Heartbreaker

Joshua Malbin307 12

th

St. Apt 8Brooklyn NY 11215

1HeartbreakerSander Kane dumped his girlfriend on their eleven-month anniversary, as hiscontract with her ex-husband required. Of course he couldn’t give the real reason, so hetold a partial truth: “You haven’t done anything wrong,” he said. “I just can’t see ustogether for good, and I thought I should say something right away.”The true part, naturally, was that he didn’t see them staying together. The lie was theimplication that he didn’t love her. He did. To make a woman fall truly in love, as he’dcontracted to do, a man must be willing to love her back. No woman loved as deeply aswhen she felt safe that she was loved, and that couldn’t be faked.Sander had learned this from his guildmaster. “You must find the lovable part of anywoman,” he’d said during Sander’s apprenticeship, “and you must expect to suffer. Youmust want to feel heartache.”Sander had learned to want it. In fact, it turned him on. He broke up with Sylvia ona Wednesday; on Thursday night he went to a bar, had drinks he didn’t enjoy, picked up awoman he wasn’t attracted to, and had meaningless, awkward sex with her. It shouldhave been awful, but his grief made it poignant. His skin felt alien, as if the body thewoman touched were not his, he had a knot in his larynx that made it difficult to breathe,and the effort tautened his abdomen and thighs and tied his erection to the base of hisspine. Like a Tantric adept he felt his orgasm start there and crawl his whole length:

Joshua Malbin307 12

th

St. Apt 8Brooklyn NY 11215

2kidneys, chest, throat, mouth, pineal gland. It was shattering. He cried, and didn’t evenknow whether he’d started weeping before or after he ejaculated.He heartbreak sex effect lasted a week, sometimes ten days. He wouldn’t turn up hisnose at other kinds of sex, of course, but he’d never found any to match it.Friday he went to see the client. Guild procedure called for a third of the fee upfront—in this case $75,000—and the remainder in an escrow account. It was time tocollect the $150,000 he was owed.The client was a lobbyist at one of the K Street shops, 20,000 square feet of gleaming anonymous office. He had a carrot-shaped head. He was beaming.“I heard from one of the few mutual friends me and her have left,” he told Sander.“You did well.”He asked one of the thirty or forty lawyers on the floor to come notarize his andSander’s signatures, and Sander bundled the papers into the leather satchel he usedinstead of a briefcase. Then the client asked the lawyer to leave again.“I have a referral,” he said. Sander sat down on the leather couch and crossed hisankle onto the opposite knee so the sole touched leather. He resented the man for makinghim crush Sylvia, and for being happy about it. She hadn’t gotten much in the divorce,and the client had never said why he wanted revenge. It might have been pure meanness.“My cousin in New York, his wife came down here with their kids. He calls me up andasks if I know who could bring them back, and I thought of you.”“The kids?” Sander asked

Joshua Malbin307 12

th

St. Apt 8Brooklyn NY 11215

3The lobbyist nodded.He’d stayed on his feet, leaning against his desk, so Sander had to look up at him.Sander didn’t like that, and he didn’t like being confused with a custody specialist. Thoseguys wormed their way into women’s lives and shot heroin in front of the six-year-old ormade passes at the teenaged daughter, all for the purpose of giving ammunition to the ex-husband’s lawyer. Sander held them in contempt, but as fellow guild members he had totolerate them.He wrote the D.C. guildhall’s phone number on a scrap of paper and handed it over.“I don’t do that kind of thing,” he said. “They’ll have a list at the hall of guys who do.”The client smirked, as if the idea of Sander having scruples amused him. Sylvia hadsaid that when she left him he’d canceled their credit cards, emptied every joint accountshe could tap, and then literally tried to bargain her into staying. She’d had to get anadvance on her salary to pay for a hotel room, and borrow from her parents to put downthe security deposit on an apartment.He missed her terribly when he left her ex-husband’s office. It was cold outside, thewind coursing through the wide, glass-walled canyons of downtown. He would haveliked to call her, one of those pleasant conversations they’d come to have over the phonein the middle of the day, she busy at work and Sander busy pretending to work, butneither pretending any reason for the call. Sweet, uncomplicated contact with a humanbeing who cared for you. All of Sander’s affairs had had idiosyncrasies like that, andhe’d lost enough of them to know that no woman in the future would call him at lunch to