LITMIR.BIZ

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flare up and otherwise disgraceful hookups might be forgiven, but on a Thursday?

      I should be ashamed of myself. Beyond ashamed, really. Why hadn’t I just stayed home alone and watched an E.R. repeat with a cheap bottle of wine like all the other normal, hopeless, single women in Buffalo?

      “Excuse me,” I say, and nudge him with my heel. Hard.

      He turns over, grunts and smiles.

      “Ahem!” I say loudly, covering myself.

      “Heh?”

      “Please, Jean-Jean, wake up! Allez vous!” I don’t know much French, but I can assure you my tone spoke volumes.

      “Come hon now, ma petite. Believe me when I tell you I know you don’t want dat! For sure I know dat!”

      “Jean-Jean, it’s like this, so please listen carefully. Last night was a mistake. I know I’ve said this before and I’m sorry, but this time I really mean it—I don’t want to see you anymore! So please just go home, okay? Please. Just go…”

      He grins and rolls his eyes at me. “Dat’s what you said hlast week, ’Olly, and da week before dat! But you halways come back to Jean-Jean for more!”

      “Well, I can promise you I’ll be sticking to my word this time and—”

      “Eh!” He puts a nicotine-stained finger to my lips. “Why say someting you regret? Jean-Jean, you know, is twice da fun! And to love ’im is to deserve ’im more dan once, ma petite. Many, many more time dan dat! So now dat you ’ad ’im, you can’t forget. No never!”

      With that, he hops out of bed and begins collecting the T-shirts and rags and rubber bands which comprise his work uniform.

      “What does that even mean?” I moan to no one in particular, and fling his cigarettes toward the door. “Please hurry, will you? I’m late for work….”

      “Jean-Jean is halways ’appy to oblige you, ’Olly. See you—layter!”

      The cheeseball winks at me twice, in case I didn’t catch it the first time. He stuffs his crap into a mud-splattered backpack and swaggers out the door, leaving me alone with a beer bottle full of cigarette butts and unwelcome memories of last night’s awkward fumblings.

      I pull the covers back up over my head for a few precious moments and vow to try and see the bright side of this latest romantic debacle. Like…at least I was getting some! That has to be worth something, right? And to be completely honest, Jean-Jean isn’t such a bad guy, anyway—he just needs to grow up a little. With some career counseling and maybe a Queer Eye makeover, he might even make a nice boyfriend for someone someday. Just not for me. In the meantime, what did it matter? Nobody would ever have to know…

      Except moi, that is.

      Fortunately, my history with Jean-Jean taught me that while the nausea and self-loathing born of my temporarily misplaced affections may linger for a while, eventually they dissipate along with most of the gory details. (Mother Nature is no fool—if the passage of time didn’t take the edge off our labor pains, our heartbreak, our bikini waxes, the human race probably would have died out aeons ago!) And thanks to a few modern amenities—namely condoms, soap and water—potentially unwelcome reminders of such ill-advised trysting are practically a thing of the past.

      The regret, though…well I suppose that’s a little different. It never fully disappears. It just sort of fades away until it becomes a tiny little pinprick of shame, part of the growing list of things I wish I’d done differently, or not at all. Yes, the regret is unfortunately quite permanent. Kind of like the new grease spot on my pillowcase.

      Two showers later—including a violent exfoliating session that would have skinned a lesser woman alive—I am officially late for work before I’ve even left my apartment.

      No, the day has not begun well.

      On difficult mornings such as these, I try to find solace in a series of uplifting aphorisms I’ve collected over the years. They help me salvage whatever shreds of optimism I can from the wreckage of my life. So I try to tell myself that the world is my oyster, that comedy is just tragedy plus time, that today is the first day of the rest of my life.

      Today is the first day of the rest of my life?

      The perfect mantra for chronically regretful yet eternally hopeful sorts like me. Most of the time, the simple, wonderful truth of it is enough to put the spring back in my step.

      Only today the slate is not clean, the start is not fresh.

      The start, in fact, stinks.

part one

      chapter 1

      The Day I Died

      It would probably go something like this:

      Hastings, Holly. 1975–2060. Passed away of chronic liver disease on Friday, December 31, 2060, alone again on New Year’s Eve, since she didn’t have a date, and hadn’t in many, many years. She was 85.

      Miss Hastings, was born in Buffalo, the fourth child and only daughter of the late Louise McGillivray Hastings, a bookkeeper, and the late Lawrence Hastings, a schoolteacher, both also of Buffalo.

      After completing a three-year degree in Journalism and Professional Writing in slightly more than five years at Erie County College, Miss Hastings took a job at this newspaper, which she believed would be an important stepping stone in her fabulous career as a writer. The single Miss Hastings quickly found her place among the many talentless hacks at the Buffalo Bugle, penning obituaries and taking classified ads for more than fifty years, until her forced retirement in 2052.

      During college, Miss Hastings took up social drinking, which eventually evolved into full-blown alcoholism after a string of failed relationships. Due to her inability to write the Great American Novel, or even a Not So Great One, the mateless Miss Hastings never left the Bugle, as she had planned. In fact, she never left the Buffalo-Niagara Region. Hell, during the last five years of her life, she never even left her house!

      Miss Hastings leaves behind nobody—not even a cat. The bulk of her meager estate will be divided among her many creditors, and her body will be donated to medical science, unless somebody claims it before noon tomorrow.

      Well, that wasn’t so bad, really. I’ve almost certainly—no, make that definitely—come across worse lives, written lamer obits for real, actual people. Haven’t I?

      Hmmm…

      Okay, so even if I haven’t, technically speaking, there’s no cause for alarm just yet. The whole point of the exercise is to imagine the way things might turn out, you know, if everything stays the same. To see where my life is heading, worst-case scenario. But even if it all comes true, so what? Cats, after all, are pretty crappy compared to dogs, so if ever there were a pet not to have… And let’s not underestimate the ultimate satisfaction of sticking it to the credit-card companies from beyond the grave.

      I print my final draft, fold it up until it’s a tiny little square and shove it way down into the bottom of my bag.

      Okay, Holly. Back to work. No need to feel sorry for yourself.

      Despite the fact that I hardly have a thing to do except sit around and wait for someone to call, I try to keep busy. I hone my pitch for a story about the Buffalo fashion scene (don’t laugh—we can’t all live in New York or London or Paris, no matter how much we might like to, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are oblivious to life’s finer things) and color-code my files until at last the phone rings. Will it be a trumpet seller? A passport found? A grieving relative? My boss, Cy, telling me he finally needs my feature, A.S.A.P?

      “Holly Hastings,” I say into the receiver.

      “Um, hi.” A woman’s voice. Very shrill. “I want to place an ad. In the personals.”

      “All right,” I sigh. “Go ahead.”

      “Okay. It’s for the

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