep with rage.
“Well I wouldn’t have picked them out. I didn’t mean anything. I shouldn’t have said anything.” She didn’t even know why they were here. On her forearms she felt sweat begin to crust, get covered with more sweat, dry and sting. Her boat shoes had already collected some sand in the short walk from his jeep, about twenty yards away. She couldn’t see the sun without straining her neck to look straight up above her.
“What, you shouldn’t have said anything and just went on lying to me? And let the flip-flops keep bothering you until all of me is associated with them and you can’t stand me either way, flip-flops or no? So that you could then break up with me while actually disliking me, as opposed to breaking up with me just over the flip-flops, which only a heartless bitch would do?”
She stepped back. “Woah. Woah. I did not say any of that.” Incredible. A human being actually thinks this way. Not just any human being, no less, the one she had let herself date for like, five months. Who had brought her to the desert at like, midday. For a picnic.
She couldn’t see the point.
“No, you’re right, you didn’t say any of that. What you said was, was — wait. I said — being a perfect gentleman — how do you like it out here, and you said you wished you had brought different shoes, but not like my flip-flops. And then you laughed, and not in a good way. You were thinking my flip-flops are stupid. Tell me you weren’t thinking that.”
He wore a bandana rolled over his blonde shag. Tied down like that, his hair was scratching his eyes. She could see him refusing to brush it away. She was having a hard time doing it herself.
“Okay. Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry. You were being nice. I was mean about the flip-flops for no reason.”
“Well that doesn’t matter now, does it?” For a second she thought he would drop it. Which any sane person would do. “What I want to know, I wanna know if you’ve always hated my flip-flops.”
“What?”
“Have you always hated my flip-flops?”
“Well it’s not like I love them. But that doesn’t matter. It’s just a taste thing.”
“Just a taste thing? No way, no way.” He crossed his arms over a tee printed with bubble letters and a cartoon steak. She brought one calf behind the other and rubbed them, reminding herself to shave when she got the chance. She sensed the hint of a wedgie, and it was starting to torture her.
“What do you mean? You can’t expect me to love every thing you wear.”
“No, no, listen. My flip-flops are not just a shirt or socks or something. My flip-flops are part of my uniform. I make decisions about what I wear. Constructive decisions. Every time I put on my flip-flops I am carefully organizing a message about who I am. And if you don’t like these flip-flops, then you don’t like that message. Do you know what that means? If you don’t like that message — that message is me! That’s the message.”
He really expected her to respond to this. She realized that this was actually how he thought.
“That doesn’t make sense. I don’t like the flip-flops. That doesn’t mean I don’t like you. Listen, it’s not the flip-flops, its me.”
“‘It’s not the flip-flops, it’s me?’ You’re using the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ on my sandals? Do you even know why we’re here?”
She did not. They stood in the shadow of a single cliff; all around them was desert. They had driven out in his jeep and he had led her here by the hand until the fateful remark, when he stopped abruptly and dropped her hands. He looked at her like her paranoid grandmother used to, and then down at his be-thonged toes.
“I drove you at here because I love the desert. And I wanted to tell you I love you, here in the desert, so that I could combine the two things I love and experience love to the second exponent.”
Love to the second exponent? She thought. Then, I have to pee. Her skirt was beginning to feel like paper around her thighs. She wanted to pick the wedgie.
He stood heroically in jeans with pretorn holes around the knees.
“But I see now that our love is impossible. For even if you believe you love me, you do not love my flip-flops, and that says more than you can possibly know. And you know what? I’m not even sad. I’m happy we figured this out. And what’s more, I feel sorry for you. Clearly you’re not very in touch with yourself if you can’t even admit that you don’t love me.”
It was hard to concentrate on him. She was thinking about the grapes in the cooler, the cooler in his jeep.
“I see you are heartbroken,” he said. “I understand. Best we make our goodbyes short. I am sorry. I forgive you.” He squared his shoulders and walked toward the jeep — the type of walk people take at the end of movies. Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind.
She didn’t consider following him until he reached the jeep, about fifty meters away. Then she remembered where she was and how she got there. Love to the second exponent.
“Hey,” she said, walking after him. But he had started the jeep, sitting in its open hatch, and was pulling it in a U back to the main road.
Is he crying? She thought. She was pretty sure he was crying. He bounced away, determined not to look at her.
Her cell phone extended in one hand. She walked about for reception. Fuck this, she thought, and used her free hand to pick the wedgie.